A look back…

Natixis SA is a large French corporate and investment bank that took a big ‘hit’ in the fall of 2008 when the massive Bernard Madoff $50 billion mega-fraud ponzi scheme blew up on its books and on the books of a lot of other big ‘players’ in the world of global finance.

Natixis’ exposure in the Madoff fiasco was estimated at 450 million euros ($605 million).

Natixis had also during this time been riding the red-hot subprime bandwagon, and when the mortgage default wave steamrolled through, Natixis’ got walloped again.  Their write-downs topped out at $1.75B.

Natixis needed liquidity to survive, and the got it – courtesy of the U.S. Federal Reserve (and, indirectly, U.S. taxpaying citizens).
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Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011  –  Excerpts:
Natixis SA reported the biggest net losses of any French bank during the financial crisis and kept an outstanding balance of more than $10 billion of loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve for six months. The loans peaked on Dec. 22, 2008, when the Paris-based bank was borrowing $15.5 billion from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility and Term Auction Facility.

In February 2009, Natixis‘s main shareholders, Groupe Banque Populaire and Groupe Caisse d’Epargne, announced they would merge to form Groupe BPCE, and the French government bought about 3 billion euros ($4.25 billion) of preferred shares in the combined entity and 4 billion euros of subordinated debt. The deal closed in July 2009. Natixis paid off the last of its Fed loans in January 2010.

Peak amount of debt on 12/22/2008: $15.5B

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And so, here we have a large foreign corporate and investment bank getting sucked into the Madoff mega-fraud ponzi scheme… and the hot subprime mortgage market roller-derby, losing big…. and then getting bailed out by the U.S. Fed.

Natixis tapped the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility, Term Auction Facility and Discount Window for a cool $15.5B.

‘Thank you,’ U.S. taxpayers…

And now it is time for fair play.  U.S. citizens deserve nothing less than the same access to U.S.-generated liquidity that was so generously extended to Natixis, and many banking heavyweights… during their ‘time of need.’

The mechanism: A Federal Reserve – U.S. Treasury Citizens Credit Facility.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (58444 downloads )

A Look back…

GE Capital, along with several other very large, well-heeled fiduciary entities was charged and convicted in a major municipal bond bid-rigging scandal in 2012. GE Capital had been shaking down municipalities across America, and screwing the pants off hard-working U.S. citizens. On a large scale.

Matt Taibbi, June 21, 2012: The Scam Wall Street Learned from the Mafia | Rolling Stone

“The state’s first witness, confusingly, was a CDR broker named Doug Goldberg… Right off the bat, in fact, Doug Goldberg explained that while at CDR, he had routinely helped the cream of Wall Street rig bids on municipal bonds by letting them take a peek at other bids:

Q: Who were some of the providers you gave last looks to?

A: There was a whole host of them, but GE Capital, FSA, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Société Générale, Lehman Brothers, Bear. There were others.…
[snip]            

Goldberg went on to testify that he repeatedly rigged auctions with the three defendants. Sometimes he gave them “last looks” so they could shave basis points off their winning bids; other times he asked them to intentionally submit losing offers – called cover bids – to allow other firms to win. ,,,,. The broker went on to detail how he had worked with the GE executives to manipulate a number of auctions.
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Several short years prior to this monumental scam, U.S. taxpayers were helping bail GE Capital out of a financial hole, courtesy of generous Federal Reserve emergency lending initiatives.

Excerpts from Bloomberg report: Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 :
General Electric Co.’s GE Capital finance unit was the biggest U.S. issuer of commercial paper in 2008. GE, the world’s largest maker of jet engines and locomotives, turned to the Federal Reserve for emergency liquidity after the market for commercial paper — bonds with maturities of less than 270 days — froze in late 2008.

GE Capital, which had $91.8 billion of CP outstanding at the end of September 2008, borrowed from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility from October 2008 through February 2009, with a balance as high as $16.1 billion, data show. Initially, a GE spokesman said the company borrowed from the program “to demonstrate our support for what the Fed is doing.” In December, GE Treasurer Kathryn Cassidy said the company was using the CPFF “primarily as a liquidity backstop.” 

Peak amount of debt on 11/21/2008:  $16.1B

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If the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve can fire-hose liquidity gushers out to companies like General Electric Co, in its time of need….

…then shouldn’t honest, hard-working U.S. citizens also be granted the same direct access to liquidity to restore financial health, across the board, to America’s working class, tax-paying U.S. citizens?

Answer: Indeed they should.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (58433 downloads )

A look back...

Bloomberg excerpts:
“As an insurer, American International Group Inc. didn’t qualify for the Federal Reserve’s crisis-lending programs for banks. So when trading partners squeezed AIG for liquidity in 2008, the Fed gave the New York-based company two credit lines all its own, with a combined borrowing capacity of $122.8 billion.

AIG’s balance under the credit lines reached about $90 billion in October 2008, data show. By then, the U.S. Treasury Department had taken over AIG, making about $70 billion of separate capital injections during the crisis.

In January 2009, the company borrowed $16.2 billion from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility. Bloomberg didn’t include the credit lines in its Fed-loan ranking because they weren’t available to a range of institutions and the borrower was never kept secret.

Peak amount of debt on 1/27/2009: $16.2B
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AIG FP (AIG Financial Products) raked in billions of dollars selling credit default swaps (CDS) during the housing boom. And they did not set aside adequate “reserves” to cover the potential of a hard down-turn in the market.

That hard down turn arrived when the housing bubble popped in 2007. And when the storm hit, AIG FP was sitting on $450 billion in CDS contracts. They could not ‘cover’ their counterparty obligations to major fiduciary institutions like Goldman Sachs, Societe Generale, and many others.  And those counterparties did not adequately verify that AIG had the unwalled reserves necessary to cover their massive exposure.

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The Fed then unabashedly stepped right up to the plate to cover those obligations – 100 cents on the dollar.
Note: The Fed “gave the New York-based company [AIG] two credit lines all its own, with a combined borrowing capacity of $122.8 billion.”

It is now time for the Fed to step up to the plate and provide one new credit line, a U.S. Citizens Credit Facility, to American families (who, by the way, did not ‘roll the dice’ with leveraged speculation schemes like AIG and other major Wall Street players).

It is time for U.S. citizens to be granted the exact same direct access to liquidity extensions – through a Fed – U.S. Treasury funding conduit.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (58433 downloads )

A look back…

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011  Excerpts:

“Hudson Castle Group Inc., a firm started by former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. executives, sponsored three asset-backed commercial paper conduits — investment vehicles that bought financial assets and raised money by selling short-term bonds. Such conduits were among “shadow banks” that “contributed significantly to asset bubbles” by converting “opaque, risky, long-term assets into money-like and seemingly riskless short-term liabilities,” according to a July 2010 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

On a combined basis, Hudson Castle’s three conduits had as much as $16.2 billion of outstanding loans from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility in March 2009. They included Belmont Funding LLC, Ebbets Funding LLC and Elysian Funding LLC.

Peak amount of debt on 3/31/2009: $16.2B

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Hereby we see the Fed providing emergency funding to bailout a company that had “contributed significantly to asset bubbles” by converting “opaque, risky, long-term assets into money-like and seemingly risk-less short-term liabilities” to assist in concealing major liquidity distress issues boiling on the books of other financial companies.

The Leviticus 25 Plan levels the playing field by restoring financial security for players who had ‘not’ contributed to asset bubbles” through “opaque, risky” carry-trade schemes – namely U.S. citizens.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (58433 downloads )

A Look back…

Guggenheim Partners, LLC provides various forms of investment and financial services across the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Guggenheim ‘tapped’ into some serious liquidity from the Federal Reserve during peak periods of the great financial crisis (2007-2010).

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Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 – Excerpts:

As chief executive officer of Bear Stearns Cos. in 2008, Alan Schwartz tapped the Federal Reserve for as much as $30 billion of emergency cash to float the New York-based brokerage until it could be acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

By June 2009, he was CEO of closely held Guggenheim Partners LLC, whose special purpose financing affiliates borrowed as much as $16.4 billion from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility. Liberty Hampshire Co., a Guggenheim unit, sponsored asset-backed commercial paper conduits, which removed mortgage securities and other assets from companies’ balance sheets and provided cheap financing. Such conduits were among “shadow banks” that helped inflate pre-crisis asset bubbles, according to a July 2010 Federal Reserve Bank of New York report.

Peak Amount of Debt on 12/10/2008: $16.4B
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Guggenheim Partners, LLC received their Fed liquidity transfusions through Commercial Paper Funding Facility, one of the many credit facilities created by the Fed to rescue companies that had rolled the dice with leveraged speculation – and lost.

These secret Fed liquidity transfusions came with a price. They represented a ‘draw’ on the purchasing power of the future earnings of millions of hard-working, tax-paying American families.

U.S. citizens are fully and justifiably deserving of that very same direct access to liquidity – through a U.S. Citizens’ Credit Facility, flowing from the Fed through the U.S. Treasury Department, and then directly on to qualifying U.S. citizen families, voluntarily choosing to participate.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (58430 downloads )

A Look Back…

Société Générale S.A. (SocGen), the 3rd largest bank in France and 8th largest in Europe, hit some ‘speed bumps’ in 2008. They announced to the world on the 28th of January 2008 that one of their junior futures traders had racked up a series of regrettable trading losses. And the company was ‘out’ a cool $7.2 billion.

At about this same time, wiser minds at SocGen were ‘chasing yield’ and loading the company up with Mortgage Backed Securities, including certain ‘cesspool grade’ MBS’s, packaged and pedaled by Goldman Sachs. They insured their mortgage-backed asset portfolio with billions of dollars worth of hedging in AIG ‘sewer-quality’ credit default swaps (CDS’s).

AIG, with no meaningful reserves, bled out quickly when the mortgage default wave ripped across America in 2007-08, and SocGen was suddenly staring up at an $11 billion loss.

The U.S. Federal Reserve stepped in to ‘cover’ AIG’s counterparties (at 100 cents on the dollar), and SocGen promptly received (courtesy of U.S. taxpayers) $6.9B in CDS payments and $4.1B in collateral postings from AIG in March 2009.

On top of all that, the Fed aimed the “secret liquidity lifeline” water canon SocGen’s way and soaked them with an additional $17.4B.

And SocGen regained its ‘financial health’ by the end of 2010. Thanks to U.S. taxpayers.

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Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 –

Excerpts: Societe Generale SA, which in January 2008 spooked investors by announcing a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) trading loss from unauthorized bets by a former trader, was one of the earliest borrowers from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s discount window during the crisis. On May 22, 2008, the Paris-based bank got $3.5 billion of loans from the window — 23 percent of the total outstanding for all banks on that date — in addition to $13.9 billion from the Term Auction Facility.

After Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse in September 2008, Societe Generale received 1.7 billion euros of preferred shares and 1.7 billion euros of subordinated debt from the French government to bolster its capital and lending. The bank repaid the state funds in November 2009 after a rights offering.

Peak amount of [Fed-based] debt on 08/22/2008: $17.4B

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U.S. citizens deserve nothing less than to be granted access to the same direct liquidity extensions that major U.S. and foreign banks received during the financial crisis of 2007-2010.

This access to liquidity would relieve debt burdens at ‘ground level’ in America, and restore ‘financial health’ to millions of U.S. citizen families.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen –Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

A look back…

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 –  Excerpts:

As the U.K.’s biggest mortgage lender, Edinburgh-based HBOS Plc faced mounting losses in September 2008 on subprime home loans to people with poor credit histories, as well as on so-called Alt-A loans, which didn’t require borrowers to provide proof of income.

On Sept. 18, London-based Lloyds TSB Group Plc agreed to buy HBOS, and the U.K. government later injected 17 billion pounds ($27 billion) of capital into Lloyds to assure the deal closed.

The Federal Reserve helped, too. HBOS borrowed as much as $18 billion from the U.S. central bank in November 2008. Lloyds completed the takeover in January 2009 and kept using HBOS as a conduit to borrow from the Fed through February 2010.

Peak amount of debt on 11/20/2008: $18B

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Note: Lloyds Banking Group, Plc was later named as one of the banks involved in defrauding U.S. citizens and municipalities via LIBOR rate manipulation.

LIBOR rate-rigging defrauded U.S. mortgage holders via ARMs resets. It also burned municipalities across the U.S. billions out of dollars in municipal bond costs by artificially ‘tilting’ rates against the interest rate swaps that had been purchased by municipalities, such as Baltimore, to hedge the bonds. And it adversely affected the value of ‘swap lines’ that were held by several dozen U.S. banks.

Reuters reported on March 14, 2014 that the FDIC was suing 16 banks that it believed were involved in LIBOR rate-rigging: “The banks named as defendants include Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC.”

“Other defendants in the lawsuit included Rabobank, Lloyds Banking Group plc, Societe Generale, Norinchukin Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and WestLB AG.” Barclays and UBS had already settled.
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Note: all of the named banks had received billions of dollars, during the height of the financial crisis, from the Fed’s “secret liquidity lifelines.”
Citigroup, peak amount received from Fed: $99.5B
Bank of America: $91.4B
RBS: $84.5B
Barclays $64.9B
The most recent bank to be implicated, and fined: Lloyd’s Banking Group, Plc, peak amount received from Fed during the financial crisis: $505M
___________________________________

The very banks that received billions of dollars in bailout funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve were defrauding American families, state municipalities, and other U.S. financial institutions.
American families deserve nothing less than the same direct access to liquidity that these banks received, from various Federal Reserve credit facilities, and ultimately, U.S. taxpayers, during the great financial crisis.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

A look back…

Dresdner Bank AG, ‘under water’ in subprime debt – Fed to the rescue…

 Notes from Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011:     

German insurer Allianz SE put its Dresdner Bank AG unit up for sale in 2008 as subprime-mortgage losses mounted.

By the time Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG agreed to buy Dresdner on Aug. 31, 2008, for 9.8 billion euros ($14.4 billion), Dresdner was borrowing $11 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

After the deal closed in January 2009 at a renegotiated price of 5.1 billion euros, Frankfurt-based Dresdner kept drawing from the Fed. The last of its loans from the U.S. central bank were repaid on July 16, 2009, more than six months after the Commerzbank deal closed.

Peak amount of debt on 7/02/2008: $18.4B

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The U.S. Federal Reserve was providing bail-out funds, through various credit facilities, to banking operations all across the globe during the height of the financial crisis.

Many of these banks created their own systemic toxicities which precipitated the global financial crisis – which then triggered tens of millions of job losses across the U.S. and millions of home mortgage foreclosures.

And U.S. taxpayers, through the Fed and U.S. Treasure Department, bailed them out.

The Leviticus 25 Plan provides the mechanism for a Citizens Credit Facility – to grant the same direct access to liquidity extensions that the Fed provided to scores of domestic and foreign financial institutions during the great financial crisis of 2007-2010.

The Leviticus 25 Plan will reignite the economy, re-incentivize work, reduce the heavy debt burdens and the unhealthy dependence on government by the citizenry, provide for massive debt reduction at the family level, generate $37.303 billion annual Federal budget surpluses (2027-2031). And restore economic liberty in America.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

A look back…

Commerzbank AG, headquartered in Frankfort, is the second largest bank in Germany.

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011  –  Excerpts:
Commerzbank AG agreed to buy Dresdner Bank AG from the insurer Allianz SE for 9.8 billion euros ($14.4 billion) on Aug. 31, 2008. Two weeks later, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy, sinking global markets and saddling both banks with bad loans and trading write-downs.

While the Dresdner price was later renegotiated down to 5.1 billion euros, by 2009 Commerzbank was heading for an annual loss and getting emergency liquidity from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Commerzbank borrowed as much as $22 billion from the Fed in July 2009.

The bank, which also had to get about 18 billion euros ($26 billion) of capital injections and 15 billion of debt guarantees from the German government, declined to say whether it got emergency liquidity from Germany’s central bank.

Peak amount of debt on 7/16/2009: $22 billion

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Commerzbank and Dresdner, chasing ‘yield’ in the red-hot subprime market, wired themselves up with some of Lehman’s supposedly high-grade securitized mortgage instruments.  The highly leveraged Lehman bled out quickly when the housing market collapsed and default waves began rolling in.  And Commerzbank and Dresdner got body-slammed with bad loans and trading write-downs.’

U.S. citizens, who did not make those disastrous investments, were then called in to bail out Commerzbank…. to the tune of $22 billion.  To bail out this foreign bank and help make them once again financially ‘healthy’…

Big banks made disastrous investments and got summarily ‘bailed out.’  And American tax-payers got… ‘austerity’…(?)

It’s time to level the playing field.  It is time for U.S. citizens to receive nothing less than that same access to direct liquidity infusions that foreign banks received from the Fed.

The time is now to restore financial health to millions of families across America.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

……………………

A Look back…

Norinchukin Bank is a Japanese bank with a hefty U.S. investment portfolio (over $800 billion). It is Japan’s largest hedge fund and has branches overseas in New York, London, and Singapore.

Bloomberg notes below that Norinchukin routinely accessed the Federal Reserve discount window for “usual fundraising needs for U.S. dollars.”

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011:
While the U.S. Federal Reserve’s website says its 97-year-old discount window is designed to “relieve liquidity strains in a depository institution,” Norinchukin Bank made the discount window part of the business plan. “We used the Fed’s discount window as part of our usual fundraising needs for U.S. dollars,” Junji Okamoto, a spokesman for Japan’s largest lender for farmers and fishermen, said in an interview.

“We did not have any special urgency or specific needs for the borrowing.” The Tokyo-based lender, owned by more than 4,000 shareholders including farm, fishing and forestry cooperatives, kept a $6 billion balance at the discount window from October 2008 through October 2009. Its overall Fed borrowings peaked at $22 billion in June 2009.

Peak amount of debt on 6/29/2009: $22B

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Question: If a Japanese Bank / hedge fund with shareholders from 4,000 Japanese cooperatives can routinely draw liquidity infusions from the Federal Reserve, then would there be a reasonable basis for allowing U.S. citizens direct access to the same liquidity?

Answer: Yes.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
$95,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2027 (57858 downloads )

…………………………….

“He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.” – Sir Francis Bacon