'Throughout North American and most of the world, brokers, investment banks, fund sellers and insurers are currently held to a low-hurdle ‘suitability standard’ where commission models and conflicts of interest'
Reagan/Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals with Republicans in Congress created law to end several centuries of Western common law protecting citizens by requiring a strong standard of fiduciary practices in our banks....with this new term 'suitability standard'. Had Congress and Clinton not broken Glass Steagall this would have weakened only stock market financial diligence but in breaking that wall of banking----Wall Street was allowed to use our bank account deposits as fodder under suitability standard. Then Bush and Obama era allowed Wall Street banks to go wild with fraud using these weakened laws as excuses to call moving all US wealth to the top GREED.
MAKE NO MISTAKE---EVEN WITH THIS NEW SUITABILITY STANDARD-----FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS LIKE LOAN ORIGINATORS AND NOW BOND MARKET SALES ARE BREAKING THE TERMS OF SUITABILITY STANDARDS.
Obama and his US Justice Department Holder then allowed all subprime mortgage lawsuits go to a few courts having judges INTERPRETING SUITABILITY STANDARDS in favor of banks. It was the duty of our states AGs to challenge that and they did not. Doug Gansler in Maryland was team Wall Street as today's FROSH will be team Wall Street in protecting profits from this coming bond market fraud.
If we understand the history of these frauds---we know fraud when it is coming----so now it is the economic crash from subprimed global US Treasury and state municipal bond debt. Here is the difference. Where the subprime mortgage loan fraud targeted the public for loans----albeit taking Federal housing loan funds----this bond fraud directly targets the US, State of Maryland, and City of Baltimore----and there are strong laws against conspiracy to defraud the government....which is what this bond fraud does.
Below you see the crimes being allowed by our Congress, US Justice Department, our Maryland Assembly and Maryland Attorney General and states' attorney----it is open and flagrant and this is why these 2016 elections were allowed to have open systemic frauds all over the nation---they needed US city mayors who were going to ignore these bond crimes and hand the power of city debt for those bonds to Wall Street Baltimore Development. PUGH AND FROSH----ARE OBAMA AND NOW LYNCH MOVING FORWARD this sovereign debt fraud that will send our US cities and the nation into the hands of the IMF---World Bank PRETENDING our governments have no revenue.
18 U.S. Code § 286 - Conspiracy to defraud the Government with respect to claims
Current through Pub. L. 114-38. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)
Whoever enters into any agreement, combination, or conspiracy to defraud the United States, or any department or agency thereof, by obtaining or aiding to obtain the payment or allowance of any false, fictitious or fraudulent claim, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 698; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)
In Baltimore it is the Baltimore Maryland Assembly and Baltimore City Hall pols with Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins loading the city with bond leverage debt and we call them THE WALL STREET PLAYERS.
Charged with Conspiracy in Maryland?
Conspiracy charges are often used against individuals where the underlying offense may or may not have actually taken place. It may involve such crimes as the distribution of drugs, solicitation to commit murder, embezzlement, or just about any crime. Often “gang members” are so charged if a crime has been committed and it is considered to be gang-related. Conspiracy could be the charge if two or more individuals planned to commit a crime and took an action towards the commission of the crime. If convicted of the charge of conspiracy (depending on what was conspired), you face the penalty of the underlying crime that was intended, whether that crime was actually ever committed. In gang related conspiracy charges, the law is clear that if you have knowledge of crimes that were planned, or were to get any benefit from such crimes, you can be charged with conspiracy and face penalties related to the crimes involved.
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It's obvious to the world the $20 trillion national debt and the soaring municipal bond debt leverage in a few states and cities like Baltimore Maryland are premeditated, willful malice designed to capture Baltimore taxpayers for decades to global corporate campus construction and subsidy. Congress and Obama gave the FED the right to confiscate bank accounts in the event of another economic crisis AND it gave the FED the right to set dates after-which bank depositors cannot withdraw----some weeks before the actual crash occurs. So, US citizens will finally hear on national media a crisis is coming only AFTER THE FED HAS PLACED THAT HOLD ON BANK ACCOUNT WITHDRAW. I am reading financial articles saying our pensions and 401Ks cannot be confiscated but Wall Street won't have to-----all those accounts are tied to GLOBAL MUNICIPAL BOND FUNDS----LIKE PIMCO. It will be the attachment of our pensions and retirements to the WORST OF BOND INVESTMENTS that will cause those losses. The final loss will come from as I said those Federal funds only sent out monthly through direct deposit. That is our Social Security, SS Disability, VA benefits all of which will hit that bank account and then be available for seizure. In Europe they allowed banks to seize accounts several times---not just once sending citizens into desperate and deepened poverty.
Again, all of these policies are designed to take down community banks and credit unions and merge regional banks into Wall Street banks taking what's left of deposits into the hands of global banks. Most US citizens will simply be DEBANKED and pushed into that predatory low-income check cashing system.
CONGRESS AND OBAMA PASSED THOSE SAME LAWS A FEW YEARS AGO TO DO HERE IN THE US WHAT WAS DONE IN CYPRESS.
“[W]ith Cyprus ... the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”
—Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor“
We see these articles written in 2013----academics and professional financial analysts were reporting this as early as 2010 when the FED and Congress started passing many of these laws. So, our state and local pols pushing all that debt KNEW we were heading into a bubble bursting bond market economic crash when they loaded the state and city with debt. Baltimore is one of the most leveraged in bond debt in the nation because Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins wanted it that way and Baltimore pols DO WHAT WALL STREET SAYS.
Bail-out Is Out, Bail-in Is In: Time for Some Publicly Owned Banks
05/02/2013 12:41 pm 12:41:53 | Updated Jul 02, 2013
Ellen Brown Author, Web of Debt, Public Bank Solution; President, Public Banking Institute
“[W]ith Cyprus ... the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”
—Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor“
The crossing of the Rubicon into the confiscation of depositor funds was not a one-off emergency measure limited to Cyprus. Similar “bail-in” policies are now appearing in multiple countries. (See my earlier articles here.) What triggered the new rules may have been a series of game-changing events including the refusal of Iceland to bail out its banks and their depositors; Bank of America’s commingling of its ominously risky derivatives arm with its depository arm over the objections of the FDIC; and the fact that most EU banks are now insolvent. A crisis in a major nation such as Spain or Italy could lead to a chain of defaults beyond anyone’s control, and beyond the ability of federal deposit insurance schemes to reimburse depositors.
The new rules for keeping the too-big-to-fail banks alive: use creditor funds, including uninsured deposits, to recapitalize failing banks.
But isn’t that theft?
Perhaps, but it’s legal theft. By law, when you put your money into a deposit account, your money becomes the property of the bank. You become an unsecured creditor with a claim against the bank. Before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was instituted in 1934, U.S. depositors routinely lost their money when banks went bankrupt. Your deposits are protected only up to the $250,000 insurance limit, and only to the extent that the FDIC has the money to cover deposit claims or can come up with it.
The question then is, how secure is the FDIC?
Can the FDIC Go Bankrupt?
In 2009, when the FDIC fund went $8.2 billion in the hole, Chairwoman Sheila Bair assured depositors that their money was protected by a hefty credit line with the Treasury. But the FDIC is funded with premiums from its member banks, which had to replenish the fund. The special assessment required to do it was crippling for the smaller banks, and that was just to recover $8.2 billion. What happens when Bank of America or JPMorganChase, which have commingled their massive derivatives casinos with their depositary arms, is propelled into bankruptcy by a major derivatives fiasco? These two banks both have deposits exceeding $1 trillion, and they both have derivatives books with notional values exceeding the GDP of the world.
Bank of America Corporation moved its trillions in derivatives (mostly credit default swaps) from its Merrill Lynch unit to its banking subsidiary in 2011. It did not get regulatory approval but just acted at the request of frightened counterparties, following a downgrade by Moody’s. The FDIC opposed the move, reportedly protesting that the FDIC would be subjected to the risk of becoming insolvent if BofA were to file for bankruptcy. But the Federal Reserve favored the move, in order to give relief to the bank holding company. (Proof positive, says former regulator Bill Black, that the Fed is working for the banks and not for us. “Any competent regulator would have said: ‘No, Hell NO!’”)
The reason this risky move would subject the FDIC to insolvency, as explained in my earlier article here, is that under the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, derivatives counter-parties are given preference over all other creditors and customers of the bankrupt financial institution, including FDIC insured depositors.
Normally, the FDIC would have the powers as trustee in receivership to protect the failed bank’s collateral for payments made to depositors. But the FDIC’s powers are overridden by the special status of derivatives.
(Remember MF Global? The reason its customers lost their segregated customer funds to the derivatives claimants was that derivatives have super-priority in bankruptcy.)
The FDIC has only about $25 billion in its deposit insurance fund, which is mandated by law to keep a balance equivalent to only 1.15 percent of insured deposits. And the Dodd-Frank Act (Section 716) now bans taxpayer bailouts of most speculative derivatives activities. Drawing on the FDIC’s credit line with the Treasury to cover a BofA or JPMorgan derivatives bust would be the equivalent of a taxpayer bailout, at least if the money were not paid back; and imposing that burden on the FDIC’s member banks is something they can ill afford.
BofA is not the only bank threatening to wipe out the federal deposit insurance funds that most countries have. According to Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, most EU banks are zombies. And that explains the impetus for the new “bail in” policies, which put the burden instead on the unsecured creditors, including the depositors. Below is some additional corroborating research on these new, game-changing bail-in schemes.Depositors Beware
An interesting series of commentaries starts with one on the website of Sprott Asset Management Inc. titled “Caveat Depositor,” in which Eric Sprott and Shree Kargutkar note that the US, UK, EU, and Canada have all built the new “bail in” template to avoid imposing risk on their governments and taxpayers. They write:
[M]ost depositors naively assume that their deposits are 100% safe in their banks and trust them to safeguard their savings. Under the new “template” all lenders (including depositors) to the bank can be forced to “bail in” their respective banks.
Dave of Denver then followed up on the Sprott commentary in an April 3 entry on his blog The Golden Truth, in which he pointed out that the new template has long been agreed to by the G20 countries:
Because the use of taxpayer-funded bailouts would likely no longer be tolerated by the public, a new bank rescue plan was needed. As it turns out, this new “bail-in” model is based on an agreement that was the result of a bank bail-out model that was drafted by a sub-committee of the BIS (Bank for International Settlement) and endorsed at a G20 summit in 2011. For those of you who don’t know, the BIS is the global “Central Bank” of Central Banks. As such it is the world’s most powerful financial institution.
The links are in Dave’s April 1 article, which states:
The new approach has been agreed at the highest levels . . . It has been a topic under consideration since the publication by the Financial Stability Board (a BIS committee) of a paper, Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes for Financial Institutions in October 2011, which was endorsed at the Cannes G20 summit the following month. This was followed by a consultative document in November 2012, Recovery and Resolution Planning: Making the Key Attributes Requirements Operational.
Dave goes on:
[W]hat is commonly referred to as a “bail-in” in Cyprus is actually a global bank rescue model that was derived and ratified nearly two years ago. . . . [B]ank deposits in excess of Government insured amount in any bank in any country will be treated like unsecured debt if the bank goes belly-up and is restructured in some form.
Jesse at Jesse’s Café Americain then picked up the thread and pointed out that it is not just direct deposits that are at risk. The too-big-to-fail banks have commingled accounts in a web of debt that spreads globally. Stock brokerages keep their money market funds in overnight sweeps in TBTF banks, and many credit unions do their banking at large TBTF correspondent banks:
You say you have money in a pension fund and an IRA at XYZ bank? Oops, it is really on deposit in you-know-who’s bank. You say you have money in a brokerage account? Oops, it is really being held overnight in their TBTF bank. Remember MF Global? Who can say how far the entanglements go? The current financial system and market structure is crazy with hidden risk, insider dealings, control frauds, and subtle dangers.
Also at Risk: Pension Funds and Public Revenues
William Buiter, writing in the UK Financial Times in March 2009, defended the bail-in approach as better than the alternative. But he acknowledged that the “unsecured creditors” who would take the hit were chiefly “pensioners drawing their pensions from pension funds heavily invested in unsecured bank debt and owners of insurance policies with insurance companies holding unsecured bank debt,” and that these unsecured creditors “would suffer a large decline in financial wealth and disposable income that would cause them to cut back sharply on consumption.”
The deposits of U.S. pension funds are well over the insured limit of $250,000. They will get raided just as the pension funds did in Cyprus, and so will the insurance companies. Who else?
Most state and local governments also keep far more on deposit than $250,000, and they keep these revenues largely in TBTF banks. Community banks are not large enough to service the complicated banking needs of governments, and they are unwilling or unable to come up with the collateral that is required to secure public funds over the $250,000 FDIC limit.
The question is, how secure are the public funds in the TBTF banks? Like the depositors who think FDIC insurance protects them, public officials assume their funds are protected by the collateral posted by their depository banks. But the collateral is liable to be long gone in a major derivatives bust, since derivatives claimants have super-priority in bankruptcy over every other claim, secured or unsecured, including those of state and local governments.The Cyprus Wakeup Call
Robert Teitelbaum wrote in a May 2011 article titled “The Case Against Favored Treatment of Derivatives“:
. . . Dodd-Frank did not touch favored status [of derivatives] and despite all the sound and fury, . . . there are very few signs from either party that anyone with any clout is suddenly about to revisit that decision and simplify bankruptcy treatment. Why? Because for all its relative straightforwardness compared to more difficult fixes, derivatives remains a mysterious black box to most Americans . . . . [A]s the sense of urgency to reform passes . . . we return to a situation of technical interest to only a few, most of whom have their own particular self-interest in mind.
But that was in 2011, before the Cyprus alarm bells went off. It is time to pry open the black box, get educated, and get organized.
Here are three things that need to be done for starters:
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Here is the Republican financial outlet saying the same and they give better prospective as to what goal the FED and Congress have in what was deliberately created to be A DEPRESSION-ERA economic crash. They are creating this bank account confiscation policy with accounts being frozen IN ADVANCE----to stop what was a century ago----A RUN ON BANKS. 1% Wall Street and their pols recreated the same conditions of economic crisis from a century ago leading to the GREAT DEPRESSION----only this time the FED wants to get it right.
If you take these policies and add to them the Obama/FED policy basically ending FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY altogether by allowing investment banks to force consumers to sign AN AGREEMENT TAKING AWAY A CITIZEN'S RIGHTS TO PURSUE DAMAGE'-----you see where GLOBAL CORPORATE PLANTATIONS WILL DIRECT DEPOSIT THAT $3 A DAY INTO THEIR GLOBAL BANKS WHICH CAN THEN USE THOSE DEPOSITS FOR ANY OCCASION DEEMED 'ECONOMIC CRISIS'.
'In 1933, when the Federal Reserve Bank refused to bail out the Bank of the United States, it triggered a run on American banks. The principal was the same. No bailout for depositors in bad banks. The result of a run on the banks was a collapse in the US money supply by a third. After all, bank deposits are supposed to be a part of the money supply used to effect transactions and store value over short periods of time. The collapse in the money supply resulted in an economic collapse that ultimately morphed into the Great Depression. Let's not even think about going there by using the Cyprus "template" for dealing with weak banks'.
Yes, they are indeed GOING THERE-----and Cardin, Mikulski, Sarbanes, and Cummings worked hard to install these laws to see this occur. Then our Baltimore Maryland Assembly pols passed similar laws and with Baltimore City Hall pols then loaded the city and state with the debt that will push towards CONFISCATION. I have been writing about this since 2010-2011---so everyone in this loop knows what this goal will be.
April 8, 2013
Giving Bank Depositors 'Haircuts' Sets a Bad Precedent
By John Makin
"Bailing in" implies the opposite of governments' "bailing out" careless investors or bank managers with public money. Specifically, "bailing in" substitutes appropriate losses by "at risk" investors for injections of taxpayer funds to rescue them. The recent collapse of Cypriot banks included "bail ins" for investors. But large depositors were also "bailed in", suffering the loss of at least 60 percent of their deposits. This was described as making investors pay for bad banking instead of taxpayers bailing out the banks.
But do we really want to treat bank depositors as "investors"? The Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselboem, now president of the Eurozone's foreign minister group, is a 46 year old agricultural economist who thinks that bailing in large depositors in Cypriot banks by expropriating at least 60% of their deposits was the right approach to March's Cypriot bank work out. As Mr. Dijsselboem said, "that's an approach we, now that we are out of the crisis, should consequently take."
Mr. Dijsselboem is going to find that we are not yet out of the heat of the crisis. Treating depositors as investors along with senior bond holders and equity holders of banks sets a dangerous precedent. How will Italian - not to mention British, American, and Canadian - households and firms respond to Mr. Dijsselbloem's message that holding deposits at a bank in order to effect transactions or briefly to store value makes them investors in the bank subject to a "haircut" in the event of a required bank bailout?
In 1933, when the Federal Reserve Bank refused to bail out the Bank of the United States, it triggered a run on American banks. The principal was the same. No bailout for depositors in bad banks. The result of a run on the banks was a collapse in the US money supply by a third. After all, bank deposits are supposed to be a part of the money supply used to effect transactions and store value over short periods of time. The collapse in the money supply resulted in an economic collapse that ultimately morphed into the Great Depression. Let's not even think about going there by using the Cyprus "template" for dealing with weak banks.
If the EU-ECB-IMF "troika", the gang that can't shoot straight, wants to subject all Euro depositors to "bail-in" they should say so. Then depositors in European banks and elsewhere can act accordingly. That is, rush into cash in times of real or perceived crisis in order to preserve their assets. That would constitute a run on Europe's banks, starting in Greece, then in Spain, Italy and Portugal and eventually reaching France, bank that would collapse Europe's money supply and its economy. The run and economic collapse would spread rapidly throughout the global economy.
What we really need to do is move as rapidly as possible back to a sharp dichotomy between depository institutions and investment banks. Call it a global return to Glass-Steagall if you like. Given the ongoing Cyprus bank fiasco, households and firms still need bank- issued money in order to effect transactions and carry on normal business and, now more than ever, to avail themselves of a safe, liquid, short-term store of value. They need to be spared fears of imminent "bail-ins" and deposit confiscation every time a crisis flares up in Europe or elsewhere.
If JP Morgan's "Whale" problem, essentially a blatant dodge of prohibition of running a hedge fund inside a bank and calling its activities "hedging" -pun intended - had blown up and jeopardized its solvency, would the Fed want to bail-in JP Morgan's retail Chase depositors? I don't think so.
Headlines notwithstanding, depositors and taxpayers are often the very same people. The Russian depositors in Cyprus may not be Cypriot taxpayers, but they are representative of a class of asset holders seeking a safe and liquid place to hold their funds. There are plenty of European, not to mention American, households and firms that are both depositors and taxpayers. The increased fear of surprise taxes on their deposits, "bail ins", resulting from the bungled Cyprus bailout is not helpful at a time when banking systems are fragile. Bank regulators need to move faster toward establishing depository institutions and labeling them clearly as distinct from investment banks where are no depositors but there certainly are bond and equity holders whose funds are at risk.
Banks in Spain and Italy are in urgent need of a quick resolution to the uncertainty of bank bail-ins. Within hours of his ill-considered March 26 (check date) comment on the Cyprus bailout, Mr. Dijsselboem was forced to back -track on his attempt to generalize the "bail in" of depositors in Cypriot banks by saying "no models or templates apply". The European Commission insisted that Cypress is not a template for Eurozone countries, read Greece, Spain and Italy, especially, but it prefers a restructuring program over using taxpayer's funds to save banks in trouble. Restructuring is fine but not if it includes destruction of a substantial portion of the money supply in the form of confiscation of deposits, be they insured or uninsured.
It's important to get back to basics. If banks are going to accept deposits that constitute a part of the money supply, a sharp contraction of which could cause a recession or depression, they need to be constrained to invest only in safe assets. Investment banks can thrive, but not with funds provided by depositors. They need to be subject to market discipline that could involve sharp losses by investors in those institutions as distinct from depositors in depository institutions.
A template that distinguishes between depository institutions and investment banks may help to resolve the "too big to fail issue" since a number of the largest banks would have to strip out either their depository or investment operation. In the meantime, let's be very clear, that "bailing in" depositors is off the table. Then, banks in Greece, Spain, Italy and the rest of Europe can breathe a sigh of relief while they strengthen their balance sheets and American banks can stop worrying about contagion risk.
American Enterprise Institute resident scholar John Makin writes AEI's monthly Economic Outlook.
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The American people must WAKE UP-----this global insurance corporation handling retirements, pensions, 401Ks, as well as CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS AND DERIVATIVES LEVERAGING. We cannot openly say THIS WILL BE THE BOND MARKET'S AIG----but it is shouting loudly----this global corporation is acting criminally and corruptly. Global consolidation of this industry with TransAmerica enfolding a BAD APPLE into its brand---as was done by Wells Fargo with all the mortgage origination firms involved in fraud.
'Transamerica did not provide much detail about why it decided to merge, except to say that it was part of a strategy to optimize their business and leverage best practices'
Complaint Review: World Financial Group, Aegon, Transamerica
View past featured reports
• Submitted: Fri, June 26, 2009
• Updated: Thu, April 14, 2016
• Reported By: — Las Vegas Nebraska
My husband was called by a recruiter indicating that he found his resume on careerbuilder.com. He told him it was for a financial position working with Transamerica. The recruiter asked him if he wanted to make great money providing he had the proper training. My husband said yes. The recruiter didn't answer any of my husbands questions but instead told him to come to the interview and they will answer all questions.
When he got there he said it was 10 other people there for the same interview. A group presentation. The lady at the front made him fill out an application and some other paperwork.
My husband said he was made to meet 4 people claiming to be managers. After that he was put in a small room with other people and had to listen to a presentation regarding 401k, pensions, retirement, life insurance etc. They never dicussed what the "job" was, the pay etc. What they try to do is get you to sign up to sell insurance and other financial products. They also try to get you to sign up your family and friends to sell financial products. My husband said they tell you that you would have to pay 100.00 for your background check. So when they did that he was turned off and started to believe this was a hoax.
When my husband started to ask questions they would beat around the bush and start talking about what they wanted him to hear. He said he wasn't interested and began to walk out.
My husband indicated that many people were walking out pissed off about the "false interview" they just sat through. He also stated that there were a bunch of other folks waiting outside for the next presentation. They do this all day long, every hour.
What this scam of a company is doing is wrong and unethical. Many people are looking for honest jobs right now to get through these hard financial times. To deceive someone like they are doing should be a crime.
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These financial groups also hold REVERSE MORTGAGES which are bundled and sold in this collapsing market. How many Americans are tied to REVERSE MORTGAGES? Many of those main street citizens still owning a home. What Wall Street is doing is consolidating all of what will no doubt be those insurances and protections of financial investments into a global monopoly that will be chosen to send into bankruptcy as happened with AIG. It will be the BAD BANK of the insurance industry. It's sad when you are drawn to investigate a global corporation because Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins has drawn it to our downtown.
It is these global consolidations that give more financial assets to allow more and more leverage and that is how we get $600 trillion in derivatives leverage that brings down the economies of the world......
'Either way, there has been a lot of consolidation going on in the broker/dealer space, so the WSG/Transamerica transaction continues the trend'.
FRAUD and PONZI SCHEME ALERT IN THE FINANCIAL PLANNING INDUSTRY! – PLEASE SHARE NOW!
Posted on April 24, 2012HAT TIP: Anonymous Email (from a high level Broker in the Financial Planning Industry)
We wanted to republish this article about WSG merging with Transamerica, not because we want to bore you with this kind of news!
Really, what caught our eye, was the facts listed in the third-to-last paragraph, pointing out that LICENSED FINANCIAL PLANNERS are committing FRAUD and PONZI schemes!!!
You must ALWAYS be careful with whom you invest with, and hire as your financial planner. Our best rule-of-thumb advice is interview several people from several companies, and pick a few people to work with, splitting up your investments – just in case one of them is a crook!!! PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE!
~ Mr. IQD
Insurance B/D to Shutter, Transfers Reps to Transamerica
Apr 18, 2012 12:00 PM, By Diana Britton
World Securities Group tops the list of broker migration in the first quarter of 2012, terminating its FINRA filings and merging with Transamerica Financial Advisers.
Insurance broker/dealer World Securities Group (WSG) has merged its operations with Transamerica Financial Advisors, both of which are subsidiaries of Netherlands-based AEGON. According to FINRA flings, John Creek, Ga.-based World Securities Group filed a request to terminate its FINRA registration in mid-February. The merger was approved Jan.6.
According to data compiled by Meridian-IQ, World Securities Group lost 702 advisors in the first three months of 2012, the most losses of any other broker/dealer this year. Meanwhile, Transamerica gained 708 FAs, the most of any firm this year. But according to Transamerica, the firm brought over 3,390 WGS reps. With Transamerica’s own 1,604 reps as of December 2011, the combined firm has a total of about 4,900 advisors.
Transamerica did not provide much detail about why it decided to merge, except to say that it was part of a strategy to optimize their business and leverage best practices. The firm will maintain a presence in Johns Creek.
In such types of bulk advisor transfers, most FAs will typically move to the new owner, said Ron Edde, senior career advisor with Armstrong Financial Group. In similar situations, advisors usually keep their same desk, office and management.
A few advisors, decided not to make the leap to Transamerica. A team out of Houston, which included Kevin Kusak, Donald Kusak and George Jones, moved to Proequities, according to Meridian-lQ. David Ting, based in Pasadena, Calif., went to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.
Big transfers of reps are certainly not uncommon, especially in the independent broker/dealer space. In December, Pacific West Securities closed down and made a deal to move its nearly 300 reps to Multi-Financial Securities.
Transamerica president Seth Miller did not return a call and email seeking comment. It’s unknown why the company will shut down and merge with Transamerica.
Edde said the frm may have been overwhelmed by litigation. In 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged five of the firm’s reps in its Pomona, Calif., branch with fraudulently selling unsuitable securities, primarily variable universal life policies. In 2010, the SEC took action against WSG for lack of supervision of the Pomona branch, ordering the firm to pay $200,000. In May 2010, the SEC charged two other WSG reps, based in Lakeland, Fla., accusing them of operating a $14.8 million Ponzi scheme.
The firm may also have been struggling to compete, “because the securities industry is all about scale,” Edde said. The more advisors you have, the lower a broker/dealer firm can charge clients for their services, he added.
Either way, there has been a lot of consolidation going on in the broker/dealer space, so the WSG/Transamerica transaction continues the trend.
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FOOL US ONCE SHAME ON YOU----FOOL US TWICE SHAME ON US.
Below you see the two tag team leaders in subprime mortgage loan fraud now being that same tag team bond market fraud ------they are handling the bulk of US Treasury and state municipal bond global subpriming and one can bet all of our US pensions, 401Ks, retirements, state and city government revenue----will be those held by these two known criminal elements. I knew to watch them because they were appointed to Wall Street Baltimore Development Corporation. Watch as well as TransAmerica is somehow attached to the fraudulent financial insurance scheme protecting the global hedge funds and investment firms tied to bond investments as our $1 billion school building bond----while the city/state/public investments are lost.
OUR CONGRESS, STATE ASSEMBLY, BALTIMORE CITY HALL POLS KNOW THIS IS COMING. MARYLAND'S GOVERNOR HOGAN----MAYOR OF BALTIMORE RAWLINGS-BLAKE KNOW THIS IS COMING. CARDIN, CUMMINGS, SARBANES, MIKULSKI KNOW THIS IS COMING.
'Nearly half of the municipal research team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N) BACML.UL, the biggest lead manager of municipal bond sales in the $3.7 trillion U.S. market, left the firm last week in a restructuring of the unit, the company confirmed on Monday'.
Business | Mon Jun 3, 2013 5:39pm EDT
Exclusive: Bank of America Merrill Lynch sheds top muni analysts
By Hilary Russ
Nearly half of the municipal research team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N) BACML.UL, the biggest lead manager of municipal bond sales in the $3.7 trillion U.S. market, left the firm last week in a restructuring of the unit, the company confirmed on Monday.
John Hallacy, an award-winning analyst, was until last Wednesday the head of muni research and had been at the firm for more than two decades. Also departing are Susannah Page and Howard Sitzer.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch spokeswoman Selena Morris confirmed the departures of Page and Sitzer and said that Hallacy retired. Morris would not comment on whether the retirement of Hallacy, 57, was voluntary.
"A new structure will be announced shortly," Morris said. "We remain committed to the municipal market." The departures are not part of a workforce reduction, she said. She declined further comment.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is the top bookrunner in the municipal bond market, with a market share just above 15 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. The bank has run sales for $22 billion of bonds since the start of the year, up from $20 billion in the same period of 2012.
In the muni research unit, four junior-level people currently remain, one source said.
Institutional investors have recognized both Hallacy and Page for their work. Hallacy was a first-place "all-star" for general obligation bonds in December in an annual contest run by Smith's Research & Gradings, an award based on votes from institutional investors.
They also awarded him second-place merits in Smith's "sellside director of research" category. Page was recognized for her research on hospital revenue bonds.
Hallacy previously spent a year at bond insurer MBIA Inc. He began his career in the late 1970s at Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.
Reagan/Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals with Republicans in Congress created law to end several centuries of Western common law protecting citizens by requiring a strong standard of fiduciary practices in our banks....with this new term 'suitability standard'. Had Congress and Clinton not broken Glass Steagall this would have weakened only stock market financial diligence but in breaking that wall of banking----Wall Street was allowed to use our bank account deposits as fodder under suitability standard. Then Bush and Obama era allowed Wall Street banks to go wild with fraud using these weakened laws as excuses to call moving all US wealth to the top GREED.
MAKE NO MISTAKE---EVEN WITH THIS NEW SUITABILITY STANDARD-----FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS LIKE LOAN ORIGINATORS AND NOW BOND MARKET SALES ARE BREAKING THE TERMS OF SUITABILITY STANDARDS.
Obama and his US Justice Department Holder then allowed all subprime mortgage lawsuits go to a few courts having judges INTERPRETING SUITABILITY STANDARDS in favor of banks. It was the duty of our states AGs to challenge that and they did not. Doug Gansler in Maryland was team Wall Street as today's FROSH will be team Wall Street in protecting profits from this coming bond market fraud.
If we understand the history of these frauds---we know fraud when it is coming----so now it is the economic crash from subprimed global US Treasury and state municipal bond debt. Here is the difference. Where the subprime mortgage loan fraud targeted the public for loans----albeit taking Federal housing loan funds----this bond fraud directly targets the US, State of Maryland, and City of Baltimore----and there are strong laws against conspiracy to defraud the government....which is what this bond fraud does.
Below you see the crimes being allowed by our Congress, US Justice Department, our Maryland Assembly and Maryland Attorney General and states' attorney----it is open and flagrant and this is why these 2016 elections were allowed to have open systemic frauds all over the nation---they needed US city mayors who were going to ignore these bond crimes and hand the power of city debt for those bonds to Wall Street Baltimore Development. PUGH AND FROSH----ARE OBAMA AND NOW LYNCH MOVING FORWARD this sovereign debt fraud that will send our US cities and the nation into the hands of the IMF---World Bank PRETENDING our governments have no revenue.
18 U.S. Code § 286 - Conspiracy to defraud the Government with respect to claims
Current through Pub. L. 114-38. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)
Whoever enters into any agreement, combination, or conspiracy to defraud the United States, or any department or agency thereof, by obtaining or aiding to obtain the payment or allowance of any false, fictitious or fraudulent claim, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 698; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)
In Baltimore it is the Baltimore Maryland Assembly and Baltimore City Hall pols with Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins loading the city with bond leverage debt and we call them THE WALL STREET PLAYERS.
Charged with Conspiracy in Maryland?
Conspiracy charges are often used against individuals where the underlying offense may or may not have actually taken place. It may involve such crimes as the distribution of drugs, solicitation to commit murder, embezzlement, or just about any crime. Often “gang members” are so charged if a crime has been committed and it is considered to be gang-related. Conspiracy could be the charge if two or more individuals planned to commit a crime and took an action towards the commission of the crime. If convicted of the charge of conspiracy (depending on what was conspired), you face the penalty of the underlying crime that was intended, whether that crime was actually ever committed. In gang related conspiracy charges, the law is clear that if you have knowledge of crimes that were planned, or were to get any benefit from such crimes, you can be charged with conspiracy and face penalties related to the crimes involved.
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It's obvious to the world the $20 trillion national debt and the soaring municipal bond debt leverage in a few states and cities like Baltimore Maryland are premeditated, willful malice designed to capture Baltimore taxpayers for decades to global corporate campus construction and subsidy. Congress and Obama gave the FED the right to confiscate bank accounts in the event of another economic crisis AND it gave the FED the right to set dates after-which bank depositors cannot withdraw----some weeks before the actual crash occurs. So, US citizens will finally hear on national media a crisis is coming only AFTER THE FED HAS PLACED THAT HOLD ON BANK ACCOUNT WITHDRAW. I am reading financial articles saying our pensions and 401Ks cannot be confiscated but Wall Street won't have to-----all those accounts are tied to GLOBAL MUNICIPAL BOND FUNDS----LIKE PIMCO. It will be the attachment of our pensions and retirements to the WORST OF BOND INVESTMENTS that will cause those losses. The final loss will come from as I said those Federal funds only sent out monthly through direct deposit. That is our Social Security, SS Disability, VA benefits all of which will hit that bank account and then be available for seizure. In Europe they allowed banks to seize accounts several times---not just once sending citizens into desperate and deepened poverty.
Again, all of these policies are designed to take down community banks and credit unions and merge regional banks into Wall Street banks taking what's left of deposits into the hands of global banks. Most US citizens will simply be DEBANKED and pushed into that predatory low-income check cashing system.
CONGRESS AND OBAMA PASSED THOSE SAME LAWS A FEW YEARS AGO TO DO HERE IN THE US WHAT WAS DONE IN CYPRESS.
“[W]ith Cyprus ... the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”
—Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor“
We see these articles written in 2013----academics and professional financial analysts were reporting this as early as 2010 when the FED and Congress started passing many of these laws. So, our state and local pols pushing all that debt KNEW we were heading into a bubble bursting bond market economic crash when they loaded the state and city with debt. Baltimore is one of the most leveraged in bond debt in the nation because Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins wanted it that way and Baltimore pols DO WHAT WALL STREET SAYS.
Bail-out Is Out, Bail-in Is In: Time for Some Publicly Owned Banks
05/02/2013 12:41 pm 12:41:53 | Updated Jul 02, 2013
Ellen Brown Author, Web of Debt, Public Bank Solution; President, Public Banking Institute
“[W]ith Cyprus ... the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”
—Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor“
The crossing of the Rubicon into the confiscation of depositor funds was not a one-off emergency measure limited to Cyprus. Similar “bail-in” policies are now appearing in multiple countries. (See my earlier articles here.) What triggered the new rules may have been a series of game-changing events including the refusal of Iceland to bail out its banks and their depositors; Bank of America’s commingling of its ominously risky derivatives arm with its depository arm over the objections of the FDIC; and the fact that most EU banks are now insolvent. A crisis in a major nation such as Spain or Italy could lead to a chain of defaults beyond anyone’s control, and beyond the ability of federal deposit insurance schemes to reimburse depositors.
The new rules for keeping the too-big-to-fail banks alive: use creditor funds, including uninsured deposits, to recapitalize failing banks.
But isn’t that theft?
Perhaps, but it’s legal theft. By law, when you put your money into a deposit account, your money becomes the property of the bank. You become an unsecured creditor with a claim against the bank. Before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was instituted in 1934, U.S. depositors routinely lost their money when banks went bankrupt. Your deposits are protected only up to the $250,000 insurance limit, and only to the extent that the FDIC has the money to cover deposit claims or can come up with it.
The question then is, how secure is the FDIC?
Can the FDIC Go Bankrupt?
In 2009, when the FDIC fund went $8.2 billion in the hole, Chairwoman Sheila Bair assured depositors that their money was protected by a hefty credit line with the Treasury. But the FDIC is funded with premiums from its member banks, which had to replenish the fund. The special assessment required to do it was crippling for the smaller banks, and that was just to recover $8.2 billion. What happens when Bank of America or JPMorganChase, which have commingled their massive derivatives casinos with their depositary arms, is propelled into bankruptcy by a major derivatives fiasco? These two banks both have deposits exceeding $1 trillion, and they both have derivatives books with notional values exceeding the GDP of the world.
Bank of America Corporation moved its trillions in derivatives (mostly credit default swaps) from its Merrill Lynch unit to its banking subsidiary in 2011. It did not get regulatory approval but just acted at the request of frightened counterparties, following a downgrade by Moody’s. The FDIC opposed the move, reportedly protesting that the FDIC would be subjected to the risk of becoming insolvent if BofA were to file for bankruptcy. But the Federal Reserve favored the move, in order to give relief to the bank holding company. (Proof positive, says former regulator Bill Black, that the Fed is working for the banks and not for us. “Any competent regulator would have said: ‘No, Hell NO!’”)
The reason this risky move would subject the FDIC to insolvency, as explained in my earlier article here, is that under the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, derivatives counter-parties are given preference over all other creditors and customers of the bankrupt financial institution, including FDIC insured depositors.
Normally, the FDIC would have the powers as trustee in receivership to protect the failed bank’s collateral for payments made to depositors. But the FDIC’s powers are overridden by the special status of derivatives.
(Remember MF Global? The reason its customers lost their segregated customer funds to the derivatives claimants was that derivatives have super-priority in bankruptcy.)
The FDIC has only about $25 billion in its deposit insurance fund, which is mandated by law to keep a balance equivalent to only 1.15 percent of insured deposits. And the Dodd-Frank Act (Section 716) now bans taxpayer bailouts of most speculative derivatives activities. Drawing on the FDIC’s credit line with the Treasury to cover a BofA or JPMorgan derivatives bust would be the equivalent of a taxpayer bailout, at least if the money were not paid back; and imposing that burden on the FDIC’s member banks is something they can ill afford.
BofA is not the only bank threatening to wipe out the federal deposit insurance funds that most countries have. According to Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, most EU banks are zombies. And that explains the impetus for the new “bail in” policies, which put the burden instead on the unsecured creditors, including the depositors. Below is some additional corroborating research on these new, game-changing bail-in schemes.Depositors Beware
An interesting series of commentaries starts with one on the website of Sprott Asset Management Inc. titled “Caveat Depositor,” in which Eric Sprott and Shree Kargutkar note that the US, UK, EU, and Canada have all built the new “bail in” template to avoid imposing risk on their governments and taxpayers. They write:
[M]ost depositors naively assume that their deposits are 100% safe in their banks and trust them to safeguard their savings. Under the new “template” all lenders (including depositors) to the bank can be forced to “bail in” their respective banks.
Dave of Denver then followed up on the Sprott commentary in an April 3 entry on his blog The Golden Truth, in which he pointed out that the new template has long been agreed to by the G20 countries:
Because the use of taxpayer-funded bailouts would likely no longer be tolerated by the public, a new bank rescue plan was needed. As it turns out, this new “bail-in” model is based on an agreement that was the result of a bank bail-out model that was drafted by a sub-committee of the BIS (Bank for International Settlement) and endorsed at a G20 summit in 2011. For those of you who don’t know, the BIS is the global “Central Bank” of Central Banks. As such it is the world’s most powerful financial institution.
The links are in Dave’s April 1 article, which states:
The new approach has been agreed at the highest levels . . . It has been a topic under consideration since the publication by the Financial Stability Board (a BIS committee) of a paper, Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes for Financial Institutions in October 2011, which was endorsed at the Cannes G20 summit the following month. This was followed by a consultative document in November 2012, Recovery and Resolution Planning: Making the Key Attributes Requirements Operational.
Dave goes on:
[W]hat is commonly referred to as a “bail-in” in Cyprus is actually a global bank rescue model that was derived and ratified nearly two years ago. . . . [B]ank deposits in excess of Government insured amount in any bank in any country will be treated like unsecured debt if the bank goes belly-up and is restructured in some form.
Jesse at Jesse’s Café Americain then picked up the thread and pointed out that it is not just direct deposits that are at risk. The too-big-to-fail banks have commingled accounts in a web of debt that spreads globally. Stock brokerages keep their money market funds in overnight sweeps in TBTF banks, and many credit unions do their banking at large TBTF correspondent banks:
You say you have money in a pension fund and an IRA at XYZ bank? Oops, it is really on deposit in you-know-who’s bank. You say you have money in a brokerage account? Oops, it is really being held overnight in their TBTF bank. Remember MF Global? Who can say how far the entanglements go? The current financial system and market structure is crazy with hidden risk, insider dealings, control frauds, and subtle dangers.
Also at Risk: Pension Funds and Public Revenues
William Buiter, writing in the UK Financial Times in March 2009, defended the bail-in approach as better than the alternative. But he acknowledged that the “unsecured creditors” who would take the hit were chiefly “pensioners drawing their pensions from pension funds heavily invested in unsecured bank debt and owners of insurance policies with insurance companies holding unsecured bank debt,” and that these unsecured creditors “would suffer a large decline in financial wealth and disposable income that would cause them to cut back sharply on consumption.”
The deposits of U.S. pension funds are well over the insured limit of $250,000. They will get raided just as the pension funds did in Cyprus, and so will the insurance companies. Who else?
Most state and local governments also keep far more on deposit than $250,000, and they keep these revenues largely in TBTF banks. Community banks are not large enough to service the complicated banking needs of governments, and they are unwilling or unable to come up with the collateral that is required to secure public funds over the $250,000 FDIC limit.
The question is, how secure are the public funds in the TBTF banks? Like the depositors who think FDIC insurance protects them, public officials assume their funds are protected by the collateral posted by their depository banks. But the collateral is liable to be long gone in a major derivatives bust, since derivatives claimants have super-priority in bankruptcy over every other claim, secured or unsecured, including those of state and local governments.The Cyprus Wakeup Call
Robert Teitelbaum wrote in a May 2011 article titled “The Case Against Favored Treatment of Derivatives“:
. . . Dodd-Frank did not touch favored status [of derivatives] and despite all the sound and fury, . . . there are very few signs from either party that anyone with any clout is suddenly about to revisit that decision and simplify bankruptcy treatment. Why? Because for all its relative straightforwardness compared to more difficult fixes, derivatives remains a mysterious black box to most Americans . . . . [A]s the sense of urgency to reform passes . . . we return to a situation of technical interest to only a few, most of whom have their own particular self-interest in mind.
But that was in 2011, before the Cyprus alarm bells went off. It is time to pry open the black box, get educated, and get organized.
Here are three things that need to be done for starters:
- Protect depositor funds from derivative raids by repealing the super-priority status of derivatives.
- Separate depository banking from investment banking by repealing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 and reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act.
- Protect both public and private revenues by establishing a network of publicly-owned banks, on the model of the Bank of North Dakota.
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Here is the Republican financial outlet saying the same and they give better prospective as to what goal the FED and Congress have in what was deliberately created to be A DEPRESSION-ERA economic crash. They are creating this bank account confiscation policy with accounts being frozen IN ADVANCE----to stop what was a century ago----A RUN ON BANKS. 1% Wall Street and their pols recreated the same conditions of economic crisis from a century ago leading to the GREAT DEPRESSION----only this time the FED wants to get it right.
If you take these policies and add to them the Obama/FED policy basically ending FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY altogether by allowing investment banks to force consumers to sign AN AGREEMENT TAKING AWAY A CITIZEN'S RIGHTS TO PURSUE DAMAGE'-----you see where GLOBAL CORPORATE PLANTATIONS WILL DIRECT DEPOSIT THAT $3 A DAY INTO THEIR GLOBAL BANKS WHICH CAN THEN USE THOSE DEPOSITS FOR ANY OCCASION DEEMED 'ECONOMIC CRISIS'.
'In 1933, when the Federal Reserve Bank refused to bail out the Bank of the United States, it triggered a run on American banks. The principal was the same. No bailout for depositors in bad banks. The result of a run on the banks was a collapse in the US money supply by a third. After all, bank deposits are supposed to be a part of the money supply used to effect transactions and store value over short periods of time. The collapse in the money supply resulted in an economic collapse that ultimately morphed into the Great Depression. Let's not even think about going there by using the Cyprus "template" for dealing with weak banks'.
Yes, they are indeed GOING THERE-----and Cardin, Mikulski, Sarbanes, and Cummings worked hard to install these laws to see this occur. Then our Baltimore Maryland Assembly pols passed similar laws and with Baltimore City Hall pols then loaded the city and state with the debt that will push towards CONFISCATION. I have been writing about this since 2010-2011---so everyone in this loop knows what this goal will be.
April 8, 2013
Giving Bank Depositors 'Haircuts' Sets a Bad Precedent
By John Makin
"Bailing in" implies the opposite of governments' "bailing out" careless investors or bank managers with public money. Specifically, "bailing in" substitutes appropriate losses by "at risk" investors for injections of taxpayer funds to rescue them. The recent collapse of Cypriot banks included "bail ins" for investors. But large depositors were also "bailed in", suffering the loss of at least 60 percent of their deposits. This was described as making investors pay for bad banking instead of taxpayers bailing out the banks.
But do we really want to treat bank depositors as "investors"? The Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselboem, now president of the Eurozone's foreign minister group, is a 46 year old agricultural economist who thinks that bailing in large depositors in Cypriot banks by expropriating at least 60% of their deposits was the right approach to March's Cypriot bank work out. As Mr. Dijsselboem said, "that's an approach we, now that we are out of the crisis, should consequently take."
Mr. Dijsselboem is going to find that we are not yet out of the heat of the crisis. Treating depositors as investors along with senior bond holders and equity holders of banks sets a dangerous precedent. How will Italian - not to mention British, American, and Canadian - households and firms respond to Mr. Dijsselbloem's message that holding deposits at a bank in order to effect transactions or briefly to store value makes them investors in the bank subject to a "haircut" in the event of a required bank bailout?
In 1933, when the Federal Reserve Bank refused to bail out the Bank of the United States, it triggered a run on American banks. The principal was the same. No bailout for depositors in bad banks. The result of a run on the banks was a collapse in the US money supply by a third. After all, bank deposits are supposed to be a part of the money supply used to effect transactions and store value over short periods of time. The collapse in the money supply resulted in an economic collapse that ultimately morphed into the Great Depression. Let's not even think about going there by using the Cyprus "template" for dealing with weak banks.
If the EU-ECB-IMF "troika", the gang that can't shoot straight, wants to subject all Euro depositors to "bail-in" they should say so. Then depositors in European banks and elsewhere can act accordingly. That is, rush into cash in times of real or perceived crisis in order to preserve their assets. That would constitute a run on Europe's banks, starting in Greece, then in Spain, Italy and Portugal and eventually reaching France, bank that would collapse Europe's money supply and its economy. The run and economic collapse would spread rapidly throughout the global economy.
What we really need to do is move as rapidly as possible back to a sharp dichotomy between depository institutions and investment banks. Call it a global return to Glass-Steagall if you like. Given the ongoing Cyprus bank fiasco, households and firms still need bank- issued money in order to effect transactions and carry on normal business and, now more than ever, to avail themselves of a safe, liquid, short-term store of value. They need to be spared fears of imminent "bail-ins" and deposit confiscation every time a crisis flares up in Europe or elsewhere.
If JP Morgan's "Whale" problem, essentially a blatant dodge of prohibition of running a hedge fund inside a bank and calling its activities "hedging" -pun intended - had blown up and jeopardized its solvency, would the Fed want to bail-in JP Morgan's retail Chase depositors? I don't think so.
Headlines notwithstanding, depositors and taxpayers are often the very same people. The Russian depositors in Cyprus may not be Cypriot taxpayers, but they are representative of a class of asset holders seeking a safe and liquid place to hold their funds. There are plenty of European, not to mention American, households and firms that are both depositors and taxpayers. The increased fear of surprise taxes on their deposits, "bail ins", resulting from the bungled Cyprus bailout is not helpful at a time when banking systems are fragile. Bank regulators need to move faster toward establishing depository institutions and labeling them clearly as distinct from investment banks where are no depositors but there certainly are bond and equity holders whose funds are at risk.
Banks in Spain and Italy are in urgent need of a quick resolution to the uncertainty of bank bail-ins. Within hours of his ill-considered March 26 (check date) comment on the Cyprus bailout, Mr. Dijsselboem was forced to back -track on his attempt to generalize the "bail in" of depositors in Cypriot banks by saying "no models or templates apply". The European Commission insisted that Cypress is not a template for Eurozone countries, read Greece, Spain and Italy, especially, but it prefers a restructuring program over using taxpayer's funds to save banks in trouble. Restructuring is fine but not if it includes destruction of a substantial portion of the money supply in the form of confiscation of deposits, be they insured or uninsured.
It's important to get back to basics. If banks are going to accept deposits that constitute a part of the money supply, a sharp contraction of which could cause a recession or depression, they need to be constrained to invest only in safe assets. Investment banks can thrive, but not with funds provided by depositors. They need to be subject to market discipline that could involve sharp losses by investors in those institutions as distinct from depositors in depository institutions.
A template that distinguishes between depository institutions and investment banks may help to resolve the "too big to fail issue" since a number of the largest banks would have to strip out either their depository or investment operation. In the meantime, let's be very clear, that "bailing in" depositors is off the table. Then, banks in Greece, Spain, Italy and the rest of Europe can breathe a sigh of relief while they strengthen their balance sheets and American banks can stop worrying about contagion risk.
American Enterprise Institute resident scholar John Makin writes AEI's monthly Economic Outlook.
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The American people must WAKE UP-----this global insurance corporation handling retirements, pensions, 401Ks, as well as CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS AND DERIVATIVES LEVERAGING. We cannot openly say THIS WILL BE THE BOND MARKET'S AIG----but it is shouting loudly----this global corporation is acting criminally and corruptly. Global consolidation of this industry with TransAmerica enfolding a BAD APPLE into its brand---as was done by Wells Fargo with all the mortgage origination firms involved in fraud.
'Transamerica did not provide much detail about why it decided to merge, except to say that it was part of a strategy to optimize their business and leverage best practices'
Complaint Review: World Financial Group, Aegon, Transamerica
View past featured reports
• Submitted: Fri, June 26, 2009
• Updated: Thu, April 14, 2016
• Reported By: — Las Vegas Nebraska
My husband was called by a recruiter indicating that he found his resume on careerbuilder.com. He told him it was for a financial position working with Transamerica. The recruiter asked him if he wanted to make great money providing he had the proper training. My husband said yes. The recruiter didn't answer any of my husbands questions but instead told him to come to the interview and they will answer all questions.
When he got there he said it was 10 other people there for the same interview. A group presentation. The lady at the front made him fill out an application and some other paperwork.
My husband said he was made to meet 4 people claiming to be managers. After that he was put in a small room with other people and had to listen to a presentation regarding 401k, pensions, retirement, life insurance etc. They never dicussed what the "job" was, the pay etc. What they try to do is get you to sign up to sell insurance and other financial products. They also try to get you to sign up your family and friends to sell financial products. My husband said they tell you that you would have to pay 100.00 for your background check. So when they did that he was turned off and started to believe this was a hoax.
When my husband started to ask questions they would beat around the bush and start talking about what they wanted him to hear. He said he wasn't interested and began to walk out.
My husband indicated that many people were walking out pissed off about the "false interview" they just sat through. He also stated that there were a bunch of other folks waiting outside for the next presentation. They do this all day long, every hour.
What this scam of a company is doing is wrong and unethical. Many people are looking for honest jobs right now to get through these hard financial times. To deceive someone like they are doing should be a crime.
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These financial groups also hold REVERSE MORTGAGES which are bundled and sold in this collapsing market. How many Americans are tied to REVERSE MORTGAGES? Many of those main street citizens still owning a home. What Wall Street is doing is consolidating all of what will no doubt be those insurances and protections of financial investments into a global monopoly that will be chosen to send into bankruptcy as happened with AIG. It will be the BAD BANK of the insurance industry. It's sad when you are drawn to investigate a global corporation because Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins has drawn it to our downtown.
It is these global consolidations that give more financial assets to allow more and more leverage and that is how we get $600 trillion in derivatives leverage that brings down the economies of the world......
'Either way, there has been a lot of consolidation going on in the broker/dealer space, so the WSG/Transamerica transaction continues the trend'.
FRAUD and PONZI SCHEME ALERT IN THE FINANCIAL PLANNING INDUSTRY! – PLEASE SHARE NOW!
Posted on April 24, 2012HAT TIP: Anonymous Email (from a high level Broker in the Financial Planning Industry)
We wanted to republish this article about WSG merging with Transamerica, not because we want to bore you with this kind of news!
Really, what caught our eye, was the facts listed in the third-to-last paragraph, pointing out that LICENSED FINANCIAL PLANNERS are committing FRAUD and PONZI schemes!!!
You must ALWAYS be careful with whom you invest with, and hire as your financial planner. Our best rule-of-thumb advice is interview several people from several companies, and pick a few people to work with, splitting up your investments – just in case one of them is a crook!!! PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE!
~ Mr. IQD
Insurance B/D to Shutter, Transfers Reps to Transamerica
Apr 18, 2012 12:00 PM, By Diana Britton
World Securities Group tops the list of broker migration in the first quarter of 2012, terminating its FINRA filings and merging with Transamerica Financial Advisers.
Insurance broker/dealer World Securities Group (WSG) has merged its operations with Transamerica Financial Advisors, both of which are subsidiaries of Netherlands-based AEGON. According to FINRA flings, John Creek, Ga.-based World Securities Group filed a request to terminate its FINRA registration in mid-February. The merger was approved Jan.6.
According to data compiled by Meridian-IQ, World Securities Group lost 702 advisors in the first three months of 2012, the most losses of any other broker/dealer this year. Meanwhile, Transamerica gained 708 FAs, the most of any firm this year. But according to Transamerica, the firm brought over 3,390 WGS reps. With Transamerica’s own 1,604 reps as of December 2011, the combined firm has a total of about 4,900 advisors.
Transamerica did not provide much detail about why it decided to merge, except to say that it was part of a strategy to optimize their business and leverage best practices. The firm will maintain a presence in Johns Creek.
In such types of bulk advisor transfers, most FAs will typically move to the new owner, said Ron Edde, senior career advisor with Armstrong Financial Group. In similar situations, advisors usually keep their same desk, office and management.
A few advisors, decided not to make the leap to Transamerica. A team out of Houston, which included Kevin Kusak, Donald Kusak and George Jones, moved to Proequities, according to Meridian-lQ. David Ting, based in Pasadena, Calif., went to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.
Big transfers of reps are certainly not uncommon, especially in the independent broker/dealer space. In December, Pacific West Securities closed down and made a deal to move its nearly 300 reps to Multi-Financial Securities.
Transamerica president Seth Miller did not return a call and email seeking comment. It’s unknown why the company will shut down and merge with Transamerica.
Edde said the frm may have been overwhelmed by litigation. In 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged five of the firm’s reps in its Pomona, Calif., branch with fraudulently selling unsuitable securities, primarily variable universal life policies. In 2010, the SEC took action against WSG for lack of supervision of the Pomona branch, ordering the firm to pay $200,000. In May 2010, the SEC charged two other WSG reps, based in Lakeland, Fla., accusing them of operating a $14.8 million Ponzi scheme.
The firm may also have been struggling to compete, “because the securities industry is all about scale,” Edde said. The more advisors you have, the lower a broker/dealer firm can charge clients for their services, he added.
Either way, there has been a lot of consolidation going on in the broker/dealer space, so the WSG/Transamerica transaction continues the trend.
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FOOL US ONCE SHAME ON YOU----FOOL US TWICE SHAME ON US.
Below you see the two tag team leaders in subprime mortgage loan fraud now being that same tag team bond market fraud ------they are handling the bulk of US Treasury and state municipal bond global subpriming and one can bet all of our US pensions, 401Ks, retirements, state and city government revenue----will be those held by these two known criminal elements. I knew to watch them because they were appointed to Wall Street Baltimore Development Corporation. Watch as well as TransAmerica is somehow attached to the fraudulent financial insurance scheme protecting the global hedge funds and investment firms tied to bond investments as our $1 billion school building bond----while the city/state/public investments are lost.
OUR CONGRESS, STATE ASSEMBLY, BALTIMORE CITY HALL POLS KNOW THIS IS COMING. MARYLAND'S GOVERNOR HOGAN----MAYOR OF BALTIMORE RAWLINGS-BLAKE KNOW THIS IS COMING. CARDIN, CUMMINGS, SARBANES, MIKULSKI KNOW THIS IS COMING.
'Nearly half of the municipal research team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N) BACML.UL, the biggest lead manager of municipal bond sales in the $3.7 trillion U.S. market, left the firm last week in a restructuring of the unit, the company confirmed on Monday'.
Business | Mon Jun 3, 2013 5:39pm EDT
Exclusive: Bank of America Merrill Lynch sheds top muni analysts
By Hilary Russ
Nearly half of the municipal research team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N) BACML.UL, the biggest lead manager of municipal bond sales in the $3.7 trillion U.S. market, left the firm last week in a restructuring of the unit, the company confirmed on Monday.
John Hallacy, an award-winning analyst, was until last Wednesday the head of muni research and had been at the firm for more than two decades. Also departing are Susannah Page and Howard Sitzer.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch spokeswoman Selena Morris confirmed the departures of Page and Sitzer and said that Hallacy retired. Morris would not comment on whether the retirement of Hallacy, 57, was voluntary.
"A new structure will be announced shortly," Morris said. "We remain committed to the municipal market." The departures are not part of a workforce reduction, she said. She declined further comment.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is the top bookrunner in the municipal bond market, with a market share just above 15 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. The bank has run sales for $22 billion of bonds since the start of the year, up from $20 billion in the same period of 2012.
In the muni research unit, four junior-level people currently remain, one source said.
Institutional investors have recognized both Hallacy and Page for their work. Hallacy was a first-place "all-star" for general obligation bonds in December in an annual contest run by Smith's Research & Gradings, an award based on votes from institutional investors.
They also awarded him second-place merits in Smith's "sellside director of research" category. Page was recognized for her research on hospital revenue bonds.
Hallacy previously spent a year at bond insurer MBIA Inc. He began his career in the late 1970s at Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.
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