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Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Wait a Minute … Do Bailouts Work?: That seems to be the question following the Treasury Department's now official sale of a massive chunk of AIG stock it purchased at the height of the financial crisis. According to the Journal, the Treasury sold shares to the public at $32.50 apiece, netting $18 billion, and bringing the federal government's return on its original $182.3 billion investment in the insurance firm to a combined...

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Carl Levin, Whale Hunter: Just when you thought you'd heard the last about the London Whale affair … Senator Carl Levin's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is conducting a probe of the JPMorgan chief investment office's derivative trades, the FT and Bloomberg News report. The subcommittee has subpoenaed JPM's regulators for documents and is seeking testimony from CIO veterans, the reports say. If the bank's executives are asked to testify before the subcommittee,...

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Spanish Bank Launches Big IPO: Spain's Banco Santander is launching an initial public offering of its Mexican unit in an effort to raise up to $4.2 billion as the Spanish economy continues to falter. The Madrid-based bank will sell as much as 24.9% of its aptly named Santander Mexico unit with shares costing between 29.00 and 33.50 pesos each. Santander is one of the few Spanish banks still able to issue debt,...

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Fed Watch: The papers preview the speech Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to deliver today at the central bank's annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. "He must once again address whether there is more the Fed can do to get the economy going and whether it is worth taking chances on controversial new programs," says the Journal. "All along he has argued these efforts are worth it and appears likely to stick...

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Mixed Bag: The FDIC's quarterly banking profile showed loan growth (encouraging), continued loan-loss reserve releases (nice, but unsustainable) and continued squeezing of net interest margins (not so good) for the second quarter. "The lack of wind in banks' sails ... helps explain why [stock] valuations are downbeat," says the Wall Street Journal's "Heard on the Street" column. Straight news stories in the Journal and Washington Post. ...