No ‘lasting’ recovery without more bank aid … STILL!!! Remember … yesterday, a big US Bank told us … 33% of the problem is solved … ONLY 33% … of the KNOWN problem AUTSCH!!! And as always … Ben Boy talks soothing BS … stabilization later in the year … YEAH RIGHT 2010? 2011? Later? [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]