Post Tagged with: "financial statements"
Financial Shock and Awe in China
To sum up: Non-performing loans look to be a full 10% of Chinese GDP. That’s high. The Chinese government is confronting this writedown problem head-on. While a number of analysts have opinions on the measures just taken, it is far from clear what the effect will be on China and the global economy
Westwood’s Alpert Says US Home Prices Will Fall Further
Dan Alpert, managing partner at Westwood Capital, thinks that banks are under-reserving and that this will come back to haunt them when house prices fall in "the final leg down" of the housing crisis. That is the right view if you read between the lines of the last post from Annaly Capital Management. I am
Does History Repeat, Rhyme or Just Have Coincidences?
This week the following graph from http://www.chartoftheday.com http://www.chartoftheday.com/ has been annotated by the author to highlight similarities of the current era for stocks to a corporate earnings pattern traced out nearly a century ago. Annotation by John B. Lounsbury August 20, 2010 The time scale of the current era (right hand oval) is compressed relative
RBS paying large bonuses while Commerzbank bankers get zero
Over the past few days, a number of major European banks have announced earnings results. Two of the most dismal results were registered at the British company Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and at Germany’s Commerzbank. However, the similarity ends there because, while Commerzbank investment bankers received no bonus, the bankers at government-controlled RBS received
Greek financial debacle threatens Swiss banks
There are a lot of interlocking threads in the Greek saga. One consistent theme that ties all of the different threads together is the fragility of complex systems. In our globalized and complex world of finance and banking, every major actor has innumerable ties to other major actors such that devastating collapses in one entity
The coming wave of second mortgage writedowns
In the lead-up to the credit crisis, I really didn’t write a considerable amount about second mortgages despite my focus on credit writedowns. At that time, I was more focused on writedowns from securitized mortgage paper (and later construction loans and commercial real estate because of the stress these loan types put on regional financials).
Pension execs connect pension problems to hiring
While many companies can use the huge increase in market returns to mask a looming pension crisis, the problem is still acute. Because of actuarial accounting, pension funding problems are pro-cyclical. Companies look flush with cash during upswings to the point where the pensions can actually goose earnings. During downswings, this process works in reverse.
On releasing Citi from TARP and banking by accounting subterfuge
Credit 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
U.S. forfeiting billions in future taxes to let Citi repay TARP
The 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.
John Hussman: Expect meagre returns in an overvalued market
John Hussman’s latest weekly contribution contends that the market is now extremely overvalued, to the point where long-term returns will likely be low. As of last week, the S&P 500 nearly matched the richest valuations, on normalized earnings, ever observed prior to 1995. While it is quite true that valuations have been higher for the
Expect continued losses from Nordic bank exposure outside home market
Moody’s anticipates continued losses at Danske Bank, SEB, and Swedbank due to large exposure outside of the Nordic markets. In particular, exposure in the Baltics is likely to lead to continued writedowns for Nordic banking institutions. The Irish Independent reports: Danske Bank A/S, SEB AB and Swedbank AB will keep suffering losses from their non-Nordic
Reaching for yield in the post-TARP era
When I read Yves Smith’s recent comments on Bank of America’s repayment of its TARP funds, I couldn’t help but think of a post I wrote six months ago called "Asymmetric information and corporate governance in bank bailouts." The gist is of the post is about the same as Yves’ and it was inspired by