"Site taking aim at big banks gains attention; Executive at Needham lender names names and promotes local institutions" by Deirdre Fernandes | Globe Staff, November 06, 2013
Big banks are coming in for another public relations beating.
A provocative new website that bills itself as “big banks’ worst nightmare” is garnering attention within the financial industry by bashing large institutions such as Bank of America and RBS Citizens Bank.
But the creator of the website — www.switchtocommunity.com — is not an Occupy Wall Street protestor or angry customer. He is another banker.
In a very unbank-like move, the website was created by a vice president at Needham Bank, Eric Morse, as a platform to promote the virtues of small, community-based banks with the slogan, “buying local means banking local.”
Related:
"More important to bankers, the city is attracting well-off, if not wealthy residents. Nearly 10 percent of households in Boston earn more than $190,000, placing them in top 5 percent of incomes, according to the census. Among major cities, only San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C., have higher concentrations of wealth."
He wants a piece of the action!
But it also revels in the troubles visiting large institutions around the country, titling one section of its home page “big banks fail” and listing news stories collected from other sites about job cuts, uncertainty, and greater government scrutiny of larger financial institutions.
Needham Bank is a member of the site and Morse, who started the initiative with his own money, said he is working to get 11 other banks to join the site, including six in Massachusetts.
“Our number one mission is to extol the virtues of community banking,” said Morse, who has worked for larger financial institutions.
Bank of America, the nation’s second-largest bank, declined to comment about the site, as did Citizens, which is headquartered in Providence.
The big-bank bashing is not a new strategy. Mid-sized TD Bank, for example, is airing commercials illustrating how it is different from large, antiseptic and anonymous banks.
Suzanne Moot, a Milton-based banking consultant, said the community bank website strategy is unusual in that it names banks.
“It’s unbankerly,” Moot said. “Banks don’t usually throw darts at each other. They don’t speak ill of each other outside of their own circles.”
Some of the biggest banks in Massachusetts, including Bank of America, Citizens, and Santander Bank, are juggling legal and financial issues or trying to remake their image, providing an opening that community banks can exploit, Moot said.
As if imagery, illusion, and public relations can $olve everything.
But poaching their customers has proven to be almost impossible, she said.
Bank of America, despite headlines about its problematic foreclosure practices and fees, saw its customer deposits grow 1.5 percent between 2012 and 2013. Needham Bank, meanwhile, had its deposits drop almost 3 percent during the same period.
Customers might be dissatisfied with their bank, but those institutions are so entwined in their daily lives that switching is a hassle, Moot said.
More like a ha$$le, but it goes to show you the banks have you by the balls until we rid ourselves of them.
Customers would not only have to move their money, but change their direct deposit, get new checks, and change all their automated payments from their electricity bills to their gym membership fees, Moot said.
The large institutions still have a convenience advantage, she said.
“I don’t see much evidence that people are moving in droves,” Moot said.
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So which bank would you like to get f***ed by?
"Financial services companies still strong in Massachusetts" by Deirdre Fernandes | Globe Staff, November 29, 2013
The local financial services industry may be older than Boston’s brownstones, less hip than tech start-ups, and bruised by the recent financial crisis, but it still serves as a crucial engine in the Massachusetts economy, a new report scheduled to be released Friday emphasizes.
Banks, insurance companies, money managers, and brokerage firms account for $36 billion, or 9 percent, of the state’s total economic output, according to the study by Mass Insight, a Boston research firm and PricewaterhouseCoopers, a global consulting firm. Although the sector has cut about 3 percent of its jobs in Massachusetts since 2009, it still employs nearly 166,000 workers — more than the computer technology and life sciences sectors, the other for-profit powerhouses in the state, when it comes to employment.
“It’s still the most important sector in the state,” William H. Guenther, the chairman and founder of Mass Insight. “It’s the supporting sector that makes it possible for the life sciences, health, and education sector to do well as they do.”
Yeah, none of us could survive if it wasn't for the looting and usurious banks.
Banks, venture capitalists, and investment firms play crucial roles in the state’s vaunted innovation economy, Guenther said, providing capital to help tech, biotech, and other cutting-edge companies to grow. The financial services industry is also among the state’s highest paying, providing the incomes and spending power that creates more economic activity.
Yup, trickle down works even here in Massachusetts.
The average salary for a financial services worker in Massachusetts was about $114,000 last year, more than twice the average wage of about $55,600 for all industries, according to the report.
The study was done for the Boston Financial Services Leadership Council, an advocacy group of local asset managers, investment firms, and banks.
Oh, it was a $elf-$erving survey being presented as objective news!
The financial services sector has long been a crucial part of the state economy, providing the capital for the trading ships of the 18th century, the mills and factories of the 19th century, and the technology companies of the 20th. Mutual funds were invented here. So was venture capital.
So the looting of pensions and college endowments was invented here?
The financial crisis of 2008, however, hit the local financial service industry hard.
Un-flipping-real!
They have had record quarters for three straight years with their best quarter ever in 2013.
The sector has shed about 10 percent of its jobs from the pre-crisis peak, according to the US Labor Department. Bank of America, the largest retail bank in Massachusetts by deposits, has shuttered 53 branches in the state since 2008.
Where do you think some of those profits are coming from?
Despite the loss of banking headquarters to mergers over the past decade, many financial services companies still make Massachusetts their home office, according to the report. One of them is Boston Private Financial Holdings, Inc., the parent company of Boston Private Bank & Trust Co., and four wealth advisory and investment management firms in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Boston Private employs more than 800 workers nationwide.
Clay Deutsch, the chief executive officer of Boston Private, said the city and state should do more to attract and keep company headquarters here, by promoting the well-educated workforce and pursuing business-friendly policies.
“Boston has too willingly accepted the loss of financial institutions headquarters,” Deutsch said.
Translation: we want more tax loot.
*****************
Deutsch said he hoped the report would remind political leaders that the financial services industry is key to the state’s economic well-being.
I told you it was a $elf-$erving piece of $hit.
Through much of the recent economic meltdown, Massachusetts leaders were at the forefront of criticizing financial institutions, Deutsch said.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, has called for more stringent regulations and warned that five years after the economic crisis too many banks are still too big.
That's why she will never be president.
Robert Reynolds, the chief executive of Putnam Investments, a Boston mutual fund company, said the issue of size is often misunderstood by the public and political leaders. Big is not necessarily bad for companies, customers, and the economy. It allows Massachusetts companies to compete in the global marketplace.
Just wondering if you are tired of reading the $elf-$erving swirl of $hit like me.
Putnam, which manages $145 billion in assets, opened its first China office in Beijing last year to develop further relationships with Chinese government, private institutions, and the growing middle class in that country.
As the American middle class shrinks and is eliminated. Think that has something to do with Putnam following the money? So what are they going to do when we go to war with China?
“It’s a phenomenal opportunity long-term,” Reynolds said. “China is investing in markets around the world.”
China is among the most promising global markets for the Massachusetts financial services industry, according to the report.
Last year, China announced it would loosen its rules and allow Chinese insurance firms to invest more overseas. Massachusetts companies, Guenther said, could become the firms managing that money.
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And those poor banks:
"US bank profits fall; first time since ’09; But litigation at one institution is main reason" by Martin Crutsinger | Associated Press, November 27, 2013
WASHINGTON — US banks earned less in the July-September quarter than they did a year earlier, marking their first year-over-year profit decline since the spring of 2009, when the country was still mired in the Great Recession.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said Tuesday that the banking industry earned $36 billion in the third quarter, down $1.5 billion, or 3.9 percent, from the third quarter of 2012.
That's $12 BILLION per MONTH, folks -- and this economy is still shit!
The FDIC said the earnings decline came primarily from a $4 billion increase in litigation expenses at a single institution.
The FDIC did not name the institution, but JPMorgan Chase & Co. reached a $4.5 billion settlement with investors earlier this month.
It was the latest in a series of legal settlements for the nation’s largest bank over JPMorgan’s sales of mortgage-backed securities in the year preceding the 2008 financial crisis.
Yeah, never mind the bundle of lies they sold you and then bet against.
As the housing market collapsed between 2006 and 2008, millions of homeowners defaulted on high-risk mortgages.
That led to billions of dollars in losses for investors who bought securities created from bundles of mortgages. Those securities had been sold by JPMorgan and other big Wall Street banks....
And that is why taxpayers had to bail them out to the tune of TRILLIONS!
Today’s report shows further progress in the gradual recovery of the banking industry,’’ FDIC chairman Martin Gruenberg told reporters at a news conference....
The quarter after quarter records were a gradual recovery, huh?
At least the banks got one; we never did.
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But everybody loves 'em!
"Consumers are seeing banks in a more positive light" by Deirdre Fernandes | Globe Staff, December 10, 2013
Have the financial crisis, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and rising fees faded in memory for bank customers?
They have only faded down the whoreporate pre$$'s memory hole.
Five years after troubles in the banking sector helped topple the American economy into recession, a new survey suggests that consumers are starting to feel better about their banks.
Approval ratings for financial institutions are now at 2007 levels — the year before the epic collapse on Wall Street, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, an annual nationwide study that is scheduled to be released Tuesday....
I suppose there is no level of shameless shit shoveling that is not beyond the propaganda pre$$ because this pile stinks to high heaven.
Large banks still lag community banks and credit unions by as much as 10 points, according to the survey.
“As time passes, negativity tends to fade for these banks,” said David VanAmburg, managing director of ACSI. “People tend to be forgiving over time.”
Even as they fee f*** you now!
ACSI only cited four banks by name — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo — because only those had a large enough sample size among respondents to the survey....
Even at the height of the financial crisis, when bank satisfaction was low, few customers switched institutions because of hassle involved with changing so many of their accounts and bills.
Still, the scores are released as fresh reminders of bank misdeeds make headlines. JPMorgan Chase last month agreed to a historic $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department over the firm’s sale of low-quality mortgage-backed securities that collapsed in value during the housing bust and helped spark the recent financial crisis.
After they made hundreds of billions in commissioned profits and default swaps.
European regulators fined several global financial institutions $2.3 billion last week for allegedly rigging benchmark interest rates.
But no one going to jail, huh?
See: EU fines global banks $2.3b over rate fixing
Hey, it's okay if you paid more on that loan so banks could stuff their pockets with loot. Why do you think we were put on this earth?
Consumers with checking and saving accounts with banks don’t seem to link those large-scale mortgage securities and interest rates controversies with their everyday interactions with their local financial institutions, VanAmburg said.
Like hell we don't!
“A lot of that noise doesn’t necessarily impact the customer experience,” he said.
The higher scores come even as banks increased their fees by 2 to 3 percent this past year, VanAmburg said.
The American people like getting $crewed in the a$$ by banks!
Banks have improved services by providing more efficient websites and mobile applications that allow consumers to quickly conduct transactions from their computers or phones.
It's the only software that works without glitches and flaws!
With more customers banking online, the lines inside branches are smaller, ensuring that customer interactions with bank staff are more pleasant, VanAmburg said.
Yup, banks were the place to be!
“As banks are doing better at providing services online,” he said, “it’s relieving some of the pressure at the bank level.”
And helping shed employees to make more profit!
The results, while the best in five years, still indicate that the industry has more work to do, said Deirdre Cummings, legislative director for the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy organization....
Cummings said her organization continues to field complaints from consumers about the extensive fees, the lack of services and products, and the high number of transactions that can only be done electronically.
Recognizing that big banks have tarnished their images, smaller financial institutions and credit unions continue to encourage consumers to switch, emphasizing better customer service, even as they struggle to provide the same convenience and branch network.
Bank of America, the largest retail bank in Massachusetts, in particular continues to lag in some customers’s eyes....
At least they pay for all the sports talk shows and football games.
Bank of America has been ahead of other banks in charging and proposing new fees and closing branches.
Regulators also have questioned whether the bank’s practices forced some homeowners into foreclosure.
Yeah, I'm sure the people whose homes were fraudulently foreclosed upon have forgiven them by now.
Bank of America and other banks have tried to polish their image in the past year and have spent millions on advertising campaigns that emphasize how they help consumers or are different than their cold, fee-charging competitors.
That only goes to show how mentally ill they are. They think illusion, imagery, and public relations advertisements are the solution to any problem. What a$$holes!
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I know the Globe is a banker's mouthpiece, apologist, and defender, as well as a vehicle for elitist insult and Jewish supremacism, but that was a lip-lock cock suck.
