David Stockman, former budget director in the Reagan administration, argues persuasively that the fundamental problems of the financial system are worse than in 2008. The “too big to fail” banks have become bigger, politicians have been bought and paid for, an entitled class of Wall Street financiers are being served by government policies and a massive amount of  [...]

Welcome to Banking Update, a roundup of articles and news from around the internet.  The Federal Reserve’s political moves threaten its independence, loan modification companies prey on vulnerable homeowners, the big banks refuse to disclose their risk on derivatives, consumers want to be bailed out for foolish financial decisions, loss of confidence in governments grow and [...]

Will the “too big to fail” banks that pose a systemic risk to the financial system ever be broken up? If Thomas Hoenig, former Kansas City Fed president wins Senate nomination as the new Vice Chairman of the FDIC, the big banks may have a lot to worry about. Mr. Hoenig should easily win Senate confirmation based on solid bipartisan support and that has a lot of executives [...]

Issuing a sell opinion on a bank stock is usually a short route to oblivion for a banking analyst.  Mike Mayo is one banking analyst who did issue sell opinions on banks yet managed to survive.  In his new book, “Exile on Wall Street”, banking analyst Mike Mayo provides an insider’s view on why the financial system has spiraled out of control, leading to a series [...]

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) was established to coordinate international efforts to promote effective regulation and supervision of the global financial system. In its latest report on global systemically important banks, the FSB makes it clear that the world’s largest banks have become too big to fail without crashing the global economy. The leaders of the G20 recently [...]

The “Too Big To Fail Banks” are at it again, making huge speculative bets on the odds of sovereign default by Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.  The costly lessons of the derivatives debacle of 2008 have apparently been forgotten. In 2008, the Too Big To Fail banks bought massive amounts of credit default swaps (CDS) to protect themselves from loss on their [...]

The Federal Reserve recently allowed Bank of America to move its massive derivative positions from the bank holding company to its banking subsidiary which is an FDIC insured depository institution.  By allowing this transfer, the Federal Reserve has allowed Bank of America to shift the risk of loss on speculative derivative contracts from the non-bank affiliate.  A failure of [...]

Potential losses on Bank of America’s massive $75 trillion book of risky derivative contracts has just been dumped onto the FDIC by the Federal Reserve. Derivatives, once described by Warren Buffet as “financial weapons of mass destruction” are complex contracts entered into for speculation or to hedge risks linked to a wide variety of other (derivative) financial [...]

The European banking crisis continues to spiral out of control while hapless politicians fail to put together a credible resolution plan. Part of the problem may be that it is difficult to construct a solution when failing banks are bigger than the countries that are trying to rescue them. The latest European bank on the verge of collapse is giant Dexia, a Belgian-French bank.  [...]

Three years after the height of the financial crisis, the issue of impaired assets on bank balance sheets remains a major risk to the health of the banking system. Regulators have allowed banks to avoid taking losses on impaired assets by not requiring mark to market accounting.  The extent of overvaluation on bank loans can be seen every time a bank fails and the FDIC has to routinely [...]