Economy

This comes from Alan Abelson at Barron's talking about seasonal adjustments for February data:   The misleading figures cut across a wide swath of the economy, encompassing housing, manufacturing, employment -- you name it. The…

This just in from the FDIC. Another Friday night special: Omni National Bank, Atlanta, Georgia, was closed today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which then appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as…

Recently, I posted a Wall Street Journal article that suggested smaller banks and new banking enterprise can supply the lion's share of additional credit needed for the U.S. banking system. While President Obama is off meeting the heads of…

The following post is up on Morgan Stanley's website and highlights the degree to which money printing has become the policy tool of choice used by central bankers with which to fight this deflationary threat. I have highlighted the whole…

Jobless claims for the week ending March 21st are in. There were 652,000 initial claims last week, bringing the unemployment roles to a record 5.56 million. Both figures are seasonally-adjusted and reflect minor changes in seasonal…

Here we are just days out from the announcement by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that the Obama Administration will be buying up so-called toxic assets as originally planned by Henry Paulson during the Bush Administration. The initial…

This comes via Angus Robertson at Research Recap. Just as the RMBS post yesterday confirmed, moe writedowns are coming in other credit classes: In a trend likely to accelerate in 2009, the default rate on bank loans to speculative-grade…

I believe we may be seeing the bottom here. Marc Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman does as well. Here is what he has to say: Our baseline expectation is that the pace of contraction of the US economy probably peaked in the horrific…

Yesterday, I posted an item on Naked Capitalism about the bankruptcy of Yamaichi Securities in 1996 as testament to lingering weakness in a country's financial sector if sick financial institutions are not dealt with swiftly. In essence,…

This comes from Swiss daily Le Temps (my translation): Credit Suisse will request the creation of additional conditional capital of 3.98 million at the General Meeting of April 24. The operation is to guarantee to the bank the "strategic…