Archive for the ‘Wall Street’ Category
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
After lobbying successfully to defeat mark-to-market accounting rules, the big banks have organized themselves to beat back another FASB-proposed accounting change. This one would force them to bring off balance sheet assets back onto the balance sheet in 2010. WSJ:
A group that includes the Chamber of Commerce, the Mortgage Bankers ...
Posted in accounting, leverage, Wall Street | 3 Comments »
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Rosenberg's latest below. Most interesting to OA is the following excerpt:
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ran with a certain ‘take’ on the yield curve that deserves a response (Yield Curve May Signal Recovery Ahead): Yes, yes, the curve is very steep with the gap between the yield on the 10-year Treasury ...
Posted in Wall Street | No Comments »
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
There are no revelations in this piece, though it does provide a decent summary of the AIG story.
[Reader note: this post originally had the CBS video embedded, but it seemed to be playing on its own, which I imagine is annoying to readers. Here's the YouTube link.]
Ed Liddy really is ...
Posted in Wall Street | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Guaranty Financial should be included in OA's "bank death watch." With $15 billion in assets and $11.6 billion in deposits as of 12/31, Guaranty Bank would be the largest bank failure in 2009.* Reader Andrew tipped us off to their second "notification of late filing" regarding Q1 financials. Like BankUnited, ...
Posted in accounting, bailout, banking, Wall Street | 3 Comments »
Friday, May 15th, 2009
[Update: The article below has been removed from the Telegraph's site, apparently after the interview subject got cold feet about his commentary. See Zero Hedge for details.]
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's latest column is a good one (ht Yves). He gets a money manager participating in TARP to say what everyone paying attention ...
Posted in bailout, banking, inflation, treasury, Wall Street | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
John Gavin of Disclosure Insight forwards this video of his appearance on CNBC. In it, he questions the integrity of the stress tests.
Gavin published a report on bank goodwill that we featured here on OA: "Using goodwill as a proxy for overall balance sheet integrity, we found reason to question ...
Posted in accounting, banking, politics, Wall Street | No Comments »
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
More great work from WSJ...
Stephen Friedman, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's board of directors, has resigned effectively immediately.
Mr. Friedman notified New York Fed President William Dudley and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke of his decision, in a letter Thursday. Mr. Friedman, who was the subject of ...
Posted in Fed, Wall Street | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Different stress test results are being leaked every day. First Citi was reported to need capital, then BofA, then Regions and KeyCorp, then Wells, then as many as 14 of the 19 being tested. Now Treasury/Fed seem to have settled on 10 needing capital. But the official announcement is still ...
Posted in banking, FDIC, Fed, leverage, treasury, Wall Street | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
According to a report late last night from Bloomberg, six of the nineteen banks that were stress tested by the Fed will need to raise additional capital. Two of the six are known: Citi and BofA.* Both are appealing the ruling. The other four banks aren't known, but SunTrust, KeyCorp ...
Posted in banking, Fed, taxpayer issues, treasury, Wall Street | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 27th, 2009
CBS News is reporting that the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into AIG's downfall:
Sources say investigators are digging into whether Joseph Cassano, the former head of London-based AIG Financial Products, and two of his top deputies - Andrew Forster, an executive vice president, and Thomas Athan, a managing ...
Posted in insurance, prosecutions, Wall Street | 1 Comment »
Friday, April 24th, 2009
Ahead of official announcements regarding stress test results, OA thought we'd publish our latest update for banks' tangible common equity, a metric that is likely to figure prominently.
A recent Reuters report said "U.S. regulators want the top 19 banks being stress-tested to have at least 3% [TCE]." In other words, ...
Posted in banking, leverage, stocks, Wall Street | 11 Comments »
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Below is a letter sent today by NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that outlines how former Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke forced BofA's acquisition of Merrill. Highlights:
BofA knew Merrill's losses were far more substantial than believed prior to closing the merger. It wanted to invoke a "material ...
Posted in banking, treasury, Wall Street | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Nick Gogerty turned me on to OpenSecrets.org, a great website that quantifies influence-peddling. Once upon a time there was the military-industrial complex; while that one's still going strong, it was long ago surpassed by the banking/securities equivalent. (Readers: any thoughts on what we should call this new "complex?")
Anyway, I thought ...
Posted in banking, politics, Wall Street | 7 Comments »
Monday, April 20th, 2009
BofA reported better than expected earnings today, but a quick glance at the income statement shows those profits aren't related to its core banking operations. Strip out trading and the company's pretax profit disappears.
(Click to enlarge)
BofA reported profit of 44¢ per share. Analysts had been expecting 4¢. But if you ...
Posted in banking, stocks, Wall Street | 10 Comments »
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
Geithner's strategy to protect bank creditors at all costs continues.
The administration knows that the banking system will need more capital to survive in its present form. The big banks are sitting on billions more of losses than can possibly be absorbed by their dwindling equity.* This implies that those further ...
Posted in bailout, banking, taxpayer issues, Wall Street | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
(Reader Note: This is Part 2 of OA's discussion of Goldman's results. See Part 1 here).
It's been awhile since there was good news to report from the banking sector. Goldman offered a little today, raising $5 billion in a sale of common stock to investors. The banking system won't be ...
Posted in banking, leverage, stocks, taxpayer issues, Wall Street | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
Lots of interesting things to report regarding Goldman Sachs today.
In this post: accounting gimmickry, higher leverage (tangible assets/tangible common equity calculated below), and silence regarding AIG payments.
In the next post: Goldman raises $5 billion in a sale of stock, which is good news.
Accounting Gimmicks and Tangible Common Equity
With respect to ...
Posted in accounting, banking, leverage, stocks, Wall Street | 6 Comments »
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
Reader CB was kind enough to share a (very) short video clip of the "New Way Forward" protest rally in Chicago yesterday.
Posted in banking, taxpayer issues, Wall Street | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 10th, 2009
This planned nationwide protest should appeal to populists on the left and free marketers on the right, both of which object to the Chinese-water-torture bailouts keeping legacy banks afloat.
The organizers have exactly the right idea to solve the bank crisis:
NATIONALIZE: Experts agree on the means -- Insolvent banks that are ...
Posted in banking, taxpayer issues, Wall Street | 4 Comments »
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
Below are clips of Bill Moyers' must watch interview with Bill Black, a top regulator during the S&L Scandal. Black's biography is here. At the bottom of the post are a few quotes worth highlighting...
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Our [financial] system...became a Ponzi scheme. Everybody was buying a pig in the ...
Posted in bailout, banking, Fed, treasury, Wall Street | 9 Comments »
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Good to see that a major publication is highlighting conflicts of interest inherent in the Geithner plan. OA opined that while banks aren't allowed to buy their own toxic assets under the plan, there's little to stop them from colluding. Citi could buy Goldman's toxic assets in exchange for Goldman ...
Posted in bailout, FDIC, treasury, Wall Street | 5 Comments »
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
The stock market's positive reaction---best 10-day gain since 1938---should leave no doubt about Geithner's bank rescue plan: it's a mammoth taxpayer giveaway to investors. Or so the market believes it's going to be. Forthwith, a tutorial for those not quite clear about the mechanics of the giveaway.
(At the bottom, there's ...
Posted in bailout, banking, stocks, Wall Street | 30 Comments »
Friday, March 6th, 2009
The latest results of Mark Hulbert's long-term newsletter performance rankings are fascinating. His rankings track performance for 160 investor newsletters that have been around since 1980. There's a new leader of the pack, Charles Allmon's Growth Stock Outlook. (Marketwatch)
Allmon has been almost completely out of stocks for more than 20 ...
Posted in funny, stocks, Wall Street | No Comments »
Friday, February 27th, 2009
Treasury and Citi announced their deal this morning by which the government and other preferred stockholders will convert their shares to common equity. No more money is being spent by the government, but shareholders are having their stakes cut to 26% and the government now gets a 36% ownership stake ...
Posted in bailout, banking, leverage, Wall Street | 6 Comments »
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Here's a news flash from Politico:
Former Time Warner and future Citigroup Chair Richard Parsons was just moments ago at the NW Gate to the WH.
“Parsons,” he said when asked by Secret Service to identify himself.
Asked again, he repeated that the last name was “Parsons” and explained that he had a ...
Posted in bailout, banking, politics, Wall Street | No Comments »
