William Poole, the last President of the St. Louis Fed and now with the Cato Institute, has a good piece on fixing the TBTF problem in a recent issue of the Financial Analysts Journal. Based on a speech given last April, it’s still highly relevant.

Poole doubts that new resolution authority will end TBTF. When push comes to shove, regulators are more likely to bail out the next AIG or Lehman rather than attempt an “orderly” wind down, even if they have expanded authority to resolve holding companies.

The “too-big-to-fail” amendment offered by Representative Paul Kanjorski has good intentions, but fatal flaws.

One I wrote about on Monday. Another is a section (see page 7) that gives systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) the right to appeal regulatory orders in a federal district court. If they don’t like the corrective actions that regulators instruct them to take, they could delay them indefinitely.

From Yves over at NakedCapitalism:

A former managing director at monolines Ambac (ABK) and FGIC wonders why AIG (AIG) was bailed out but the monolines weren’t. (He admits to bias, so take this with a grain of salt.)

For all the fear that bankers have expressed about Representative Paul Kanjorski’s amendment to end “too big to fail,” the final text shows that they don’t have much to fear. While the amendment gives regulators new power, it’s unlikely they’d actually use it.

The Pennsylvania Democrat neuters his own legislation with a single line, which stipulates that for regulators to take action against a systemically dangerous institution (SDI) it must “(pose) a grave threat to the financial stability or economy of the United States.”

From Landon Thomas at NYT: In Britain, visions of Japan’s decade of stagnation

Britain may finally be emerging from recession, but many analysts warn that it is a false dawn. In fact, they argue, the economy here is so ravaged by growing debts and ruined banks that it could well be following in the steps of Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s.

Moody’s/REAL released September data for their commercial real estate price index. Month over month drops have been fast and furious this year.

• -8.6% Mar to Apr
• -7.6% May
• -1.0% June
• -5.1% July
• -3.0% Aug
• -3.9% Sept

Since the peak in October 2007, CRE prices are down 43%.

Paul Krugman is complaining of deficit hysteria over on his blog again. Where are the bond vigilantes? he wonders. Since we’re still able to sell debt so cheaply, why is anyone worried about more deficit spending?

As always, there are numerous holes in his argument that he chooses to ignore.

Is gold going to $6,300? Dylan Grice, an analyst with Societe Generale, says it’s possible, given the decline in central bank credibility. But investors need to keep one thing in mind: Gold is merely a vehicle to protect the purchasing power of money.

Gold is surging because investors see that the Federal Reserve — more concerned with deflation and unemployment than sound money — may be trapped in a never-ending cycle of monetary accommodation.

Al de Molina’s tenure as CEO of GMAC was short and rocky, punctuated by bailouts and controversy over the morally hazardous tactics of subsidiary Ally Bank.

His strategy hasn’t worked and Ally’s anti-competitive behavior is hurting other banks. The new chief executive, Michael Carpenter, needs to restructure GMAC so that it is no longer dependent on a government lifeline.

This is the Times editorial page on the NY State deficit. Note how fiscally conservative they are when discussing this issue.

New York’s governor could not have spoken more plainly than he did last week before a joint session of the State Legislature. “Quite frankly, we are running out of money,” he said, as he asked members to help cut the budget. The plea has so far gone unanswered, even though, with each week, the fiscal problems get worse….

Another tidbit from Rosenberg, who offers guidance on what the Fed means when it says it will keep rates low for an “extended period”…

FED CAN’T RAISE RATES UNTIL AFTER 2011

Citigroup’s (C) capital position appeared much improved when the bank reported third-quarter earnings, but a look beneath the surface shows that much of its capital is of questionable value.

According to its recent 10-Q, Citi had $38 billion of deferred tax assets as of Sept. 30, more than a third of the bank’s tangible common equity of $107 billion.

Gold’s recent behavior strikes me as similar to oil circa July ‘08. With it leaping to another new high Wednesday — $1,119 — I thought I’d offer the following chart for reader comments: (Click chart to enlarge)

Thanks to Nick Laird of Sharelynx for the data.

The public debt will pass $12 trillion this week, up another trillion since March. With Obama’s left flank calling for a second stimulus – which is really a third stimulus if you count George Bush’s tax rebates – there’s still no serious discussion about how to deal with debt. The bond market is telling us not to worry. But if history is any guide, the bond market is wrong.

(Click chart to enlarge in new window)

When it comes to managing the business cycle, Keynesian and laissez faire economics have failed rather spectacularly, their prescriptions leading to increasingly violent bubbles and busts. For this reason there have been calls for a “new economics.” To get there, perhaps we just need to rediscover forgotten economists like Hyman Minsky and Ludwig von Mises.

I was intrigued by an article by Mark Whitehouse in the Wall Street Journal last week. He described how concepts like “leverage” and “collateral,” crucial to understanding credit and commonly discussed by financial economists, remain foreign to mainstream economics.

Objective observers mostly agree that it doesn’t make sense for banks to be in the securities business, not if they’re explicitly insured by the government. Wall Streeters invent rationalizations to support the current structure because a large chunk of their profits come from trading.

It’s very refreshing that John Reed, an architect of Citigroup (C) — the biggest, most disastrous financial supermarket of them all — now says the merger was a mistake and banks should be broken up.