Friday, July 16, 2010

Bank of America: 'Oops, We Cheated Accidentally'

(snippet)
BofA admits hiding debt' is the official headline. 'Oops, we cheated accidentally on purpose' would describe the issue more accurately.
This issue is particularly interesting as Bank of America reports its earnings on Friday.
Omitting what's Important
The implications from the WSJ article are that 'banks are carrying more risk most of the time than their investors or customers can easily see.' When it comes time to reporting quarterly earnings, BofA found it appropriate to apply a little accounting trick, unintentionally of course.
WSJ reports that 'though much smaller in scope, Bank of America's accounting of the six trades is similar to what a bankruptcy-court examiner said Lehman Brothers Inc. did to make its balance sheet look better before it filed for bankruptcy in 2008.' Bank of America disclosed six transactions, also known as 'dollar roll' trades that were erroneously misclassified.
Dollar rolls are deals in which mortgage-backed securities (MBAs) are transferred to a trading partner with a simultaneous agreement to repurchase similar - not the same - securities from the same trading partner (which was unidentified in this case).

3 comments:

  1. Let's just go out and start killing bankers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. These kinds of anarchistic ,declarative perhaps tongue in cheek ,individualist “solutions” to social problems solve nothing and border on incitement to individual ‘terrorism” against individual persons deemed to be the problem, simply for acting in their own greedy individual and class interest, with contracts somewhat more dishonest than the accepted norm in a decently ruled capitalist society with properly enforced laws.
    Any dead bankster will only be replaced by the next in the hierarchy or perhaps by the son or daughter that will inherit the property titles and corrupt set up.
    But the class and banksters with property interests have their own police and legal and state defenses to deal with disruptive elements.
    A recent emerging practice seems to be tasing dissidents and police resisting Grandmothers. So ,do not talk out of line, letting off steam like this , as house raids might upset your Grannies health.
    Marx seen the solution to these social problems of exploitation by capital in his day and economy as being class problems , contradictions between the exploited industrial workers the “proletariat” and capitalists.
    But, as workers on the whole are no longer the exploited class ,in a now de-industrialized , services based ,over indebted consumerist America , the emerging social contradictions appears to be ,mild objections from the middle class to being looted and turned into hereditary debt peons , by banksters as the personified more visual representatives of capitalist corruption and also some objections to the deficit costs of a permanent war militarism that have bankrupted the government ,creating an additional “need” for “Austerity”to preserve the debt system and paying off the bondholders of government debts.
    So, the main contradictions in america appears to be between the middle class and organized ruling monopoly usury capitalist Elite and the costs of paying for expensive militarism.
    If middle class Americans do not like the idea of real socialism, or being looted and turned into debt peons and tax slaves either , for the bailout socialization of the losses of the rich top 10% 'communists" in a corporate state ,then they must organize as a middle class for their own economic interests .
    Individual violence, or it appears even voting for tweedledum or tweedledee
    in a two party same /same political set up, that gives bi-partisan support for bailouts and banksters and for imposing ‘Austerity “ to pay for militarism for empire, will change nothing either.
    Keeping an old ,manipulated now non- functioning outdated Constitution does not make revolutionary changes , but "revolutions" can make or adapt new constitutional laws to suit new conditions .
    Actualy holding banksters legally responsible for their crimes and locking them away in order to protect the majority in society would be a good start by the Peon class enslaved by debts.

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  3. B of A forgets to pay taxes, no problem says Feds, John Q Citizen no pay taxes, off to jail. No questions asked.

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