Friday, September 18, 2015

This Week in Bank Failures

The Fed failed to raise interest rates after more than a year of signaling an interest rate hike this month. The continuation of low interest rates is good and bad news for banks. Banks and workers alike are squeezed by the artificially low rates, but banks and borrowers in a financial hole, as more than a few still are, gain more time to dig out.

A U.S. appeals court threw out most of a class action on sovereign debt of Argentina, saying the judge acted improperly in expanding the class to include bondholders not affected by the 2002 default. The court has struggled with the scope and scale of the case, which is years away from final resolution.

The NCUA placed a credit union into conservatorship: Bethex Federal Credit Union with 5,000 members in Bronx, New York. Separately, state regulators in New York took control of Montauk Credit Union, with 3,000 members, and placed it in NCUA conservatorship. The credit unions will continue to operate while being managed by the NCUA.