Toeser

Cash for Trash: Better Never than Late

Actually Palmer, Canada may have to start watching it's southern border for American citizens. Canada is doing much better than the U.S., and after Pelosi, Reid, and Obama have destroyed our economy, we may all try to sneak into Canada.

5 Reasons Bank Shareholders Will Take a Hit

The market can remain illogical longer than you can remain solvent.

You are right about the banks. You may even be right about the market, but only time will tell. I hate mania markets because I find it hard to pull the plug on logic. Many of the big banks actually lost a ton of money last quarter, but reported big profits. Hardly a reason to be buying, but people are.

Why Banks Want to Return TARP Money

Overall bank lending is up something like 3-4% over the past 12 months, down from an annual growth rate of 10-12% in the previous couple of years.

If you have healthy GNP growth of 3-4%, then a growth rate in lending above that number means everyone is going more into debt. Duhhh! Hello government. We don't want to return to a 10-12% growth rate in lending, that's what got us here.

U.S. Bancorp Dividend Cut: Anything but TARP

"It is not a coincidence that U.S. Bancorp cut its dividend at the same time that it repaid the TARP money."

The TARP money has not been repaid. The government will not allow the funds to be repaid until stress tests have been finished. My concern is who is stress-testing our loser government?

Repaying TARP: Life for USB and NTRS?

I worked most of my adult life for USB. I am delighted to have my retirement benefits coming from them and not from 20 other banks where they would be at substantial risk. USB perfect? No. But they had a discipline around expense control that was obsessive. While I occasionally saw cracks in risk management, they also scored very high on that front.

Global Finance recently ranked Wells Fargo (1) and USB (2) as the lowest risk banks in the U.S. I am afraid they got that backwards. At this point in banking history, USB is clearly number one over Wells Fargo. USB does not have a Wachovia to absorb, and they are not headquarted in self-destructing Cali – fornia, as Arnold would say.

2008 - Where I Was Right and What I Could Not Have Imagined

I agree that most alternative energy sources, such as wind, will not make a meaningful dent in our future energy needs. Biofuels, such as ethanol from corn, are generally as inefficient as you state. However, there is one on the horizon that may just be our primary future energy source: algae. Experimental technologies for growing algae have found it to be literally thousands of times more efficient than corn (per acre). I just hope the government does not screw this up by picking less efficient favorites.

That Sucking Sound? It's FDIC Insurance Taking Over

Government bailout here, government bailout there. The government is us, and all the money we use to bail out ourselves is borrowed from China. Never has this country been so vulnerable to a meltdown. I don't think it will happen, but the conditions are ripe.