Green Dot is still doesn’t own Bonneville Bancorp. In February 2010 (16 months ago), Green Dot agreed to buy Bonneville Bancorp for $15.7 million. Bonneville is a very small bank in Provo, Utah. Green Dot is buying the bank with cash. There was some initial upheaval about the transaction (from me) that this was a shadow transaction that allowed Wal-Mart to buy a charter. Steve Streit settled those concerns through a very direct outreach to advocates. Some advocates took the step of sending a letter to the Federal Reserve which rescinded their initial protest against the acquisition. Comments closed last summer, but the Federal Reserve still has not (more…)

JP Morgan Chase has created a fee schedule for its Chase Total Checking Account (“CTCA”) that systematically pulls dollars out of the pockets of retired Americans.

The Chase Total Checking Account charges a monthly fee to any account holder that fails to make a single direct deposit of at least $500 per month. The CTCA fee can be avoided if you maintain a daily minimum balance of $1,500, or if you have an average balance of $2,500, or if you have $5,000 in any combination of Chase accounts worth a combined sum of $5,000.

If the account holder can’t meet those hurdles, then Chase takes $12 from the account. This in (more…)

Jamie Dimon’s 35-page letter to JP Morgan Chase shareholders is an interesting commentary on how his bank has navigated the financial crisis. The letter offers extensive insight into discrete elements of the WaMu acquisition.  Dimon even proffers several surprising opinions about TARP, Dodd-Frank, and the CFPB. While he extends some support for each, he is less than content with either the Durbin Amendment or the new Basel rules.

Tom Brown says that JP Morgan Chase’s letter, penned by Jamie Dimon, is an outstanding letter.

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The affidavit armageddon continues to spread. Today the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency notified seven servicers that it would be visiting their offices in order to verify that their foreclosure procedures were legitimate. This follows voluntary annoucements by GMAC, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America that they were going to suspend current foreclosures in process while they review documents.

The banks are getting plenty of heat. Imagine how bad this probelm is going to be, and imagine how long (more…)

Regulators in England slapped a $48.5 million fine on JP Morgan Chase today, citing the bank’s failure to segregate customer deposits from their own accounts.

Chase was playing with Other People’s Money (OPM). Perhaps they have grown accustomed to that in a country where taxpayers buy bank stock, where banks can borrow on discount from the federal government, and all kinds of loans are backstopped by Uncle Sam.

Louis Brandeis warned us about this problem back in 1914.

In England, they are having none of that.

This is a stunning disregard for consumer safety. In essence, this practice gave a boost to JPM’s balance sheet, but at the expense of their depositors.  Holders of deposits were denied insurance protection on their funds as a result. The sums were not small, either. The FSA, England’s regulator of financial institutions, said that at times, the sum of money transferred into JPM accounts reached $23 billion.

How much is that? Quite a lot, actually. That is more than rests in many mid-sized US banks.  First Citizens of Raleigh, North Carolina, only has $12.7 billion in core deposits. RBC Centura – just $17.6 billion.

This might be one more reason why people should support the CFPA.