longtermvalue

Yes, Financial Companies Can Be Analyzed

Charlie - that is what I am getting at. You indicated that "the process is highly subjective with little overall guidelines," which I know to be true for most unregulated companies estimating their general liabilities. Do you KNOW that to be true for banks in estimating their reserves, or is that a best guess kinda thing?

Mr Brown wrote: "I’ll spare you the details of the minutiae of reserve accounting. Suffice it to say, though, that managements have very little discretion... Auditors do not permit (and investors would not want) managements to have broad discretion over the size of reserves."

That makes me think there is an aspect of banking regulations that more or less ties the hands of management teams in establishing reserves. That would be news to me, it would be highly relevant to this debate, and I would like Mr Brown to address this further (if he has made it through the endless comments of drivel).