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Category Archives: banking
The Goldman Munipal Conflict Non-Story Refuses to Die
Remember the silly ProPublica report about alleged Goldman Sachs conflicts of interest in California? ProPublica subsequently took its act on the road, and used exactly the same Goldman report to produce an almost-identical article about New Jersey, in the Newark … Continue reading
Posted in banking, journalism, Media, Politics
3 Comments
Why Elizabeth Warren is an Inspired Choice to Oversee TARP
Tom Brown has a peculiar column today taking issue with the inspired choice of Elizabeth Warren to chair the panel overseeing the TARP program. The problem, in his eyes, is that Warren is a fighter for consumers, rather than banks. … Continue reading
Posted in bailouts, banking, regulation
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Thain’s Bonus
A bunch of investment-bank CEOs are dangling from a rising hot-air balloon. Dick Fuld, as we know, held on for too long, and by the time he finally let go, there was too far to fall, and he died. Jimmy … Continue reading
Is Goldman Covered by the Community Reinvestment Act?
Sanford Bernstein’s Brad Hintz knows much more about banking than I do. And he seems to have discovered a CRA loophole, at least insofar as the Community Reinvestment Act applies to Goldman Sachs: Mr Hintz, who predicts a change in … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Blame Citigroup’s woes on the Citi-Travelers Merger
Justin Fox — rightly, I think — reckons that the repeal of Glass-Steagal was on net a good thing, not a bad thing, for the US banking system, if only because it has allowed big commercial banks like Bank of … Continue reading
Posted in banking, regulation
4 Comments
Pay Bankers Much Less
Andrew Ross Sorkin is worried about what happens if you don’t pay bankers enough money: The trick, of course, is to dole out enough rewards to keep executives working, and working hard, but not to dole out too much… Citigroup … Continue reading
What’s a Super-Senior Tranche?
I’ve written myself into a corner, now, and can’t think of any way to get out of writing the promised blog entry on super-senior tranches. Especially when Kevin Drum asks so nicely. So here it is. Deep breath… By now, … Continue reading
Posted in banking, derivatives
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Credit Card Crunch
Meredith Whitney has a piece in the FT which is full of extremely large numbers: Capital destruction has been so intense that multi-trillions in capital raised by institutions through both private and public capital has gone to plug holes and … Continue reading
Posted in banking, regulation
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Rubin’s Teflon Finally Wears Off
In one of the most ill-advised pieces of PR I can remember, Bob Rubin has given an on-the-record interview to the WSJ, in which he takes no blame or responsibility for anything which has gone wrong at Citigroup. The reaction … Continue reading
Did Citi Suffer a Run on Deposits?
Vikram Pandit was on Charlie Rose last night, and was asked point-blank whether there was a run on Citi’s deposits last week. Here’s the exchange, at around the 10:40 mark: Charlie Rose: So you go to them and decide that … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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When Banks Retain Depositors by Cutting Rates
After Citibank confirmed to me that it was reducing the interest rates on its checking accounts to qualify for unlimited FDIC insurance, it’s now put out a big email to that effect — without quite coming out and saying so: … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Citi: Will the Bailout be Enough?
The WSJ has details of how the Citi bailout was structured: If the U.S. were to take another equity stake, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wanted it to be small, since otherwise the government would end up owning Citigroup. The officials … Continue reading
Why Citigroup Imploded
Brad DeLong and Prince Alwaleed both have theories on why Citigroup imploded as it did. Brad thinks its a combination of factors — bad modelling of tail risks; bad modelling on the subject of house prices; an unprecedented spike in … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Citi’s Credit Barely Tighter
While most people are looking at the share price, Alea has the Citi CDS datapoint: 19bp tighter, at 482bp. That seems disappointing: what kind of a rescue is this, if Citi is still trading at levels more normally associated with … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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Citi’s Share Price Problem
When it comes to judging the stock market’s reaction to the Citigroup bailout, there’s only one number that everybody’s looking at: the Citi share price, which opened Monday at about $5.80. What does this mean? Two things are worth bearing … Continue reading
Has the FDIC Bumped Up its Deposit Insurance Again?
At 6am this morning, I got a peculiar email from Citibank — not as a journalist, but just as one of their depositors. The subject line was startling: Unlimited FDIC Insurance Coverage on your Citibank Checking Account The email continued: … Continue reading
Posted in banking, regulation
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Citi’s Underwhelming Bailout
If you want an idea of just how bad Citigroup’s position was on Friday, just take a look at the term sheet of the deal announced on Sunday night. After the $309 billion of toxic assets have been ring-fenced, Citigroup … Continue reading
Did Rubin Kill Citi?
The vipers’ nest of recriminations and finger-pointing that is Citigroup has now turned on the one man who was until now untouchable, Bob Rubin: Citigroup insiders and analysts say that Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin played pivotal roles in the … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Who Will Take Over Citi?
As John Carney notes today, Citigroup’s market capitalization is $21 billion; that of Goldman Sachs is $20 billion. Can anyone say "merger of equals"? Nothing’s unthinkable in this market, not even the idea that you can tie two rocks together … Continue reading
This is Not Financial Meltdown
Is this the low point of the crisis so far? From the stock market’s point of view, yes, it is. And the numbers coming out of the Treasury market would certainly seem to imply a flight to quality of unprecedented … Continue reading
Citi: From Bad to Worse
Shares in Goldman Sachs are down 3% this afternoon to a new low of just $60 a share — a level not seen since 1999. To give you an idea of the straits that the financial sector is in, Goldman … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Against Big, Public Banks
Alexander Campbell is beginning to think that publicly-listed banks might not be such a good idea after all: The UK’s mutual building societies spent decades being humdrum, unexciting, unambitious – and solvent. Then they all demutualised, as more than one … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Citi’s Presentation: No Mention of Profitability
Vikram Pandit’s 26-page presentation this morning "contains forward-looking statements", according to the disclaimer on the final page. But there aren’t actually very many of them: in fact, I can only find two. Citi’s expense target in 2009 is $50-52 billion, … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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From Frying Pan to Fire, Stockbroker Edition
The WSJ today reprises the New York Post’s story from earlier this month about a culture clash between Merrill Lynch and Bank of America. For all the clashing, though, we’re told that 90% of the brokers who BofA wanted to … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Citi’s Achilles Heel: Foreign Depositors
Dick Parsons, lead outside director of Citigroup, is sounding just a tiny bit defensive these days: We are confident that the direction our management team has set is the right direction — and the winning direction — for these extraordinary … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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