Monetary System

While the Chinese were adding to their gold stock over the last several years, Europeans were selling – with disastrous results.  Back in 1999, Gold prices were depressed after an almost two-decade bear market.  For some strange…

If you haven’t noticed, the Treasury department seems to be leaking the results of the stress tests to reporters at the Wall Street Journal.  Richard Bove, a well-known bank analyst was on Bloomberg Radio this morning talking to Tom…

This report comes via “The Center for Public Integrity”: The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or bankrolled by banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout…

Last week I wrote a post suggesting that the Germans were getting tired of bailing out their banks and had moved to more draconian solutions to 'fix' the banking sector. Nationalizing Hypo Real Estate this week will be the first move in…

Warren Buffet speaks with CNBC in the lead up to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting.  He talks a bit about stress tests and Citigroup.  When asked about Wells Fargo, he says he administers his own stress tests and that Wells passes "with…

From the London School of Economics website: Below is an audio recording of approximately 78 minutes where Gillian Tett takes us inside the shadowy world of complex finance and derivatives and explains how the business of slicing and…

This is FDIC seizure number 32 (more details here): Cache Valley Bank, Logan, Utah, Assumes All of the Deposits of America West Bank, Layton, Utah America West Bank, Layton, Utah, was closed today by the Utah Department of Financial…

This is number 31 by the FDIC this year. "The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund will be $18.1 million." (See link for further details): North Jersey Community Bank, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Assumes All of the…

With the stress test results coming out, it is a wonderful thing for Citigroup that it has been able to sell its Japanese brokerage unit to Sumitomo Mitsui, and at a good price of $7.8 billion. Here's an excerpt of the FT story:…

The first bank nationalization in German history is about to take place. At issue is Hypo Real Estate (HRE), a troubled Munich-based company that lends to commercial property developers and to build offices, hotels, roads, airports, you…