PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security

Hackers have crossed into new frontiers by devising sophisticated ways to steal large amounts of personal identification numbers, or PINs, protecting credit and debit cards, says an investigator. The attacks involve both unencrypted PINs and encrypted PINs that attackers have found a way to crack,...

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It Was The Irresponsible Leveraging, Redirect The Blame

Enough Demonizing The Mortgage Holders, It Was The Irresponsible Leveraging

Over and over, it has begun to drone on throughout society and media. “Loser homeowners”, “irresponsible borrowers”, et cetera… the mantra is being touted the main reason behind the current financial collapse. The responsible parties at the helm of major banks and government have shifted blame to those who do not have the means nor the power to defend themselves. It is easy for the well-connected CEO’s and government insiders to get their faces on TV and get the meme of their faultless leadership into the public psyche.

...(A) major banking institution leveraging itself at 35:1 is not the effect of poor home loans but the irresponsible management and leadership of the institution.

The persons holding the cards look down upon and even blame the defaulting homeowners (they are not blameless, but are hardly the key players in the collapse), when it was the the banking lobbyists pushing to relax regulation and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) who relaxed leveraging rules to allow banks more room to game the system. And when it all crumbled… it was the banking CEO’s with hat in hand before congress begging for the socialist handouts, not the homeowner who was being booted to the street for taking an ill-advised, poorly managed home loan that the banks were all too pleased to use as a means of leverage by granting to sub-prime borrowers.

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10 Banks That Could Be Next To Go Under

IndyMac bank going under probably has you wondering, is my bank next? Various analysts are predicted that hundreds of small and regional banks could collapse in the next year. Here's the top 10 list of the nation's most troubled banks...

The list is determined by dividing the bank's non-performing loans by the sum of its tangible equity capital and loan loss reserves, what is termed the "Texas-ratio." Any bank with a ratio higher than 100 means they have more bad loans on the books than money to pay for them.

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U.S. Considers Takeover of Two Mortgage Giants

Under the plan, shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be worth little or nothing, and any losses on mortgages they own or guarantee would be paid by taxpayers...In the last week alone, Freddie has lost 45 percent of its value, and Fannie is off 30 percent. Expectations of default at the companies have also risen; it costs three times as much today to buy insurance on a two-year Fannie bond as it did three years ago.

The companies are by far the biggest providers of financing for domestic home loans. If they are unable to borrow, they will not be able to buy mortgages from commercial lenders. In turn, that would make it more expensive and difficult, if not impossible, for home buyers to obtain credit, freezing the United States housing market. Even healthy banks are reluctant to tie up scarce capital by offering mortgages to low-risk home buyers without Fannie and Freddie taking the loans off their books.

A conservatorship or other rescue operation would be the second time in four months that the Bush administration has stepped in to engineer a rescue to prevent the financial system from collapsing. Last March, it forced the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase to avert a bankruptcy of that venerable investment house.

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INDYMAC bank fails!!! 2nd largest crash EVER!! FDIC Steps In

$32 billion IndyMac Bank fails. FDIC takes over. This is the second largest financial institution to close in U.S. history. EVERYBODY PANIC!!!

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