“If I tell you, you’re not going to believe me,” Torres said. He was crying as he told them an incredible story about being recruited by the Defense Intelligence Agency to participate in a secret operation testing the security of Washington-area banks. He said he’d been assigned to rob a half-dozen banks over four days. And he told them about Theo, the man who hired him and gave all the orders—even though Torres had never met him.
posted by pravit
on Apr 19, 2013 -
32 comments
"Of the top 100 Swiss companies, 49 give shareholders a consulting vote on the pay of executives. A few other countries, including the United States and Germany, have introduced advisory "say on pay" votes in response to the anger over inequality and corporate excess that drove the Occupy Wall Street movement. Britain is also planning to implement rules in late 2013 that will give shareholders a binding vote on pay and "exit payments" at least every three years.
Minder's initiative goes further, forcing all listed companies to have binding votes on compensation for company managers and directors, and ban golden handshakes and parachutes. It would also ban bonus payments to managers if their companies are taken over, and impose severe penalties — including possible jail sentences and fines — for breaches of these new rules."
posted by vidur
on Jan 21, 2013 -
32 comments
"We decided to go on
an adventure through the financial statements of one bank [Wells Fargo], to explore exactly what they do and do not show, and to gauge whether it is possible to make informed judgments about the risks the bank may be carrying. We chose a bank that is thought to be a conservative financial institution, and an exemplar of what a large modern bank should be."
posted by vidur
on Jan 14, 2013 -
14 comments
James Coyne, the former Governor of the Bank of Canada,
died October 12 at the age of 102. Coyne will be best-remembered for the
Coyne Affair in 1961, a watershed moment in Canadian monetary policy that has been the subject of
scholarly articles and at least one
Master's thesis. Coyne and the Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, disagreed on monetary policy. After Diefenbaker failed to get a bill vacating the office of Bank Governor through the Senate, Coyne resigned, setting the
modern precedent that the government, not the Bank, sets the fundamental direction of monetary policy in Canada but that the Bank implements policy independently. His son, columnist Andrew Coyne,
pays tribute (obliquely) to James Coyne's legacy of integrity in public office. (Andrew once complimented his father's parsimoniousness in
purchasing cars.)
posted by Dasein
on Oct 17, 2012 -
9 comments
And when the day comes that you, the American taxpayer,
own this Bank, you will be ready to make it a
Bank for America—one that brings benefits not to the privileged only, but to all of our customers, and to all of our stakeholders too.
posted by Surfin' Bird
on Apr 20, 2012 -
15 comments
Chext is a site that enables the user to enter transactions and track their bank balance via SMS. People sharing a bank account can also get updates when money is spent from the account by the other person.
[more inside]
posted by reenum
on Sep 19, 2011 -
30 comments
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. In a few hours, I will destroy the Greek economy. Unless, that is, you give me the sum of...
one trillion dollars!
(SLNYT, but with this much money I can afford to look frumpy)
posted by anigbrowl
on May 10, 2010 -
61 comments
Betting Against the American Dream. In 2005, just as Wall Street started to get cold feet about the housing market, the
Magnetar hedge fund helped create a new wave of billion-dollar mortgage-backed securities, pushed bankers to include riskier sub-prime mortgages, and then shorted the securities, making millions when the bubble finally burst. Traders on both sides of the deals pocketed enormous fees even if their banks went under when the securities failed.
Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica,
This American Life, and NPR's
Planet Money track down some of the big winners in the housing/financial crisis. No time to read or listen? It seemed so much like a scheme from
The Producers, they even recorded
a show tune to explain it all. (
Previously,
2,
3)
posted by straight
on Apr 15, 2010 -
30 comments
A software engineer blogs about the
inept and insecure way in which a bank asks customers to file a claim when they're the victim of fraudulent transactions. Dozens of customers chime in with similar experiences, over the course of months. The bank in question contributes nothing to the conversation, and the system remains both
insecure and broken today [that last link is probably blocked by your browser or operating system, but don't worry - the form on the page doesn't work anyway].
posted by subpixel
on Nov 25, 2009 -
28 comments
Swiss private bank Wegelin says goodbye and good riddance to America. Swiss private bank Wegelin
announced two weeks ago that it is to stop doing business in the United States. The St Gallen-based bank, Switzerland's oldest, said the decision had been taken in response to stricter measures introduced in the US against tax dodgers and planned changes to estate tax, which would make some non-US citizens liable to tax if they inherited US securities.
In
a letter to investors it said Swiss banks were likely to find themselves in an untenable position, as they would be expected to know which clients were liable to pay US tax – "an impossible undertaking", given the lack of clear definitions in the matter.
posted by DreamerFi
on Sep 2, 2009 -
88 comments
Confused about the banking crisis? Confused by banks in general?
This American Life's latest show
Bad Bank (
streaming, mp3) is a highly informative (and entertaining) overview of how banks work, and what problems they--and we all--face in this current crisis. Produced by another great NPR show,
Planet Money.
posted by zardoz
on Mar 2, 2009 -
23 comments
iBank? 25 billion in cash and short-term securities. No long-term debt. Why Apple should get into the banking sector, pronto.
posted by leotrotsky
on Jan 23, 2009 -
49 comments
