Here’s Where the $110 Billion in Wall Street Fines Went

Fortune:

Here’s the full break down of the Wall Street Journal analyzed:

• A huge chunk, $49 billion of the funds are with the Treasury Department. The agency initially received $14.5 billion from settlements, though other government agencies, including $34 billion from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other government-charted housing associations, later funneled money to the department.
• $45 billion was put aside for consumer relief.
• $10 billion was set aside to be used for housing-related federal agencies and to whistleblowers who called banks out. Some of the funds were also go back to the Treasury.
• $5.3 billion went to states, which appeared to use the money as they saw fit, including directing the money to pension plans which were hit hard by the fallout from mortgage-back securities.
• $447 million was given to the Justice Department, which had a role negotiating with banks.
• Some $1.2 billion could not be tracked down or is unaccounted for.

Hillary Clinton Stops Short of Ruling Out Wall Street Aides

WASHINGTON–Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on Wednesday said she would work to “end the revolving door” between Washington and Wall Street–but stopped short of ruling out continuing her party’s recent tradition of turning to the financial industry for Treasury secretaries.

“I think it’s important also to look at what we want to accomplish,” said the former secretary of state, during her debate with her challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

She then went on to boast of what she considered the economic success during the administration of her husband, President Bill Clinton, during the 1990s, a time when Mr. Clinton relied heavily on Wall Street officials to staff his administration.

Mrs. Clinton was asking during the Miami debate whether she agreed with criticism from liberals in her party that her husband and President Barack Obama had “relied too heavily on advisers who represent the world view of the big banks”–in particular that three of their last four Treasury secretaries had ties to Citigroup Inc.

“I do agree that we have to end the revolving door,” Mrs. Clinton said, adding that she supports a bill introduced last year by Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, called The Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act.

Read on.

NYC Wall Street Protest Planned to Call on Hillary Clinton to Release Transcripts of Goldman Sachs Speeches

Activists from the Occupy Wall Street movement will join a broad coalition of Bernie Sanders supporters Wednesday to march on Wall Street in New York City and demand Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton release the transcripts of speeches she gave to financial giant Goldman Sachs.

Protesters will gather on the steps of the Federal building at 11:30 a.m. and march to the Trump Building on Wall Street until 1 p.m.

Two groups that support Sanders’ bid for the White House—Latinos for Bernie and Veterans for Bernie—will attend the event in an official capacity and join other Sanders supporters as well as Occupy Wall Street activists in carrying signs and banners that read “#ReleaseTheTranscripts.”

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Obama denies he let Wall Street off the hook

President Barack Obama said Monday it was “not true” that his administration allowed Wall Street to go back to business as usual in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

The president, speaking to reporters after a Monday meeting with regulators including Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, said it was “popular” to suggest that “nothing happened” after the crisis that helped touch off the Great Recession.

“That is not true,” Obama said. “We did not just rebuild this, we rebuilt it better and we’ve rebuilt it stronger.”
In a briefing held later, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest noted the economy has staged a strong recovery, including the “longest streak of job creation in history,” even as Wall Street reform was enacted.

Read on.

It’s hard out there for a banker: Wall Street slashes bonuses

It’s hard out there for a bankster pimp…

It’s getting a lot tougher to make a living on Wall Street.

Average bonuses paid out in New York’s financial services sector tumbled 9 percent last year, to an average $146,200 — its lowest level in three years, the state’s fiscal watchdog said on Monday.

The decline in the treasured bonus was the result, in large part, of a 10.5 percent decline in profits on Wall Street to $14.3 billion in 2015, according to the report from the watchdog, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The slip in profits shrank the bonus pool at the state’s broker-dealers 6 percent to $25 billion, DiNapoli said, which could reduce tax revenues for both the Empire State and the Big Apple.

The 6 percent drop in the bonus pool — plus the addition of 4,500 jobs, for a 2.7 percent jump in payrolls, to 172,400 jobs — resulted in the 9 percent decline in average bonuses.

Read on.Read on.

Exclusive: Congressional watchdog to probe lax Fed bank oversight

A U.S. watchdog agency is preparing to investigate whether the Federal Reserve and other regulators are too soft on the banks they are meant to police, after a written request from Democratic lawmakers that marks the latest sign of distrust between Congress and the central bank.

Ranking representatives Maxine Waters of the House Financial Services Committee and Al Green of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations asked the Government Accountability Office on Oct. 8 to launch the “evaluation of regulatory capture” and to focus on the New York Fed, according to a letter obtained by Reuters.

In an interview, the GAO said it has begun planning its approach.

The probe, which had not been previously reported or made public, is the first by an outside agency into the perception that government regulators are “captured” by and too deferential toward the bankers they supervise, so that Wall Street benefits at the public’s expense.

Read on.

Wall Street Is About to Go After Donald Trump Big Time

Wealthy donors will spend millions in coming weeks

Watch out Donald, Wall Street is gunning for you.

It’s looking increasingly unlikely that any of Trumps’ rivals can mount enough support to stop his winning the Republican nomination for president, but that’s not stopping some of Wall Street’s wealthiest tycoons from spending millions to thwart Trump.

According to a report Thursday in Politico, the newly formed Our Principles PAC—funded with an initial $3 million donation from Marlene Ricketts, wife of billionaire T.D. Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts—will begin launching television ads against Donald Trump in the coming days.

In addition, the group held a conference call on Tuesday to solicit further donations. Included on the call were Paul Singer, billionaire founder of hedge fund Elliott Management; Hewlett Packard President and CEO Meg Whitman; and Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts, one of Joe and Marlene Ricketts’ three sons; and others, according to Politico. Politico also talked to one person close to the group who said that, “The money is not going to be a problem. We will raise what we need to do what we need to do.”

Read on.

Bank Whistleblowers United D.C. Press Conference Hits a Home Run!

In spite of the stormy weather in D.C. last week Thursday, our Bank Whistleblowers United press conference got off to a rousing start. William Black and I were able to make it to D.C.; Michael Winston, stranded en route, called in on his cell, and Gary Aguirre joined us by Skype.

Hosted by Campaign for America’s Future Co-Director Robert Borosage kicked it off by pulling no punches: “Millions of Americans were devastated by this financial crisis and the great recession. They then watched the banks get bailed out even as homeowners were left to sink. The banks ended up bigger and more concentrated than ever while most Americans still have not recovered from the ground lost in that recession.”

Introducing our initiative and the proposal we’ve presented to the presidential candidates, he stated, “each risked their careers to blow the whistle on what the FBI termed was an epidemic of fraud on Wall Street.”

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Regards,

Richard

Richard M. Bowen III
richard@richardmbowen.com
www.richardmbowen.com/
214- 604-5492

Larry Fink and His BlackRock Team Poised to Take Over Hillary Clinton’s Treasury Department

Time will tell…

Goldman Sachs paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 for three speeches, but an even bigger Wall Street player stands ready to mold and enact her economic and financial policy if she becomes president.

BlackRock is far from a household name but it is the largest asset management firm in the world, controlling $4.6 trillion in investor funds — about a trillion dollars more than the annual federal budget, and five times the assets of Goldman Sachs. And Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, has assembled a veritable shadow government full of former Treasury Department officials at his company.

Fink has made clear his desire to become Treasury Secretary someday. The Obama Administration had him on the short list to replace Timothy Geithner. When that didn’t materialize, he pulled several members of prior Treasury Departments into high-level positions at the firm, which may improve the prospects of realizing his dream in a future Clinton Administration.

And his priorities appear to be so in sync with Clinton’s that it’s not entirely clear who shares whose agenda.

Clinton, for her part, has refused to rule out a Treasury Secretary drawn from Wall Street.

Fink’s ready-made team available for a move from Wall Street to Washington. includes:

• Christopher Meade, former general counsel at the Treasury Department, who now serves in a similar capacity at BlackRock. Meade spent 2010 to 2015 at Treasury, with the last three years as general counsel.
• Katheryn Rosen, a managing director at BlackRock, who cut her teeth in government as a senior policy advisor to Barney Frank on the House Financial Services Committee, helping to write Dodd-Frank. Frank is anadvisor to the Clinton campaign. Rosen went from Frank’s office to a deputy assistant secretary position at Treasury in February 2011, working to build the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the Treasury-led super-regulator monitoring systemic risk. Prior to government work, Rosen spent fourteen years as a managing director with JPMorgan Chase.
• Kendrick Wilson, a vice chairman at BlackRock since 2010 who has ties to Goldman Sachs, Lazard, and the Treasury Department. He advised Treasury while they managed the financial crisis and its fallout in 2008 and 2009, before coming to BlackRock. At Treasury, Wilson brought his experience advising financial institutions to carry out hastily arranged crisis-era deals, like the merger of Bank of America and failed subprime lender Countrywide.
• Michael Pyle, who was a senior adviser to Lael Brainard when she served as undersecretary to the Treasury for international affairs; he also worked at the White House for the National Economic Council and the Office of Management and Budget. He worked as a director at BlackRockuntil at least October 2015, though he apparently is now an economic policy advisor to the Clinton campaign.

Read on.

Why Bankers Should Fear Donald Trump

WASHINGTON — In almost any other election cycle, bankers would be celebrating the fact that a Republican candidate has emerged so far in front of the pack and would quickly fall in line behind him.

But New York real estate mogul Donald Trump’s Super Tuesday victories are cause for concern, not celebration, in the industry. His rhetoric, record and temperament make him a uniquely ill-suited Republican candidate to earn banker support, and those who do back the outspoken businessman are likely to soon regret it. Here’s why:

1. Trump is not committed to regulatory relief, Dodd-Frank repeal — or any other bank priority.

While most of the Republican candidates in the race have avoided discussing Wall Street reform or the financial crisis, almost every one at some point endorsed a repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act and pledged regulatory relief for community banks. (Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was the first, doing so during the initial Republican debate in August.) Trump, in contrast, has said almost nothing about Dodd-Frank beyond describing it as a “terrible law.”

Read on.