UBS reported a loss of 358 million Swiss Francs ($332 million) after writing down a further $5.1 billion in debt.
In my post yesterday, I said the market expected as much. But, more importantly UBS has confirmed plans also mentioned in yesterday’s post of splitting the bank up into three autonomous units – effectively ending the [...]

I wish it were not so, but it is increasingly obvious that every part of the financial sector in the United States is infected by this menacing plague of credit losses and writedowns. Now it comes to light that the five biggest U.S. credit unions have lost so much on residential mortgage-backed securities that [...]

Let’s hope the UBS earnings report is not as bad as Merrill. If you recall, Citi, Merrills and UBS are the three worst offenders when it comes to writedowns. Given the recent asset sales by RBS and Merrill, one would expect to see some real ugliness at UBS tomorrow. Stay tuned.
The pressure [...]

I’m getting a lot of mail about the Rosenberg post and my mea culpa on inflation. To be blunt, a lot of you think I’m out to lunch and Rosenberg is too — after all inflation is over 5% and that’s just the bogus CPI measure our governments release.
But, alas, there is method to [...]

Lloyds TSB announced first half results, a 70% fall in pre-tax profits. Yet, Lloyds’ management was confident enough to raise the dividend 2p a share to 11. 4p. This strikes me as completely out of touch with market conditions. In the midst of a credit crisis and on the back of a [...]

Last week, we heard that Australia’s NAB had to take a massive writedown due to American CDO exposure (apparently triggered by Merrill Lynch). Yesterday, we heard about Australia’s ANZ Bank taking it on the chin to the tune of $1.2 million Australian.
Now, it’s New Zealand’s turn with the problems at the New Zealand Guardian [...]

I fully anticipate this will happen, so the question becomes: what will the Fed do?
The FDIC stepped in at two banks over the weekend, 1st National Bank of Nevada and First Heritage Bank. These banks failed as a result of construction loans in real estate bust regions of the US. No, surprise there. [...]

After the United States started its ‘Guns and Butter’ exercise under President Johnson and eventually de-linked from gold in 1971, its economy has become ever more leverage- and debt-propelled. Interestingly, the result has been a diminishing marginal return for each new dollar of debt.

1st National Bank of Nevada and First Heritage Bank, operating in Nevada, Arizona and California were taken over by the FDIC on Friday. They always wait until Friday night to do their business. This marks the first FDIC closure action since the FDIC closed the much bigger IndyMac.
Bad loans to developers and home [...]

The day is almost over for the market (thank goodness) and it seems that financal service investors are in panic mode again. The market is down over 250 points and some shares in financial services are down over 15%. What gives?
As we may soon find out, non-market based economic solutions, like the infamous SEC [...]