Banking

FinCEN Files Reveal $2 Trillion in Suspicious Banking Transactions

| Importance: 9/10

BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the FinCEN Files, revealing more than $2 trillion in suspicious banking transactions reported to the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network between 1999 and 2017. The files contained over 2,100 Suspicious …

FinCEN BuzzFeed News International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Deutsche Bank HSBC +4 more money-laundering banking financial-crime regulatory-failure suspicious-transactions +2 more
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Trump Signs Dodd-Frank Rollback Raising 'Systemically Important' Bank Threshold from $50B to $250B After Industry Lobbying Blitz

| Importance: 9/10

President Trump signs the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (S.2155), dramatically weakening post-2008 financial regulations by raising the asset threshold for ‘systemically important financial institution’ (SIFI) designation from $50 billion to $250 …

Donald Trump Greg Becker Silicon Valley Bank Mike Crapo Mark Warner +3 more deregulation banking dodd-frank regulatory-capture lobbying +2 more
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Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) Founded

| Importance: 8/10

Agha Hasan Abedi established the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in Luxembourg, creating an international bank with initial capital from Bank of America and Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. BCCI rapidly expanded to become the seventh-largest private bank in the world before being …

Agha Hasan Abedi Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Bank of America banking financial-crime international-banking money-laundering regulatory-capture
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Alien Property Custodian Seizes Bush-Thyssen Nazi Banking Assets

| Importance: 8/10

The Office of Alien Property Custodian seizes the assets of Union Banking Corporation (UBC) in New York on October 20, 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among the bank’s directors is Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of two future presidents, whose firm Brown Brothers Harriman …

Office of Alien Property Custodian Prescott Bush Union Banking Corporation Fritz Thyssen Brown Brothers Harriman +1 more nazi-collaboration elite-impunity banking corporate-treason institutional-corruption
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Banking Crisis Accelerates with 2,300 Bank Failures in 1931 as Hoover Resists Federal Intervention

| Importance: 9/10

A second wave of banking panics erupts in June 1931 centered in Chicago, where depositor runs beset networks of banks that had invested in declining real estate assets, resulting in approximately 2,300 bank suspensions during 1931—significantly more than the 1,350 failures in 1930. The crisis …

Herbert Hoover Federal Reserve American bankers depositors financial-crisis banking great-depression deregulation institutional-failure
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Federal Reserve Warns Against Speculation But Takes No Effective Action

| Importance: 8/10

The Federal Reserve Board issues a public warning that banks should not make loans for stock market speculation, expressing concern about the use of Federal Reserve credit to finance the securities boom. The announcement signals regulatory awareness that margin lending and speculative excess pose …

Federal Reserve Board Benjamin Strong Charles Mitchell Andrew Mellon National City Bank regulatory-failure financial-speculation banking institutional-capture
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McFadden Act Perpetuates Banking Fragmentation, Prohibits Interstate Branching

| Importance: 7/10

President Calvin Coolidge signs the McFadden Act, one of the most contested pieces of banking legislation in U.S. history, which recharters the twelve Federal Reserve District Banks into perpetuity but prohibits interstate branch banking for national banks. Named after Representative Louis Thomas …

Louis Thomas McFadden Calvin Coolidge U.S. Congress Federal Reserve financial-deregulation banking regulatory-capture
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Farm Crisis Begins as Agricultural Prices Collapse While Debt Remains

| Importance: 8/10

American agriculture enters a decade-long depression beginning in summer 1920 as commodity prices collapse following the end of wartime demand. Wheat prices fall from $2.50 per bushel to under $1.00; cotton drops from 35 cents per pound to 13 cents; corn collapses from $1.50 to 42 cents. Meanwhile, …

Andrew Mellon Federal Reserve Farm Bureau U.S. Congress economic-crisis regulatory-failure rural-america banking agricultural-policy
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