That’s how my friend Jeff described the most recent flap over a banker allegedly using religion to defend the industry.
If you haven’t caught it, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was quoted in the Sunday London Times as saying “we have a social purpose,” in referring to the banking industry. What caught everyone’s eye was the [...]

For those of us interested in seeing more robust and knowledgeable regulators in government service, the recent news that Rick Bookstaber is joining the SEC is quite welcome. While I disagree vigorously with much of recent economic policy, I view the Bookstaber news as a signal that the Obama Administration is serious about overhauling America’s [...]

Of the five, United Commercial is pretty darn big ($11.2 billion in assets)
United Commercial Bank San Francisco, CA
As of October 23, 2009, United Commercial Bank had total assets of $11.2 billion and total deposits of approximately $7.5 billion. East West Bank paid the FDIC a premium of 1.1 percent for the right [...]

The Obama Administration is captured. To understand why it has acted as it has, one doesn’t have to take the view that its efforts to save the banking industry were a deliberate attempt to line bankers’ pockets by transferring money from taxpayers to the banking industry. One need merely read the last post I wrote [...]

I was reading Kid Dynamite’s account of the recent Treasury – Finance Blogger meeting after having read a bunch of others (see them all in Abnormal Returns’ Nov 4th links). And I was struck by his characterization of the thinking at Treasury in regards to the financial crisis. I want to highlight two points and [...]

Fitch, the credit rating agency, has just downgraded the sovereign debt ratings for the Republic of Ireland from AA+ to AA-.  That is two notches and is proof-positive that the ratings agencies are worried about the hole in Dublin’s finances.
If you read the Irish press this morning, it is all doom and gloom and has [...]

Nils Pratley’s piece at the Guardian on RBS and Lloyds is very good.  Two quotes sum up the situation quite well.
First, in regards to Lloyds, Pratley says:
Royal Bank of Scotland’s shares down almost 20% in two days; Lloyds’s shares an oasis of tranquillity. Those market reactions tell the story of the banking bailout part 3, [...]

Lloyds are looking to avoid the embrace of government by going to existing shareholders to raise capital and sidestep the draconian break-up solution foisted upon RBS by Neelie Kroes. According to Bloomberg, this is the largest rights issue ever for a British company and equates to $34 billion.
All of this must be excruciating for Lloyds [...]

At the weekend I wrote about Alistair Darling’s about-face on breaking up to big to fail financial institutions. Apparently, this was not a case of labour changing tack and finding regulatory religion, but rather of the European Union imposing its will on the British government. The EU is also dictating policy in Germany, the Netherlands [...]

In a clear break with US economic policy, the UK government have decided that too big to fail is too big to exist. As a result, three large financial institutions now owned at least in part by government are to be dismantled. Moreover, talk of Tesco’s or Virgin getting the assets is yet another momentous [...]