banks

Europe is slowly but inexorably moving toward its own version of TARP—the U.S. “toxic asset relief program”. Rather than sub-prime mortgages and related derivatives, the toxic assets in Europe are sovereign credits, which in some cases –…

Here are a few charts from the credit default swaps market based on 5-year CDS. Here’s what I see.

Europe is way over banked and the chart illustrates the monumental task and cost of recapitalizing some of their largest banks. The size of the largest four banking institutions in France, for example, represents over 300 percent of the…

In a February 2010 Casey Report article titled Is China’s Recovery a Fraud?, my thesis was the $2.1 trillion stimulus package rolled out by Chinese authorities after the 2008/2009 financial crash was leading to enormous malinvestment. As…

Last week Moody's cut the ratings of 12 British lenders, including Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group. This week the other two ratings agencies, S&P and Fitch cut the ratings of 10 Spanish lenders.

Moody's decision to place Popular's ratings on review for possible downgrade is driven by our view that the combined entity emerging after the integration with Pastor is likely to have a weaker credit profile than Popular's standalone…

The answer is it depends who you ask. The New York Times put the question to five of us and our answers varied considerably. If there was any overlap in answers I would say it was our general agreement that the euro zone periphery will…

Whether the writedowns make investors feel relieved because of the alleged balance sheet transparency remains to be seen. However, the balance sheet woes at Erste highlights how active banks within the EU are in cross-border relationships.

If you recall Global Macro Monitor’s post on Europe's Bank Problem last week, the IMF chart showed very well how banks were struggling to wean themselves from short-term funding sources and increase tangible common equity. The Belgians had…

Muddling through means deepening crisis for the euro zone.