The About page talks about BofA’s history, starting with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake:

One century ago, a resourceful Italian immigrant named Amadeo Giannini rescued the meager deposits of his fledgling bank from the fires that followed San Francisco’s most legendary calamity, the earthquake of 1906. Days later, with most other banks in ruins and unable to open their vaults, Amadeo was making handshake-guaranteed loans to desperate San Franciscans from behind a makeshift desk on the waterfront. Our bank was thus born of one of the most notorious disasters in history. Soon, your bank will rise from the ashes of a new catastrophe — this one of human origin.

It then goes on to describe’s BofA’s “too-big-to-fail” status, leading to the moment when BofA’s problem becomes your problem. That is, guess who gets to bail them out?

You are soon to play the role of pilot, passenger, and rescuer of the mighty craft that will soon be your Bank of America. It is on your shoulders to act decisively, and it is on your gut to rebuild the bank of your dreams.

The best part is this supposed message from CEO Brian Moynihan:

Today, it’s time to acknowledge that our Bank isn’t working anymore—not just for the market, but for people, our real customers. We’ve paid $8.58 billion in relief to borrowers and $3.24 billion in fines. We face lawsuits and claims from citizens, companies, and state and local governments. There is even a petition with the Federal Reserve to break up our bank, adding yet more uncertainty to our position….
As a result, our company’s shares have fallen precipitously, and now trade at one-fifth their 2008 price. Our Bank may, in fact, soon need help keeping afloat—and much as in 2008, you, the American taxpayer, will be asked to provide that assistance.
The institutions you rescued in 2008 have continued much as they always were, engaging in the same practices that brought our economy so close to collapse. To make sure that this time around, things turn out differently, we at Bank of America are launching a forum in which you, the American taxpayer, can prepare for the time that you own us. By sharing ideas, and reading and rating the ideas of others, you can begin charting a course for this Bank—your course.
Welcome to your Bank of America.

Oh man, this is priceless stuff.

There’s even a fake PR announcement.

More on the spoof at BBJ and YesLab

Even the supposed denunciation of the hoax by BofA was, itself, a hoax. Brilliant.

YourBofA.com was created by Yes Lab, Rainforest Action Network, New Bottom Line, and some people from Occupy Wall Street’s Alternative Banking working group.

The site allows you to get creative and make your own ads for BofA, which of course results in LOLs like this:

Then there are those not quite safe for work.

Recently, BofA reported a 68% drop in earnings on a 17% decline in revenue. It’s profit was $653 million, earnings were 31 cents a share, which still beat estimates (which were 12 cents/share). The bank had to undergo a $4.8 billion pre-tax accounting charge connected to a change in the value of its debt. (source: WSJ)

BofA is currently trading around 8.77 per share.

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Have you guys heard about the debt ceiling? Yeah, it’s in the news. Almost everybody wants to raise the debt ceiling, but they want to do it their way. Let’s listen to Remy Munasifi speakin da truuf about da debt ceilin’:

LOL, Remy.

Here’s the deal – there’s something called the Boehner plan, which is the debt-cutting plan thought up by that tea party dude who cries all the time. At first, he was like: “Yeah, I’ll vote to raise the debt ceiling by $900 billion but you need to cut $1.2 trillion over the next decade.” Then he started on rewrites because it appears not all G.O.Peeps will get on board.

Harry Reid has his own plan too, which involves raising the ceiling $2.7 trillion, and cutting spending by the same amount over the next 10 years. But chances are good the Senate will drop-kick it.

The government has until next Tuesday to raise the debt ceiling, currently at $14.29 trillion. After that, it’s default time and a probable ratings downgrade.

Most officials think that both Boehner and Reid’s plans won’t pass both houses. Obama will veto them anyway.

There’s talk among certain Republicans that they won’t vote to raise the limit unless they get a balanced budget amendment. Good luck with that one.

What we have here are Democrats accusing Republicans of playing politics with the debt limit issue without any concern for the chaos a default would cause, and we have Republicans responding by saying they have a “mandate.”

As for possible tax increases, well no Republican wants that.

I really haven’t been following this debt limit crap. I’m glad the Prez went on YouTube to help explain things.

- Bill

FED Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress today that the economy is growing more slowly than expected, and should this anemic growth continue, the FED is ready to launch more stimulus.

“given the range of uncertainties about the strength of the recovery and prospects for inflation over the medium term, the Federal Reserve remains prepared to respond should economic developments indicate that an adjustment in the stance of monetary policy would be appropriate.”

Source: CNBC

I translated this statement and out came QE3.

The markets seem to have come to the same conclusion, as the major indexes are all up over 1% as of 1:30pm. Gold has jumped to 1585.60.

Speaking of Gold, Ron Paul asked the Bernank an interesting question:

Paul: Do you think gold is money?
Bernanke: (pause) .. No.
Paul: Even if it’s been used as money for 6,000 years… somebody reversed that? Eliminated that economic law?
Bernanke: Well, it’s an asset. Would you say treasury bills are money? I don’t think they’re money either.
Paul: Why do central banks hold it? Why don’t they hold diamonds?
Bernanke: Well it’s tradition. Long term tradition.
Paul: Well, some people still think it’s money.

Classic Bernank!! Sure, the banks could hold gold out of “tradition” but we never really got an answer from Ben on why he thinks gold isn’t money. Is gold a medium of exchange? Is it a store of value? Does Ben even understand this, or is gold just an intrusion on his fiat-money fantasyland? Who knows?

-Bill

PS: Alyx just informed me that we went through something similar in March.

Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

Bill Here!

Happy April Fools Day! Many of you will wish this was an April Fools Joke, but unfortuntely, it isn’t.

Bloomberg has the following report on the release of FED documents which say that the discount-window lending program which gave out loans in 2007 and 2008 during the height of the crisis gave most of that money to foreign banks. Thanks to something called the Depository Institutions Deregulatory and Monetary Control Act, which was passed in 1980, a foreign bank which maintains reserves at a FED bank may receive discount window credit. (Incidentally, the Monetary Control Act has been blamed in circles for a lot of the mess we are in. It allowed banks to get on with some hot merging action and helped make the banking world “safe” for subprime lending.)

Says Ron Paul about the foreign bank bailouts:

The American people are going to be outraged when they understand what has been going on. What in the world are we doing thinking we can pass out tens of billions of dollars to banks that are overseas? We have problems here at home with people not being able to pay their mortgages, and they’re losing their homes.

Something tells me Ron Paul doesn’t get invited to a lot of Benny’s parties. Anyway here are some of the foreign banks that took advantage of Benny’s generosity:

• Dexia SA. They borrowed $33.5 billion through their New York branch. Dexia is a Belgian-French institution headquarted in Brussels. Their history is interesting to say the least and probably deserves its own post. In 2001 they bought up a bank in the Netherlands that went through some kind of asset-leasing controversy that damaged Dexia’s reputation. On the political front, they are trouble – investing in companies that have committed human rights violations (they also invested in the BTC pipeline which is in a very volatile area). They also have a subsidiary that operates in Israeli settlements in the occupied territories (which you may have read about in the newspapers). Oh! They were one of Madoff’s victims, too, losing €78 million! Doh!
• Depfa Bank. They borrowed $24.5 billion. Based in Dublin, they were taken over in 2007 by German real-estate lender Hypo Real Estate Holding, which was eventually completely nationalized by the German government.
• Bank of Scotland. Borrowed $11 billion. Bank of Scotland was a subsidiary to HBOS Plc, based in Edinburgh. Lloyds Banking Group eventually took them over. Andy Hornby, CEO of Bank of Scotland at the time, took his winning strategy to Alliance Boots. He just announced his decision to leave them as well. Probably a good idea before he gets found out again.
• Societe Generale. France’s second largest bank got $5 billion.
• Norinchukin Bank. Tokyo-based bank borrowed $6 billion.
• Bank of China. Their New York branch got $198 million in August 2007. Oh, the irony!
• Deutsche Bank AG. Two of their divisions received $1 billion a piece.
• Arab Banking Corp. Its New York branch borrowed $1.1 billion in October 2008. At the time, they were 29% owned by the Libyan central bank. (I think that percentage still holds in 2011). You might not have heard of the country of “Libya” but you should read up on it one day if you are bored. ABC is a joint stock company established in 1980 through a decree by the Amir of Bahrain. In case you haven’t heard of “Bahrain” either, well just know that there are protests going on there against the authoritarian regime, which is backed by our Saudi friends. Seriously, you should pick up a newspaper once in awhile.

It should be noted that the Bernanke held out as long as possible from giving this information. His reasoning is that revealing names of the borrowers “might lead market participants to infer weakness.” Now why would anyone ever infer that?

But after both Bloomberg and News Corporation (Fox News) filed Freedom of Information Act requests to get the names, the courts ordered the FED to comply.

Vincent Reinhart, the former FED Director of Monetary Affairs, said:

The caricature of the Fed is that it was shoveling money to big New York banks and a bunch of foreigners, and that is not conducive to its long-run reputation

Gee, ya think?