Archive for January 16th, 2009

Quote Of The Day

As one gets older, one discovers everything is going to be exactly the same with different hats on.                                                                  Noel Coward

Now We Know Why Thain Was Smiling

Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America, was named Banker of the Year by the American Banker in December. Today it was announced that the federal government was going to inject billions more into Bank of America to keep it alive. The ostensible reason for this bailout is that Bank of America was blindsided […]

Friday Failure

Well it took three weeks but we have our first bank failure of 2009. And the winner is Illinois based National Bank of Commerce. Here are the details from Reuters. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said National Bank had $430.9 million in assets and $402.1 million in deposits. Republic Bank of Chicago will assume the […]

Some Thoughtful Ideas On The Fiscal Stimulus Bill

John Jansen at Across the Curve has some pretty interesting thoughts on the impending fiscal stimulus bill. His comments are obviously deeply felt and given his tendency to stick to facts and not editorialize a great deal have an even greater impact. You will need to go about halfway through his post to get to his […]

Are The Regulators Moving To A RTC Solution?

I put up a post last night that discussed the idea of resurrecting the RTC concept as a means of clearing bad assets out of the banking system. Reuters is reporting today that there seems to be some move afoot to do something along those lines. The details are more than fuzzy with lots of […]

Prices Stayed Flat In December-Deflation For January?

As if you needed any further evidence that deflation is not that far away, the CPI for December provided it. Consumer prices fell by 0.7% and the core rate was basically flat. The numbers are seasonally adjusted. Another number that was released was industrial production. It was down 2% for December versus November. That was […]

Two Big Banks-Two Giant Losses

It’s so late in the day that this is like posting yesterday’s news and given the subjects I suspect most of you have already read more than you care too about these two losers. Anyway here’s the basics of the BofA, Citi earnings debacles. BofA lost $1.79 billion for the quarter but did turn a […]