Alpine Bank
by Ben Bernanke
Reported – $23.8 Million for the quarter just ended 31MAY2010. Actually it’s closer to a $40 Million quarterly loss if you don’t count the $15.9 Mill Alpine took as a tax write off for the same quarter. (Click Here) for a copy of that short version FDIC report. Check the bottom of page 2 for proof of those numbers. Accountants and Bankers can (Click Here) for the complete FDIC.gov report.
What you’re not being told by our daily two newspaper fish wraps – is that the FDIC maintains a somewhat “secret” list of banks on their Troubled Bank Watch List. Obviously making that list public could cause a run on a bank – so the FDIC keeps that list to itself. What we can all monitor however, is whether a local bank stops making loans…a clear sign the FDIC has ‘put their finger’ on a bank and are forcing them to ‘fix’ their balance sheet – by reducing the number of ‘toxic assets’ (read: bad loans) that bank owns. Clearly, Alpine’s (good performing loans) record in this area not too favorable for the last 18 months.
Reportedly in 2009 (Click Here) Alpine took $70 Million in TARP/CCP funds to help their bank balance sheet – then. The Feds in return now reportedly own 10% of Alpine.
Add to this their $15.9 Mill tax write off in this most recent quarter – and you find the basis of why Alpine caught our attention this week. For a closer look at Alpine’s 2009 deposits and where they are (Click Here) for that FDIC report.
The good news? Reported to the ECT this week – Alpine has not stopped making loans…so far.
DISCLAIMER: The ECT gets it. It helps no one to have any of our local banks (in trouble) where our friends and neighbors work and have their home and business loans. Nor does the ECT mean to imply that “Alpine Bank leads Western Slope to Greece v2.0 Financial Status”. Our point simply this – a reasonable person needs to be informed about what is actually happening around them – so they can make better decisions about planning their future. So the ECT peppers our reports with [click-here] to let our readers decide for themselves who’s really working to inform the folks. Don’t worry about the ECT – unlike the VD & VM we’ll be just fine without advertising revenue from Alpine…we just wish Alpine would stop playing their sappy radio commercials.
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Jim Willie, on the Max Keiser show at the beginning of Octorber, stated that over a weekend in September that the Bank of America was going to go under, and the Fed gave them an emergency money tranfusion to keep them afloat. Now this article about the BofA and it vast exposure to forclosure fruad could sink the bank. If you have accounts with BofA or any other bank, for that matter, you best get out while you can.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/credit/bank-of-america-mortgage-document-errors-trouble-countrywide/19728402/
and http://republicbroadcasting.org/?p=12190
Martin D. Weiss Ph.D.
Money and Markets
Martin here with an urgent update on the next phase of the banking crisis.
Just this past Friday, the government released new data showing that the FDIC’s list of “problem banks” now includes 903 institutions.
That’s ten times the number of bad banks on the FDIC’s list just two years ago.
The banks on the list have $419.6 billion in assets, or SIXTEEN times the amount of two years ago.
And yet, these bad banks are …
Just the Tip of the Iceberg!
How do we know?
Because the FDIC has consistently neglected to include the most endangered species on its list of problem institutions — the nation’s megabanks that are among the shakiest of all.
The FDIC doesn’t reveal the names of the banks on its list — just the number of institutions and the sum total of their assets.
Still, I can prove, without a shadow of doubt, that the FDIC’s list of problem banks is grossly understated and inadequate.
Consider what happened on September 25, 2008, for example.
That’s the day Washington Mutual filed for bankruptcy with total assets of $328 billion.
But just 30 days earlier, according to the FDIC’s own press release, the aggregate assets held by the 117 banks on its “problem list” were only $78 billion.
In other words …
Washington Mutual alone had over FOUR times the sum of ALL the assets of ALL the banks on the FDIC’s list of problem banks!
Obviously, Washington Mutual was not on the FDIC’s list.
Obviously, the FDIC missed it. Completely.
Also not on the FDIC’s list: Citicorp and Bank of America, saved from bankruptcy with $95 billion in bailout funds from Congress. Just these two banks alone had over FORTY-SEVEN times more assets than all of those the FDIC had identified as “problem banks.”
Some people in the banking industry seem to think the FDIC can be excused for missing the nation’s largest bank failures for the same reason that blind men groping in the dark can’t be blamed for missing an elephant in the room.
But the fact is that the FDIC even missed the failure of a relatively smaller bank: IndyMac Bank.
When IndyMac failed in July 2008, the 90 banks on FDIC’s “problem list” had aggregate assets of $26.3 billion. But IndyMac alone had $32 billion in assets. Evidently, even IndyMac was not on the FDIC’s radar screen.
This is …
Easily One of the Greatest
Financial Scandals of Our Time
The FDIC’s problem list is supposed to guide banking authorities in their efforts to protect the public from bank failures. If the FDIC is missing all the big failures, where does that leave you and me?
Heck — it’s bad enough that they refuse to disclose the names of endangered banks. What’s worse is that they’re hiding the truth from their own eyes.
And with so many misses so evident, you’d think they would have changed their ways by now.
Not so.
Even as I write these words to you this morning, banking authorities are AGAIN failing to recognize, analyze, scrutinize, or tell the public about the real impact of the most intractable disaster of this era:
Major U.S. Banks Still Extremely
Vulnerable to the Foreclosure Crisis
Here are the facts …
Fact #1. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo Bank, and Bank of America each have more than $20 billion in single-family mortgages that are currently foreclosed or in the process of foreclosure.
Fact #2. Each bank has at least DOUBLE that amount in a pipeline of foreclosures in the making — $43 billion to $55 billion in delinquent mortgages (past due by 30 days or more).
Naturally, not all of the past-due loans will ultimately go into foreclosure. But these figures tell us that the biggest players are not only in deep, but could sink even deeper into the mortgage mayhem.
Fact #3. Combining the foreclosures and delinquent mortgages into a single category — “bad mortgages” — the sheer volume still on their books is staggering:
* JPMorgan Chase (OH) has $65 billion in bad mortgages …
* Wells Fargo Bank (SD) has $68.6 billion, and …
* Bank of America (NC) has $74.9 billion.
Fact #4. The potential impact of these bad mortgages on the bank’s earnings, capital — AND SOLVENCY — is dramatic. Compared to their “Tier 1″ capital …
* SunTrust (GA) has 57.6 percent in bad mortgages …
* Bank of America has 66 percent in bad mortgages …
* JPMorgan Chase has 66.8 percent, and …
* Wells Fargo has 75.4 percent.
Tier 1 capital does not include their loan loss reserves. But even if you included them, the exposure is still huge.
Moreover, this data is based on the banks’ midyear reports. Since then, we believe the situation has gotten worse.
And these numbers reflect strictly bad home mortgages! It does not include bad commercial mortgages, credit cards, construction loans, business loans, and more.
Here’s the key: Based on their size alone, we KNOW that none of these giant institutions are on the FDIC’s list of “problem banks.”
Yet they are all definitely WEAK, according to our Weiss Ratings subsidiary, the source of this analysis on bad mortgages.
Moreover, “weak” means “VULNERABLE,” according to the analysis of the Weiss ratings provided by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
To help make sure your money is safe, I have four recommendations:
Recommendation #1. Don’t keep 100 percent of your savings in banks. Also seriously consider Treasury bills — bought through a Treasury-only money market fund or directly from the Treasury Department.
Don’t be put off by their low yield. The primary goal of this portion of your portfolio should not be the return on your money. It’s the return OF your money.
Recommendation #2. The only real risk in holding U.S. Treasury bills is the likelihood of a falling U.S. dollar. But don’t let that alone prompt you to run away from safe investments and rush into high-risk investments. Instead, stick with safety and protect yourself from a dollar decline SEPARATELY, with hedges against inflation, such as gold.
Recommendation #3. For checking accounts, money market accounts, and CDs that you have in a bank, be sure to keep your principal and accrued interest under the FDIC’s insurance limit of $250,000.
Recommendation #4. Given the magnitude of the potential crisis … given the limited resources of the FDIC … and in light of the strong anti-bailout sentiment of the new Congressional leadership … I feel you must not count exclusively on the FDIC or any government entity to guarantee your savings.
Instead, make sure you do business strictly with financial institutions that have what it takes to withstand adverse conditions on their own, even without a penny of government support.
Do your best to avoid banks with a Weiss rating of D+ (weak) or lower and seek to do business with banks that we rate B+ (good) or higher. Stay safe.
Good luck and God bless!
Martin
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
The Elite Now Have Unlimited FDIC Coverage for Deposits
Activist Post
A little known clause in the gigantic Dodd-Frank financial reform bill went into effect January 1st. All funds in a “non-interest-bearing transaction account” are insured in full by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from December 31, 2010, through December 31, 2012.
This temporary unlimited coverage is in addition to, and separate from, the coverage of at least $250,000 available to depositors under the FDIC’s general deposit insurance rules.
It is unclear the purpose of this temporary status, but certainly we can speculate that it is to protect the elite’s deposits should another catastrophic financial collapse happen in the next two years.
The official purpose as stated by the financial bill itself is beyond convoluted:
The proposed rule serves as a vehicle for the FDIC Board of Directors to announce that it will not extend the TAGP beyond the scheduled expiration date of December 31, 2010. Because of the differences between the TAGP and the new statutory provision, changes to the rules are necessary.
Say what? It seems that the designers assume another financial crisis is looming and they want to make sure that the taxpayers will be on the hook for the potential billions in private bank losses.
It was reported the other day that Alpine was down 48 million for the last quarter.
Wow. The FDIC just closed another bank in CO– what happens if (when?) the FDIC runs out of money?
the FDIC is broke…..google it
But But But…. It Wasn’t Going To Happen!
Major problems with commercial real estate, that is…
In a recent report, the credit rating agency, Fitch Ratings, said that 30% of commercial mortgage-backed securities loans set to mature in 2011 do not pass their refinance test. Another credit rating agency, Moody’s Investors Service, said recently that although the commercial real estate markets are making their way toward recovery, most still have not reached a point of stability.
Uh huh. “Extend and pretend” has been the rule of the game thus far. That is, pretend a loan is performing and meets covenants even if it doesn’t, and extend maturities instead of forcing an actual roll, when the default would come out into the daylight like a vampire forced into the sun, immolating itself into ash.
Drive around. The “For Lease” signs are still sprouting. And when it comes to commercial real estate there is a decade’s worth – or more – of oversupply.
Commercial Real Estate loans have almost-always been written not on a fully-amortizing basis with an intent to eventually be debt-free, but rather on a cash-flow-positive basis. That is, the economic activity in the shopping center or whatever it is supports the interest payments on the note, and the principal is rolled over when the term expires. Extending that scheme into the residential real estate marketplace with OptionARM and other similar loans is a big part of what detonated the residential market, because residences are not revenue-producing things, and thus should never be financed in that sort of fashion.
The bankers didn’t care about that, of course. All they cared about was being able to skim off a piece of every transaction, and that’s exactly what they did – right up until it blew up in their face. Like the sellers of picks and shovels during the Gold Rush, the presence or absence of actual gold didn’t bother them one way or the other – only the hype mattered.
Unfortunately the same meme infested commercial real estate. “If you build it they will come” was the mantra. This, of course, is fantasy – if you build it the people with the disposable income have to be there and spread that income around your merchants, or they don’t come and you go broke.
The options for working these loans out are limited. If the property is in negative equity, and many of them are, either having been refinanced with “light” covenants or built during the bubble years, reasonable qualifications are not going to be able to be met. Lease stability is always in question in a commercial situation, as it only takes one anchor tenant to blow up to ruin the property’s coverage ratio. Once you get in trouble on ratios you’re cooked as there are few ways out of the trap.
MCSNet was able to take advantage of one of these circumstances in the 1990s for our office space. But that was during a mild and shallow recession where a building owner had allowed tenants to get a bit far out on the tightrope without a safety line. This is a common thing to do during booms, as there’s competition from new buildings and renovations that make it very difficult to stick with your standards and remain safe.
Those who think that these loans aren’t the rough equivalent of an overpressurized dive tank that someone is whacking on with a sledge are delusional. They are, and that which cannot go on forever in the form of “look the other way” forbearance won’t.
We’re about out of time on this little charade, and the economic “uptick” everyone was counting on to rescue the lenders has simply not materialized.
In all fairness-the FDIC also went into the red (Bankrupt) in 1991 and had to borrow money from the Treasury–http://forex-hyip-investment.com/business-fdic-in-red-can-an-accounting-trick-save-the-agency
And-> The FDIC has currently been “in the red’ since Sept 2009 btw-
You will like this line though Go Ron Paul Go! ”
…it is important to note that FDIC officials stressed that the fund’s depleted state wouldn’t affect depositors because federally insured deposits are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government”
http://networthadvice.com/2009/09/30/fdic-falls-into-the-red/
(In Red in 1991 due to: In the late 1980s, the Savings and Loans crisis led to FDIC bailout of many Savings and Loans Associations, costing taxpayers $120 Billion. /)
Everyone should watch America: Freedom to Fascism
Go Ron Paul needs to join Eagle County for Ron Paul!
Yep Go Ron Paul Go — that is the path we are on…so i hope we don’t wake our sleepy ‘lil selves up when it is too late…
All i can think of is this: (famous statement attributed to) Pastor Martin Niemoller
————————————————————
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
—————————————————————-
I bet our kids aren’t taught this in Government Public Schools though-one more good reason to homeschool-which is growing in leaps and bounds across America. You hear that Public schools? Parents are… determined to teach their kids what you all don’t want them to know…
Knowledge is Power.
The dumbing down of Amerikas school system.
Alex Jones interviews Charlotte Iserbyt (if it doesnt play google it)
Worst radio commercial ever aired! EVER!!