crisis

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…

In the wake of a few significant elections in the American states of New York, New Jersey and Virginia, a lot of pundits are putting their spin on what these elections mean for Barack Obama and his political agenda. On the whole, I find…

The Obama Administration is captured. To understand why it has acted as it has, one doesn’t have to take the view that its efforts to save the banking industry were a deliberate attempt to line bankers’ pockets by transferring money from…

I was reading Kid Dynamite's account of the recent Treasury - Finance Blogger meeting after having read a bunch of others (see them all in Abnormal Returns’ Nov 4th links). And I was struck by his characterization of the thinking at…

At the weekend I wrote about Alistair Darling’s about-face on breaking up to big to fail financial institutions. Apparently, this was not a case of labour changing tack and finding regulatory religion, but rather of the European Union…

If you have been wondering whether a statistical recovery is at hand, today’s ISM manufacturing report should be the clincher.  The report was definitely bullish with the ISM index rising to 55.7 and sub-components supporting the…

Remember the iconic Depression-era movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which Jimmy Stewart plays the wholesome young man in Washington out to do good? Well, Mr. Smith could just as easily have been your friendly banker at Washington…

I just came across a post on Zero Hedge called “An Overview Of The Fed's Intervention In Equity Markets Via The Primary Dealer Credit Facility.” Now, that’s a mouthful. As far as I can discern, the post’s purpose is to expose alleged…

The Seattle Times has a must-read piece on Washington Mutual today which reveals a lot of the fine detail on how the company was run and what led to its demise (hat tip calculated Risk). As with many of the other busted financial giants…

John Gapper had a good piece in the FT yesterday called “Goldman should be allowed to fail.” His conclusion is that Goldman is allowed to game the system. It is a broker-dealer masquerading as a bank. It takes on much more risk than a…