ShareI was reading Kid Dynamite’s account of the recent Treasury – Finance Blogger meeting after having read a bunch of others (see them all in Abnormal Returns’ Nov 4th links). And I was struck by his characterization of the thinking at Treasury in regards to the financial crisis. I want to highlight two points and [...]

ShareNils Pratley’s piece at the Guardian on RBS and Lloyds is very good.  Two quotes sum up the situation quite well.
First, in regards to Lloyds, Pratley says:
Royal Bank of Scotland’s shares down almost 20% in two days; Lloyds’s shares an oasis of tranquillity. Those market reactions tell the story of the banking bailout part 3, [...]

ShareLloyds are looking to avoid the embrace of government by going to existing shareholders to raise capital and sidestep the draconian break-up solution foisted upon RBS by Neelie Kroes. According to Bloomberg, this is the largest rights issue ever for a British company and equates to $34 billion.
All of this must be excruciating for Lloyds [...]

ShareAt the weekend I wrote about Alistair Darling’s about-face on breaking up to big to fail financial institutions. Apparently, this was not a case of labour changing tack and finding regulatory religion, but rather of the European Union imposing its will on the British government. The EU is also dictating policy in Germany, the Netherlands [...]

ShareIn a clear break with US economic policy, the UK government have decided that too big to fail is too big to exist. As a result, three large financial institutions now owned at least in part by government are to be dismantled. Moreover, talk of Tesco’s or Virgin getting the assets is yet another momentous [...]

ShareJosh Rosner, a Managing Director at Graham Fisher & Company, an independent research for institutional investors in financial service assets, has some pretty strong words for the reform legislation proposed by the Obama Administration and now making its way to Congress. On Bloomberg, he said it favors large too big to fail institutions and hurts [...]

ShareRobert Johnson, director of the Economic Policy Initiative of the Roosevelt Institute, has been extremely critical of the US Government’s handling of matters related to financial services.
This past October 7, he gave testimony at the House of Representatives financial Services Committee expressing some of his concerns.  Not only was his testimony cut short, but [...]

ShareI am listening to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner answer questions before the House Financial Services Committee and he seems to be talking the talk, but his Administration is not walking the walk. 
The bill he is aggressively defending calls for putting a resolution process in place which ostensibly allows the cost of the failure of [...]

ShareThis comes via the FT:
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday decided to drop the widely used West Texas Intermediate oil contract as the benchmark for pricing its oil, dealing a serious blow to the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The decision by the world’s biggest oil exporter could encourage other producers to abandon the benchmark and threatens the [...]

ShareEvery time I hear the word ‘bureaucrat’ used to make a point for or against government’s role in the economy, I cringe. I see this label as unfair and dehumanizing.
I grew up in Washington , D.C. where my parents and their friends rose through the ranks of government, often to the very managerial positions which [...]