Reader M&M called my attention to a Bloomberg story I was really hoping to avoid, “U.S. Sets a Six-Month Deadline for New Bank Capital“. The opening: The government set a six-month deadline for the biggest 19 U.S. banks to raise any new capital deemed necessary after a mandatory review of their balance sheets. The regulators […]
Read more...Nassim Nicholas Taleb, of Black Swan fame, joins the chorus in attacking asymmetrical bonuses, the “head’s I win” if things go well, “tails you lose” syndrome. An oversight in this piece is that this approach nevertheless worked reasonably well in the old Wall Street. Why? The big reason was that you had owner/managers whose capital […]
Read more...To be honest, I’m not quite sure how to read this Wall Street Journal piece, since this is a spat between two parties, with a “he said, she said” quality to it. However, the title, “Citigroup Chafes Under U.S. Overseers:” suggests a bias in favor of Citigroup.”Overseers” is a weak word, suggesting Uncle Sam really […]
Read more...Japan has been hit by a double-whammy: the global fall in trade, made worse by its (formerly) rising yen. While deteriorating conditions in China generally get more media attention, the falloff in Japan is stunning and serious. Japan has spent more than a decade stagnant, but the overall growth figures mask the fact that the […]
Read more...Lifeline for endangered albatross BBC First evidence of a supernova in an ice core physics arXiv Thousands queue at New York job fair Financial Times The Media Continue to Ignore Welfare for Citi Shareholders Beat the Press AIG’s Liddy May Shift Strategy as Asset Sales Stall Bloomberg and As A.I.G.’s Losses Grow, Its Survival Options […]
Read more...Tech layoffs: The scorecard CNet (hat tip reader John) Shiller: House Prices Still Way Too High Clusterstock U.S. Consumers Driven Away From Drink Spending: Chart of Day Bloomberg (hat tip reader John). Gee, I am not part of this trend, although it would be better if I were. US natural gas prices could hit $2/MMBtu […]
Read more...Sports fans, your humble blogger earnestly endeavors to keep up with the machinations of of big financial firms to extract rents from the poor chump taxpayer, usually by invoking scary images of the financial version of nuclear winter. Since we seem to be heading there anyhow, I’m at a loss to explain why these tactics […]
Read more...Guess the continuing deterioration in the stock market is beginning to capture the attention of the financial regulators. The Treasury, FDIC, OCC, OTS, and Federal Reserve issued a joint statement just after 4:00 PM (hat tip reader Steve). Some key bits (boldface ours); A strong, resilient financial system is necessary to facilitate a broad and […]
Read more...‘Superguns’ of Elizabeth I’s navy BBC Court Enforces FOIA Request to Release TARP Details Anthony Freed Microsoft wants refund from some laid off workers CNet Fire Lloyd Blankfein Independent Accountant Clinton Encourages China to Keep the Yuan Undervalued Dean Baker Beijing’s Olympic building boom becomes a bust LA Times (hat tip reader Michael) The Collapse […]
Read more...Let’s see. Citigroup has gotten $45 billion of TARP funds, and backstops on a net of roughly $250 billion of crappy loans after Ciit’s first loss and allowing for the split between Uncle Sam and Citi on the balance. And it is pretty unlikely that we have seen the end of Citi’s funding needs. GM […]
Read more...We have been skeptical that the pending Treasury stress tests on banks, designed to ascertain their state of health, were inadequately staffed and therefore could not do the job properly. Our big concerns were that they had too few bodies to test financial data versus underlying documentation adequately (usually done on a sampling basis) and […]
Read more...We are back to weekend melodrama, but this one is starting on Sunday night, not a Thursday or Friday. Not good. Citigroup is apparently throwing itself on the mercy of the court, um, taxpayers, once again, but even the bankster favoring Geithner/Summers team know that the public at large is losing patience with financial firm […]
Read more...Runaway horse in French capital BBC (see another video here, hat tip reader Michael T). Look for the way the gendame catches Garabaldi. Surveillance cams help fight crime, city says Chicago Sun-Times. Big Brother is coming to the Midwest. Check the Numbers: The Case for Due Diligence in Policy Formation Fraser Institute (hat tip Felix […]
Read more...In a post yesterday, some readers bandied about the idea of developing some reasonably thought out proposals for “nationalization” or “receivership” or “pre-privatization”, possibly on an open source model of some sort. (Aside: those who know how Linux was developed know that it wasn’t free form; Linus Torvalds exercised control, one might think of it […]
Read more...Some readers and fellow bloggers have been anticipating an over-the-weekend resolution of some sort for Citigroup and/or Bank of America, given the impressive fall (admittedly from already distressed levels) in their stock prices over the last ten days. I could well be proven wrong, but I didn’t expect it this weekend, and I don’t see […]
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