bank

On the surface, Deutsche Bank's results this morning came in better than expected with first quarter earnings more than doubling as Germany’s biggest bank benefited from a pick-up in market activity at the start of the year. In the three months to March, Deutsche managed to make a net profit of €575m, more than double from €236m in the same period a year earlier, when market were shaken by concerns over Deutsche’s viability, and above consensus estimates of €522m.

Submitted by Ronan Manly, Bullionstar.com

In February 2017 while preparing for a presentation in Gothenburg about central bank gold, I emailed Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, enquiring whether the Riksbank physically audits Sweden’s gold and whether it would provide me with a gold bar weight list of Sweden’s gold reserves (gold bar holdings). The Swedish official gold reserves are significant and amount to 125.7 tonnes, making the Swedish nation the world’s 28th largest official gold holder.

Another day, another fine for the bank that no matter what, just can't play by the rules.

On Thursday, the Federal Reserve fined Deutsche Bank $156.6 million for violating foreign exchange rules and running afoul of the Volcker Rule, suggesting it was likely trading FX out of its own account in violation of Dodd-Frank.

In levying the FX fine on Deutsche Bank, the Fed said it found "deficiencies in the firm's oversight of, and internal controls over, FX traders who buy and sell U.S. dollars and foreign currencies for the organization's own accounts and for customers."

Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

Just how bad is the ongoing fraud in the banking system? Get ready for a mind-bowing expose by a former insider at UBS.

Brad Birkenfield, author of Lucifer's Banker: The Untold Story of How I Destroyed Swiss Bank Secrecy, recounts the efforts he uncovered by his employer to help its clients cheat the US government out of tens of $billions in taxes.

China vowed that this time it was serious about finally deleveraging its economy. Once again, it lied.

First, a quick tangent: as a reminder, when it comes to the global economy, increasingly more analysts are realizing that just one number truly matters: that of the global credit impulse, which as we cautioned for the first time two months ago, had recently turned negative, mostly as a result of the recent deceleration in China's credit creation.