The National Credit Union Administration is threatening to sue several large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, seeking the refund on $50 billion in mortgage-backed securities sold to wholesale credit unions, who buy the securities on behalf of retail credit unions. The securities are now worth $25 billion, half of what their original value.
In one of the broadest accusations that Wall Street helped cripple financial institutions during the crisis, the National Credit Union Administration, or NCUA, has threatened to sue several investment banks unless they refund over $50 billion of mortgage-backed securities sold to the five institutions, called wholesale credit unions.
The NCUA is accusing Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit, Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. of misrepresenting the risks of the bonds to wholesale credit unions, which loaded up on the bonds in their role of investing on behalf of retail credit unions, according to people familiar with the situation.
Chase has been mailing customers letters informing them that as of July 19th, debit card reward programs will be discontinued claiming it is because of debit card interchange fee limitations imposed by the upcoming new federal rules.
Most shocking about that statement is that Chase is actually preemptively informing customers about a change.
Make sure they don’t keep charging you the $25 annual fee after the program has been discontinued.
Update: A Chase customer posted these exerpts from the letter she received:
We are writing to notify you about some upcoming changes to the Chase Ultimate Rewards program that we are making as as a result of the recent changes in the law.
Congress recently enacted a new law know as The Durbin Amendment that significantly impacts debit cards. As a result of this law, we will be changing our debit rewards program. After July 19, 2011 you will no longer earn points on purchases you make with your Chase Ultimate Rewards Debit Card.
So they are directly blaming the law in the letter to customers, possibly hoping to generate some political pressure.
Chase charges non-customers $5 or more to cash a check drawn on Chase Ban in the branch. Here’s how one creative non-customer got one cashed for free.
My previous employer used Chase. One day I took my paycheck into the branch from which the check was written. They wanted to charge me $5 to cash that check. It’s my money, or at the very least, my employers money. Why should Chase get a cut?
I asked to speak to the branch manager to see if he would waive the policy. I mentioned that Walmart would cash the check for only $3. I asked how it was possible for Walmart to cash a Chase check at less cost than Chase, the bank (and branch) from which the check originated? The manager actually told me he didn’t know and didn’t care, and that perhaps I should go to Walmart and ask them!
He then said that if I opened a Chase account, I could get my check cashed for free. I thought about this for a moment, and said sure!
I opened a Chase acct. with $100 from the cashed check, and left. I went to a nearby store and grabbed a soda, then walked back into Chase (no more than 10 minutes later) and closed my account. I made a point of thanking the branch manager for the free check cashing service, and promised to tell all my friends and family about my experiences with Chase.
Thank YOU for the opportunity to repeat my story here today.
This makes perfect sense. The FDIC has to prove that it was justified in siezing WaMu and finding former executives guilty of mismanaging the bank is a good way to swing the public perception.
FDIC Sues Ex-Washington Mutual CEO Killinger for Bank Losses
Former Washington Mutual Inc. Chief Executive Officer Kerry Killinger and Chief Operating Officer Stephen Rotella took extreme risks with the bank’s home-loans portfolio, causing billions of dollars in losses, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a complaint.
Rotella, Killinger and David Schneider, Washington Mutual’s home loans president, showed reckless disregard for the bank’s long-term safety and instead focused on short-term gains to increase their compensation and “should be held accountable,” the FDIC said in the complaint filed March 16 in federal court in Seattle. The agency seeks unspecified damages and an order freezing the assets of Killinger and Rotella and their wives.
Federal regulators seized Washington Mutual, once the nation’s biggest savings and loan, in September 2008 and sold it to New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $1.9 billion.
Bank executives blamed Killinger, who was CEO for 18 years, during hearings before the U.S. Senate last year for ineffective management controls and lax lending standards.
“This action runs counter to the facts about my relatively short time at the company,” Rotella wrote in a letter e-mailed to Bloomberg by his spokesman, Daniel Hilley. “As you might imagine, I am angered by this abuse of power by the FDIC.”
JPMorgan spokesman Joseph Evangelisti declined to comment. No phone number is listed for Kerry Killinger in Washington State and Schneider couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
The case is FDIC v. Killinger, 11-00459, U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington (Seattle).
This is from my very own credit card statement.
In what reasonable sense of business does a credit card company allow someone to pay such a small amount each month that it would take 34 years to pay off their balance? If you’ve seen The Secret History of the Credit Card (PBS Frontline) you know why this makes business sense; banks make way more than just interest off of customers that pay only the (extremely undersized) minimum payment, in the form of late fees, much higher rates, and the like.
So, the next time you hear of a bank complaining about customers not being responsible and paying off their credit cards, remember the credit pushers that got the customer hooked in the first place.
I pay off my bill in full every month by the way. 🙂
According to the Wall Street Journal (ATM Fees Heading Higher, 3/16/11) Chase is testing higher fees for non-customers who use their ATM’s. Chase currently charges $3 for an out-of-network user (that is in addition to whatever that customers bank will charge them) and is testing $4 and $5 ATM withdrawal charges in several states to see what the market will bear.
Keep it up Chase, your just giving lawmakers more reason to consider regulating ATM fees as well as debit swipe fees and overdraft programs.
Big banks like Chase are constantly complaining these days for the loss of revenue (profits) associated with new laws that curb (abusive) practices like automatic overdraft protection and debit card swipe fees. They claim that all this new legislation that restricts their ability to make money is forcing them to raise fees on consumers in other ways.
I’m not buying it.
What is reallly happening here is that we have seen two decades of banking innovation. Banking innovation is really just another term for banks discovering new and better ways to bilk their customers for more and more fees. From lending practices that urged customers to borrow beyond their means, to pages of small-print rules that let them jack up the fees and rates when those same customers couldn’t afford to pay (i.e. the bank’s desired outcome). Overdraft “protection” programs that customers didn’t want but got surprised with anyways, credit card and debit card swipe fees that bilked merchants, you name it, banks have added it on over the last two decades any way they could.
The biggest banks were/are the worst and most banks aren’t at all what banks were 20 or more years ago: institutions that served their customers.
Now, the expectation of all this added fee income is a higher level of profitability that has set a new bar.
So of course banks are going to whine about their gravy train going away and look for other ways to get paid more money for providing less and worse service. It makes perfect sense.
Unless you go back and reconsider what a bank is really meant to be. If you did, you’d be leaving your big bank for a smaller one that exemplifies what banks are supposed to be like.
Bad bad Chase, Lawsuits | admin March 23, 2011 | 
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