COMMON SENSE

Doctrader

Said in May 2006….”

The stage is set, for most Americans the collapse will be felt in their retirement accounts and 401(k). The next level of pain will be their home valuations, and lastly the cost of food and energy. It will be up to you to take the necessary steps to preserve your wealth by using protective stops and put options if you own individual stocks.

MarketWatch.com

By John Letzing,

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Cleveland-based AmTrust Bank, with 66 branches and roughly $8 billion in deposits, was closed by regulators Friday, as the ongoing credit crunch continued to claim victims.

Three smaller banks in Georgia, an Illinois-based bank and a Virginia bank were also shuttered, bringing the 2009 total to 130.

The three Georgia-based bank failures bring that state’s total this year to 24.

Flash back in time since April 2009… when only 23 banks had failed!

Huffington Post

2 more banks fail, lifting this year’s tally to 23

Apr 10, 2009 … This year’s tally of 23 bank failures is nearing the total for all of … to 25 for this year and 50 since start of 2008 for the failed banks…

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• FDIC Bank Insurance Fund Plunges Into Red (abcnews.go.com)
• Regulators shut AmTrust Bank in Ohio (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Technorati Tags: AmTrust Bank, bank, Bank failure, Banking Services, business, financial services, Georgia, Illinois

By Adam Cohen

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES  BRUSSELS -(Dow Jones)- European Union finance ministers on Wednesday reached a compromise on a new supervisory framework for the bloc’s financial markets.  Under the plan agreed by the ministers, the EU will create two new supervisory groups for financial markets: a “macro-prudential” body to study big-picture risks to stability and three “micro-prudential” groups to look at specific issues in the banking, securities, and insurance and pension sectors.
The U.K., home to the EU’s largest financial center, was worried about ceding control over the City of London to a powerful new EU committee. It also wanted to ensure its taxpayers wouldn’t be forced to fund bailouts for banks operating across the bloc’s borders or spend money on other measures.

The three groups supervising the regulation of specific industries will be responsible for harmonizing the rules and methods applied by national authorities. They will also have the authority to resolve disagreements between countries and to coordinate action in a crisis, albeit with certain limits. The EU finance ministers agreed that the supervisory groups can’t dictate how EU governments spend money and outlined an appeal procedure for states that think a regulatory decision will affect their national purse.

Technorati Tags: bank, City of London, EU, European Union, finance, Finance minister, government, Multilateral

It’s Not a “Wonderful Life”, as posted by

Monty Pelerin’s World , Economics, Finance and Politics Through The Prism of Classical Liberalism

The overhang to any economic recovery is the banking system. There is no way to know how bad the banking problems really are, given the accounting or lack thereof. Banks, with an encouraging wink and a nod from regulators, have refused to realistically value their assets. In some cases, these values may not even be determinable, other than to say they are currently grossly overvalued.

US Banks & The FDIC, Are Delaying Their Losses

Posted by Larry Doyle on December 3, 2009

Postponing losses in hopes that one can trade out of them is a game very rarely won. In similar fashion, not acknowledging losses in hopes that the situation improves and the loss is mitigated is also a recipe for disaster. All one needs to do is look eastward to Japan to realize that. Ultimately, a loss not only must be realized, but paid.

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• FDIC announces 124th bank failure (money.cnn.com)
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• As bank failures mount, FDIC may need to take out a loan (dailyfinance.com)

Technorati Tags: Asset, bank, Banking Services, Banks and Institutions, business, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, financial services, government, Larry Doyle

by

STEVENSON JACOBS

NEW YORK — The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday she’s “very worried” that the nation’s biggest banks aren’t lending enough and warned the economy could take another turn for the worse without increased access to credit.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said the FDIC’s upcoming quarterly report would show that “not many large institutions are doing a very good job of lending.” Instead, she said, some are taking advantage of near-zero interest rates by borrowing dollars cheaply to buy higher-yielding assets like stocks or commodities – a move known as the “carry trade.”

Addressing the rash of bank failures, Bair said the FDIC had enough funds to shut down troubled banks and would tap its line of credit with the Treasury only as a last resort. There have been 120 bank failures this year, …

The Huffington Post

Technorati Tags: bank, Bank failure, business, FDIC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, financial services, Line of credit, Sheila C. Bair