Jake Berzon

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Looks like there are some inflationary signs already starting to emerge. Yet, recession is in full force. Looks like stagflation of the 70s has a good chance for a rerun, except deeper, stronger, longer.

We will need a new term for this mess that we are in. Here are some suggestions: "deepshitation," "bushobamation," "starvflation" and the listy goes on...

Nationalizing the U.S. Banking Sector: There's No Choice

Oh, there is always a choice and usually there are many choices. You just happen not to like any of the other choices.

If it was up to me, I would let all the bad banks go through a structured bankruptcy process. The process would include past and current executive teams over the past 8 years (including risk managers and anyone else with bonuses totaling over $500k), who would be required to pay restitution.

TARP Accountability: Bankers Say 'What, Me Sorry?'

A nice and colorful obfuscation cloud - I love it!

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Some of those earnings results are much better than my worst fears. Hope is alive! :)

Sorkin's Questions to Bank CEOs, Answered

Capping leverage is definitely the way to go. The question is how can this be done without banks finding yet another way of getting around the regulatory limits?

BofA's Merrill Purchase: Good for America, Bad for Them

Does anybody, except the author, really believe that Ken Lewis not only selflessly sacrificed everything for himself, but also violated his fiduciary duty to BofA shareholders, simply in order to be patriotic? Somehow, I find that extremely difficult to believe. More likely he took a gamble that did not work out as well as JP Morgan's and Well Fargo's.

Bank Lending Declines Just 1.4% in Q4: Was the TARP Instrumental?

What I generally see looking at that chart is that the banks that benefited the most in $ terms from TARP have increased their lending the least in % terms. I see this as a gross inefficiency in the way that TARP has worked.

Nationalizing Bank Losses

From afar, it certainly looks like there is no good reason for taxpayers to take on the losses and pay for mistakes a select few have made. Responsibility should fall on the shoulders of those who created the problem.

How best to implement this or how to properly structure bankruptcies of the failures so as to minimize the hurt that falls on the shoulders of the innocents are simply details that need to be worked out.

Turning Japanese: The Audacity of Reality (Part 3 of 3)

The best article I have read in a very long time - it was long overdue. Well thought out, great job and thank you!

Banks Lend, But Only TARP Money?

TARP money is pretty much the only money BAC has to lend anymore, so I am glad to hear that they are not hoarding it, but using it, as it was intended - to make loans.

Preview from Europe: Another Bear Market Bounce, Or Bottoming?

Quite insightful observations on Ireland. Dependency ratio is also the Japanese problem and increasingly our own.

Also, China is likely overstating its current growth. Do you really believe that they are still growing at 6.8%? Underlying data seems to contradict this.

Finally, just about every company reporting today was reporting a disaster. No place to run...

Bank Investors Beware, Shareholder Interests Are Secondary

I would think that to invest in banks right now you would have to be either much smarter than anyone I know or suicidal, but I have been saying something like this since April 2007 - stockvalues.org/stock-...

Cramer's Stop Trading! Will the Banks Be Nationalized? (1/15/09)

Banks that are not solvent should not be kept on governmental life support, funded by taxpayer dollars.