Posted by seumasach on September 18, 2008
The last pocket of resistance has now folded. The policy is now confirmed: “Save the bankers, sink the pound”. The flight to safety has begun and the price of gold will rise dramatically.
Ashley Seager
18th Septmber, 2008
The Bank of England yesterday reversed its decision to end an emergency lending scheme for banks next month, citing the turmoil in money markets this week since Lehman Brothers collapsed.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, financial collapse, Save the bankers, sink the pound! | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 16, 2008
Bank of America is buying Merrill Lynch for $45 billion, AIG needs an emergency $40 billion bail-out from Uncle Sam to stay afloat, and Lehman Bros is kaput. Whew! The financial world has been turned upside-down overnight and the opening bell hasn’t even rung at the NYSE. It’ll be a rough day of trading ahead. Paul Krugman summed up the prevailing feeling of anxiety on Wall Street like this:
“Will the U.S. financial system collapse today, or maybe over the next few days? I don’t think so — but I’m nowhere near certain. You see, Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank, is apparently about to go under. And nobody knows what will happen next.”
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, financila collapse, Lehman | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 16, 2008
“Goldman’s profits are likely to have been hit by a dramatic fall-out in commodity prices in August, an area in which the bank is known to take significant positions”
Neatly sidestepping the sub-prime market Goldman look to have been caught up in the commodities bubble. Note that oil has hit $92 on Asian markets this morning: the bubble has burst.
James Quinn
16th September, 2008
Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein is today expected to reassure shareholders in the top-tier investment bank about the outlook despite the turmoil facing financial markets following the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, financila collapse, Goldman | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 6, 2008
Ellen Brown
5th September, 2008
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee nearly half the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market. Not long ago, they were the darlings of Wall Street, ranking next to U.S. bonds as among the safest and most conservative investments in the world. They are called “government-sponsored enterprises” (GSEs), although they are entirely privately owned and specifically disclaim government backing on their prospectuses. The market has taken these disclaimers with a wink and a nod and has assumed that the GSEs are “too big to fail,” forcing the government to save them from their reckless investment schemes. Fannie and Freddie’s preferred shares have been considered so safe that banking regulators let banks count them in the capital required as a cushion against loan losses. This is now proving to be a serious problem, because both the common and preferred shares of the distressed duo are suddenly plunging. Between May 15 and August 25, Fannie’s common shares lost 77% of their value, while its preferred shares lost 58.8% in that short time. Freddie Mac’s preferred shares plunged even more, down 65.5%.1 That could be a disaster for many banks, which are loaded to the gills with these preferred shares. Banks already reeling from losses on mortgages and mortgage-backed securities are now being hit at the core, shrinking their capital base. Loss of bank capital works as leverage in reverse: at a capital requirement of 10%, $1 lost in capital wipes out $10 in loans. Read the rest of this entry » |
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, fanny and freddie, natonalisation | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on September 1, 2008
DIC chief is facing exceptional challenges
By Eric Dash
and Geraldine Fabrikant
The New York Times Salt Lake City Tribune
Article Last Updated: 08/31/2008 12:25:23 AM MDT
WASHINGTON – Sheila Bair anticipated the mortgage crisis long before most other regulators. But she never dreamed it would wreak so much havoc on so many banks.
More than a year after the credit crisis first flared, Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., warned last week that the outlook for the ailing banking industry was bad – and getting worse.
The swelling tide of toxic home loans is proving to be even more worrisome than initially feared, Bair said. She is struggling to clean up the mess and forestall home foreclosures with a plan to ease loan terms for hard-pressed homeowners.
”It is going to be a slog to work though this, but there is no easy way to do it,” Bair said about her plan during an interview in her office here. ”We haven’t seen the trough of the credit cycle yet.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, FDIC | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 31, 2008
The above headline needs qualification: Bank of England to show no mercy as firms go under- unless they are banks
By John Lawless and Simon Evans
Independent
Sunday, 31 August 200
The Bank of England is expected to ignore pleas for a cut in rates this week, despite warnings that the number of companies set to go under in Britain this year could reach 17,000.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on August 29, 2008
Market Scan
FDIC Under Pressure Forbes
Carl Gutierrez, 08.27.08, 5:55 PM ET
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, the government’s designated spotter, is starting to sweat under the pressure of so many firms sitting in hot water.
The number of troubled U.S. banks rose to 117 in the second quarter, and it’ll get worse if the housing slump and credit crisis continue, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, commonly know as the FDIC. Specifically, the number of “problem” lenders increased in the second quarter to 117, with $78.3 billion of assets, from 90 lenders with $26.3 billion of assets three months earlier. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by smeddum on August 28, 2008
Who Really “Insures” the FDIC?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 – Vol. 10, No. 204
Today’s comment is by David Newman, Market Analyst for The Sovereign Society.
Insurance is one of those things that’s supposed to help you sleep at night. It’s right up there with putting locks on your doors and installing airbags in your teenager’s new car. It should mean that you’ve got one less thing to worry about.
So when you find out that the insurance policy itself may be at risk, it’s basically like hearing all those precautions were just a huge waste of time.
All chances of a good night’s sleep are gone forever. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, FDIC | 1 Comment »
Posted by smeddum on August 24, 2008
US bank closures done quietly; eye to a sale
Reuters
John Poirier
video link to latest bank closure
WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (Reuters) – When a U.S. bank fails it doesn’t die alone. Months earlier, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp experts have usually slipped into town to see if they can save the institution or at least find an eager buyer. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 18, 2008
“There is no such thing as a free bailout.”
Colby Cosh
18th July, 2008
Dammit, someone has to say it: Shouldn’t the first clue that something was wrong with Fannie Mae and Freddie Machave been their names? Surely a country has to be courting trouble when it lets its secondary mortgage market be captured by companies that sound like things your grandmother would say instead of cursing. “Oh, Freddie Mac! Looks like we’ll have to increase the money supply again, Paw.”
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 16, 2008
“No one who has wealth or assets in any form, in any currency, is safe – you might as well consider yourself as being at least knee-deep in the shark infested waters of the financial markets.”
By Julian Delasantellis
As he was winding down his days of dissoluteness and reprobation, the 4th century Christian philosopher Augustine of Hippo, commonly referred to as St Augustine, begged for just a few more rounds of divinely sanctioned debauchery. “Lord,” he cried out to the heavens, “Give me chastity and continence, but not quite yet.”
Currently, as a result of the ever-worsening crises in US housing finance, a crisis being illustrated by the absolute devastation of the shares in the US government’s semi-private semi-public secondary market mortgage wholesalers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and in the government seizing control of mortgage lender IndyMac in one of the largest bank failures in American history, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke must be raising higaze to the heavens for a similar entreaty.
“Lord, give me credibility as, and the ability to be, an inflation fighter – but not quite yet.”
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In These New Times 