The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) recently released its third quarter of 2009 Quarterly Banking Profile, detailing a host of statistics on the banks under its jurisdiction. This report has been well covered, but one part I wanted to highlight was the section on the number of employees at the FDIC.

The number of employees has moved up from 4,476 in September 2006 to 6,298 as of September 2009. While this might seem like a lot, the total number of employees peaked at 22,586 in September 1991, during our previous banking crisis.

It was reported Wednesday that Motorola (MOT) is shopping around its division that makes set top boxes and other equipment for cable and phone companies. The rumored asking price is around $4.5 billion.

That sounds great, but unfortunately for Motorola and its shareholders, the company paid $11 billion for it 10 years ago. Read how management gushed over it back then:

I have blogged constantly about the value and importance of long term investing, and a recent report from the Aspen Institute came out with some practical proposals to fight what they call "short-termism" in the market.

Let's start with the problem as outlined by the institute:

Am I the only BJ Services (BJS) shareholder out there who thinks that this is a lousy deal? Is there any hope for a competing bid? BJ Services traded close to $40 back in 2006, and was as high as $33 last summer.

So we get .40 shares of Baker Hughes and $2.69 cash for a big total of $16.47. Wow, that's a big $0.63 premium over the previous close for BJS.

An article entitled "Behavioural Bias and Conflicts of Interest in Analyst Stock Recommendations" published in the Journal of Business Finance & Accounting examines these issues:

"Whether sell-side analysts are prone to behavioural errors when making stock recommendations as well as the impact of investment banking relationships on their judgments. In particular, we analyse their report narratives for evidence of cognitive bias."

The ancient battle between Value and Growth investing continues, with Barron's weighing in with its take on the issue. It's starting to remind me of the Hundred Years' War between France and England or that Star Trek episode where two planets have been at war for five hundred years.

Value Investing has underperformed growth investing over a six month or three year horizon, but Value Investing outperformed in the second quarter of 2009.

Matt Taibbi’s article on Goldman Sachs (GS) has now achieved legendary status for the term he coined in this sentence:

“The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Does anyone remember a year ago when every pundit and media outlet predicted that Sovereign Wealth Funds were going to take over the world? The assets they controlled were growing so quickly due mostly to the commodity boom that it was starting to create hysteria in the United States. It's amazing how quickly the conventional wisdom can change.

From the Financial Times:

The International Energy Agency cut its oil demand estimates for every year through 2013 by about 3 million barrels a day, it said in its Medium- Term Oil Market Report today. Consumption will average 86.76 million barrels a day in 2012, the first year it will rise above 2008’s level of 85.76 million barrels a day, according to the Paris-based agency.

Well so much for demand for Energy from China. This demand growth has always been hyped by Energy bulls, but as I and many others have stated previously, what really matters is demand growth from the the U.S. and other industrialized nations.

<<<Go to Part I

Here are my notes from the White Mountains Insurance (WTM) Analyst Day held on May 20, 2009. These are for the introductory section, the financial highlights and a review of bad news in 2008. When I went back to the events section of the White Mountains Insurance web page, the webcast link was missing, so I don't know if I'll be able to review the rest of the meeting. I have e-mailed the company asking for the link but haven't heard back. If anyone has the link to the webcast, please send it to me.

Here are my notes from the White Mountains Insurance (WTM) Analyst Day held on May 20, 2009. These are for the introductory section, the financial highlights and a review of bad news in 2008. When I went back to the events section of the White Mountains Insurance web page, the webcast link was missing, so I don't know if I'll be able to review the rest of the meeting. I have e-mailed the company asking for the link but haven't heard back. If anyone has the link to the webcast, please send it to me.

Notes

TXCO Resources (TXCO) looks like it may become the first casualty of the credit crunch in the exploration and production sector.

The company just received an acceleration notice from its lender demanding full repayment of the $150 million owed under the agreement, an amount the company does not have.

Here’s the bitter truth about the “financial crisis.” Things were never as bad as people thought, and now things are not as good as people think. Over the last six months, there was too much pessimism around what was going on, and now we are moving toward too much optimism.

Why is this happening? One reason is that too many investors and commentators take cues from the stock market and use that as a fundamental barometer for whether things are “good” or “bad.” This is reflected in media commentary by these pundits who go on TV and say something like this:

Thomas S. Gayner, the Chief Investment Officer of Markel (MKL), will be interviewed on the blog Manual of Ideas on Monday, April 6th. Gayner manages the investment portfolio at Markel and has a strong long term track record of outperformance, and follows a value investing approach.

I wrote an article on Markel for Investopedia back in late 2008.

Banks have received billions of dollars from the government as part of the Capital Purchase Program (CPP) of the Troubled Asset Relief Plan (TARP) set up by the Bush Administration. Here is the letter they would love to send to Congress.

Dear Congress,

I was listening to CNBC, and they just reported that the sky is falling. Oh my God!! Look out below.

The Financial Media is deepening and prolonging the recession by engaging in a series of what a professional would call cognitive distortions. The first of these is called Catastrophizing. This is defined as believing that a situation is much worse than it really is. Here's an example of Catastrophizing. A large bank reports a huge loss due to aמ unrealized loss in its securities portfolio, and deteriorating loan asset quality leading to higher charge offs and loan loss reserves. Then a talking head, or one of the anchors on CNBC, says something like this:

The sentiment is obviously terrible out there for the market and the economy, so it is important to highlight some data that didn't get that much play because most pundits are too busy predicting when the sky will fall and whom it will fall on.

The Conference Board reported that its Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose 0.4% in January. This is the second month in a row that it increased. Five of the ten components in the index were up.

The Rick Santelli "Rant of the Year" is now legendary in the investment blog world so I won't waste any time discussing it. The clip is below:

I just came across a survey from the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers that gives confirming evidence that the soft market in insurance may be over.

The survey concludes that "Commercial property/casualty market premiums showed definite signs of leveling off in the fourth quarter of 2008 across small, medium and large accounts and for most major lines of commercial business."