Public Intelligence

This paper describes the foreign banking landscape in the United States. It begins by establishing a vocabulary for discussion of the subject, and then identifies a number of important data-related issues. With that information in hand, the remainder of the paper focuses on identifying the most important underlying trends on both sides of the balance sheets of foreign-owned banks’ U.S. operations. At each step, the investigation considers how foreign-owned banks compare to U.S.-owned domestic banks, and how two types of foreign banks operations in the U.S. — branches and agencies of foreign banks (FBAs), and foreign-owned subsidiary banks (FSUBs) — compare to each other.

For those who wish to understand the true nature of our current financial system, the Pujo Committee’s 1912-1913 investigation of the “Money Trust” is essential reading. The Committee identified a concentrated group of Wall Street bankers who operated a sophisticated financial network unified by 341 interlocking directorships held in 112 corporations valued at more than $22 billion in resources and capitalization exerting significant control and influence over the U.S. economy and monetary system. The companies and individuals comprising this network were primarily agents of the Morgan and Rockefeller banking empires which dominated U.S. finance following the “Industrial Revolution”. The Committee names a number of prominent banking institutions as participating in this system including J.P. Morgan & Co., First National Bank of New York, Kuhn Loeb & Co. and individuals such as Paul Warburg, Jacob H. Schiff, Felix M. Warburg, Frank E. Peabody, William Rockefeller and Benjamin Strong, Jr. Understanding this system of overlapping financial networks and how those networks are used to dominate utilities, railroads, banking and the U.S. financial infrastructure throughout much of the twentieth century is key to the proper analysis of our current economic situation and the influence that the “Money Power” wields over global politics.

Even at this late date, it is difficult to assess the precise international impact of the TARP or other U.S. rescue programs because Treasury gathered very little data on how TARP funds flowed overseas. As a result, neither students of the current crisis nor those dealing with future rescue efforts will have access to much of the information that would help them make wellinformed decisions. In the interests of transparency and completeness, and to help inform regulators‟ actions in a world that is likely to become ever more financially integrated, the Panel strongly urges Treasury to start now to report more data about how TARP and other rescue funds flowed internationally and to document the impact that the U.S. rescue had overseas. Going forward, Treasury should create and maintain a database of this information and should urge foreign regulators and multinational organizations to collect and report similar data. The crisis also underscored the fact that the international community‟s formal mechanisms to resolve potential financial crises are very limited. Even though the TARP legislation required Treasury to coordinate its programs with similar efforts by foreign governments, the global response to the financial crisis unfolded on an ad hoc, informal, countryby-country basis. Each individual government made its own decisions based on its evaluation of what was best for its own banking sector and for its own domestic economy. Even on the occasions when several governments worked together to rescue specific ailing institutions, as in the rescues of European banks Dexia and Fortis, national interests often came to the fore. These ad hoc actions ultimately restored a measure of stability to the international system, but they underscored the fact that the internationalization of the financial system has outpaced the ability of national regulators to respond to global crises.

The bonds of so-called peripheral euro-region nations, including Greece, Ireland and Spain, fell relative to benchmark German bunds after Greece’s credit rating was cut to junk by Moody’s Investors Service. German government bonds rose as investors shunned all but the safest assets following the downgrade and Citigroup Inc. said Greek debt will now be removed from some indexes. The ranking was lowered four steps to Ba1 from A3 by Moody’s, which cited “substantial” risks to economic growth from austerity measures tied to a 110 billion-euro ($134.5 billion) aid package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The lower rating “incorporates a greater, albeit, low risk of default,” the ratings company said in a statement yesterday in London. The outlook is stable, it said.

The euro zone’s decision to include the International Monetary Fund in any Greek rescue plan extends the Fund’s influence to a large swath of the world economy—and gives a political boost to its managing director. Over the past two years, the IMF has worked with the European Union to bail out EU members, including Latvia and Hungary. Now it is clear that the IMF mandate reaches also to Portugal, Spain and other troubled members of the 16-nation euro zone, said Domenico Lombardi, a Brookings Institution expert on the IMF. “Any possible (economic) contagion to Portugal and Spain (from Greece) should be under control,” because of IMF and euro-zone involvement, he said.

Addressing the influential Treasury Select Committee, Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman Sachs managing director, accepted that the investment bank had “enabled politicians to mask borrowings” through a complex currency transaction in 2001. The so-called “swap” allowed Greece to conceal some of its debts and meet eurozone limits on government borrowing. Goldman made an estimated £192m in fees on the deal. “With the benefit of hindsight, it seems very clear that standards of transparency could have been and should have been higher,” Mr Corrigan said

The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout ofAmerican International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all. Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.

Goldman Sachs on Thursday reported earnings of $13.4 billion and a compensation pool of $16.2 billion for 2009. The results represent a remarkable recovery for Goldman Sachs, which emerged from the financial crisis ahead of rivals as it booked handsome profits from trading activities as markets recovered. The compensation pool — which includes salary and benefits but is largely for year-end bonuses — translates to an average payout of $498,000 per employee, although rainmaker traders and bankers will earn millions. The average pay amount is up 37 percent from 2008, although lower than the pre-crisis level in 2007.

In the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve and Treasury faced several key decisions about the future of AIG. After attempts to find private-sector financing failed, they chose to provide assistance to AIG rather than allow the company to file for bankruptcy. FRBNY officials believed that an AIG failure would pose considerable risk to the entire financial system and would have significantly intensified an already severe financial crisis. FRBNY was concerned about the effect of an AIG bankruptcy on key sectors of the market, such as retirement accounts and the credit markets. FRBNY adopted in substantial part the economic terms of a draft term sheet under consideration by a consortium of private banks, the terms of which included a very high interest rate.

Home addresses for Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup; James Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase; John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo; Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America; and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

U.S. taxpayers are “extremely unlikely” to earn any return on the $700 billion government program to invest in banks and other companies as the financial system teetered on the edge of collapse, a quarterly audit said. In a report to Congress, the Troubled Asset Relief Program watchdog Neil Barofsky said that recouping the billions of dollars given to insurer American International Group Inc. and automakers General Motors Co. and Chrysler LLC “is far from certain.”

Goldman Sachs stands to receive a payment of $1bn – while US taxpayers would lose $2.3bn – if embattled commercial lender CIT files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the matter said. The payment stems from the structure of a $3bn rescue finance package that Goldman extended to CIT on June 6 2008, about five months before the Treasury bought $2.3bn in CIT preferred shares to prop it up at the height of the crisis.

G20 finance leaders on Saturday took aim at excessive bank pay and risk-taking at the root of the financial crisis and insisted trillions of dollars of emergency economic supports would be needed for some time. Although the global economy looks brighter than when the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers met in April, their closing statement said they would not remove economic stimulus until the recovery was well entrenched.

The Federal Reserve — the quasi-autonomous body that controls the US’s money supply — is a “Ponzi scheme” that created “bubble after bubble” in the US economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney-general of New York.

By itself, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”) is a huge program at $700 billion. As discussed in SIGTARP’s April Quarterly Report, the total financial exposure of TARP and TARP-related programs may reach approximately $3 trillion. Although large in its own right, TARP is only a part of the combined efforts of the Federal Government to address the financial crisis.

Despite a horrible year in most global markets, these 100 funds all have three-year annualized returns that run to solid double digits; a majority were up in 2008. Remarkably, one firm, Paulson, has two funds in the top four, No. 1 Paulson Advantage Plus (event-driven) and No. 4 Paulson Enhanced (merger arbitrage). In second place is Balestra Capital Partners, a global macro fund, third is Vision Opportunity Capital, a merger arbitrage fund, and fifth was Quality Capital Management-Global Diversified. Strong performance in weak markets is hedge funds’ most basic appeal and these funds did nothing to dispel that idea last year.

Russia may switch some of its reserves from U.S. Treasuries to International Monetary Fund bonds, the central bank said today. The comment drove Treasuries and the dollar lower. Alexei Ulyukayev, first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, said some reserves may be moved from Treasuries into IMF debt, reiterating comments made last month by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Ulyukayev’s remarks were confirmed by a Bank Rossii official who declined to be named, citing bank policy.