credit cards

The FT reports: Citigroup is close to agreeing a sale of its German retail banking operations to Credit Mutuel for between €3bn and €5bn, after the French bank outbid Deutsche Bank in a close race, according to bankers close to the…

One reason many pundits feel this particular downturn will be quite nasty is the level of debt consumers have versus their savings. Since July 1982, when the stock market bottomed, Americans have been dis-saving and leveraging up like…

This is a big story coming from the Swiss German-language paper Sonntagszeitung. I originally saw this story in a derivative report from MarketWatch and then again at Calculated Risk. It's not getting enough play as yet in the…

UBS has announced that it expects further massive hits from the credit crisis and subprime meltdown to affect its quarterly earnings to be released soon. However, after raising a huge amount of equity capital, the company is…

As the financial sector melts down, one wonders which institutions are the safest: smaller local banks, money center banks, super regionals, credit unions. Credit unions are certainly something to think about because they offer high rates…

When lenders violate the U.S. federal lending disclosure laws, they may get stuck with the loan losses. This is the case now being argued before the courts in Wisconsin, with major implications on the number of cases to be filed and the…

From the Wall Street Journal: Florida Sues CountrywideThe Florida attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Countrywide Financial Corp. and its chief executive, Angelo Mozilo, alleging that the company engaged in deceptive and unfair…

The Vancouver Sun is on a roll today. They have another post on ICBC that makes for interesting reading. Frankly, I don't know what to make of it. But it makes for a good read. Chinese bank has market cap twice that of JPMorgan First,…

In this weeks Barron's, Louise Yamada writes that financials in the U.S. have not fallen nearly enough in respect to their meteoric rise in the U.S. indices. She predicts further pain in the sector to where they represent less than a…

Peter Schiff, the investor and author, is a controversial figure. He tells of an America that has lost its way through shedding manufacturing and its habit of saving money. His conclusion is that the U.S. is not a place where he wants his…