As financial shares take a beating, it is a good opportunity to highlight the differential treatment of accounting for loans and for debentures and securities because this bodes ill for regional banks.

FAS 157
The crux of the difference in how loans are treated for accounting purposes and how debentures/securities are treated comes from FAS 157. [...]

Ross Perot is making a comeback! The Texas billionaire has come back into the political fray with his website Perot Charts. I recommend taking a stroll through it. You will definitely be a wiser person for it. Today’s chart comes from his site and shows projected social security and medicare spending [...]

Mish over at the Global Economic Trend Analysis caught a story in the FT about the possibility of banks being forced to put $5 trillion back on their balance sheets.
The FT article says:
Accounting changes could force U.S. banks to take thousands of billions of dollars back on to their balance sheets in the coming months [...]

Yesterday, in a post entitled “De-leveraging,” I argued that credit writedowns and the resulting deleveraging are highly deflationary. This is the core of the problem with the global financial system. I want to expand a bit on that conversation.
Yesterday, I kept it simple to illustrate the problem with leverage and the need for [...]

This article speaks for itself.
Bill for taxpayers swells by trillionsDeficit far bigger than government estimate
By Dennis CauchonUSA TODAY
The federal government’s long-term financial obligations grew by $2.5 trillion last year, a reflection of the mushrooming cost of Medicare and Social Security benefits as more baby boomers reach retirement.
That’s double the red ink of a year earlier.
Taxpayers [...]