In a debt drugged, liquidity obsessed world, a change in interest rates can go from affecting profitability to affecting solvency very quickly. And it’s not just the banks that are high on cheap credit.
February 27th, 2010 | Nickolai Hubble | 0 comments | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "banks"
Obama Proposals Prevent Any One Bank from Becoming Too Big to Fail
U.S. stocks fell two percent after suffering a surprise attack from the regulatory flank by President Obama. The Obama proposals are designed to prevent any one bank from becoming “too big to fail.” They aim to achieve this – in ways not pleasing to the investment banking industry – by cracking down on proprietary trading and bank sponsorship of hedge funds.
January 22nd, 2010 | Dan Denning | 3 comments | Continued
Surge in Chinese Bank Lending in 2009 Leads to Fall in Bank Capital
And while we’re on the subject of China we should relay that Citic Pacific Ltd, which is an arm of China’s largest state-owned company, is set to spend more on magnetite iron ore projects in Australia. Magnetite is a lower grade ore than the hematite ores that BHP and Rio have all but locked up in the Pilbara.
November 26th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 2 comments | Continued
Is It Really the End of the Dollar Carry Trade?
But as you’ll learn today, the bankers, the Fed, the media…the whole lot of them…have learned nothing from last year. The hangover was just beginning to set in, so everyone began drinking again heavily. And now the party is wild and out of control. Even the cops are drunk.
October 27th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 4 comments | Continued
Warren Buffett: People Do Not Make Money by Betting Against the US Economy
What we saw was an over-stretched empire getting ready to snap. But we were also allowing ourselves to be lazy. Rather than deconstruct the capital structure of the world’s largest economy, we decided to sell the whole damned thing.
October 12th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 5 comments | Continued
Can Governments and Central Banks Prevent More Credit Writedowns?
Are we changing our tune, then, about what to expect from markets? Not one bit. But the question now is timing. The collapse of 2008 was so severe because of the sudden reduction in leverage in the financial sector. As assets fell in value, the most highly leveraged firms (or lenders who raised money by selling debt) went out of business.
October 12th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 34 comments | Continued
Will Gold Make Higher Highs From Here?
What’s more, the emergence of the gold exchange traded funds (ETFs) has put a huge portion of the gold market in a very small number of hands. If the ETFs sell…who will they sell to? Or more succinctly, a lot of the gold demand is coming from a few institutions. If other institutions (central banks and sovereign wealth funds) don’t pick up the slack, there will be more sellers than buyers and prices will fall.
October 7th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 3 comments | Continued
You Can Have a Deadly Depression and Dizzying Levels of Inflation Simultaneously
“Inflation can and did occur during a depression, and that inflation was strictly a monetary phenomenon…”
September 24th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 5 comments | Continued
US Dollar As Reserve Currency Not Working Very Well
Their report makes some of the right noises, “The dollar-based reserve system is increasingly challenged.” Hmm, a slight understatement there. If “increasingly challenged” is a euphemism for “dead” then we’d agree.
But we don’t think that’s what they mean.
September 10th, 2009 | Kris Sayce | 38 comments | Continued
The More Money in a Financial System the Less Each Unit is Worth
For the last 10 years, the money supply in the United States has expanded at roughly twice the rate of GDP growth. And the Fed doubled its balance sheet in just the last 18 months.
September 8th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 1 comment | Continued
The Banks Should Hold More Capital
The US system of capitalism has become a system where the capitalists have no capital. The big banks have too little in savings…not enough ‘buffers’ to protect them from unexpected crises. They made a fortune during the boom years…
September 7th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
Seems Everyone is Speculating on the Banks
“Public assistance enables the world’s largest 15 financial firms to return to the capitalization they had in September 2008,” the article continues. The largest of the largest, HSBC, is now judged to be worth $186 billion, according to the stock market.
September 2nd, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 2 comments | Continued
One in Four US banks Announce Unprofitable Quarter
“Friday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal picks up on the theme of the long road of pain ahead for bank shareholders in the US,” colleague Dan Amoss tells us. “In ‘Banks on Sick List Top 400,’ the WSJ details several ugly highlights from the latest FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile, published last Thursday.
September 1st, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities Are Back
Today’ Age reports that the Trust will try to raise $280 million from the issue. Some of that will be used to pay off nearly $450 million in securities that mature in December. Hmm. Selling more debt to pay off old debt. There’s never a bad time for that if you don’t have cash.
August 27th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 6 comments | Continued
Roubini Says United States Will Climb Out of Recession Towards End of Year
Maybe he will be right. Maybe this downturn will resemble Japan’s multiple recessions over the last two decades. Or maybe it will be a single, deeper and longer lasting slump – like the one in the early ’30s. We don’t know. Either way, it should be thought of as a depression…
August 19th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
