banks

The big news this week is that writedowns have moved near trillion dollar territory. As all of the banks report earnings and come clean about losses, the figures are staggering. The largest writedowns came from the GSEs with Fannie Mae…

The financial sector bailout continues on track. Meanwhile, financial services sector losses have hit $919 billion. This summer, I had been of the view that we would see $1.5 trillion in losses before this was over. However, this is…

Last night an article by Niels Jensen of Absolute Return Partners caught my eye. In it, he made a very strong case for worrying about European bank exposure to emerging markets and its potential for creating systemic risk. I would like to…

The U.S. government is throwing money at the financial sector like nobody's business. The latest salvo in this ridiculous affair comes in the form of more money for AIG. Rather than prattle on about how shambolic the U.S. bailout has…

It is now a ritual. Every Friday night the FDIC announces which banks have been playing fast and loose with our money and need to be shut down. This week, there are two banks, Security Pacific of Los Angeles and Franklin of Houston.…

This past week I have been particularly distracted by the political headlines in the run-up to the U.S. Presidential election, so I apologize if I have missed a few stories in the financial press.The writedowns do continue unabated and we…

This past weekend, the FDIC closed yet another bank, Freedom Bank of Bradenton, Florida. The bank had total assets of $287 million and total deposits of $254 million. Super regional Fifth Third, based in Cincinnati, Ohio will take over…

By now, you are familiar with the carry trade, where one borrows in one's own currency in order to invest in higher yielding foreign assets, often times with significant leverage. The Japanese were famous for making this trade in…

This week, I can practically repeat what I said last week verbatim - so, I will.Writedowns continued unabated despite the easing global credit markets. While we should see a bear market rally due to this easing, the ill effects of a global…

As with everything else, the bailout of the U.S. banking system is going to have unintended consequences. One of them seems to be giving exactly those firms that wasted billions of shareholder money a chance to double down. Flush with…