Crash Survival Zone

Banks that received taxpayer bailouts had a lower average level of loans outstanding as of the end of March than a month earlier, the Treasury Department reported Monday.

Five hundred of the more than 600 banks participating in the $700 billion financial system rescue had an average of $5.24 billion in loans oustanding on March 31, [...]

By Paul Krugman

“This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions. … All in all, I think we hit the jackpot.” So declared Ronald Reagan in 1982, as he signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act.

He was, as it happened, [...]

The biggest loser of the financial bailout is indisputably the American taxpayer.
The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold
How the Financial Bailout Scams Taxpayers, Subsidizes Wall Street, and Props Up Our Broken Financial System
By Andy Kroll
On October 3rd, as the spreading economic meltdown threatened to topple financial behemoths like American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America [...]

By Henry Blodget

By insisting on bailing out bank bondholders to the tune of 100 cents on the dollar, John Hussman says, the government has crowded out $1 trillion of private investment and almost guaranteed double-digit future inflation.

Hussman’s weekly note explains the crowding-out part in detail (it’s complex, but important).  Here’s a quick summary:

Bailed-out banks are [...]

The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to put new restrictions on the credit card industry, passing a bill whose backers say will make card-issuers spell out their terms in fewer words, using plain English, and treat customers more fairly.

The 90-to-5 vote, following a 357-to-70 vote in the House on April 30, made it likely that [...]

By Martin Wolf

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” Thus wrote the Sicilian writer Giuseppe di Lampedusa, in The Leopard. This seems to me the guiding principle of the Obama presidency. To many Americans, he seems a flaming radical. To me, he is a pragmatic conservative, albeit one [...]

Do bank stress tests and the latest round of capital-raising mean it’s finally safe to invest in financial stocks?

The last week has been a Rorschach test for investors. Bearish investors question the assumptions and results of government-conducted stress tests, which required top U.S. banks to raise billions in new capital. Bullish investors cite realistic hopes [...]

The bank stress test results, released Thursday, suggested that the nation’s 19 biggest banks could expect nearly $82.4 billion in credit card losses by the end of 2010 under what federal regulators called an adverse economic situation.

But if unemployment breaches 10 percent, as many economists predict, the rate of uncollectible balances at some banks could [...]

Home values in the United States extended their fall in the first quarter, with more than one in five homeowners now owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday.

U.S. home values posted a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index of $182,378, [...]

Rates may be tantalizing, but be prepared to jump through many hoops.

Refinance your mortgage now and you may capture the lowest interest rate of your lifetime. But unlike a couple of years ago, when it seemed all you needed was a pay stub (if that) and an eager mortgage broker, today’s process can be tedious. [...]