Today the news will be all about Sarkosy and Merkel having yet another meeting. Neither leader has a firm grip on power within their own country, Merkel’s is certainly slipping and Sarkosy is slowly becoming a Vanity Fair version of Berlusconi, and neither has a grip on the broader debt fiasco upon which they bob […]

I think we are going to see European bank funding, both short term (overnight) and the coming wave of bond/debt to be rolled over, becoming intensely political. The political battle is between Washington DC and Berlin, with the ECB in the middle. This battle will start once the spiralling funding needs of Europe’s private banks

Quick update – Banco Pupular, Spain’s third largest banking group, has just announced that it will sell “non-strategic assets”. In Italy All three of Italy’s big banks (UniCredit, Intesa and Banca dei Monte Pasci) have had their stocks stopped yet again this morning. While in France Soc Gen which already fell 15% on Wednesday is down

Earlier today in “Bank Blood Letting” I wrote, Bank of America has lost lost $33 billion of its market value in a single week. Unless these losses are magically erased by spectacular gains, and soon, we will see forced selling of assets as banks try to raise capital. A few hours later this from Reuters,

RBS has lost a quater of its share value in the last two weeks. Not far off 10% in the last two days. The British tax payer has so far lost 50% of the money, our taxes, that the government invested in it. Commerzbank in Germany just announced a 93% drop in profts due to

Heeere we go! What looks like a bank run-style exit by investors in SocGen in France and Intesa in Italy. There have been fairly massive outflows of money from Italy to Switzerland for a few days. Now it seems its the turn of the investors and Bond holders to run for the exits. They’ve been

Two headlines which when put together tell the story that the financial press has not seen fit to point out. Headline one from The Wall Street Journal –  BofA Sells Part of Mortgage Portfolio to Fannie Mae Headline two from The Washington Post – Fannie and Freddie ask for $7 billion more The first article

So just a quick round up on the day for all those who thought that the authorities had everything back in hand. In the UK, Wolverhampton and Manchester are alight. I have little experience of Wolverhampton. But Manchester is a central pocket based around Market Street, basically rebuilt with Russian mafia money..sorry investment, which brought

Governments and markets bleat on so wetly like slack jawed drunkards, about restoring confidence. Well here is an idea. Not a big idea, but an achievable one. Take one bank, just one will do, one mostly publicly owned and audit it for its debt. Audit it in public. A debt commission for a public bank. Brush