The split happened prior to the Enron bankruptcy and was the result of a decade of litigation (Andersen consulting partners weren't happy with the profit-splitting with the audit partners).
pocketsmith (https://www.pocketsmith.com/) is a pretty good solution for this. I was a Mint user that was concerned about the privacy and also looking for a service that provided an API. I'm not 100% sure about the privacy, but they do provide an API for your own financial data.
You can have a say over someone’s property by purchasing it. Taking away valuable uses of someone’s property (where the use doesn’t harm anyone else’s property) without compensation is stealing.
I think Penn Central was a fantastically wrong decision (Rehnquist and Stevens dissented in that case). Obviously, the fact that a regulation diminishes the value of property is not sufficient to amount to a taking. The government can ban diesel cars and if that renders existing diesel cars worthless, so be it. Height limits (and the concept of air rights trading) can be justified on a similar principle, but they’re closer to the borderline. But historical landmark laws are not laws of general effect that happen to impact property values. They are targeted takings of private property without compensation.
The landmark laws have had essentially reverse blockbusting/gentrifying effects in poor neighborhoods in New Orleans like Tremé. It’s not uncommon for speculators to call in violations like broken stoops or split porch railings and then the same speculator leaves flyers in the mailbox of the “violator” offering to buy for a knockdown price...
Landmarking this building removes the choice from future New Yorkers to redevelop this bookstore-building into housing, offices, or even a park.
If you want to have a say in how the community develops, maybe don't limit your options for developing your community? If future New Yorkers decide they don't want this building turned into a modern skyscraper, they can reject the required applications for building permits at that time.
Or is it more about "old" New Yorkers trying to make sure new New Yorkers don't have a say?
New Yorkers already do have their say in how the community develops - why do you think something like 40% of the buildings in Manhattan couldn’t be built today under existing zoning?
New Yorkers have made it illegal to build the very same buildings and neighborhoods they claim to love - while also demanding that existing neighborhoods be preserved because they’re so “unique.”
It’s almost like there’s some other agenda at play...
Yes, there are some limits on companies ability to do this but they're generally not especially relevant for the types of things companies use their own stock for (stock based compensation, acquisitions)
> After all, banks remained basically insolvent in this fractional reserve scheme.
This is incorrect. Bank solvency has to do with the assets of the bank, even in markets with commodity (e.g., gold) or representative money (e.g., gold-backed paper). The assets of a bank include loans, the liabilities are the money the bank owes to depositors. There is no reason a bank can't take a gold deposit and loan it out (thereby, "creating" gold).
The purpose of a central bank, at least in orthodox economics, is to loan to solvent banks that are nonetheless cash-poor. Imagine a mismanaged bank, that has loaned too much, and cannot meet the demands of depositors. If the loans + cash are more valuable than the deposits, the central bank will loan to the bank to meet their temporary cash shortage. [0]
This is essentially what happened in the case of AIG. The Fed believed that the value of AIGs assets were greater than its liabilities, and loaned them the money at a penalty rate. The Fed believed that AIG was _solvent_. There were a number of extenuating factors here that I'm glossing over, but that is the underlying point. The reason that Lehman was not saved was that the Fed had substantial reason to believe that the assets (primarily the sub-prime loans) were not worth more than the liabilities, and the Fed will not lend into hole. Lehman was _insolvent_.
Fractional reserve banking, by itself, does not suggest solvency or insolvency. Without fractional reserve banking, there cannot be credit. Sharia banking is an example of full-reserve banking, because interest is prohibited, so there is no incentive to loan. (There are ways Islamic banks get around these prohibitions).
[0] I would suggest looking at Bagehot (1873) for a full description of this idea.
There is no well defined financial distinction between insolvency and whatever you want to call the situation in which the marked to market net value of a bank's assets goes negative due to a fall in prices during a liquidity crisis.† There almost certainly were such situations during the last crisis, when a bank's book value went negative, and yet it was not deemed to be insolvent.
That's because in practice insolvency is not so much a financial concept but an accounting and legal one, and in those domains it refers only to situations in which a corporation cannot meet its financial obligations as they come due. In ordinary circumstances that convention gives corporations some leeway to re-negotiate their obligations to stave off insolvency. But during a liquidity crisis it means that an institution whose book value goes negative (temporarily?—who knows?) will or won't become insolvent in part depending on whether third parties are willing to lend to it to plug the hole that exists in its books at the moment. That means that solvency during such periods is a bit of an artificial thing, depending in part on the of vagaries of the marketplace, as well as the judgement and munificence (or whim, if you'd like) of central bankers and other governmental actors.
> Without fractional reserve banking, there cannot be credit.
This is not true. There can be credit, just not with the simultaneous fiction that creditors retain access to the money they've lent. Bond markets and old-fashioned money-market bank accounts operate without that fiction, for instance.
† — Or for that matter during a classic bank run, which is another form of liquidity crisis. A typical bank operating on fractional reserve is solvent in the sense that over some indefinite future time horizon it should be able to give its depositors their money if they demand it, since the money the bank is owned in loans exceeds the money the bank owes its depositors. But a bank does not enough money in its vaults to pay all its depositors if they all want it back at the same moment; if no third party is willing to lend cash to the bank suffering the run ("provide it liquidity"), then it will become insolvent, no matter what its book value.
I agree that the definition of solvency is wrapped up in the value of the assets, which can be difficult to assess. That's why I said "The Fed /believed/ that the value of AIGs assets were greater than its liabilities" [emphasis added]. That being said, I think we can agree this has very little to do with fractional reserve banking as a concept. To put it simply, you can only have insolvent banks in a fractional reserve system, but a fractional reserve system doesn't necessitate insolvency by any means.
I'll agree to the second critique re: the credit in a full-reserve banking case.
Not in this case. You would need to have standing and a relevant claim to sue any person or firm. I would think it would pretty difficult to show sort of generalized claim about the injustices of the patent system. That is a political question, not a legal question.
These two rates serve different purposes. The Fed Funds rate is the rate at which banks earn interest on money held there (so keeping it low encourages banks to not keep it there, raising it does the opposite).
LIBOR (and there are different LIBORs for different currencies and maturities, the main one is USD 3-month) is the rate that banks lend each other on an unsecured basis. Technically, each bank determined their own LIBOR based on how they see the market and what they believe they can borrow at (hence our problems).
The important thing about LIBOR is that many trillions in notional of derivatives use it as a reference, so changing it has very real impact for all market participants (including pension funds, etc.). Even floating rate loans are often based on LIBOR.
I think you may be confusing Fed Funds with Interest on Reserves.
Fed Funds are unsecured overnight loans between banks. In the aftermath of 2008, banks have a lot of reserves and trading volume in the Fed Funds market has decreased significantly. It's arguably not an important rate to pay attention to anymore, but the Fed still claims to be targeting it (indirectly through open market operations)
Interest on Reserves is interest paid by the Fed to banks for holding reserves at the Fed. This is a new thing that was implemented in the wake of the 2008 crisis and quantitative easing.
there is a lot of market infrastructure and jurisprudence that exists specifically for this problem. Trades can and are canceled as the situation demands[0].
Edit: For a more complete analysis of DB's capital position, they have published Moody's report on their credit. [2] I don't see much in there that would suggest DB was insolvent, but they do seem to be having some difficulty reorganizing their business.
The capitalisation of a bank is not based on its market value but on its accounting value, i.e. how much money shareholders brought in, and how much profits the bank retained over the years.
A falling share price doesn't impact the bank's capital ratios. It does impact however its capacity to raise more capital if required, which is not a good thing.
It was similarly surreal when WaMu disintegrated -- they sold their deposits to Chase for less than the amount of the deposits, which seems odd at first ("they just sold a pile of money for less than the money itself was worth"), but isn't really. WaMu couldn't just spend those deposits, they were only worth the amount of money that could be extracted in fees for holding the accounts and from invested the deposited money, which was naturally less than the value of the pile of money.
WaMu's $170 billion in customer deposits were "sold" to Chase for $1.9 billion (I thought both numbers were bigger, but so says Wikipedia). If you were a WaMu banking customer before the implosion, you were a Chase banking customer afterwards.
Again, you can't sell deposits. Chase assumed the business of WaMu, which included liabilities - mostly deposits. Deposits are a liability and it is impossible to sell a liability. So saying "they sold their deposits to Chase for less than the amount of the deposits" is entirely inaccurate. It's somewhat counter-intuitive because deposits "seem" like assets and loans "seem" like liabilities - but it's actually the other way around on the balance sheet.
DB may be insolvent, but to be fair, there aren't many banks that can pay out the figures recorded in the managed accounts. I recall one Utah bank which is supposedly able to, and there may be others, but usually a mainstream bank cannot fulfill 99% withdrawals of assets on short notice.
I don't think any bank can. But it's not a capital problem, it's a liquidity problem. A bank, whether an internationally active, or a mum and pop local bank, is in the business of taking short term deposits and lending the money long term. Banks are required to cover some of their deposits in liquid assets so that it can sustain some level of stress. But a full scale run on the bank where all depositors want their money back would kill any bank, big or small.
A bank is solvent, Madoff wasn't. Madoff didn't have any asset, the cash you would have invested with him had been used to pay off other investors.
A bank has assets, the money you lent the bank (through your deposit) is invested in a mortgage, backed by a property. You will ultimately get your money back. but it is a timing issue (and therefore liquidity), not a solvency issue.
It's a liquidity issue if the bank invested in mortgages (usually), but it can be a solvency issue if they are invested in debt (sovereign or corporate) that can be defaulted on.
Totally different. A bank generates a return on it's deposits.
Madoff just paid a dividend or phony appreciation to investors based on money deposited by new investors -- except for the money he stole it was a closed system with no return generated.
He also concentrated his efforts on courting a relatively insular community (religious Jews) via trusted community figures to avoid awkward questions.
Thats usually a sign of a scam -- banks don't send your priest/rabbi/community leader to hawk CDs. But there are many hustles (Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, and various savings clubs) that are common in ethnic and religious communitiesand apread via word of mouth.
