» banks

The banks stocks have had a good run, leading the way along with the tech stocks since October. But having reached the resistance at their peaks of last spring are they leading candidates to lead the way down in any Sell in May and Go Away correction again this year? Recent economic reports from t...

Recent Gallup polls show that Three Years After Crisis, Little Sign of Economic Relief in U.S.  There has been no improvement in underemployment (counting part-time workers) from a year ago Job creation has been in a narrow range since October 2010 Consumer spending has been stagnant since Januar...

Dan Aronoff responds to Tim Congdon’s article, Theories look flimsy if they are misunderstood, published in The Financial Times of London on September 1st. Tim Congdon (pictured above) is the founder of the macroeconomic forecasting consultancy Lombard Street Research. Dan’s response,...

I look at the financial statements of the big banks. 10-Qs and the like. I’ve concluded that, for the most part, it’s a waste of time. There are usually 70 or so pages of numbers and discussion. Tons of data. But what is missing is a realistic appraisal of what the assets are actually worth. Rat...

The Wall Street Journal noted last week: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday ruled out a central bank bailout of state and local governments strapped with big municipal debt burdens, saying the Fed had limited legal authority to help and little will to use that authority. “W...

This article can be read in full here; Federal Reserve welcomes a Brave New Economy – how the Fed is robbing the public in open daylight. Maiden Lane Special Purpose Vehicles purchased toxic mortgages like option ARMs and commercial real estate.. ...

People may not even realize that during the Great Depression, US Federal debt as a percent of GDP did not even reach 40 percent.  Part of this was because the size of government was much smaller in military, public services, and entitlements.  The only time in history that the US as a whole spent ...

Recently, I read up on how Iceland is doing—surprisingly well, actually. Unemployment is down, the Krona is going back up. Good balance of trade, good fiscal balance sheet. Quite the turnaround, after its troubles over the last couple of years— —so then if Iceland is doing OK, why then are we ...

The growth of the too big to fail bank is something that is modern to this era.  In the 1990s there were fewer than 40 institutions that had total assets above $20 billion.  In the late part of the 1980s and 1990s this number was below 20.  The peak was reached in 2005 with 55 institutions havin...

The big banks claim that they have paid back all of the bailout money they received, and that the taxpayers have actually made money on the bailouts. However, as Barry Ritholtz notes: Pro Publica has been maintaining a list of bailout recipients, updating the amount lent versus what was repaid. So...

...

From www.zerohedge.com Tyler Durden on 10/05/2010 JPM’s Delta One team has come up with some great observations on what is the one truly indisputable bubble in the market currently: that of correlations (unlike the bubbles in bonds and stocks where both camps have stern defenders who refu...