WaMu (Washington Mutual) was seized by the FDIC last Thursday, 9/25/08. JP Morgan came in to gobble them up. It gives JP Morgan access to a lot of bank branches in areas they didn’t have a prescence. Wachovia wasn’t seized, but the FDIC orchestrated a buy-out by Citigroup. Frankly, I thought Citigroup had enough problems [Read More…]

The FDIC announced today an interim rule that makes it much, much easier to determine coverage for Revocable Trust Accounts, also known as payable-on-death (POD) or living trust accounts. Before today, you had to have qualifying beneficiaries on the account. Now, the beneficiary can be anyone, the bank’s records just need to specify who they [Read More…]

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have asked the congress to approve a $700BB Bail-out of the banks. They had the gall to want this with no strings attached. I’m a conservative republican, but that doesn’t mean I agree with the administration lock, stock, and barrel. Thankfully, Congress is asking good [Read More…]

[Disclaimer: Reading this may cause anxiety, distress, depression, heart palpitations, or any other number of potential side affects. Read at your own risk.] I am not a big fan of bail-outs. So far the Gov’t has just been throwing money around, our tax money, to bail out private businesses that made bad business decisions. Why [Read More…]

The rumor mills have been in high gear today. Lehmen Bros. is rumored to be in negotiations for a 3-way split. The suiters supposedly are Bank of America (remember they also bailed out Countrywide), an Asian company, and some Private Banking Group. Official news may be let out on Sunday. What ever happended to not [Read More…]

Kansas Bankers Surety Co. has long been in the business of providing excess insurance on deposits above the FDIC limits. They provided this service mainly to other banks seeking to take large blocks of public deposits and the additional insurance would cover the amounts above the $100,000 FDIC limits in case of a bank failure. [Read More…]

Many commentators are saying we’ve hit bottom. I’m not so sure. Anyway, here are some links to articles out there. First, from CNN, an article about the dreaded Stagflation or maybe just stagnation. http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/19/markets/thebuzz/index.htm?postversion=2008081911 It appears that our economic gloom is finding its way around the world. Although, it will probably help keep inflation in [Read More…]

Another Bank, First Priority Bank, FL (FDIC# 57523) was taken over by the FDIC on Friday, August 1, 2008. The insured deposits have been transferred over to SunTrust Bank, Georgia (FDIC# 867). This follows another takeover a couple of weeks ago of First National Bank of Nevada and First Heritiage Bank. The insured deposits were [Read More…]

(Update 3/2009)–IndyMac Federal Bank was acquired after government financial assistance and subsequently operated as part of OneWest Bank, FSB (58978). For more information visit the FDIC page. Select “Generate history” for a full history by date. (Update 7/14/08 6:40 AM PST)— IndyMac Federal Bank, FSB is the new name. The website has a link to [Read More…]

I was reading Dwight’s daily post at WesCorp. And he is commenting on the Unemployment report (not good BTW). While the initial reaction to the Unemployment Report was one of relief, the fact remains that this was a very ugly report. There was nothing to feel good about. The survey that is used in calcutlating [Read More…]