ShareAnd you thought the bailouts were over and market discipline might be restored.  Not a chance – the bailouts will continue, come hell or high water. The latest demonstration of this is GMAC, where the government will now be majority owner. GMAC has officially been nationalized. Now the government is running auto financing in addition [...]

ShareThis comes via the NYTimes:
To the Editor:
Re “Volcker’s Voice, Often Heeded, Fails to Sell a Bank Strategy” (front page, Oct. 21):
As another older banker and one who has experienced both the pre- and post-Glass-Steagall world, I would agree with Paul A. Volcker (and also Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England) that some kind [...]

ShareIt seems that not a day goes by when you don’t hear about some asset sale in Citigroup’s far-flung empire. Of all the major too-big-to-fail institutions, it is easily the most troubled: the poster child for everything that is wrong in finance in America.
But, when President Obama’s Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg stepped in to [...]

ShareThis is my translation of a Dutch-language article which appeared today in Belgian daily De Tijd. Let’s see if this news is picked up in the U.S.
Citibank Belgium never should have recommended the controversial Lehman Brothers investments to its customers. So states the writ of the Brussels public prosecutor on the case.
The collapse of Lehman [...]

ShareBack in March when the US Government felt compelled to bail out out Citigroup, Tracy Alloway over at FT Alphaville noticed a curious thing – Citigroup had effectively been nationalized.
No, they were not seized by government, but Citi was controlled by government.  The Feds had 36% of shares outstanding, which in many cases is [...]

ShareWhile Citi and BofA are getting taken to the woodshed for double secret probation, JPMorgan Chase is showing record revenue of $25.6 billion and a large profit of $2.7 billion.  As profit is up 36% from a year earlier and 27% from just last quarter, you can see that JPM is now firing on all [...]

ShareIf you haven’t noticed, the Treasury department seems to be leaking the results of the stress tests to reporters at the Wall Street Journal.  Richard Bove, a well-known bank analyst was on Bloomberg Radio this morning talking to Tom Keene and said he knows they have been leaking.  Yves Smith was on top of this [...]

ShareWith the stress test results coming out, it is a wonderful thing for Citigroup that it has been able to sell its Japanese brokerage unit to Sumitomo Mitsui, and at a good price of $7.8 billion.
Here’s an excerpt of the FT story:
Citigroup on Friday sold its Japanese brokerage and some parts of its local investment [...]

ShareThe leaks about who failed the stress tests are already starting.  Who got a big fat ‘F’?  Apparently, Citi and BofA for starters.  But is that any surprise?
Regulators have told Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. that the banks may need to raise more capital based on early results of the government’s so-called stress [...]

ShareThis comes from French-language Swiss daily Le Temps:
Over 50% of respondents in Geneva surveyed by the HEG School of Management believe that the bankruptcy of a large institution is likely.
The Swiss political world is clearly convinced that it will never let one of the major banks in the country go bankrupt. Despite the rescue of [...]