ShareCNBC’s Diana Olick has the breaking story on alleged fraud in the mortgage industry. She has been writing about this for a few days now.  See Big Banks Accused of Short Sale Fraud – Realty Check with Diana Olick at CNBC’s website.
Basically, second liens on properties like home equity loans have a blocking interest that [...]

ShareCredit Writedowns has made it clear how little will there is in Washington for substantive reform in financial services.  But, let’s be more explicit in this post about what policy makers are doing.  I will use the recent Citigroup TARP brouhaha and changes to the implementation timetable of accounting rules as the vehicle for this [...]

ShareThe Washington Post is reporting that the federal government has quietly decided to exempt Citigroup from a large future tax bill in allowing it to exit the TARP program.  This is a backdoor bailout worth billions and is an outrage that demonstrates the lengths to which government will go to gift these organizations taxpayer money.
At [...]

ShareThere will be no Dubai sovereign default. The government of oil-rich Abu Dhabi surprised investors this morning in announcing a $10 billion rescue package to pay for upcoming obligations of embattled Dubai World.
Below Richard Stovin-Bradford of the Financial Times speaks about Abu Dhabi’s decision to finally come to Dubai World’s rescue.  I share his view [...]

ShareCitigroup has confirmed it will repay $20 billion of the bailout money it has received from government, becoming the latest big bank to exit the TARP (troubled asset relief program). To prevent capital ratios from dipping, the company will issue $17 billion in new shares and $3.5 billion in new debt (“tangible equity units”) to [...]

ShareMatt Taibbi is one of the few commentators in the mainstream media who is not worried about ‘access’ and has, therefore, been free to write much more critically about the economic crisis and reform efforts on Wall Street.
His first piece was a polemic against Goldman Sachs, which triggered a backlash against the venerated Wall [...]

ShareThe news of Willem Buiter’s role as Chief Economist at Citigroup comes via DealBook at the New York Times:
Citigroup said on Monday that it has hired Willem Buiter, a professor at the London School of Economics, as its chief economist, effective January 2010.
Mr. Buiter will replace Lewis Alexander in Citi’s top economics post, in which [...]

ShareCredit Suisse has a note out urging caution on Citigroup shares due to regulatory hurdles.  Their logic bears noting as it can be useful for other U.S.-based banks.
On Monday the CS analysts met with Citi management, who were somewhat cautious. The CS note indicates that regulatory changes in the U.S. are likely to mandate higher [...]

ShareIn a recent post, “How is Citi going to deal with $38 billion in deferred tax assets?,” I pointed to a Reuters article which called into question Citigroup’s ability to earn enough money to prevent its having to take a charge for an incredibly large deferred tax asset. That post generated a response from a [...]

ShareCitigroup has been losing tens of billions of dollars over the past two years as the financial crisis has unfolded. If one considers the government capital that Citi has not paid back, the bank is clearly the weakest of the four largest legacy banking behemoths in the United States. Earnings results this year demonstrate that [...]