accounting

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…

The positive earnings announcement by Wells Fargo on Wednesday was marred by a sell recommendation from Dick Bove and a lot of chatter about credit writedowns and mortgage servicing rights (MSRs). I wanted to add a few words about the…

Meredith Whitney downgraded Goldman Sachs from ‘buy’ to ‘neutral’ today.  Previously, Goldman had been her only buy recommended stock, all of the others rated neutral or ‘sell.’  Why did she do it? FT Alphaville has the answer:…

I think it should be abundantly clear that I am bearish on financials given my sell equities call two weeks ago.  After all, it was the banking sector which I was most bullish on in April – August. They are also the stocks that have…

Marshall Auerback here. This is a cross-post from an article I wrote at the finance site New Deal 2.0, a one-stop-shop for current news, sharp analysis and potential solutions of the country’s fiscal crisis. We’ve said it before and…

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…

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,…

Earnings season is upon us and the Swedish banks have begun reporting earnings. Their results have seen huge writedowns that demonstrate large and continued exposure to souring loans in the Baltics. Handelsbanken and Nordea reported…

Every country has a problem child or two in the financial services sector. America has Citigroup and Bank of America. Britain has RBS and HBOS/Lloyds.  And Germany has Hypo Real Estate.  I have been chronicling problems at the…