Citibank CFO Gary Crittenden is quoted:
“If current trends prevail, it is fair to conclude we will continue to have substantial additional marks on our subprime exposure this quarter.”
“It’s reasonable to expect that credit costs will continue to rise through 2008, and that provisions for losses in its consumer business will also grow.”
“Expects revenue growth […]

The credit crunch is far from over, according to Oppenheimer & Co. banking analyst Meredith Whitney …
She sees consumers defaulting and an accumulation of these defaults will appear on the balance sheets of our “beloved banks” …
She is quoted as follows:
“Just as strained liquidity pushed so many small and mid-sized specialty finance companies to […]

The Americans were only thinking about it …
The Bank of England might actually do it …
Today’s FT has the following …
“The credit crisis is so severe that dozens of smaller lenders could be forced to stop offering new mortgages unless the government intervenes, leading bankers told Gordon Brown on Tuesday.
The stark warning, issued […]

GE … the once great GE … in TROUBLE
Only 2 weeks ago they reiterated their guidance …
Now they “found out” …
“After the Bear Stearns event, we experienced an extraordinary disruption in our ability to complete asset sales and incurred marks of impairments, and this was something that we clearly didn’t see until the end […]

Citibank is close to announce the sale of around 12bln$ of debt.
This is seen as positive and bullish … hmmmm
My take:
1. This is buy-out related debt, NOT mortgage related … so they sell “better” debt
2. They lock in a loss … and free as it is leveraged debt only a small amount of their balance […]

And again the market plays the card of hope …
After Q1 is booked … and with it some losses …
Everybody is bullish and confident again (unbelievable!)
Still there is NO VISIBILITY at all, how long and deep the recession might be …
NO CHANGES so far in the housing market or at the credit front …
BUT … […]

The ECB shows over the last years, that it is really a special centralbank … following the footsteps of the German Bundesbank, now an affiliate of the ECB.
The ECB is now the last “one” standing … the only one on the planet you can trust … what a difference to the BoE or even the […]

As I will not be able to trade today, just one thing …
What about interest rate cuts … even in Europe tomorrow???
The situation …
Due to the global credit crunch, money markets are unusually tight … the spread between the official rates and the interbanking rates is widening every day … reaching levels, unseen since […]