Archive for August, 2009
What Would Be Involved in an Audit of the Federal Reserve? – Part Three
What would an audit of the Federal Reserve look like then? Ron Paul helps us here, as recently he cited the response of the General Accounting Office when there was some interest in auditing the Fed in the 1970s: “We do not see how we can satisfactorily audit the Federal Reserve System without authority to [...]
Lending Club Investment Tips for Lenders
In the last couple of years, many technologically savvy investors have begun to diversify their investment portfolio by becoming lenders to other individuals seeking personal loans through peer-to-peer lending companies such as Prosper.com and LendingClub.com. There are some people that have averaged over a 12% APY on the money that they have invested through these [...]
FDIC Seeks to Attract Additional Buyers of Failed Banks
After 8 months into the year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has seen over 80 bank failures and has had engineer purchases for each of the failed banks. After last Friday’s failure of Colonial BankGroup, the largest bank failure this year, the FDIC is taking steps to attract more buyers of troubled financial institutions to [...]
CapitalSouth Bank Marks 80th Bank Failure of 2009
State regulators shut down the CapitalSouth Bank and handed over its reigns to the FDIC on Friday, August 21st, marking the 80th bank failure in 2009. Iberiabank Corp of Lafayette Lousiana will take over 10 branches of CapitalSouth Bank on Monday as well. Capital South only had $546 million in deposits for over $617 million [...]
Prosper, Lending Club and Other Loan Clubs: An Introduction to Peer to Peer Lending
If there’s any new financial product that has been the darling of personal finance blogs across the web in the last couple of years, it’s peer to peer lending services. They have received a lot of interest from people who are extremely interested in their personal finances, but Prosper, Lending Club and other peer to [...]
Obama Administration Raises Deficit Forecast to $9 Trillion
The budget deficit for the federal budget has just been revised by the White House by close to $2 trillion over the next 10 years, now estimated to come in at around $9 trillion rather than the $7.1 trillion originally projected. (I wonder how you miss a number by about $2 trillion in the first [...]
What Would Be Involved in an Audit of the Federal Reserve? – Part Two
Last post we talked about Congress being granted the power by the Constitution to “coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.” So Congress obviously has the authority to do that, and by extension, to audit the Federal Reserve. I have went into some length [...]
What to Look For Other than Interest Rates When Shopping For an Online Savings Account
When you’re looking for a place to store your hard earned money, you don’t want to trust it with just any financial institution. How do you make sure that the place you’re going to put your money is the best place to go? Most people only look at the interest rates that they will receive, [...]
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA Now Owns Guaranty Bank
Yesterday I reported that Guaranty Bank was close to be taken over by Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA from Spain, and now that became a reality today, becoming the first foreign bank to take over a failed American Bank through regulators via their subsidiary BBVA Compass. BBVA Compass is the U.S unit of Banco Bilbao [...]
TARP Bailout Money: How was the $700 Billion Spent?
Last fall, the country was in a major financial crisis, in response, the Department of the Treasury with authorization from Congress gave over $700 billion to banks and financial institutions under the troubled asset relief program (TARP). Originally, the money was designated to purchase mortgage-backed securities which had lost significant value because of the rise [...]
What Would Be Involved in an Audit of the Federal Reserve? – Part One
There has been a self-conscious effort to confuse the proposed audit of the Federal Reserve, initiated by Ron Paul, in order to fight off what would be unveiled and revealed by that very audit. So before we get into what an audit of the Federal Reserve would entail, let’s look at part of the basic [...]
How to Maximize Your CD Rates with a Certificate of Deposit Ladder
If you have a lot of money in a savings account, you are at the whim of whatever the current interest rate environment is. If the economy falters as it has in the last year, the rates you will be able to receive on your money will be dismal if you have it in a [...]
Mortgage Delinquencies Continue Rise In Q2, Top Q1 Record
The rate of delinquent U.S. mortgages continues to grow sequentially and that did not change in the second quarter as even more struggling borrowers fell at least 30 days behind on their loan payments. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) announced Thursday that 9.24 percent of all U.S. mortgages were in a delinquent status at the [...]
Lending Club Follows Mainstream Banks, Raises Interest Rates on Personal Loans
Peer to Peer Lending Services, such as Prosper.com and LendingClub.com, have been providing consumers a way to lend money to other consumers while side-stepping major financial companies for a couple of years now. These two companies have both faced the problem of what interest rates to charge their borrowers and both have come up with [...]
FDIC’s Proposed Private Equity Restrictions Hindering Bank Sales
As usual, when the government steps in to the private market they screw things up, and in the case of regulations proposed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., they would essentially stop all interest of private equity firms in buying failed banks, cutting off a major source of capital. The idea of the banking and [...]
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