Money in the Bank

AmTrust Direct is offering one of the highest money market rates on the web at 5.36% APY. This e-Savings Account comes with a $1 minimum requirement to open and you can also deposit it as a CD with a raised minimum deposit of $1,000 USD. The rate is fixed for 90 days and this rate to limited to deposits up to $100,000, anything over will be a 5.00% APY instead of 5.36%.

Some of the biggest players in the banking world, looking ahead to a time when a tax or trade system becomes the law in the U.S., are taking the cost of carbon emissions into account when it comes to loaning money, especially to utilities. Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley have all said they will be including the cost of carbon emissions when determining when to loan money to companies.

Russell Heimlich wrote to share his method for organizing bank statements. He uses a three-ring binder, a stapler, and a hole-punch. I really like this method — it reminds me how we handle the finances at work. It’s a vast improvement over my system, which literally involves a series of shoeboxes.

I took my son in the other day to open a teen checking account at Wells Fargo, where I am an existing customer. They said that I had to be on the account as well (presumably because my son is a minor) so I said ok. Prior to going in, I’d called their customer service to find out the details of the account, and to ask if they did a credit check.

And they want to make us believe markets are returning to normal. Money market rates tell a very different picture and I rather rely on the data than the propaganda coming from central banks. And in this reality banks are scrambling to borrow funds at rates significantly higher than what the priests of ever expanding credit would like to see implemented.

The Fed along with Canadian and European Central Banks are flooding financial markets with money trying to drive down interest rates and provide liquidity. The European intervention was their largest ever, $130 billion.

Court gawkers have been witnessing a wild match of words between Floettl and former Bawag CEO Helmut Elsner who has been stripped of most of his assets by the court. Elsner was certainly the most despotic CEO Austria's banking industry has ever seen. He is infamous for his quick loss of temper and a tendency to mistreat subordinates.