From the category archives:
The official results of the banking sector stress test have not yet been released. But the Wall Street Journal is reporting today that two potential casualties will be Citigroup and Bank of America. Specifically, the Journal says the feds want both institutions to raise billions of dollars more in capital, though the banks are reportedly [...]
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While there have been some “green shoots” emerging in the residential real estate market in select areas, there is nothing of the sort happening in the commercial real estate (CRE) market. Commercial lags residential during declines and recoveries, and I believe we are still deeply mired in a CRE cesspool. Of course, some of us [...]
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The International Monetary Fund just released its latest Global Financial Stability Report. You can download the entire, mammoth 237-page PDF here if you’re so inclined. But the headline is that the IMF has increased its estimate of the ultimate cost of the credit crisis. The organization now says the crisis could ultimately cost $4.1 trillion [...]
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The combination of the expiration of temporary foreclosure moratoriums, rising unemployment, and falling home prices all combined to drive foreclosure filings to a record high in March, according to RealtyTrac (see chart above). Filings surged 17.4% from 290,631 in February to 341,180 in March. On a year-over-year basis, filings are up a hefty 46.4%.
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The attitude of the administration toward the results of the so-called “stress test” of the country’s 19 biggest banks seems to change every day. Will the results be kept secret? Will we just get aggregate data, or will we get an institution-by-institution breakdown? How much data will the public be given? Those are questions that [...]
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There’s an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal this morning. It talks about how banks that have received TARP funds are raising rates on various loan products and continuing to push loans that consumer advocates view as toxic. Other recent stories have highlighted how many borrowers continue to be cut off by their banks.
These [...]
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The seemingly endless line of companies looking for taxpayer-funded bailouts just keeps getting longer, and the folks in Washington show no sign of forcing anyone out of it. This morning, we’ve learned that life insurance firms will receive aid from the TARP.
From the Wall Street Journal:
“The Treasury Department has decided to extend bailout funds to [...]
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Here’s a good read over at The Daily Beast on the Obama banking recovery plan (my emphasis added). An excerpt:
“Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, and a host of other economists—myself among them—spent the late 1990s yelling at Japanese and other Asian officials to clean up their banking crises. A typical conversation would end with the American [...]
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Once-lofty expectations for the upcoming Group of 20 meeting are heading south in a hurry. U.S. and European policymakers are having trouble agreeing on the proper combination of bank bailouts, economic stimulus, and so on. It’ll be interesting to see how the markets react (in early trading, “risk aversion” trades — stocks down, bonds up, [...]
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You have to love the way this public-private asset purchase plan is constructed. Ingenious how the administration has figured out a way to massively subsidize the banking industry and claim that’s not what it’s doing. This FT article makes clear what is really going on (I have read similar critiques at several other blogs). Here [...]
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