September 2008

The House of Representatives in the United States has defeated the proposal originally crafted by U.S. Treasury Secretary to help bail the U.S. out of financial difficulties. My hope is that Congress can get to business and craft a…

I have said before that a systemic response is necessary to deal with the present banking crisis in the United States. This crisis has nothing to do with subprime assets and little to do with things like predatory lending. Those are issues…

I am listening to C-Span where the House of Representatives is debating whether to pass the deeply flawed bailout bill that has been crafted on the heels of major disturbances in financial services. Unfortunately, this bill is not going to…

Connecticut-based Clayton Homes, now owned by Berkshire Hathaway and called Clayton Holdings, (not to be confused with Clayton Homes, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway)*, has warned that Subprime and Alt-A delinquencies in the U.S. are…

Wachovia Corporation has agreed to be bought out by Citigroup in a deal supported by the U.S. government. Exact terms of the deal are still forthcoming, but this could be seen as a best case scenario for a bank which was increasingly under…

Echoing my sentiments in the last post, "The U.S. banking crisis: where are we?," Stephen Roach, the head of Morgan Stanley Asia has made a blistering attack on the U.S. Congress. He has labeled Congress's response to crisis…

This morning Chris Whalen made some comments on CNBC that hit the nail on the head regarding the U.S. banking crisis: there is a huge wave of old-fashioned loan losses coming down the pike. The writedowns we have seen to date are largely…

UPDATE: 9:30 AM ET: This post has been updated to reflect the events surrounding Fortis. On Friday, I warned that European government officials like Peer Steinbrück of Germany should refrain from chastising the U.S. and the U.K. over…

There are some great ideas out there about what the U.S. bailout is all about. Earlier, I mentioned my belief that it had everything to do with marking to market. Just a while ago, I caught a post that has a very intriguing angle on the…

Earlier today I highlighted a number of banks that were under severe selling pressure in their respective home markets. This list included Fortis, Macquarie, NCC, Wachovia and CIT. The UK's Bradford & Bingley is certainly on that list…