national-global

Fed, ECB Head to Summit; European Bank Woes Grow; More Libor

07/31/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Eye on Central Banks: The European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve are set to meet this week in an effort to bolster the flagging global economy. According to the Journal, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will focus on how to spur enough economic growth in the U.S. to drive down unemployment, while ECB head Mario Draghi needs to address growing concerns that countries will abandon the euro. The Journal says there's a...

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A Bummer Party for SOX, As Libor Party Gets Messier

07/30/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Happy Birthday, Dear SOX: Remember that big financial law that came between the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Dodd-Frank Act? Policymakers and pundits have spent so much time lately debating whether to roll back those two laws that we (I'll omit the auditing department from this blanket reference) have forgotten the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that was supposed to clean up auditing conflicts, public disclosures and do other things to renew our faith in public...

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Barclays Goes for the Gold Medal in Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Months

07/27/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Barclays' Baggage: Things just aren't getting better this month for Libor-gate poster child Barclays, which this morning reported a 76% year-over-year drop in profit for the first six months of 2012 and revealed that nope, it's not leaving the harsh spotlight at the center of the bank-scandal stage anytime soon. ...

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That's Like Victor Frankenstein Saying, 'A Monster Was Created,' Sandy

07/26/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Weill's Bombshell: "I am suggesting that [large, diversified financial companies] be broken up so that the taxpayer will never be at risk, the depositors won't be at risk." That is what Sandy Weill, the man who assembled the quintessential Frankenbank, said on CNBC Wednesday morning, causing finance and media professionals around the world to gasp, spit out their coffee, and/or utter things like "whoa" or "holy mackerel" or other, unprintable expressions. And...

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If the Concierge at the Bank Branch Smiles and Asks How She Can Help You Today, Call Your Broker and SELL!

07/25/12

Breaking News This Morning ... Sandy Weill Calls for Return of Glass-Steagall: No, you are not dreaming, and this is not a parody from The Onion. This is real. In a CNBC interview this morning, the architect of Citigroup says, "What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that's not going to...

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Binary Debates About Regulation Are Really Getting Tiresome

07/24/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Regulatory Reform Redux: The New Yorker's financial columnist, James Surowiecki, frames the Libor-rigging scandal as a textbook example of the financial industry's inability to regulate itself. Reputation risk has proven an insufficient incentive for bankers to behave, he writes; an "intrusive and overbearing" approach is "exactly what the financial industry needs." But Reuters' blogger Felix Salmon finds Surowiecki's new-sheriff-in-town prescriptions (jail time for fraudsters and preventive measures inspired by urban policing strategies)...

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Euro Mess (Continued), Swapping Swaps Regulators, SIGTARP's Kiss-and-Tell

07/23/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Europe (Again): It might be taking on the sound of a broken record at this point, but the banking-sovereign-cultural crisis that has been wracking the continent for months has reached yet another "first-ever" crescendo. "Spain's borrowing costs reached a new euro-era high on Monday as fears about the country's wilting economy and government finances outweighed the eurozone's approval of loans to help Madrid recapitalise its banks," reports the Financial Times. Catalonia's addition...

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Why U.S. Banks Have Little to Fear from Sovereign Debt Downgrade

08/06/11

The downgrading of U.S. government debt by Standard & Poor's Friday evening is a grim milestone in the history of American finance-and one that will be parsed in excruciating detail in coming days-but the ultimate practical impact on financial institutions seems likely to be minimal in the short term. The reasons are many.

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Friday, August 5

08/05/11

Breaking News This Morning ... Fannie Mae Loses $2.9B in 2Q: The government-sponsored enterprise has asked the Treasury for another $5 billion of aid. Receiving Wide Coverage ... Cash Is Really King Now: As the markets tanked again amid mounting global economic fears, Bank of New York Mellon told large institutional customers it would charge them a 13 basis point fee simply for holding deposits of more than $50 million. According to the Journal, a letter to these...

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Thursday, August 4

08/04/11

Receiving Wide Coverage ... European Contagion: The papers report today that the continent's debt crisis is spreading from peripheral countries (Greece, Ireland and Portugal) to Italy and Spain. (Though we'd thought that the investment community had lumped all five together a while ago, given traders' use of the unflattering acronym PIIGS). According to a story in the Times, big banks in those two larger economies -- namely Italy's UniCredit and Intesa, and the Spanish banks Santander...

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