‘There is public money for a backstop. Have I said that before? We’re at the end. The deal [Barclay’s/Lehman] is dead.’ ibid. Paulson
Organised crime steals £2 million from our bank accounts every day. Tonight: detectives investigate a gang who have stole hundreds of credit cards. They uncover the bent bank insiders selling our account details and go after an international gang who have made millions of pounds as they target the criminals behind Britain’s fastest growing crime. Fraud: How They Steal Your Bank Account, ITV 2019
One in five of us have cards stolen or compromised. ibid.
Every day in Britain over 230 people have their account details stolen by card skimming gangs. ibid.
The City of London police regularly arrest corrupt bank workers. ibid.
They shifted the gigantic losses of the idiotic banks on to the shoulders of the taxpayers – it’s called austerity. Yanis Varoufakis, Oxford Union, Youtube 55.42 2015
The Bank of England is one of the most powerful and influential institutions in the world. But you can’t hold an account here or take out a loan. It’s responsibilities are far bigger. As well as storing vast quantities of gold, it prints the country’s entire supply of banknotes; it affects the cost of our mortgages and stops our high street banks from crashing the British economy again. Inside the Bank of England I, BBC 2019
Created in 1694 the Bank of England is set in the heart of London’s financial district. ibid.
Following its staff as they try to prepare the country’s financial systems for any impact that Brexit could have. And the bank is pulled into the eye of a national storm. Inside the Bank of England II
‘The county had a near-death experience because of the financial system.’ ibid. Carney
For many the bank’s pronouncements are not only too downbeat but stray too far into politics. ibid. news
‘Overall we have 413,000 bars which are worth about £155 billion.’ ibid. gold guy
On September 15th 2008 Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in America, filed for the biggest bankruptcy in history. With $691,063,000,000 of debt, it triggered a global financial crisis. In the years leading up to the disaster, several Lehman Brothers employees fought to prevent it. Storyville: Inside Lehman Brothers: The Whistleblowers, captions, BBC 2019
‘I was blacklisted from Wall Street … Lehman had a reputation on Wall Street as being cowboys. And their business practice a bit aggressive … I joined Lehman in 1994: I was vice-president. You were on your toes. You were watching your back. You had to do the best. There was just a certain vibrancy all the time. But I enjoyed that.’ ibid. whistleblower
‘Below that level, in middle management, there were a number of people who were greatly concerned, and believe that Lehman was putting itself at great risk, and that it could be a disaster.’ ibid. Anton Valukas, examiner, Lehman Brother bankruptcy
‘Since 2008 no-one of importance has been convicted.’ ibid. whistleblower
‘In order for them to meet their quotas, they started bringing in junk.’ ibid. mortgage sales woman
Richard D Fuld junior: ‘He was considered one of the most brilliant men on Wall Street’ … Total Compensation: $71.90 million; 5-year compensation Total: $254.03 million. ibid. April 2008
The fact that bank are siphoning off of the relief program is thanks to the fact that the United States had no existing public infrastructure ready to quickly get money out to struggling businesses when the pandemic hit.
Banks Stand to Make $18 Billion from CARES Act in Fees. That’s money taken directly out of the $640 billion pot of funding Congress allocated to the PPP program. The Intercept online 2020, cited Keiser Report
Hit from All Sides, European Bank Stocks Swoon to 1998 Low: Leaks about money laundering, a resurgent Pandemic, China risks, exposure to Turkey’s financial crisis, all in a negative-interest-rate environment that is toxic for banks. Wolfstreet online, Nick Corbishly 21 September 2020, cited Keiser Report
One reason for the rout was the release of a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on lenders that had facilitated $2 trillion in suspicious transactions. HBC, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of New York Mellon, were implicated. Over almost two decades, the five banks had ‘enriched themselves and their shareholders while facilitating the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins’, the report said. ibid.
Better markers, an industry watchdog, recently published its own analysis of J P Morgan’s wrongdoing, which covers a 20-year period until 2019. ‘J P Morgan Chase has a 20-year long RAP sheet that includes at least 80 major legal actions that have resulted in over $39 billion in fines and settlements’, the report said.
‘Any other business in America with that recidivist record would almost certainly have been shut down by prosecutors long ago’, it said. However, is said, the largest banks are effectively shielded against executive prosecution and jail time’. Reuters online, cited Keiser Report October 2020
Have negative interest rates in the UK really moved closer? The Bank of England’s instruction to commercial banks to prepare for a negative cost of borrowing is not all it seems … The headline from the Bank of England’s latest report released on Thursday is that ‘negative interest rates have come a step closer for the UK economy’.
Commercial banks have been instructed to ‘commence preparations’ for the official cost of borrowing to go into reverse – and to be in a position to process negative rates, set by the UK’s central bank, in their own internal computer systems.
From that perspective this is a significant day in UK monetary policy history and for a country which has never seen a negative cost of borrowing imposed since the Bank of England was founded in 1694. Independent online article Ben Chu February 2021
‘We must lend German DM90 million. It may never be repaid but it will be less of a loss than the fall of Nazism.’ Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick, 2014, Montagu Norman, Bank of England, 2014
The investment didn’t come from Hitler: it came from Brown Brothers Harriman … These Nazis raised money from America’s richest families. ibid.
I G Farben who had entered into a cartel with the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil ... The Nazi war machine was actually an American business … a highly lucrative business. ibid.
This railway line [to Auschwitz] was an American railway line. ibid.
Nobody said a word about American industrialists building Hitler’s war machine at the Nuremberg trials. ibid.
Since the ’60s news from the City has mattered to more and more people. Between St Paul’s and Tower Bridge lies the City of London and its marketplaces. No-one makes anything here except money. For this is capitalism’s heart: one square mile of offices, typewriters and telephones. Inside Story: The Market, BBC 1976
Banks: there are over 250 of them in the City. ibid.
‘The largest foreign exchange market in the world.’ ibid.
At the heart of non-life insurance are men of substance called Lloyds of London. A Lloyds underwriter makes his living from betting you your disaster won’t happen. If it does, the underwriter who’s put his name to the risk must pay out down to the shirt on his back. ibid.
Every day the discount houses scour the banks for idle money. ibid.
The health of the market is monitored with a morbid precision. ibid.
‘I’ve just actually went through an order of, of an abduction. I actually work in the Northern Bank cash centre. They used me to rob it.’ Thirty million.’ Heist: The Northern Bank Robbery, 911 call, BBC 2021
2004: It was the biggest bank robbery in British history. Two families held hostage. A crime that shook politics in Northern Ireland to its core. ibid. caption
Who robbed them? Did the IRA carry it out? If the IRA did carry it out, did Martin McGuinness and Jerry Adams know about it. And they are at the heart of the Peace Process at this moment. ibid.
The Northern bank raid is among the biggest robberies of modern times, and yet so much of what happened is a mystery. ibid.
Internal bank CCTV captures the entire robbery unfolding. ibid.
6:28 pm: Chris returns to the bank for the real robbery to begin. ibid.
‘7 people have been arrested and more than two million pounds seized: a possible connection with the Northern Bank Robbery just before Christmas … ‘A major [IRA] laundering operation.’ ibid.