Regulators shut LibertyPointe Bank in NYC

[TwixVoy]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators on Thursday shut down LibertyPointe Bank in New York City, boosting to 27 the number of bank failures in the U.S. so far this year following the 140 brought down in 2009 by mounting loan defaults and the recession.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over LibertyPointe, with three branches, $209.7 million in assets and $209.5 million in deposits. The bank catered largely to the Orthodox Jewish community in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Valley National Bank, based in Wayne, N.J., agreed to assume the assets and deposits of LibertyPointe Bank.

In addition, the FDIC and Valley National Bank agreed to share losses on $181.5 million of LibertyPointe's loans and other assets.

Read more: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/100311/us_bank_closure.html

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VERY unusual to shut down a bank on Thursday. The article claims the feds did it out of religious considerations, but I call bull sh** on that. I have read every bank closure notice for the past 2 years, and the feds have NEVER closed a bank on a day other than Friday out of religious considerations.

When a bank is shut down the process is totally transparent to the banks customers. Therefore even if the bank had many Jewish customers they would not even have been impacted other than being told "TECHNICALLY, from a customers point of view, your deposit is now held by X, but everything else is identical". Yea, I'm sure that would be a huge outrage if they were told that on Friday versus Thursday. Something is up with this closure that the feds don't want to talk about.

[ORDagnabbit]

1. yeah I listened to an NPR story on why they do it on fridays... thursday is very very wierd. n/t

[lonestarnot]

2. Yeah. That is weird alright. Something smells.

[Sebastian Doyle]

3. I'm not at all familiar with this particular bank.

But I'm sure I could think of at least 5 banks in NYC which are far more deserving of being shut down by the Federal government than Liberty Pointe was.

And I'll bet everyone here would know their names, no matter what part of the country you live in.

[valerief]

4. Is that all regulators do? Close banks? nt

[Renew Deal]

5. They are probably telling the truth about religious reasons.

There are entire communities in NY that run strictly on the Orthodox calendar. They respect the sabbath completely, and not just little shops. The big ones too.

Here's a link that I found.

"Using "Central Avenue" colloquially refers to the business district of Central Avenue. This section is just under a mile long and is located mostly in Cedarhurst and Lawrence, with a small section in Woodmere. It has always been an anchor of area life, and is the defining feature of Cedarhurst, a "shopping village". It features a vast number of restaurants and a large number of clothing stores, in addition to supermarkets, barbershops, pharmacies, etc. It also is the location of the Peninsula Public Library, St. Joachim Church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre and the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway High School. It is considered prime real estate territory, with very high store rental rates. As such, every side street along the strip holds many more stores. Because of the large Jewish population (mostly Orthodox and Charedi), many of the restaurants and food stores are kosher certified. However, several bars and Italian restaurants can also be found there. Because of the vast number of people shopping in preparation for the Jewish Sabbath, traffic on Friday afternoons is virtually at a standstill, while most stores are closed on Saturday. In addition, since 2 high schools (HAFTR and Rambam Mesivta)let out all four of their respective grades, lunchtime during the school year leads to large increases in waiting time at restaurants in the area."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Avenue_(Five_Towns)

[marasinghe]

6. i think you are correct.

lived in a brooklyn hasidic neighborhood, once.

not certain; but, i seem to remember them having restrictions on commercial activity, on the sabbath - which is saturday. so the feds could've pushed forward the bank closure by one day, from the standard friday deal, because of the majority of the bank's customers being orthodox jewish.