Sometimes there is just lunacy written about financial companies, and sometimes there is lunacy inside of financial companies. Forget about the argument that there are usually both for a minute. Yesterday we…
No one with an abacus, a calculator, or a mainframe will ever know what the global credit crisis has cost in real money. Lost jobs means lost tax revenue. Lost bank capital…
The large money center banks never planned to take the money they are getting from the government to make loans. The equity investments will be used to shore up capital, which is…
Citigroup (C) is not going to make it, at least not an an independent company. The FT has reported that the head of Goldman Sachs (GS) called Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit to…
According to Reuters, the Korean central bank made record rate cuts. Reuters reports that the G7 said the rising yen may be a threat to financial markets. Reuters writes that Hungary and…
Too many mouths to feed. Someone will have to starve. Now that Henry Paulson has $700 billion and some discretion about how to spend it companies from car manufacturers to airlines want…
For the period ending October 15, short sellers got out of most banks and brokerage stocks. That is a shame for them. They could have made a killing this week. The short…
This is obviously one of our ugliest mornings in years with futures trading limit down. What is interesting is that the financial stocks are the most leveraged to this, yet oddly enough…
There is an “official” government bailout number. That is the $700 billion Congress gave to Henry Paulson to hand out as he pleases. Most of it will go into buying equity in…
According to Reuters, former Citigroup (C) CEO Sandy Weill may start a fund to invest in distressed financial companies. Reuters writes that Amazon (AMZN) turned in a weak forecast hurting its stock.…
Perhaps it is because this is an election year, but everyone is going around asking "Are we better off than we used to be?" It is not just the baby-kissing politicians. People…
Oppenheimer bank analyst Meredith Whitney has taken a dim view of bank earnings for some time. Her research has caused sell-offs in big financial company shares on more than one occasion. But,…
Douglas A. McIntyre Energy prices are on the back burner. The focus on economic growth, or lack thereof, has moved to whether credit markets will open up and how soon housing prices will recover. Focusing…
Goldman Sachs repeated its opinion that Citigroup (C) is a "sell" and probably would not make a cent until late in 2009. Goldman claims that credit markets are too tough for Citi…
Analysts often as about "earnings quality". How accurate are quarterly numbers? Are they being "managed" to make a company’s fortunes appear better than they actually are? The question has come up in…