For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture

Op-Ed Columnist - David Brooks - The Great Seduction by Debt - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com -- David Brooks on Ben Franklin, and then the past 30 years--a "must read." Succinct. Concise. Well phrased.

Keywords & keyphrases: Benjamin Franklin, hard work, temperance, frugality, industrious, ambitions, living for the moment, decadent, moral guardians, debt culture, the lottery class, value shift, consequences.

Note the enumeration of the agents of destruction.

consolidations to Cleveland?

KeyBank eliminates call center, 200 jobs -- Just keeping you posted, from our neighbors in Dayton:

KeyBank is the second Cleveland-based bank to cut jobs and slash operations in the Dayton area recently.

National City Corp. announced last week that it is cutting nearly 1,300 jobs to shrink the bank's faltering mortgage business. More than 100 employees at National City Mortgage in Miami Twp. were laid off as a result.

"the neighborhood's the victim"

Mason prosecutes mortgage-fraud schemes in Solon worth $2.6 million - cleveland.com -- Bill Mason strikes a chord that should resonate with all of us, and this idea may form the basis for communities to recover from the lenders, the investment bankers, the brokers, the servicers, the hedge funds, and all others who have made transactional, short-term profits churning our capital and using our legal system against us, as it suits them.

Mason praised Solon police for paying special attention to mortgage fraud, a crime that many police departments are just beginning to understand.

Countywide, the prosecutor's office has so far this year filed 12 cases involving 60 properties, $8.4 million in loans and more than 130 defendants. Mason, who has an assistant prosecutor and three investigators focusing on mortgage fraud and related offenses, promised to aid any cities that bring cases to his attention.

"We want to get the corporations and people who are doing these practices," Mason said. "The neighborhood's the victim."

newer data from Federal Reserve System shows same pattern

Top 50 bank holding companies Summary Page -- Here's some 06/30/2007 data from our Federal Reserve System showing the top 50 BHCs (bank holding companies), their domicile, and their total assets. Again, the trend is similar to what we found in the previous comment: New York, 7; Ohio and North Carolina, 5 each.

1 CITIGROUP INC. (1951350) NEW YORK, NY $2,220,866,000
2 BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION (1073757) CHARLOTTE, NC $1,535,684,280
3 JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. (1039502) NEW YORK, NY $1,458,042,000
4 WACHOVIA CORPORATION (1073551) CHARLOTTE, NC $719,922,000
5 TAUNUS CORPORATION (2816906) NEW YORK, NY $579,062,000
6 WELLS FARGO & COMPANY (1120754) SAN FRANCISCO, CA $539,865,000
7 HSBC NORTH AMERICA HOLDINGS INC. (3232316) PROSPECT HEIGHTS, IL $483,630,057
8 U.S. BANCORP (1119794) MINNEAPOLIS, MN $222,530,000
9 SUNTRUST BANKS, INC. (1131787) ATLANTA, GA $180,314,372
10 ABN AMRO NORTH AMERICA HOLDING COMPANY (1379552) CHICAGO, IL $160,341,966
11 CITIZENS FINANCIAL GROUP, INC. (1132449) PROVIDENCE, RI $159,392,731
12 CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL CORPORATION (2277860) MCLEAN, VA $145,937,957
13 NATIONAL CITY CORPORATION (1069125) CLEVELAND, OH $140,648,168
14 REGIONS FINANCIAL CORPORATION (3242838) BIRMINGHAM, AL $137,624,205
15 BB&T CORPORATION (1074156) WINSTON-SALEM, NC $127,577,050
16 BANK OF NEW YORK COMPANY, INC., THE (1033470) NEW YORK, NY $126,457,000
17 PNC FINANCIAL SERVICES GROUP, INC., THE (1069778) PITTSBURGH, PA $125,736,711
18 STATE STREET CORPORATION (1111435) BOSTON, MA $112,345,777
19 FIFTH THIRD BANCORP (1070345) CINCINNATI, OH $101,389,721
20 KEYCORP (1068025) CLEVELAND, OH $93,490,903
21 BANCWEST CORPORATION (1025608) HONOLULU, HI $70,661,335
22 HARRIS FINANCIAL CORP. (1245415) WILMINGTON, DE $64,475,903
23 NORTHERN TRUST CORPORATION (1199611) CHICAGO, IL $59,609,734
24 COMERICA INCORPORATED (1199844) DETROIT, MI $58,945,727
25 MARSHALL & ILSLEY CORPORATION (1199497) MILWAUKEE, WI $58,327,527
26 M&T BANK CORPORATION (1037003) BUFFALO, NY $57,869,069
27 UNIONBANCAL CORPORATION (1378434) SAN FRANCISCO, CA $53,173,833
28 CHARLES SCHWAB CORPORATION, THE (1026632) SAN FRANCISCO, CA $49,003,812
29 ZIONS BANCORPORATION (1027004) SALT LAKE CITY, UT $48,703,130
30 COMMERCE BANCORP, INC. (1117679) CHERRY HILL, NJ $48,231,325
31 POPULAR, INC. (1129382) SAN JUAN, PR $46,985,000
32 MELLON FINANCIAL CORPORATION (1068762) PITTSBURGH, PA $43,389,057
33 TD BANKNORTH INC. (1249196) PORTLAND, ME $42,981,084
34 FIRST HORIZON NATIONAL CORPORATION (1094640) MEMPHIS, TN $38,395,825
35 HUNTINGTON BANCSHARES INCORPORATED (1068191) COLUMBUS, OH $36,422,081
36 COMPASS BANCSHARES, INC. (1078529) BIRMINGHAM, AL $34,938,942
37 SYNOVUS FINANCIAL CORP. (1078846) COLUMBUS, GA $33,295,823
38 NEW YORK COMMUNITY BANCORP, INC. (2132932) WESTBURY, NY $29,638,404
39 RBC CENTURA BANKS, INC. (1826056) RALEIGH, NC $25,374,678
40 COLONIAL BANCGROUP, INC., THE (1080465) MONTGOMERY, AL $23,823,484
41 ASSOCIATED BANC-CORP (1199563) GREEN BAY, WI $20,849,531
42 BOK FINANCIAL CORPORATION (1883693) TULSA, OK $19,363,601
43 W HOLDING COMPANY, INC. (2801546) MAYAGUEZ, PR $17,894,049
44 FIRST BANCORP (2744894) SAN JUAN, PR $17,596,317
45 WEBSTER FINANCIAL CORPORATION (1145476) WATERBURY, CT $16,964,451
46 SKY FINANCIAL GROUP, INC. (1071203) BOWLING GREEN, OH $16,807,287
47 FIRST CITIZENS BANCSHARES, INC. (1075612) RALEIGH, NC $16,012,041
48 COMMERCE BANCSHARES, INC. (1049341) KANSAS CITY, MO $15,531,107
49 NEW YORK PRIVATE BANK & TRUST CORPORATION (3212091) NEW YORK, NY $15,095,466
50 FULTON FINANCIAL CORPORATION (1117129) LANCASTER, PA $15,078,415

Tom brings up an interesting point

Thomas Suddes: Ohio secretary of state is already looking for something to do - cleveland.com: Gloria mentioned to me just now that Tom has brought up an interesting point:

"And State Treasurer Richard Cordray, a Democrat, is offering himself as a
provider of financial advice to Ohioans. It's a mystery how that could be virgin
territory: Ohio is the legal headquarters of five of America's 25 largest banks;
no state boasts more such headquarters. "

Further research from Infoplease fleshes this out, with a quick top 30 using December, 2005 data from the Federal Reserve. The numbers need another six zeroes, so I provided them, but I don't really know if that helps us get our collective head around the magnitude of the situation any better (quadrillion comes after trillion):
1. Bank of America Corp. (Charlotte, N.C.) $1,082,243,000,000
2. J. P. Morgan Chase & Company (Columbus, Ohio) 1,013,985,000,000
3. Citigroup (New York, N.Y.) 706,497,000,000
4. Wachovia Corp. (Charlotte, N.C.) 472,143,000,000
5. Wells Fargo & Company (Sioux Falls, S.D.) 403,258,000,000
6. U.S. BC (Cincinnati, Ohio) 208,867,000,000
7. Suntrust Banks, Inc. (Atlanta, Ga.) 177,231,000,000
8. HSBC North America Inc. (Wilmington, Del.) 150,679,000,000
9. Keybank (Cleveland, Ohio) 88,961,000,000
10. State Street Corp. (Boston, Mass.) 87,888,000,000
11. Bank of New York Company, Inc. (New York, N.Y.) 85,868,000,000
12. PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (Pittsburgh, Pa.) 82,877,000,000
13. Regions Bank (Birmingham, Ala.) 81,074,000,000
14. Branch BKG&TC Corp. (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 80,227,000,000
15. Chase Bank USA (Newark, Del.) 75,052,000,000
16. Countrywide Bank (Alexandria, Va.) 73,116,000,000
17. LaSalle Bank (Chicago, Ill.) $71,061,000,000
18. National City Bank (Cleveland, Ohio) 69,482,000,000
19. Bank of America USA (Phoenix, Ariz.) 62,983,000,000
20. MBNA Corp. (Wilmington, Del.) 58,517,000,000
21. Fifth Third Bancorp (Cincinnati, Ohio) 57,613,000,000
22. North Fork Bank (Mattituck, N.Y.) 57,045,000,000
23. Bank of the West (San Francisco, Calif.) 55,158,000,000
24. Manufacturers and Traders TC (Buffalo, N.Y.) 54,391,000,000
25. Comerica (Detroit, Mich.) 53,577,000,000
26. Amsouth Bancorporation (Birmingham, Ala.) 52,570,000,000
27. Union Bank of Calif. (San Francisco, Calif.) 48,679,000,000
28. Fifth Third Bank (Grand Rapids, Mich.) 47,605,000,000
29. Northern Trust Corp. (Chicago, Ill.) 44,865,000,000
30. Citibank SD (Sioux Falls, S.D.) 44,011,000,000

The final tally: Ohio, 5; New York, 4; North Carolina and Delaware, 3 each. With all we have going on around here, what do you think of that? Are we bank-friendly? Have they helped make us everything we are today? What are your thoughts, or feelings?

lots of statistics, for the record

Mortgage Trouble Clouds Homeownership Dream - New York Times -- Now, nearly two years after we gave testimony for the Cuyahoga County commissioners and five years since Cleveland-Marshall law professor Kathleen Engel began writing her papers warning of the impending debacle, the numbers begin to appear in the popular press, and the evidence of greed is incontrovertible.

In the same edition, the NYT tells in "Buying With Help From Mom and Dad" about how the high price of residential real estate is spawning new specialties among lawyers, third-party administrators, psychiatrists, and counselors, as parents and children cope with the imbalanced behavior of committing more money to the children's housing than the children can afford. I wonder what the upshot of all this will be if ever the prices in the housing markets recede, and they find themselves in the uncomfortable condition called "upside down."

Finally, Gloria tells me that in the PD Friday, someone with insight into the mortgage and real-estate industries talked of "mortgages that are designed to strip wealth rather than allow homeowners to build up equity in their properties." It's good that all this is coming out now, while the huge intergenerational transfer of wealth from the post-WWI crowd to the post-WWII crowd is still under way.

Do you think that, if we paid cash for our housing and our cars, that the prices would moderate and approach true value?

New York Times wheels in its big financial gun

Crisis Looms in Market for Mortgages - New York Times -- here, the NYT has wheeled in its big gun, financial-press hit-woman Gretchen Morgenson, to level the mortgage market, perhaps to drive a panic, certainly to bang a gong and sell the news. The excerpt below is the tip of the three-page iceberg:

The analyst’s untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn’t the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago.

Now, as then, Wall Street firms and entrepreneurs made fortunes issuing questionable securities, in this case pools of home loans taken out by risky borrowers. Now, as then, bullish stock and credit analysts for some of those same Wall Street firms, which profited in the underwriting and rating of those investments, lulled investors with upbeat pronouncements even as loan defaults ballooned. Now, as then, regulators stood by as the mania churned, fed by lax standards and anything-goes lending.

Investment manias are nothing new, of course. But the demise of this one has been broadly viewed as troubling, as it involves the nation’s $6.5 trillion mortgage securities market, which is larger even than the United States treasury market.

Hanging in the balance is the nation’s housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders means many potential homebuyers will find it more difficult to get credit, while hundreds of thousands of homes will go up for sale as borrowers default, further swamping a stalled market.

government & nonprofit reps now fly to the rescue of more banks

Banks have a confirmed commitment to the city--In yesterday's Letters to the Editor in the PD, two of our representatives, one from the government and the other from the nonprofit sector, flew to the rescue of still more banks, citing specific nice little things these other banks do and why they should have a bigger share of whatever City-of-Cleveland preferences shifted to KeyBank a few days ago. Joe Cimperman and Ann Zoller cite a few instances of bank beneficence, but then Joe goes on to begin to start to get around to getting to a key point:

This picture of those two banks is different from the one painted by an outdated city administration formula that doesn't tell the true story. Cleveland's needs change daily. So must its relationships with financial partners. To continue to grade on a scale that does not reflect the banks' support of community needs sends the wrong message. We must recognize when institutions serve our community in ways that mean real quality-of-life improvements for all Clevelanders.

First of all, is there a formula, is this preferential-treatment-of-banks thing actually quantified, and who has seen it lately? Does this formula have at the top of the list the amount that the institution expects to pay the city on the deposits? The term and liquidity of the deposits? The ratings of the institution to hold the deposits, and the default insurance available per account? The ability to provide multiple accounts and also good accountability? The percentage of employees who actually live in Cleveland proper (no municipal income tax recripocity) and the payroll specifically attributable to those employees? The dollar amount of mortgage loans let out, with an offset for sloppy lending practices evidenced by foreclosures? A benevolent practice of cashing government and payroll checks for ordinary people with small or no accounts, so they aren't forced to go to the high-fee check-cashing gouge joints?

Way after all these things, we can list the actual amounts the banks give to city politicians and to the nonprofits, to make sure nobody is buying the business, and the amount of fees they use as incentives for the nonprofits to promote their banking products. Anything over $50 should be accounted for, just like our former governor's golf perks.

We need lots of analysis and then transparency and accountability, so that we can proceed to talk intelligently about who gets what city-deposit business, and how much.

Key in distress, and here comes Cleveland to the rescue

For banks, it pays off to reinvest in the city--As you saw a few days ago, Richard Cordray began taking KeyBank to task for putting its interests ahead of those of the rest of us. Well, lo and behold, here comes Key's champion to the rescue, taking money out of the other banks and shifting it over to KeyBank.

Cleveland stripped millions of dollars in deposits from National City and Charter One banks on Tuesday, citing the lenders for not doing enough to help city residents and businesses.

I wonder how those "city-assigned" rankings were determined. From the article, it appears that a few other people are wondering that, too. I wish Sharon Dumas, the finance director for the city, were more forthcoming with details. For instance, I think bank ratings and overall financials would play a huge part in the selection of a place for our community deposits, but I don't see that mentioned anywhere. One of the criteria, having a lot of branches in the city, might be a sign of bad management and too much overhead, for instance, and I haven't noticed the rates at KeyBank on consumer loans being any more competitive than those anywhere else. Did they identify and then count in the check-cashing storefronts with relationships to KeyCorp, and assess a penalty for parasitic activity?

Also, where is the mention of foreclosure rates and amounts here? I know Key has moved aggressively to cover its own assets in our neighborhood. Is there a foreclosure offset or penalty calculated in?

Is there any talk of what interest rate the banks will pay the city? Are our government employees here, Sharon Dumas and Ken Silliman, acting in the best interest of their fellow citizens if they don't try to maximize earnings? I know of common opportunities where plain old deposit money earns between 4.5% and 5%, yet all I see here is the use of some vague "profit" estimate, where each bank makes 3.5 cents profit per hundred dollars of deposits. First of all, what does this mean? Why are we talking about what the bank makes? Shouldn't we be talking about what the city makes? Quickly, $111,000,000 times the average of say, 4.75% is $5,272,500.

The biggest banks, like those who hold Cleveland's money, made about 3.5 cents profit on every $100 of deposits in 2006, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which regulates them.

Is there talk anywhere else of the deposit insurance, the FDIC coverage, available per account? Again, I know of a common opportunity where the FDIC coverage is $1,200,000 per registration, but has anybody looked into that, in these times when banks earnings are down and they're straining under a heavy load? Is this a time when we should be consolidating our city money in one place, or is it a time when we should be spreading it out more?

Are we doing the right things with our city money, for the right reasons, for the right people?

Oops--almost forgot. Do you think one of the litmus tests could be how many bank executives you find in the city after the sun goes down?

they take care of the money, all right

The Columbus Dispatch - Local/State, KeyBank failed to pay state $170,000: Panel wants interest paid back, questions data-entry contract -- Our friend Anthony Fossaceca over at Blue Ohioan brought this to my attention. It's all coming around fairly quickly. Excerpts:

A Cleveland-based bank shortchanged Ohio taxpayers at least $170,000 last year. The same bank is getting $626,000 a year for work the state can do itself. By fixing both problems, Treasurer Richard Cordray says the state could save more than $1 million. ...Cordray said that when he took a closer look at the state’s "checkbook" — the main depository handled under contract by Cleveland-based Key-Bank — he found at least $170,000 in interest credit that the state should have received last year but didn’t. ...In many cases, the amount to be credited was more than the charges, but the state rarely, if ever, got the full credit, Cordray said. ... The treasurer’s office will look at previous years because KeyBank has had the contract for 14 years. Cordray also said he expects to cancel another Key-Bank deal, a data-entry reporting contract that costs $626,000 annually. ... Cordray said his staff can do the work in-house. The state already has negotiated with KeyBank to avoid $113,000 of that cost this year, he added.

When we go over to BankRate.com and look up KeyBank's financial statement, we notice that the non-interest-bearing deposits are around 21-22% of all deposits in 2005 and 2006. I wonder how they accounted for this state money? The big question, after Cordray gets done: Will the Key financial statement change drastically this year? What was the gist of that book by that treasury guy about Truth?

if I ran the city, the series, #8: plowing priorities

Downtown workers, visitors plow on--If I ran the city, I'd do just what Frank Jackson did the other day: make the main streets passable, and then make the neighborhood streets that feed into them passable. I, too, would serve the businesses, and then the residents.

The PD story's angle is interesting, because its primary perspective comes from a woman in sales for a bank (Why do we need to sell a bank's services? Banks should attract, I would think.) who drives (alone, we presume) in an SUV (conspicuous consumption of resources) all the way in from Strongsville (sprawl near the Medina county line) to find her reserved space in the company lot (the lot of that parasitic banking concern from Scotland, probably on the site of torn-down legacy office space) usurped by others of her ilk, her inconsiderate, disrestpectful fellow employees.

Is the PD holding this woman up to make her the object of sympathy, or ridicule?

Anyway, thanks for the service, Frank, and I just wish more people would get their cars off the street earlier in snowstorms to make the plowing on the neighborhood streets that much more effective.

hot tips sink ships

Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Deutsche Bank are among the major Wall Street banks that were sent letters last month by the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a broad examination into whether bank employees are leaking information about big trades to favored clients, The New York Times reported.Trading ahead of client orders, or front-running, has long been an issue on Wall Street. But the latest S.E.C. investigation appears to have a new twist: Rather than examine whether a bank is trading ahead of its own client by using knowledge of the customer's trade, the scope of the investigation will allow regulators to see if banks tip their valued customers who then go trade at another bank, making the paper trail harder to detect. Go to Article from The New York Times>>

what goes around comes around: subprime stooge's karma's not instant, but quick enough

Tremors at the Door - New York Times--Two days ago, Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis alerted us to this phenomenon as it had made itself manifest just across the Harvard-Denison Bridge, in the North Broadway and Fleet areas. The podcast should be posted shortly over at Meet.The.Bloggers. From a moral standpoint, this guy Dallas, the subprime mortgage lending company poster child, is, in my opinion, reprehensible. If this "hey, it paid more money, what would you do?" attitude passes for business ethics, we need to do a lot of re-tooling. Here's the poster child's whiny lament, now that HE no longer has credit:

...William D. Dallas, the founder and chief executive of Ownit, would argue that his company has become an early case of road kill.

In mid-November, JPMorgan Chase, which provided Ownit with money to make home loans, notified the company that it was in default and would lose access to a $500 million credit line by Dec. 13 because it was losing money. It had taken on too much debt and its net worth had fallen, according to bankruptcy documents and people briefed on the company’s finances

....For his part, Mr. Dallas acknowledges that standards were lowered, but he placed the blame at the feet of investors and Wall Street, saying they encouraged Ownit and other subprime lenders to make riskier loans to keep the pipeline of mortgage securities well supplied.

“The market is paying me to do a no-income-verification loan more than it is paying me to do the full documentation loans,” he said. “What would you do?”

an indentured nation: serfs up?

Banks Gone Wild - New York Times--Years ago, many of our forefathers came to this country as indentured servants, or slaves, or debtors. As you read this recounting of how we live in a nation of "banks gone wild," you wonder whether we're just about back in the same boat as they came over on. I think it's time we took our money, our lives, and our freedom back.

...A boomerang effect has appeared, too. The new law contains a provision forcing many debtors into Chapter 13 compulsory repayment plans. The bill’s backers expected this fresh squeeze on debtors to produce more cash for the banks, but the trend appears to be downward.

In adopting the provision, Congress disregarded the advice of every disinterested group that has looked at the question, including three presidential commissions, the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office. It also ignored a past House Judiciary Committee report, which declared that such compulsion might well amount to the imposition of involuntary servitude. [emphasis mine]

So the lending goes on. People classed as the “working poor,” now beginning to be tapped by the credit card vendors, no doubt constitute a rich supply of coveted potential revolvers — fresh customers for the banks to draw into the credit maze, with its minimums and its unending late fees. In signing the 2005 act, President Bush declared that it would make more credit available to poor people. Unquestionably so. And 30 percent interest was just what they needed, wasn’t it?

more on the empire of debt

Cablevision Buyout Bid Is Raised - New York Times--The NYT now gives us a permalink to articles that will not expire when the article goes to the NYT archives. This article is about the Dolan family, which has a local presence. Here are some of the numbers from the article:

The Dolan family, the controlling shareholders of the Cablevision Systems Corporation, yesterday increased their bid for the company by about $1 billion, to $8.9 billion, from their October offer.

James L. Dolan, the chief executive of Cablevision, and his family want to take the company private.
The family, which owns 20 percent of Cablevision equity and controls 70.4 percent of the vote, said in a letter to the special transaction committee of the board, that this was the family’s final offer and it was good until Wednesday.

The company, which owns cable systems as well as several cable programming networks, issued a statement saying it had no comment on the offer.

The family, led by Charles F. Dolan and his son James, also said it would not resell the company if its bid for Cablevision was successful. That effort is a type of insurance that aims to protect shareholders from a buyer flipping the asset at a higher price. The family said it would be willing to discuss a contractual agreement on the issue.

It also said that it would respect the vote on the decision by a majority of the minority shareholders and that it would not sell its control position if the company stayed public...

...As it stands now, the equity portion of the bid has risen 11 percent, to $30 a share.
But at that level, the company may be beginning to bump up against its debt covenants, analysts said yesterday. The company currently has $11.2 billion in debt.

The newest offer would require the Dolans to pay an additional $6.8 billion to buy out the 228 million public shares. That would bring the total debt level to about $18 billion, and the average annualized 2007 cash flow is expected to be about $2 billion. That puts the debt-to-cash-flow ratio at a multiple of nine times, which is the limit on the debt covenants, said Chris Marangi, who follows cable at Gabelli & Company. Gabelli’s parent company, Gamco Investors Inc., owns 20 million shares of Cablevision stock.

Analysts also said that the Dolans told the company that their advisers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, would provide preferred equity financing for the deal, although the family did not say how much of the financing would be preferred equity.

Although preferred equity, which carries a higher interest rate than debt, does not count in debt-to-cash-flow ratios, the family said only that they did not do this because of debt covenants but because the capital structure made the most sense.

What I can't see--and I'm probably just naive--is how you can pay $8.9 billion to buy out the 80% of the company you don't own and then be $18 billion in debt? (8.9 divided by .80 = 11.125 billion, encumbered with 18 billion of debt?) What am I missing here?

NCB wipes off the booger

Our friends over at CLEVELANDADA brought this to my attention:

CLEVELAND, Jan. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- National City Corporation(NYSE: NCC) has announced the completion of the sale of the First Franklin origination franchise and related servicing platform to Merrill Lynch & Co.(NYSE: MER), effective Dec. 30, 2006. First Franklin is a leading originator of non-prime residential mortgage loans through a nationwide wholesale network.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20030428/NATIONALCITYLOGO)
Under terms of the agreement, Merrill Lynch paid a $1.3 billion purchase price for the San Jose, Calif.-based First Franklin, and affiliated business units, Pittsburgh-based National City Home Loan Services and NationPoint, headquartered in Lake Forest, Calif.
About National City National City Corporation (NYSE: NCC), headquartered in Cleveland,Ohio, is one of the nation's largest financial holding companies. The company operates through an extensive banking network primarily in Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri and Pennsylvania,and also serves customers in selected markets nationally. Its core businesses include commercial and retail banking, mortgage financing and servicing, consumer finance and asset management. For more information about National City, visit the company's Web site at http://www.nationalcity.com.

SOURCE National City Corporation