Thank God we still have Paul Volcker out there throwing out a few straight comments from time to time. In an era when the likes of Tim Geithner can speak volumes and put themselves on record on both sides of every issue, it’s refreshing to see the great man speak his mind. Today, some comments […]
Posts Tagged ‘banks’
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Wall Street’s Ghoulish New Business
Posted by Tom Lindmark on September 5th, 2009
Those lovable Wall Street ghouls have cooked up a new asset class to securitize — life insurance policies. I am not kidding you, they’re going into the business of buying life insurance policies from sick people, pooling them and then selling the securities to investors. The NYT has the story: The bankers plan to buy […]
Bank Construction Loan Problems Are Getting Worse
Posted by Tom Lindmark on September 5th, 2009
Here’s an update on part of the commercial real estate sector’s loans from Floyd Norris at the NYT. He delves into the growing problems with construction loans. Reports filed by banks with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation indicate that at the end of June about one-sixth of all construction loans were in trouble. With more than […]
Bigger Safer Banks May Be The Way To Go
Posted by Tom Lindmark on August 30th, 2009
The blogosphere has been preoccupied this weekend by the WaPo article about the big banks getting bigger in the wake of the financial crisis. The predominant sentiment seems to be that this is a bad thing. All of the talk reminded me of a post that John Hempton who writes the excellent Bronte Capital blog […]
FDIC Looks To Private Equity To Help Clean Up The Banking Mess
Posted by Tom Lindmark on August 20th, 2009
Although they won’t vote on the final rules until next Wednesday, the FDIC provisions for private equity acquisitions of banks are leaking out. As expected, the government stared the PE guys in the eyes and blinked. According to the WSJ, the agency will soften the amount of capital that a bank owned by PE must […]
The Pettis Banking Theorem
Posted by Tom Lindmark on July 13th, 2009
This is from Michael Pettis’s China Financial Markets. It should probably be like the Pledge of Allegiance used to be in school, a required recitation before the meeting of any bank board of directors. I guess it is time to introduce something that I might call the Pettis Rule of Banking (although I am way, […]
What Is Plan C And How Will They Solve The CRE Conundrum
Posted by Tom Lindmark on July 9th, 2009
The Washington Post has a good article on the Treasury Department’s new task force charged with closing the barn door now that the horses are long gone. It’s called Plan C and their job is to figure out where the next disaster might be lurking in the financial system. That’s how the Post describes their […]
