FEDERAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

The Financial Institutions Regulatory and Interest Rate Control Act of 1978 created the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. Its purpose is to promote consistency in the examination and supervision of financial institutions.

What is considered a good credit score?

In the council are the...

• Comptroller of the Currency,
• one governor of the Federal Reserve System,
• the director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, and
• the chairmen of the FDIC and National Credit Union Administration Board.

What is a good credit score?

The council’s purpose is...

• the “establishment of uniform principles and standards and report forms for the examination of financial institutions.”
• to make recommendations on matters of common concern to supervisors,
• to conduct schools for examiners,
• 
  
• to provide training seminars on risk management,
• to periodically meets with a liaison committee composed of 5 representatives from state financial regulatory agencies.

Poor credit credit cards

Other council responsibilities include...

• helping maintain uniformity among federal banking agencies in identifying problem
  institutions and
• classifying loans that involve country risk or are
  large credits shared by several different banks.

In 1989, as directed by Congress, the council monitors the real estate appraisal requirements established by federal regulatory agencies and the appraiser certification and licensing standards of each state.

0 balance transfers

In most areas, agencies represented on the council maintain their independence. While the council has achieved greater
consistency in dealing with supervisory issues and reporting forms, its recommendations have not always been adopted uniformly.

Federal Bank Regulatory Agencies of the United States

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

The Banking Act of 1933 established this agency. It directly supervises (enforces) and examines insured state-chartered banks which are not members of the Federal Reserve System.

Like the Federal Reserve, the FDIC is an independent federal agency. It has 5 directors, one of whom is the Comptroller of the Currency. Another is the director of the Office of Thrift Supervision. Three others are appointed by the President for a term of 6 years. One of the appointees is designated as Chairman of the FDIC for a 5-year term. While the headquarters are in Washington DC, there are 8 regional supervisory offices.

While the FDIC supervises a large number of banks, its main function is to insure the deposits at commercial banks and thrifts. Before a bank obtains deposit insurance, it applies to the FDIC to receive approval. FDIC insurance responsibilities extend to protecting insured depositors, acting as receiver for failed banks, and administering insurance funds. The fund is financed with assessments on insured banks.

The FDIC is authorized to make special examinations of any insured bank when necessary to determine the condition of the bank for insurance reasons. Since 1983, the FDIC has been involved in bank examinations of certain problem banks not directly under its supervision. To eliminate redundant examinations, the FDIC's current policy is to be involved in the examination supervised by other agencies. This is only when the examination represents a simultaneous effort or are confined to special occassions.

The FDIC has a variety of enforcement powers in its supervisory capacity. These include...

• terminating deposit insurance,


• issuing cease and desist orders,


• removing bank officials and other affiliated parties, and


• levying fines at state non-member banks.

The FDIC can recommend or pursue enforcement actions against other insured institutions and may appoint itself as conservator or receiver to reduce insurance fund losses.

In 1989, the FDIC gained authority to insure thrifts through the Savings Association Insurance Fund. The FDIC may initiate examinations of insured thrifts for insurance purposes. The FDIC can prevent thrifts from pursuing activities that would pose a serious threat to the fund. Apart from these powers, the FDIC supervises state-chartered savings banks.

Federal Bank Regulatory Agencies of the United States

The Federal Reserve System

Established by the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, the Federal Reserve System is headed by a seven-member Board of Governors. Each is appointed to 14-year terms by the President of the United States. Why 14 years? To keep the President of the United States from selecting a majority of the Governors.

The Board of Governors is headquartered in Washington D.C.

While the Board of Governors are the head of The Federal Reserve System, it comprises 12 Federal Reserve Banks and 25 branches located throughout the country. Each Federal Reserve Bank has a a board of nine (9) directors. Six are elected by the member banks from its district. The other 3 are appointed by the Board of Governors.

Of the directors elected by the member banks, 3 represent member banks and 3 are from the business community. The 3 directors appointed by the Board of Governors are selected to represent the public (which basically means the Board of Governors).

The Federal Reserve System directly supervises (i.e. enforces) state-chartered banks that choose to become members. In addition to bank supervisory responsibilities, the Federal Reserv reviews membership applications from state banks and, together with state authorities, merger and branch proposals from state member banks.

The reason a state bank becomes a member bank is to bypass state banking laws and regulations. Or, at the very least, to avoid supervision by the state in which it operates. This gives the Federal Reserve control over a state's bank community and can override local concerns in favor of Federal Reserve interests.

Federal Bank Regulatory Agencies of the United States

Comptroller of the Currency

This is the oldest of the federal bank regulatory agencies. It was established by the Currency Act of 1863 and strengthened by the National Bank Act of 1864. The Comptroller is the primary supervisory agency for national banks.

Supervisory means enforcement while regulation means rule-making.

The Comptroller is a bureau of the Treasury Department and is headed by a single-person appointed by the President to a 5-year term. Of course, the question becomes, if a President has a 4-year term, doesn't that mean a 1-term President may not choose their own Comptroller. The answer is yes. This was done on purpose.

The Comptroller exercises control over the operations of national banks through a number of ways. Control includes...

the power to charter national banks,
the review of national bank branch and merger applications,
the implementation of regulations, and
examination and supervision of ALL national banks.

This means the Comptroller not only has oversight over national bank operations, but also determines who charters (starts) or expands a national bank. This is done through policy decisions. It is a lot of power for one person to have. And, to add to that, the Comptroller serves as a director of the FDIC.

domain sale tips

My experience falls along these lines:

1. 99.99% of all "average folk" interested in acquiring a domains in the aftermarket are largely clueless concerning values and how to go about the business of making a buy. So I proceed with low expectations and a second-grade teacher mentality: Be nice, explain the basics, keep things simple, build trust by being open and honest, etc.
2. About 33.33% of the inquiries you may receive about a given domain are likely from "non-average folk". That would include domainers looking for bargains, opportunistic feeders, cranks, etc.
3. Pure dishonesty, scamming and the like is rare but one always has to be vigilent. Escrow services address most of the problem.
4. International transactions offer added opportunities for transactions to run aground, so it pays to keep things simple.

My #1 remedy for smoking out bona fide offers early is to ask for a land line to a business where I can talk with whomever is in charge of the deal. No land line ~ low confidence. I know we're in the mobile age but most businesses of any size will still have a physical location with a fax, phones, answering machines, a street address, etc.

google rankings

G appears to be rewarding large eCom sites, using affiliate links, with better PR and SERP positions because of their sheer size, and the artificial appearance of a national and/or global presence. Thus, sites resorting to these unnatural methods to clone and create hundreds of thousands of locale specific pages will continue to do so and thrive, and will continue to suck up G's index and database capacity, to the detriment of truly local businesses that have a real brick & mortar presence in those communities and selling the same products or services.

This is happening in many industries. Big bucks national aggregators are artificially creating locale specific pages for certain services, even though they have no real presence there, and even though they do not actually offer or provide those services themselves. They are then using their prominence on G and other SEs to monopolize consumer online inquiries for those services in all those markets, just to turning around and sell the resulting consumer inquiries as "leads" to the truly local service providers and dealers. The effect is usually higher cost to the consumer, not a savings, because the true service providers have to mark up their charges to cover the cost of the leads, in some industries, a substantial percentage of sales.

In some industries and services, this may make good business sense, since the locals may not have the ability or desire to build their own web sites. In others, it is not good business, and detracts from good, local providers who do go to the effort of developing their own web presence. So it can go either way.

the Google 'sandbox'

The 'Sandbox' is about trust through links. It is applied on a page by page basis. This has been observed and studied across 70+ new websites over the past 2 years.

Free Myspace HTML Codes
BigFinder
Whore Me generator
Myspace Layout generator
Pioneer

What many call the sandbox effect is simply an extension of the way Google normally places web pages into its primary and secondary indexes.

Bar Graph
Graphs
Headlines
Report
Tree MDI

Links are required to get into the SERPS for any term (primary index). You don't get in until Google sees enough satisfactory, trusted links. Also, an interesting factor comeing into play is the way Google returns pages for three or four word terms. This is if one of the words is highly competitive. If enough websites in the primary index (which depends heavily on links) exist, you won't appear in those results. It doesn't matter if your title tag and on-page SEO is 100% targetted for the phrase. Drill-down into the SERPS to the point where you see irrelevant sites. Still, you won't see your web page. Basically, it doesn't meet the criteria to appear. There are not enough trusted links.