Free Republic

New York state’s comptroller has asked a host of banks and credit card companies to explore whether or not gun transactions should be treated like high-risk purchases like porn, illicit drugs and cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg magazine reported. Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees some $209.1 billion in the state’s public employee retirement fund, the third largest in the country, sent letters out last week urging financial institutions to consider following Citigroup’s effort to force the gun industry to adopt stricter policies. “If gun violence continues unabated in society — public outcry and calls for action may grow and create significant financial risk...

Six Kentucky community banks that could be competing for business have agreed to work together as charter members of the specialty $150 million Commonwealth Infrastructure Fund to finance public-private partnerships (P3) in Kentucky.In the next few months, CIF is expected to reveal one or more inaugural deals.“We are looking at five to 10 potential projects that should start sometime in 2018. We expect to make loans to two or three projects in 2018 after the underwriting process has been completed,” said John Farris, who manages CIF. “We believe we will lend out all $150 million over three to five years...

Putin controls the Russia's state institutions, its secret police and its big state companies. Together with a few old friends from St. Petersburg, the president is tapping the big state companies through overpriced no-bid procurement, transfer pricing, asset stripping and stock manipulation. They are also making money by extorting old oligarchs and taking loans from state banks, not to be returned. Overall assessments indicate a personal enrichment of Putin and his closest cronies of some $20 billion to $25 billion a year since 2006, a pilfering from Gazprom of $60 billion from 2004 to 2007...By now, this group would have...

I am involved in the lawsuit, and I have been needing bank records from 2010. It sounds like Banks only keep the records for six or seven years. I'm curious if anyone has ever had experienced trying to obtain bank records older than 6 years and if they have had success. By the way, I am with Wells Fargo.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Recently filed federal charges against President Donald Trump's ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort could also pose legal and regulatory risks for the banks that loaned him millions of dollars against his New York real estate in recent years. The most serious exposure may be for a Rhode Island-based bank that employed a "conspirator" in Manafort's scheme to obtain a loan he couldn't afford, according to the 32-count new indictment unsealed this week. Dubbed "Lender B" in court papers, Citizens Bank not only lent Manafort $3.4 million based off of fraudulent documents but, in another case, appeared to...

The PBS NewsHour, which I love for telling me what to think and when to think it, had a piece yesterday about a black lesbian woman who claimed she couldn't get a mortgage because racist banks wouldn't lend to a black person.  When her Japanese lesbian partner applied for a loan, however, she quickly got it. Fifty years after the federal Fair Housing Act banned racial discrimination in lending, African Americans and Latinos continue to be routinely denied conventional mortgage loans at rates far higher than their white counterparts. It found a pattern of troubling denials for people of color...

Dec 29 (Reuters) - Zach Lazarus, chief executive officer of A Green Alternative, a marijuana dispensary in San Diego, California, has lost count every time he re-opened a bank account after it was closed because of his connection to the cannabis industry. Lazarus has had to play a game of "whack-a-mole" with banks, likening his frustrations to a popular arcade game in which a player repeatedly gets rid of something only to have it re-appear somewhere else. Lazarus and other marijuana business owners in the $8 billion industry resort to cash-only transactions for business and to pay employees because they...

A high-ranking official from Turkey’s second-largest state-owned bank was arrested in New York City March 27. On the orders of the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Joon H. Kim, FBI agents arrested Mehmet Hakan Atilla, Halkbank’s vice president for international banking, for violating the US-led sanctions against Iran. The press release from Kim’s office accused Atilla with participating “in a years-long scheme to violate American sanctions laws by helping Reza Zarrab, a major gold trader, use U.S. financial institutions to engage in prohibited financial transactions that illegally funneled millions of dollars to Iran.” Zarrab, a Turkish citizen...

A Senate panel on Tuesday approved legislation that would provide banks and credit unions with relief from some of the stricter regulatory requirements put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. The bill, which was approved by a 16-7 vote, raises the threshold at which bank holding companies are considered too big to fail, thus subjecting them to financial stress tests and a capital-planning review. The threshold would increase from $50 billion to $250 billion. The panel rejected an array of amendments that senators said could unravel a bipartisan agreement crafted over several months. The bill is much narrower than...

My wife and I have an account with one of the large mutual fund companies. We were just informed that the state is getting ready to seize the account because it is considered abandoned. We have had the fund for about 12 years with the dividends and capital gains automatically deposited in our bank account. After calling the fund we were told that even though there have been approximately 150 automatic transactions on the account over the last 12 years they did not count as activity and so the state is preparing to seize the account. We were told we...

Two years ago, I wrote a column that frightened a lot of people. Now, I’m going to scare you again — this time, maybe even more. That column, which appeared on Sept. 24, 2015, explained that it had become easier for states to confiscate people’s bank, money market and other financial accounts because they were “abandoned.” So-called escheatment laws have been on the books forever. But states have been changing the rules so that it has become simpler for them to consider an account dormant — and then take it over. It’s a great scam for states that are desperate...

[I begin] with the story of a series of Socialist scholars conferences that Barack Obama attended when he lived in New York City between the years 1983 and 1985. And when I finally reconstructed what had gone on at these Socialist conferences that Barack Obama attended, I truly was amazed because what I saw was a kind of map of Barack Obama’s entire subsequent political career. It was at this Socialist conferences in New York in the mid-’80s that Barack Obama encountered the groups, the strategies, and the mentors who would guide him throughout his entire political career. [T]hese Socialist...

EXCLUSIVE: Tech company which maintained Hillary's secret server was sued for 'illegally accessing' database and 'stealing White House military advisers' phone numbers' The Internet company used by Hillary Clinton to maintain her private server was sued for stealing dozens of phone lines including some which were used by the White House. Platte River Networks is said to have illegally accessed the master database for all US phone numbers. It also seized 390 lines in a move that created chaos across the US government. Among the phone numbers which the company took - which all suddenly stopped working - were lines...

European Union states are considering measures which would allow them to temporarily stop people withdrawing money from their accounts to prevent bank runs ... The move is aimed at helping rescue lenders that are deemed failing or likely to fail, but critics say it could hit confidence and might even hasten withdrawals at the first rumors of a bank being in trouble. The proposal, which has been in the works since the beginning of this year, comes less than two months after a run on deposits at Banco Popular contributed to the collapse of the Spanish lender. It also come...

Though belated, the recent ordinance empowering the Reserve Bank of India to ensure recoveries from wilful defaulters is a step in the right direction. However, a lack of legal authority was never a barrier in the government’s ongoing war against corruption, black money and bad debts. Be that as it may, it is imperative for the government to demonstrate tangible results that would carry conviction with the masses. If only it were to examine the anatomy and modus operandi of national highway projects, it would discover a large-scale plunder of public money waiting to be booked. The usual contractor-engineer-politician troika...

House Republicans voted Thursday to replace the 2010 Dodd-Frank law with their own sweeping financial regulatory measure, the Financial Choice Act.The bill passed 233-186, with no Democratic support. One Republican, Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted no.Authored by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, the conservative chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, the bill is perhaps second only to the healthcare legislation Republicans passed last month in its scope and significance. Like the healthcare bill, it would undo one of Obama's top legislative achievements, the new rules imposed on the financial sector in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis....

In the land of NIRP refugees and “Reverse Yankees,” who will get crushed? At the end of the week, something special happened, something totally absurd but part of the new normal: the average yield of euro-denominated junk bonds – the riskiest, non-investment-grade corporate bonds – dropped to the lowest level ever: 2.77%. April 26 had marked another propitious date in the annals of the ECB’s negative yield absurdity: the average euro-denominated junk bond yield had dropped below 3% for the first time ever. By comparison, what is considered the most liquid and safe debt, the 10-year US Treasury, carries a...

Guccifer 2.0, has released files pertinent to the Clinton Foundation. Banks that received TARP fund sent kickbacks to Democrat polls to bribe them to vote for the TARP bailouts.   When Obama demanded that congress approve more bailouts between 2009 and 2011, it seemed as if kickbacks were offered to Democratic politicians from the big banks, but through the Clinton Foundation. This included Hillary, who was to ensure that the bailout got approved. Clinton aided the big banks in bribing the Democrat politicians. “Democrats funneled tarp funds back to their PACs! That’s taxpayer bailout money that went right to...

As John F. Kerry tries to bounce out of Boston and into a decisive fall campaign lead, a skeleton from the past will slink out of jail - possibly looking to score headlines and undercut the new nominee. David Paul, a central figure in a 1980s savings and loan scandal, is set to be sprung from a halfway house in Miami Sunday - a decade after his conviction on 97 counts of banking fraud. TV news outlets are scrambling to line up the first interview, hopeful the long-silent Paul might spill some beans about his close fund-raising ties to Kerry...

Stocks drop after Trump says he's actively considering breaking up big banks Headline only at this time.