Charting Stocks

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)  seized 3 more banks over the weekend bringing the total bank failures for 2009 to 40. One bank was in North Carolina, another in Georgia, and the third was in Kansas.
The FDIC was appointed receiver of Cooperative Bank of Wilmington, N.C., Southern Community Bank of Fayetteville, Ga., and First [...]

The US government issued approval for 10 of the nations largest banks to pay back the TARP money.  The banks are:

Omni National Bank was shut down on Friday by the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency). The OCC appointed the FDIC as receiver.
Omni National Bank had total assets of $956.0 million and total deposits of $796.8 million. At the time of closing, there were approximately $2.0 million in uninsured deposits that potentially [...]

Don’t mess with the banks!

The markets jumped early in the trading day in a move  led by a “Leaked” memo by Nationalized Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit which was sent to employees stating that the troubled bank was profitable in the first 2 months of 2009. He went on to describe their capital position as “Strong.”
The market, which was extremely [...]

I’m sure that the chart below  comes as no surprise. Each of the major industry groups are down for the year. Banks and brokers are down 49% and 20.50% respectively.

The following chart contains the same industry groups as the previous but instead of plotting absolute performance, we focus on relative performance (Each industry group relative [...]

We hear much about institutions being too big to fail, and so, the taxpayer is expected to bear any cost to save large financial companies. We think that the more relevant question to ask is whether these institutions are too big to save?
With the passage of the most recent bailout bill, the taxpayer is now [...]

Much has been made about the so-called bank stress tests which are being conducted by the US treasury though the government has revealed little or no information on what the test might entail.
Tim Geithner has described the stress test only as “a more consistent, realistic and forward looking assessment about the risk on balance sheets,” [...]

Alabama’s Jefferson County is unable to make a $636 million sewer debt payment due Friday. The county will hold an emergency meeting to vote on an extension request which they hope will buy some time.
The county was recently downgraded by the ratings agencies which resulted in accelerated principal and interest payments due to banks.  The [...]