The number of banks that had non-performing assets equal to at least 5 percent or more of their assets — considered a critical threshold - more than doubled in the year through June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Altogether, the 150 banks hold assets of $193 billion, 15 times the FDIC's entire insurance fund.
“These numbers are off the charts,” says Blake Howells, an analyst at Becker Capital Management, referring to the nonperforming loan levels at companies he follows.
Banks are losing the “ability to try and earn their way through the cycle.”
The biggest banks with nonperforming loans of at least 5 percent include Wisconsin’s Marshall & Ilsley Corp. and Georgia’s Synovus Financial Corp., Bloomberg reports. (more)
Friday, August 21, 2009
PIMCO: Dollar Supremacy Is Coming To An End
PIMCO portfolio manager Curtis Mewbourne is getting a lot of attention for a new report predicting the long-term demise of the dollar, or at least its end as the undisputed reserve currency.This kind of stuff is great for sensational headlines, though Mewbourne's own argument isn't particularly sensational or novel.
It basically comes down to: The emerging economies, notably China, are coming on fast, and China is starting to do more trade directly with other countries without the need for dollars.
China for example has entered currency swap arrangements with a number of countries so that trade financing can be negotiated in renminbi as opposed to dollar terms. In addition, several countries have signed up to replace part of their foreign currency reserves with new bonds issued by the IMF and denominated in SDRs (Special Drawing Rights), a basket of currencies. (more)
The New American Dream: Renting
'A man is not a whole and complete man," wrote Walt Whitman, "unless he owns a house and the ground it stands on." America's lesser bards sang of "my old Kentucky Home" and "Home Sweet Home," leading no less than that great critic Herbert Hoover to declaim that their ballads "were not written about tenements or apartments…they never sing about a pile of rent receipts." To own a home is to be American. To rent is to be something less. Every generation has offered its own version of the claim that owner-occupied homes are the nation's saving grace. During the Cold War, home ownership was moral armor, protecting America from dangerous outside influences. "No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist," proclaimed builder William Levitt. With no more reds hiding under the beds, Bill Clinton launched National Homeownership Day in 1995, offering a new rationale about personal responsibility. "You want to reinforce family values in America, encourage two-parent households, get people to stay home?" he said. George W. Bush similarly pledged his commitment to "an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, 'welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property.'" (more)
Thursday, August 20, 2009
The Countdown To The Implosion Of The Dollar
You can take your waves, percentages, algorithms, quants and quarks and throw them directly into the basket. The time for lines and squiggles are behind us. The common shares of the US dollar are and have been in a long term downtrend. That downtrend is 81 days from implosion. The selling of the US dollar and US dollar instruments is increasing in international markets, making it ever more difficult to manipulate the popular US dollar index, the USDX.
The price of gold is all in the dollar, times 100.
The manipulators have built a fundamental spring into gold by their capping activities.
COT has cooked its own goose.
Where the price of gold is concerned, there is no other focus of interest as all points of interest have but one common denominator.
That entity is the US dollar. (more)
The price of gold is all in the dollar, times 100.
The manipulators have built a fundamental spring into gold by their capping activities.
COT has cooked its own goose.
Where the price of gold is concerned, there is no other focus of interest as all points of interest have but one common denominator.
That entity is the US dollar. (more)
McAlvany Weekly Commentary August 19, 2009
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