accounting

This comes via Marc Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman and is an even-handed review of what just happened: As widely expected FASB modified fair value accounting rules. The key seems to be for assets for which there is not a market. The…

Of course you know I think credit cards are going to produce a tsunami of writedowns, right? Things are looking more and more like that tsunami is right around the corner: Credit card writedowns soared to record levels in February,…

You might have thought house price declines were slowing. I certainly had hoped so. The latest data from January 2009 from the S&P/Case-Shiller index suggests this is wishful thinking as year-on-year declines hit another record of…

Dunfermline, the largest uilding society in Scotland was forced into the hands of the Nationwide.  This happened only after the U.K. government was forced to pony up 1.6 billion pounds - not the best of news for Gordon Brown before a major…

This weekend has seen two major European financial institutions forced into the hands of government and a third on the verge of major new asset writedowns and job cuts. The events highlight the fragility of European banking and the need…

This comes via Angus Robertson of Research Recap: The performance of auto loan securities has been mixed, but Standard & Poor’s Credit Research points out that overall ratings on the ABS have been remarkably stable in spite of…

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…

Today, I want to make the case for seeing writedowns as central to this global downturn. To do so, we need to rewind and compare what is going on today with what we have experienced in the past. Drawing on this comparison, I can…

While most people have their attention tuned to the spectacle over at AIG, financial institutions in Europe are having their own difficulties. In the last day, I have seen news stories of European banks looking for ways to raise capital in…

Everyone is talking about marking to market as if its elimination is a silver bullet. So far as the economics goes, I am not sure that mark to market is such a big deal. The whole point of the banks is to make loans and hold them. Look at…