Monetary System

Is this propaganda? I just received this e-mail from the FDIC’s consumer news with the title above. Personally, I never doubted that unbrokered deposits under $250,000 are safe at U.S. depositary institutions. But, the natural sceptic in me…

Below is a CNBC video with Meredith Whitney in which she joins Nouriel Roubini on the doom and gloom parade.  Over the summer, both Whitney and Roubini were fairly optimistic. In June I said: Think of the consensus forecast as an…

Orion Bank, Naples, Florida As of October 31, 2009, Orion Bank had total assets of $2.7 billion and total deposits of approximately $2.1 billion. The FDIC accepted a 1.5 percent discount from IBERIABANK on the deposits of the failed…

The Jamie Dimon piece in today’s Washington Post is a must-read. Dimon, head of behemoth JPMorgan Chase makes the best case for not breaking up large too-big-to-fail financial institutions. His idea: set up a robust resolution process and…

In a recent post, “How is Citi going to deal with $38 billion in deferred tax assets?,” I pointed to a Reuters article which called into question Citigroup’s ability to earn enough money to prevent its having to take a charge for an…

Citigroup has been losing tens of billions of dollars over the past two years as the financial crisis has unfolded. If one considers the government capital that Citi has not paid back, the bank is clearly the weakest of the four largest…

Bond insurer Ambac Financial has warned bankruptcy is a distinct possibility, sending its shares plummeting more than 30% today. What is intriguing about this pending bankruptcy is how this company escaped bankruptcy in 2008, was…

Columbia University Professor and former Federal Reserve official Frederic Mishkin wrote a much-discussed Op-Ed in the Financial Times yesterday. In it, he asks Are potential asset-price bubbles always dangerous? He answers this…

This is pretty funny. Hat Tip Rob Johnson and New Deal 2.0. Source Money performed by Cypress Hill - Answers.com What does "dollar, dollar bill, y'all" mean? – Yahoo! Answers

That’s how my friend Jeff described the most recent flap over a banker allegedly using religion to defend the industry. If you haven’t caught it, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was quoted in the Sunday London Times as saying “we have a…