GaryD

Worrying About Large-Deposit Bank Runs

Many of those withdrawals are company payrolls. Companies of any significant size that do their own payrolls need to maintain sizeable accounts, well beyond the FDIC maximum. The people running these companies aren't going to screw around with the risk of losing their payroll. They are going to put the money into Treasuries. The bubble in Treasuries is a whole different ball of wax. It all ends in a run on the dollar...

Trying To Find a Buyer for WaMu

20 bucks and an empty bottle of Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve beer. And I'll also throw in a used, green, spiral bound notebook and a marker that I accidentally left the cap off of. That oughta seal the deal...

Trying To Find a Buyer for WaMu

I'll give them 20 bucks for it.

Latest Bank Headache: Home Equity Loans

That quote by Chuck Scharf is a joke. My brother-in-law worked at Citi when home equity loans first came out. They were told by senior management to push that crap and got big bonuses for doing so. At the time I thought that they were crazy to expect people to go out and get second mortgages on their homes to buy "stuff"; appararently I don't have a good grasp of human action. The bankers knew exactly what they were doing from the get-go. Now they want to blame the mortgage brokers, th government, the homeowners, anyone. They probably had a plan set up fifteen years ago that predicted a blow up, and a little chart that showed how they were going to pin the blame on everyone but themselves. Now they dump the crap on the fed, which amounts to a taxpayer bailout funded through inflation. What a crock. When do we get to tar and feather these guys?