Today's
Feature
Council
Property Purchase Vote.
The Carthage City Council is
scheduled to hear the second reading and vote on
proposed land purchases this evening during the
regular Council meeting in City Hall at 7:30 p.m.
The actual purchase of the
property would be contingent upon the approval of
the half-cent sales tax increase to be voted upon
April 7 by Carthage voters.
According to information
provided by the Carthage Economic Development
Corporation, a non-profit organization that is in
favor of the proposal, the ten year tax would be
used to purchase 700 acres over several years.
Approximately 600 acres would be developed in
three phases as an industrial park and 100 acres
would be uses as a professional park. The
development would be located just south of the
McCune Brooks Regional Hospital. The majority of
the property is currently owned by various
Precious Moments affiliated companies.
According to information
supplied by the Carthage Economic Development
Corporation, the average cost per family would be
about $4 per month in sales tax.
Bank Stress
Tests List.
ProPublica.org
Last Wednesday, federal
regulators announced that they were beginning the
so-called stress tests on the country’s
largest banks. One thing that hasn’t been
entirely clear: exactly which banks are getting
the treatment. Based on the criteria announced by
the Treasury Department and publicly available
data, we’ve compiled a list of those 19
banks below.
Some, like GMAC and American
Express, weren’t banks until a few months
ago, when they converted to bank holding
companies in order to be eligible for Treasury
Department programs. All but one, the insurance
company MetLife, which qualifies because
it’s a bank holding company, have already
received billions from the Treasury. Treasury
Secretary Tim Geithner has said the test will be
used to assess how much more (if any) in bailout
billions these institutions need.
A GMAC spokeswoman confirmed
the company was among those participating in the
stress tests, but declined to comment further. A
MetLife spokesman declined to comment on the
tests and referred questions to the Treasury.
Spokespeople from both the Treasury and the
Federal Reserve declined to comment.
The Treasury has announced that
the tests will be applied to 19 U.S.-based bank
organizations with more than $100 billion in
total assets. These fit the bill:
Name Total Assets (Billions)
1. JPMorgan Chase 2,175
2. Citigroup 1,947
3. Bank of America (not
including Merrill Lynch) 1,822
4. Wells Fargo 1,310
5. Goldman Sachs 885
6. Morgan Stanley 659
7. MetLife 502
8. PNC Financial Services 291
9. U.S. Bancorp 267
10. Bank of New York Mellon 238
11. GMAC 189
12. SunTrust 189
13. State Street 177
14. Capital One Financial Corp.
166
15. BB&T 152
16. Regions Financial Corp. 146
17. American Express 126
18. Fifth Third Bancorp 120
19. KeyCorp 105
The assessments, directed by
regulators but performed by the banks themselves,
will analyze how a bank would fare under a grim
economic scenario (some argue not grim enough) in
the next couple of years.
Based on those tests, the
Treasury will force the bank to raise a specified
amount of money – between 1 percent and 2
percent of the company’s risk-weighted
assets, though in special cases the Treasury
could decide more is needed. If the money
can’t be raised privately, the Treasury will
provide it. For the biggest banks, like Bank of
America and JPMorgan Chase, 1 percent of
risk-weighted assets amounts to about $13
billion. If the Treasury decided each institution
required the maximum, more than $140 billion
would be needed, most of that likely coming from
public coffers. The investments will made as
preferred shares convertible to common shares.
GMAC, the financial arm of
General Motors that also has insurance and
mortgage divisions, converted to a bank holding
company in December. Then, as part of the bailout
of GM and Chrysler, the Treasury invested $5
billion in GMAC. It’s unclear exactly how
much more GMAC could get after the stress tests
since the company does not publicly disclose its
risk-weighted assets, but the extra bailout dough
would most likely range from $1 billion to $3
billion.
A number of insurance companies
have sought to convert to bank holding companies
to get a piece of the bailout, but MetLife, which
has been a bank holding company for years,
apparently hasn’t applied for aid. As of
yet, no insurance companies have been approved.
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