Monetary System

In the video below, William Black, a well-known Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City and former top regulator at of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the S&L crisis, holds court.…

Today, Swedbank, a Swedish bank with huge Baltic loan loss exposure, surprised investors with a second rights issue in less than a year.  In going to investors for more money, the company said its doing so in a fully underwritten deal…

Fannie Mae has the luxury of marking its accounts more accurately because they have no fear of being nationalized or going bust since they already have hit the wall.  So, when we read the latest quarterly results from Fannie Mae, we are not…

Thank goodness someone has some sense. Manhattan Federal District Court Judge Jed Rakoff refused to approve Monday’s Bank of America’s deal with the SEC be cause it may be unfair to the public to accept the settlement. Bank of America was…

Bank of America’s story in the BofA-Merrill saga has always sounded dubious at best.  Ken Lewis has always claimed he was doing what was right by shareholders and America, that Gentle Ben and Hammering Hank coerced him into the Merrill…

Here are the latest FDIC seizures: First State Bank of Altus, Altus, Oklahoma Total assets of $103.4 million and deposits of approximately $98.2 million Estimated cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF): $25.2 million. Integrity…

In truth this is really two failures, but one had six subsidiaries so it counts as seven.  Here are the failures: The first bank is in New York. Waterford Village Bank, Clarence, New York, was closed by the New York State Banking…

This is part two of the End of Wall Street series the Wall Street Journal is producing. Chapter Two of A WSJ series: What was going through the minds of CEOs, corporate boards, fund managers and mortgage lenders as they created…

This is a huge deal.  FASB is considering requiring all financial assets be valued at fair values on balance sheets.  Hat tip Andrew. Bloomberg reports (notice my highlighting in bold): The scope of the FASB’s initiative,…

Here’s a credit-crisis video retrospective from the Wall Street Journal. It is chapter one of a three part series.  Notice the Wall Street meme that subprime borrowers caused the crisis which is patently false.  It’s all about…