Pretty much, Bank of America is evil.

Well I'm reading this article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone about Bank Of America. It's by Matt Taibbi who, despite occasional foul language, is a really, really good and powerful writer.

Here's the link:
www.rollingstone.com...



The article shows how they did all kinds of blatantly illegal stuff. Robo-signing is just the tip of the iceberg. These people...I mean, wow. I don't even know where to start. There is the nickle-and-diming that adds up, like four-point-something billion in completely bogus fake-overdraft charges. When sued, they settled for under ten cents on the dollar. 90o% profit for breaking the law must seem like a real bargain for them. But the worst of all is how they essentially looted pension accounts, for normal hardworking Americans, with the understanding that the "insurance companies" would pay for any shortfall. Nobody expected such widespread fraud, though, so there is no money to make good on all this stuff. But our stupid government keeps them propped up, and bankers are still driving around in Ferraris like jerks! It makes me want to screeeeem!

There, I actually screamed in real life when I typed that. But it didn't really help too much. Well, anyway read the article. You'll scream too.

Doubt youll find one person here who IS supportive. Burn em all down imo lol

Nah, you dont say!

The BANKSTER SNAKES are being exposed more and more each day.

They better start going underground cause thats where the SNAKES will soon be driven.

The banking industry summed up in one sentence:

"Dad, I smashed up the car, so give me keys to a new one."

Before I switched from Stank of America, they would show a good size payment the day it cleared, then it would disappear off of online banking, and the funds deducted; would go back to what it was as if there wasn't a payment at all...I don't watch my accounts constantly, as soon as my checking balance hit low enough to overdraft, they sprung the hidden purchase back into view, causing the account to over draft from savings smacking me with a 35 dollar fee twice; one for insufficient funds and again for overdraft transfer charges from savings; basically extorting 70 dollars from their sneaky practices.

I watched the account like a hawk to see if they tried it again, the next month and sure enough...after a large bill payment cleared they hid the amount and changed the balance back within hours of it clearing...however, since I was watching the account they didn't get me, I kept my own correct balance so I KNEW what I had not the LIE they were saying...I had my direct deposits switched to check and sent to my address...as soon as all linked checks came...I opened an account at a credit union, and told Bank of Smellica to go get sexually acquainted with themselves.

Can an individual consumer sue them for such a thing or does it have to be a class action against them for doing such things? I doubt individually, I could battle them and win.

If you have screen shots and proof, take them to small claims court.
So yes anyone can sue anyone. You can sue B of A.
Maybe you'll get a judge who is one of the billions bilked by them.

Banks are not evil.

Usury is evil.

Which I suppose by default... makes banks evil.

This story is a great example of how simply errasing debt and the cost of the bond holders (typically pension funds) and not correcting a company's failed business structure will not fix the problem.

As a matter of background info... many and I do mean many, understand the GS sponsered bond purchase and subsequent tender in to the debt for equity swap was the result of a strong armed political move by the Obama Administration that threatened Goldman and several of the other large CDS marketmakers with the abolishment of the CDS industry (i.e. think about what was going on in 2009) if they didn't help facilitate the transaction... Note there is no half way reasonable or intelligent investor alive that would willingly jump into owning YRC debt... much less in to the teeth of a eq for debt swap... literally sheer crazy... they were simply forced to fall on their soward.

YRC Back at Brink 2 Years After Goldman Spat: Corporate Finance
By Lisa Abramowicz - Mar 19, 2012 11:28 AM ET LinkedIn Google +1 Print QUEUEQ
Two years after the Teamsters union faced off against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to keep YRC Worldwide Inc. (YRCW) out of bankruptcy, the second-biggest U.S. trucker is back on the brink.

Credit-default swaps tied to the company, whose units include New Penn, Holland and Reddaway, imply an 87 percent chance of default, according to data provider CMA. Bonds from Overland Park, Kansas-based YRC, which employed 32,000 on Dec. 31, have lost 50 percent of their value in six months.

Enlarge image
YRC Back at Brink 2 Years After Goldman Spat Jin Lee/Bloomberg
A tractor trailer rolls out of a parking lot at YRC Worldwide Inc. in Carlstadt, New Jersey.

A tractor trailer rolls out of a parking lot at YRC Worldwide Inc. in Carlstadt, New Jersey. Photographer: Jin Lee/Bloomberg
Even as a strengthening U.S. economy boosts profits at FedEx Corp. and Con-Way Inc., YRC is set to lose $68.6 million this quarter, according to the average estimate of four analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, which would be its eighth loss in nine periods. Its competitors grabbed market share by lowering prices and attracting customers after YRC averted bankruptcy in 2009 through a debt exchange with a face value of $470 million. YRC’s revenue fell to $4.9 billion last year from $9.9 in 2006 while long-term borrowings rose.

“We don’t have a whole lot of faith that this will work itself out over the near term,” said David Berge, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service in New York. “There’s still a fairly high likelihood of them being in a default or distressed situation over the next year, year and a half. They’re still burning cash.”

YRC projects it won’t earn enough money to satisfy lender requirements starting in the second quarter, meaning it will have to either negotiate a new arrangement or accelerate debt payments, according to a Feb. 28 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

‘In Compliance’
If lenders demand repayment, YRC “will not have sufficient cash and cash flows from operations to repay such indebtedness,” it said in the filing.

“The current covenant package and corresponding forecast were set by the previous management team,” Jamie Pierson, YRC’s chief financial officer, wrote in an e-mailed statement. “We fully anticipate resetting the covenants so that we will be in compliance the second quarter and beyond.”

Credit-default swaps on YRC jumped to 44.5 percent upfront on March 7, the highest level since 2009, before falling to 43.3 percent on March 15, according to CMA, which is owned by CME Group Inc. and compiles prices quoted by dealers in the privately negotiated market. That means the upfront cost to protect $10 million of YRC bonds from default for five years increased to $4.45 million in addition to $500,000 annually.

Bonds Drop
Derivatives traders were demanding 35.2 percent upfront at the end of last year. YRC’s swaps were the fourth-worst performers in the past three months compared with other companies worldwide, according to the data.

Its 10 percent bonds due in March 2015 dropped to 36 cents on the dollar as of March 14 from 72 cents in September, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Shares of the company have dropped 11 percent this year to $8.91 as of 11:19 a.m. today in New York.

In December 2009, YRC extended a tender-offer deadline six times before bondholders agreed to swap equity for debt, allowing the trucker to delay a $19 million interest payment that would have left it in an “unsustainable” position, according to a regulatory filing at the time.

The bondholder pushback prompted International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James Hoffa to ask federal and state authorities to review “questionable promotion” of credit- default swaps tied to YRC debt. He named Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank AG, Toronto Dominion Bank, Barclays Capital, and UBS AG as firms with a “history of making markets” in derivatives trades that would profit from YRC’s bankruptcy.

‘Goal Line’
Goldman Sachs said at the time that the New York-based bank “neither has a position in, nor makes markets in, YRC corporate bonds or credit-default swaps.”

After YRC received bondholder approval, Bill Zollars, its chief executive officer at the time, said Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Aristeia Capital LLC, Silverback Asset Management and a Smith Management LLC unit “got us over the goal line by going into the market, buying bonds and tendering them.”

Zollars previously said that “the most difficult bondholders to deal with were investors with credit-default swaps that paid off if the company went bankrupt.”

Two years later, YRC’s auditor, KPMG LLP, said the company’s financial condition raises “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue,” according to the Feb. 28 filing. The trucker has $175 million of pension payments and $48.3 million of lease obligations due this year, according to the filing.

Top Providers
“The company’s market share substantially declined over the past few years,” Standard & Poor’s analysts led by Anita Ogbara wrote in a Feb. 29 report. As a result of YRC’s “well- publicized financial distress, its competitors sought to gain market share by pricing aggressively.” they wrote.

A ratio of YRC’s costs compared with revenue increased in the past two quarters, while Con-Way’s decreased, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The less-than-truckload business, which relies on a healthy U.S. economy for its success, is concentrated among the top providers, with the 10 biggest carriers accounting for about 67 percent of the $33 billion U.S. and Canadian market, the data show.

YRC has about $1.3 billion of indebtedness, an amount that will increase because YRC is incurring new debt to pay some of its interest, the filing showed. Most of the company’s debt matures in 2014 and 2015. Its enterprise value, the sum of its stock-market capitalization and net debt was $1.22 billion on March 16, down from $4.09 billion at the end of 2005. Its aggregate equity price has declined to $65.7 million from $2.56 billion.

‘Operational Story’
“Since the company’s finalization of its last restructuring of July 2011, there’s been significant management changes to focus on the company’s operations,” Iain Gold, the Teamsters union’s director of strategic research and campaigns, said. “This is an operational story that, given time, markets will reflect more accurately the value of the company.”

The company is divesting assets and resources not related to its core less-than-truckload business -- in which it hauls goods for more than one customer in the same trailer -- in North America, according to Pierson’s statement. It sold some of the assets from its Glen Moore truckload operating subsidiary to Celadon Trucking Services Inc., in said on Dec. 15.

New Management
In July, James Welch took over as CEO and a new board of directors was installed, with James Hoffman, former president of Alliant Energy Resources, acting as chairman. Michelle Russell was appointed general counsel and secretary this year.

YRC said it appointed Pierson as CFO in November. He previously was a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal North America LLC, where he focused on out-of-court restructurings and senior management advisory.

“The restructuring gave them time, but they certainly weren’t out of the woods,” said Berge of Moody’s, which has assigned YRC a corporate family rating of Caa3, the lowest rung of a category considered to be of poor standing and high credit risk. “Last time around they were reliant on a couple of transactions being successfully completed. Now they’re reliant on the market cooperating with them.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Abramowicz in New York at [email protected]

Well I'm reading this article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone about Bank Of America. It's by Matt Taibbi who, despite occasional foul language, is a really, really good and powerful writer.

Opinion. Good writers don't need to use foul language to make a point. Strike one.

But our stupid government keeps them propped up,

Nonsense. Bank of America repaid its TARP funds years ago, with interest mind you. No one is propping up this bank. In fact, this bank is actually profitable, and even passed the recent stress-tests for financial stability just a couple of weeks ago.

I like Jesse Einhorn's comments on the ranting and raving of this Rolling Stone article:

"I'm no fan of BofA, but the number of analytic errors, conflations and misrepresentations in this article completely undercuts its central critique. Just to name a few...

1) The fact that BofA borrows from the Fed at low rates isn't some nefarious scheme, nor is it a "bailout" (or "shadow bailout") by any remotely reasonable definition of the term. It's simply a natural consequence of a little thing called monetary policy: with inflation low and unemployment high, the Fed has kept rates near the zero-bound. True: banks that borrow from the Fed benefit from the cheap money, but that doesn't make it a "bailout". Not even close. And what's Taibbi's criticism here? That Bernanke should raise rates and f--k up the recovery simply to punish bad actors like BofA? Ask Paul Krugman what he thinks of that brilliant idea.

2) BofA reported a loss in 2010 and consequently, didn't pay taxes. That same year, Taibbi notes, it also paid out billions in bonuses and compensation. Such compensation may have been excessive, but the idea that it constitutes "tax evasion" is simply laughable. Employee compensation - even for that most loathsome class of d**khead-douchebag-a**hole executives - is a normal cost of doing business, and sometimes paying it puts a company in the red. Moreover, however much BofA didn't pay in corporate taxes was ultimately collected in the form of income taxes on the billions it paid in employee compensation. And since the effective corporate tax rate in this country is barely 25%, it's highly likely that the IRS - and by extension, the American taxpayer- ended up with MORE revenue as a result. If that's the definition of "tax evasion", keep it coming.

3) In Taibbi's revisionist narrative, the losses suffered by innocent pensioners are laid squarely at the feet of BofA, while the institutional investors who mismanaged their assets, in plain violation of their fiduciary duties as trustees, are basically absolved of any guilt. Asset managers such as BlackRock and PIMCO are portrayed as helpless, babe-in-the-woods "suckers"- a laughable characterization since any other Taibbi piece would describe them as the savvy, ruthless behemoths that they are. (Other major players in pension management include well-known "suckers" like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs). Indeed, it would hardly surprise me if Taibbi's next RS broadside took aim at precisely these same asset managers. Yet for this month, it seems, history's greatest monster = BofA, so despite their obvious culpability, its counterparties (i.e. institutional investors) are given a pass.

4) Whether it's sloppy writing or deliberate obfuscation, Taibbi repeatedly attributes instances of misconduct by Countrywide and Merrill Lynch to BofA, despite the fact that this misconduct occurred YEARS BEFORE the 2008 mergers. There's more than enough evidence of bad behavior by BofA (and ONLY BofA) to build a credible case against the bank. Conflating BofA malfeasance with that of Countrywide/Merrill - i.e. the 2005 deal with US Bancorp - is counterproductive at best and dishonest at worst.

I could go on. I suppose I already have.

For his fearless assaults on American Finance, Taibbi and his thesaurus have earned a reputation as the #1 advocate for the 99%. But as journalist (much less a social scientist/historian), his work leaves much to be desired."

Read. Enjoy.