What to Do about Goldman Sachs
Will today’s hearings before Senator Levin’s subcommittee on Capitol Hill with Goldman Sachs actually lead to some kind of change?
Goldman Sachs executives testify before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
The Senators are having a good time grandstanding.
- Sen. McCaskill: “It is pure gambling. You are the gambler. You are the house….you have less oversight than a pit boss in Las Vegas…what worries you is a bad article in the Wall Street Journal. Not a regulator.”
- Sen. McCain: “It is unethical, and the American people will have their judgment.”
What if the federal government decided to use its substantial market power to put Goldman in its place? What could they do?
- They could remove Goldman as a primary dealer. Goldman would not be able to make big fees through the auction of Treasuries.
- They could shut Goldman out of the discount window. Right now, Goldman has access to the Primary Dealer Credit Facility. Bernanke set up this as a means for the Federal Reserve to lend directly to investment banks. It was set up to buoy major brokerage institutions and to ensure liquidity, particularly for overnight lending, during the fallout from the subprime credit crisis. It certainly doesn’t make sense to spend money helping an institution that appears to have helped to orchestrate the subprime crisis.
- They could deny Goldman’s current application to buy a national bank, and put future buys on hold until Goldman is willing to answer Senator Levin’s questions.
They could cease to let Goldman have any participation in the issuance of Treasuries. Perhaps that could be extended to local governments, where Goldman might be shut out of municipal bond offerings.
Today, in another portion of Capitol Hill, the OCC is pursuing its own response. Chairman Dugan is appearing at the Capitol to encourage consumers to take the month of April to improve their financial literacy. It is one more step that reflects the bias at the OCC.
Scott Rickard
April 29, 2010
In 2008, US financial institutions and Wall Street committed one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated against the American people.
The government allocated $900 billion for special loans and rescues related to the US "housing bubble".
Several financial institutions used this money to buy single-family home loans from failed banks for only one penny on the dollar.
Case in point, JPMorgan Chase bought Washington Mutual for only for $1.9 billion. Washington Mutual held as assets of $118.9 billion in single-family loans, of which $52.9 billion were "option adjustable rate mortgages" (Option ARMs), with $16 billion in subprime mortgage loans, and $53.4 billion of Home Equity lines of Credit (HELOCs) and credit cards receivables of $10.6 billion.
That is why JPMorgan Chase is so incredibly profitable now.
Only 25% of Washington Mutual's single-family loans have actually foreclosed.
So the remaining 75% of Washington Mutual's single-family loans have not foreclosed, and JP Morgan Chase is making money hand over fist on the single-family loans they bought for only 1%.
Not to mention that the US is facing well over $300 billion dollars in single-family home loan foreclosures nationwide.
Right now the US is on pace to see over 1 million bank repossessions this year alone.
In all, more than 900,000 households, or one in every 138 homes, have received a foreclosure-related notice this year.
The $75 billion foreclosure prevention program has only helped a very small fraction of troubled homeowners.
So far, the Treasury has set aside $39.9 billion of the $75 billion foreclosure prevention program.
However, only $90 million of the $39.9 billion set aside for loan modifications has been spent on permanent loan modifications.
You can see a breakdown of the all the loan modifications for each financial institution here.
http://bailout.propublica.org/loan_mods/list
In essence, about 231,000 homeowners have completed the loan modification process as part of the foreclosure prevention program through March.
That's about 21 percent of the 1.2 million borrowers who began the program over the past year.
Total Number of Eligible Loans: 3,398,612
More than 1.3 million homeowners have received offers for trial modifications, and nearly 1.1 million trial modifications have begun under the program.
Only 170,000 homeowners now have permanent modifications, about double the number from December. An additional 91,000 borrowers have received final approval for a permanent modification.
While the government gave nearly $900 billion to Wall Street and financial institutions,very few single-family loans nationwide are receiving loan modifications and are only saving a median of 36 percent of their before-modification payment, which is a median of roughly $500 per month on mortgage payments.
However, homeowners have spent $2.7 billion in aggregate through trial and permanent modification loan payments. Please note that this is not loan principal savings, it is only trial and permanent modification loan payments.
This is ultimately another great deal for the banks, and a total rip off for the American people.
So for the few single-family loans that were modified at a median of $150,000, the amount of principle reduction was roughly 33% reducing the median loan principle by $50,000 to around $100,000. Nothing near the 99% off that financial institutions received when they bought assets from failed financial institutions using US government (Chinese actually) loans.
The worst part is that the US tax payer has already received a huge bill for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) which allowed the banks to experience record profits in under a year and a half. And now the $75 billion loan modification program, that barely helps a small fraction of affected single-family homeowners, is allowing the banks to cash in on the profits a second time through the term of the modified loans.
For more information on The State of the Government's Loan Modification Program see:
http://bailout.propublica.org/programs/6-making-h…
For more information on the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) see:
http://www.financialstability.gov/docs/105Congres…
Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/economy/9090560…