February 28, 2015

Bank fines a fraction of what the government spent bailing them out

Dirt Digger's Digest - Investment bank Morgan Stanley has disclosed that it will pay only $2.6 billion to settle U.S. Justice Department allegations that it deceived investors in the sale of toxic securities in the run-up to the financial meltdown.

I say “only” because the amount is substantially lower than the figures paid by Bank of America ($16.7 billion), JPMorgan Chase ($13 billion) and Citigroup ($7 billion) in similar cases. Thanks to the efforts of groups such as U.S. PIRG, we know that these amounts are less onerous than they appear because the companies are often allowed to deduct the payouts from their corporate income tax obligations.

My colleagues and I at Good Jobs First have been assembling data that does more to put the payouts in perspective. As part of an expansion of our Subsidy Tracker database to the federal level, we obtained information on the massive bailout programs implemented by the Federal Reserve in 2008 to stabilize the teetering financial system by purchasing toxic assets on the books of financial institutions and by serving as a lender of last resort....

It’s already clear that the settlement amounts paid by the banks (especially in after-tax terms) have been easily absorbed as costs of doing business. The Fed bailout data shows that another reason the banks have been little fazed by their legal expenses is that they received government assistance worth a thousand times more during their time of grave vulnerability in 2008 and 2009 — vulnerability that was largely of their own making due to reckless securitization of subprime mortgages and consumer loans.

After Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, the Fed was apparently willing to spare no expense in rescuing the other big financial players. Its efforts ensured the survival of the big banks that are riding high today.

1 comment:

greg gerritt said...

Whereas if we wanted an economy that worked we would have massivbely reduced the debt of homeowners and made the banks eat the difference.