Word: banke
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...nation's banks have never been more prosperous, but their very prosperity has created some problems. Some shady elements have been attracted by the prospects of fast money, and even the Mafia and Murder Inc. have been tied to some bank difficulties. A few banks, unable to resist the lure of business on every side, have overextended themselves and met with woe. Eight banks were shut by state or federal authorities in 1964 and another four have failed this year-more than in any comparable period since the Depression...
...Vegas. Jim Saxon, who supervises the 4,700 U.S. national banks, charged as a starter that underworld activity, gambling and phony securities were behind the recent failure of chartered national banks in California, Colorado and Texas. He accused Don C. Silverthorne, president of the defunct San Francisco National Bank ($41 million in assets), of "gross misconduct and gross deception," said that he had exacted huge fees from some borrowers and then spent part of the money gambling in Las Vegas. "Untrue-and he knows it," replied Silverthorne, who gets his chance to testify this week...
...Brighton National Bank in Colorado, said Saxon and his aides, a Denver mystery man named James W. Egan, whom they described as an apparent "front for gangsters," secretly got control of the bank before it had even opened, and "completely milked" its assets. Two financiers, one with a criminal record, took over the First National Bank of Marlin, Texas, through a front man, said Saxon; they promptly turned around and collected $179,000 in commissions for selling the bank mortgages of dubious value...
Saxon defended his controversial record of chartering 369 new national banks during 1963 and 1964, insisting that such expansion was essential to keep up with the expanding economy and to generate competition among lenders. Like many bankers, he blamed bank takeovers by unsavory characters on a loophole in federal law (since closed) that left federal officials in the dark about changes in bank ownership. Mindful of congressional cries that gangsters may still be buying up banks to sanitize their hot money, Joseph W. Barr, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., announced that he has set up a unit...
...that is too much, but the number of critics is growing. Arthur L. Nash, senior loan executive of Manhattan's Brown Brothers Harriman, fears that "the stage may be set for trouble" because of careless lending, and H. Frederick Hagemann Jr., president of Boston's State Street Bank, worries because "banks are more highly loaned than at any time since the '20s." Says Ransom Cook, president of San Francisco's Wells Fargo Bank: "The proper criticism now is that banks aren't conservative enough." If Senator McClellan's current probe does nudge bankers...