NY regulator says financial firms could face bans over money laundering

By Emily Stephenson

WASHINGTON Wed Mar 19, 2014 3:39pm EDT

State financial regulator Benjamin Lawsky listens to testimony at a hearing in New York January 29, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Eric Thayer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York state’s top financial regulator on Wednesday said his office, as part of efforts to crack down further on Wall Street misdeeds, is considering banning certain banks from specific businesses.

The New York Department of Financial Services has taken an increasingly hard line on financial institutions that have violated U.S. sanctions laws through their U.S. dollar clearing operations, imposing steep fines on them.

But the head of that office, Benjamin Lawsky, said in a speech in Washington he could envision moving beyond fines to penalties that could hurt the institutions in more severe ways.

“You could say no dollar clearing for a month or for a year or for six months,” Lawsky said, adding that he is still thinking through the potential repercussions of such steps.

Last year Lawsky’s office blocked Deloitte LLP’s financial advisory unit from working with New York state-regulated banks for a year as part of a settlement related to its review of money laundering controls at Standard Chartered Bank.

“We’re considering some new, similar ideas when it comes to our investigations into banks that used their dollar-clearing operations to launder money, but we have not come to any firm conclusions on that issue yet,” Lawsky said.

Lawsky, who has worked to establish a reputation as a tough enforcer, did not name firms and told reporters after his speech that his office is still thinking through how they could keep banks out of certain businesses.

U.S. regulators, including Lawsky’s office, are looking at whether French banks Credit Agricole and Societe Generale violated anti-money laundering rules and economic embargoes on countries like Iran, Reuters has reported.

Lawsky’s office has reached settlements with Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, which is owned by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, and Standard Chartered over similar allegations.

Lawsky said regulators also need to go after more individuals as they figure out new ways to punish financial firms that break the rules.

“Ultimately, when Wall Street executives face real, serious consequences for breaking the rules – it helps deter future misconduct,” Lawsky said.

(Reporting by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Reuters: Business News

NY regulator says financial firms could face bans over money laundering

New York takes London"s crown as top financial center: survey

LONDON (Reuters) – New York has knocked London from its position as the world’s leading global financial center after seven years, according to the Global Financial Centres Index compiled by London-based consultancy Z/Yen.

Reuters: Top News

New York takes London"s crown as top financial center: survey

The Black Financial and Fraud Report

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China Drops Bombshell On US - Bankers Deaths, Bank Runs, Financial Bigwigs Running Scared - It Is All Connected!

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China Drops Bombshell On US - Bankers Deaths, Bank Runs, Financial Bigwigs Running Scared - It Is All Connected!

Financial Crisis a Joke at Secret Wall Street Party

(Newser) – After ruining the global economy, why not celebrate with a party that features homophobic jokes and musical acts in drag? That’s what reporter Kevin Roose discovered when he sneaked into the 2012 annual black-tie induction ceremony of Kappa Beta Phi, a secret Wall Street fraternity that’s been around since 1929. Big cheeses like billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, AIG CEO Bob Benmosche, and former Bear Stearns chair Alan “Ace” Greenberg took in the event’s camaraderie and heavy drinking at New York’s St. Regis Hotel ballroom in 2012. Among the lowlights:

• A private-equity executive at Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe told jokes like, Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Barney Frank and a Fenway Frank?” A: “Barney Frank comes in different-size buns.”


• Bill Mulrow, top Blackstone Group executive, donned tie-dye clothes to portray a “liberal radical” while a hedge fund manager berated him: “Bill, look at you! You’re pathetic, you liberal! You need a bath!”


• Investment banking CEO Warren Stephens hit the stage draped in a Confederate flag and sang a financial-crisis song to the tune of “Dixie”: “In Wall Street land we’ll take our stand, said Morgan and Goldman. But first we better get some loans, so quick, get to the Fed, man.”

Writing about the party in his new book, Young Money (excerpted at the Daily Intelligencer), Roose describes how the Wall Street types eventually spotted him and shuttled him into the hall—where they promised to take his calls if he “could just keep their privacy in mind.” Obviously, Roose didn’t play ball. His take-away from the event? “The upper ranks of finance are composed of people who have completely divorced themselves from reality. No self-aware and socially conscious Wall Street executive would have agreed to be part of a group whose tacit mission is to make light of the financial sector’s foibles.” Click for the full excerpt, including juicy photos and audio from the party.

Newser

Financial Crisis a Joke at Secret Wall Street Party

The Developing Financial Crisis in Rahmaland

Projections show that Emanuel would have to raise property taxes by up to 150 per cent if he were to leave Chicago’s pensions untouched, which would cripple its economy. Alternatively, he would have to eliminate essential services to keep pensions intact; Beirut on the Lake would return with a vengeance. Reality dictates he must cut the pensions themselves. The unions will be sure to fight it bitterly in the courts and at the ballot box. “Everyone faces the same problem,” Emanuel says. “We [Chicago] face it in spades. One of the things I’ve tried to do is show that if you give a little, you get a win-win situation. If you try to hold on to what you have, you won’t progress. You can’t tax your way out of this, or cut your way out of this. We are kind of the same as New York and Los Angeles. Our economy is incredibly strong, our fiscal picture is weak and the combination to the lock that I’m trying to work through is how to fix the fiscal piece without derailing the economy.” Time is scarce: Chicago’s pension-funding “holiday” ends in 2015.

BlackListedNews.com

The Developing Financial Crisis in Rahmaland

The Developing Financial Crisis in Rahmaland

Projections show that Emanuel would have to raise property taxes by up to 150 per cent if he were to leave Chicago’s pensions untouched, which would cripple its economy. Alternatively, he would have to eliminate essential services to keep pensions intact; Beirut on the Lake would return with a vengeance. Reality dictates he must cut the pensions themselves. The unions will be sure to fight it bitterly in the courts and at the ballot box. “Everyone faces the same problem,” Emanuel says. “We [Chicago] face it in spades. One of the things I’ve tried to do is show that if you give a little, you get a win-win situation. If you try to hold on to what you have, you won’t progress. You can’t tax your way out of this, or cut your way out of this. We are kind of the same as New York and Los Angeles. Our economy is incredibly strong, our fiscal picture is weak and the combination to the lock that I’m trying to work through is how to fix the fiscal piece without derailing the economy.” Time is scarce: Chicago’s pension-funding “holiday” ends in 2015.

BlackListedNews.com

The Developing Financial Crisis in Rahmaland

Nuclear bomb of financial engineering keeps wages from growing

AmCham and ECCT congratulate financial services industry"s progress

By Kathrine Wei ,The China Post
January 28, 2014, 12:10 am TWN

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Joint Banking Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce and the European Chamber of Commerce in Taipei yesterday praised the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) for its efforts in taking concrete steps toward improving the banking regulatory environment and making it more competitive by accepting recommendations from industry.

Both chambers of commerce acknowledged that the Taiwanese government is currently working to boost Taiwan’s economy, enhance competitiveness and attract more investment. They stated that the further development of the financial services industry is essential to nurture financial professionals and increase international competitiveness.

The recent progress and efforts made in cross-strait financial cooperation has created an opportunity for Taiwan to become an important offshore RMB market in the Asia-Pacific region, noted the AmCham/ECCT Joint Banking Committee. In recent years, the committee has been continuously providing recommendations aimed at boosting Taiwan as an offshore RMB center as well as promoting Formosa bonds in the international bond market. The committee believes that the regulators’ continued efforts will better position Taiwan as an important financial center in Asia.

The Joint Banking committee also acknowledged that the Taiwan government has referred to the financial market development experiences of Hong Kong and Singapore in setting policy and broadening the business scope of the financial market through timely regulatory review and appropriate deregulation guided by the principles of stabilization and liberalization.

In addition, the committee is highly encouraged by and fully supports the government’s policy to include the financial services industry in the Free Economic Pilot Zones and expand the business scope of offshore banking units (OBUs). These are helpful policies that could spur the repatriation of capital that is currently offshore. This approach is essential to enhance the onshore financial market, which will lead to growth in terms of investment, job opportunities and the economy.

As responsible members of Taiwan’s Financial Industry, AmCham/ECCT Joint Banking committee members announced that it will keep providing recommendations and adopting international expertise in order to benefit Taiwanese corporations and consumers and increase the competitiveness of the financial industry. The committee also fully supports the view expressed by Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Tseng during the FSC’s business liaison meeting with foreign bank country heads, that members of the financial industry should promote CSR activities in order to build a better living environment for the next generation.

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Financial stability concerns should not deter Fed on policy: Bernanke

Financial stability concerns should not deter Fed on policy: Bernanke
http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20140116&t=2&i=830061613&w=580&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=CBREA0F1B6Z00

By Jonathan Spicer and Jason Lange

WASHINGTON Thu Jan 16, 2014 12:32pm EST

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pauses as he responds to reporters during his final planned news conference before his retirement, at the Federal Reserve Bank headquarters in Washington, December 18, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve should give the economy the stimulus it needs despite “credible” worries that its massive bond-buying program could destabilize the financial system, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday.

In his last planned public remarks as head of the central bank, Bernanke said concern about the potential harm to financial stability is the only risk from unconventional monetary policies “that I find personally credible.”

But, he added “at this point we don’t think that, and I think I can speak for my colleagues on this, we don’t think that financial stability concerns should at this point detract from the need for monetary policy accommodation, which we are continuing to provide,” Bernanke said.

During his tenure, Bernanke pushed the Fed far into unconventional territory, not only slashing short-term interest rates to zero and keeping them there since December 2008, but providing long-term “forward guidance” assuring investors the Fed would keep interest rates low for a long time to come.

In a second unprecedented move, he quadrupled the Fed’s balance sheet to $ 4 trillion through three rounds of bond-buying aimed at lowering long-term rates and spurring hiring.

“I do think by the way that they both have been helpful,” Bernanke said at a Brookings Institution event. And neither, he said, have delivered the potential costs that many warned they would, including unbridled inflation.

Inflation, by the Fed’s preferred gauge, has risen just 1.1 percent in the past 12 months, well below the Fed’s 2-percent target.

Janet Yellen, currently Fed vice chair, will take the reins as Fed chair on February 1, just after the Fed’s first policy-setting meeting of the year.

Last month, the Fed took a first step toward dialing down its massive stimulus with a decision to reduce monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities to $ 75 billion from $ 85 billion a month.

The Fed will probably phase the program out entirely late in the year, Bernanke said at the time.

He also told investors that the Fed was nowhere near to tightening policy, saying the U.S. central bank would keep rates near zero until “well past the time” that unemployment falls to 6.5 percent, especially if inflation continues to linger below the Fed’s 2-percent target.

Unemployment fell to 6.7 percent in December.

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer and Jason Lange; Writing by Ann Saphir; Editing by James Dalgleish and Paul Simao)

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DHS Preparing for Next Financial Collapse ?

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DHS Preparing for Next Financial Collapse ?

Personal Financial Disclosure Analysis: What Took Us So Long?

We’re happy to bring you the updated Personal Financial Disclosure section of our website!

It may seem surprising that 2012 data on the personal finances of lawmakers, the Supreme Court and the executive branch is considered new in January 2014. But processing these disclosures and getting the information they contain into a searchable database is not for the faint of heart. Let us explain.

Every year on May 15, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices and high-ranking members of the executive branch are required to file a form detailing their personal finances for the previous year. Filers who are not ready can request an extension, which gives them up to an extra three months to file.  That means the public — including the Center for Responsive Politics — can’t even begin to look at the filings until between five and eight months after the end of the calendar year covered.

Reports can be submitted electronically, though that’s not required. An electronic filing requirement was originally included as part of the STOCK Act, but the provision was removed in the subsequent S. 716, which passed in May 2013. Though electronically submitted forms are much easier to read than the handwritten ones, even then the forms are only available as PDFs and are not searchable. And we don’t currently have the capability to pull information from handwritten filings through OCR (optical character recognition). We hope to soon!

In order to provide searchable data to visitors of our website, including CRP-added industry codes, we must hand-enter each item from each page of the forms. Every asset, transaction, income amount, trip, gift and position held is keyed in by a real person.  Needless to say, this takes a long time.  

Some filers submit blurry, handwritten reports. Others hand in hundreds of pages of brokerage statements. And some submit amended reports with little or no information connecting the amendment  to the original report.

Beyond that, financial data can be confusing. Sometimes the value of an entire portfolio is listed along with the values of each underlying asset, which can lead to overreporting if the duplications aren’t caught. Another common challenge we encounter is accurately coding an asset as a bank account or a stock invested in a banking institution.

All of these issues require special care and make creating the PFD dataset a time-consuming process.

We’ve done our very best to provide accurate, searchable and downloadable information. Please let us know what interesting things you are able to do with the database and alert us to any mistakes you think we might have made along the way.

Thanks, and happy hunting!

OpenSecrets Blog

Personal Financial Disclosure Analysis: What Took Us So Long?

Leaked Memo Reveals Who Caused The Global Financial Collapse (It"s Not Good) - MOC #261 via @LeeCamp

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Leaked Memo Reveals Who Caused The Global Financial Collapse (It"s Not Good) - MOC #261 via @LeeCamp

Debt Crisis For Generations, Global Financial Crisis

Debt Crisis For Generations, Global Financial Crisis
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[287] Drones at Your Doorstep, Puppet States Against Diplomacy & America"s Impending Financial Crash

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[287] Drones at Your Doorstep, Puppet States Against Diplomacy & America"s Impending Financial Crash

VIDEO: Banking on a Rally

With gains of more than 30% for many financial stocks so far this year, the sector has given many traditional value investors vertigo. David Reilly explains why investors should look closer at the gains.

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VIDEO: Banking on a Rally

UK watchdog to begin major review of wholesale financial markets

UK watchdog to begin major review of wholesale financial markets
http://currenteconomictrendsandnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/bce0a__p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

By Huw Jones

LONDON Tue Nov 19, 2013 1:35pm EST

LONDON Nov 19 (Reuters) – Britain’s financial regulator will start a root and branch review early next year of whether wholesale markets used by banks, fund managers and exchanges are competitive.

“This will be a wide-ranging piece of work and, as part of it, we will be inviting market participants to tell us where they currently encounter issues,” David Lawton, director of markets at the Financial Conduct Authority, said on Tuesday.

The FCA was launched in April with a mission to protect consumers better after a string of mis-selling scandals left them out of pocket.

Lawton outlined how the new watchdog will also change the way it supervises wholesale markets after the scandal over the rigging of Libor benchmark interest rates by banks.

The FCA will use new competition powers to make changes in the way these markets operate. Wholesale financial markets cover stock exchanges as well as bond and derivative trading by banks, brokers and asset managers.

“We believe this work will be an important step forward in using the competition objective to bring about better outcomes for consumers and market integrity in the wholesale markets,” Lawton told an FCA conference on markets.

One issue the FCA expects to crop up in the review is the price exchanges charge for their data on share trading.

Big asset managers have complained at having to pay a plethora of exchanges for their data to obtain a pan-European snapshot of the market and check if they are getting the best offer prices.

Another issue is co-location or where exchanges offer a premium service to participants who are allowed to place their computer servers next to the exchange to get the fastest trading speeds possible.

Some investors view this as a two-tier market that creates unfair advantages.

Over the next five years, the watchdog expects to be using its competition powers in the wholesale market as actively as it will be in the retail market, an FCA official said.

The FCA can generate structural changes in the market to increase competition by issuing new rules and guidance, curbing what firms can do and take enforcement action.

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Reuters: Financial Services and Real Estate

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Financial Crisis! U S economic collapse imminent Alex Jones Max Keiser

Financial Crisis! U S economic collapse imminent Alex Jones Max Keiser
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0sgf5p0Lnnc/0.jpg

Read more about Financial Crisis! U S economic collapse imminent Alex Jones Max Keiser and other interesting subjects concerning Economy at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Max Keiser - Economist Says Current Financial Struture Will Cost Us 10 Year Depression

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Max Keiser - Economist Says Current Financial Struture Will Cost Us 10 Year Depression

Financial woes hit UK hospitals hard

Financial woes hit UK hospitals hard
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A British parliamentary committee has been warned that a third of hospitals across the UK are going into the red amid a crippling financial crisis created by unprecedented cash squeeze, media reports say.

The warning by the Nuffield Trust health think tank cautioned members of parliament (MPs) in a bleak assessment of the National Health Service (NHS)’s financial difficulties, saying one in three hospitals could end up unsustainable with the current system not equipped enough to face the growing problem, British media reported.

The House of Commons health select committee launched the probe into the NHS’s ongoing £20bn savings drive, and it was warned by the think tank that ministers should be prepared to face any possible scenario.

“Many hospitals face severe and potentially unsustainable financial pressures”, the trust told the MPs, adding that its analysis of official data about the NHS’s financial health puts a question mark over its future viability.

According to the trust’s assessment, smaller hospitals which are operating semi-autonomously of NHS and the government’s control face a greater risk because they are not given foundation trust status.

The trust added that those hospitals in “regional clusters of financial stress”, such as outer London and the West Midlands, are also going into the red.

The foundation trust status would not be given to 83 NHS trusts from among 246 trusts which are providing care in England because they are not earning enough, or generating a sufficient surplus from their work, said the Nuffield Trust.

According to Monitor, the NHS’s economic regulator, those trusts include 40 of the 146 foundation trusts and 43 of the 100 trusts which have not achieved that status.

Meanwhile, the NHS would not be able to bail out hospitals in trouble because “hospital trusts could start becoming unsustainable in larger number than the current system is designed to address”, according to the trust.

The main opposition Labour Party used the think tank’s analysis to blame the coalition government for failing to address hospitals’ financial woes.

“Ministers lack a plan to deal with trusts in serious financial difficulties and cannot guarantee that the quality of patient care will not be affected. With hospital trusts facing a financial challenge, the government should be focusing on sorting the situation out,” said Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary.

Anita Charlesworth, the trust’s chief economist, said: “We need to monitor the signs that this challenging situation could lead to an unsustainable financial squeeze on hospital trusts. The weakest hospitals appear to be getting weaker.”

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