Top Gun

Financial Stock Valuations: The Mirror Image of Tech Stocks in '99?

Wells is the only bank, one of the few stocks, that I own.

Congress will appropriately heavily regulate the banks. They have proven to be crooks. Instead of letting them fail, regs will be instituted to insure that capital remains at high levels and risks are manageable.

Economy is food production, transportation, building when actually needed, etc, etc. Banks merely facilitate by transferring money from one place to another. Any leverage is simply inflationary in the sense that it bolsters prices in the short term, just like helping out mortgage borrowers by the federal government.

We may eventually realize that leverage is the dumbest thing a mature society can allow. I don't know, but banks only benefit from as much leverage as they can generate. Tacit backstop by the federal government must be removed in order to reduce risk taking. Wells is the only major bank that I can see who never assumed they would get help from the government, and leant accordingly. And gee, they actually make money!

Geithner's Superfund Is the Real Deal

Seems to me we are headed for a bit of resolution, someone needs to value and take these high risk assets. Even putting $500B into strong hands will reduce the overall risk in the sellers portfolio by quite a bit.

I think we are in a bond market for the next ten years, forget stocks. This is new in my adult lifetime. We created so much credit (we, ha!) that all available capital must be deployed against this mess. It's now clear to me that you can add to your list that bankers tried to get the public to absorb all of their mistakes - mistakes they had already made commissions on. Can anyone say $4B in bonuses Merrill Lynch for selling debt we are now asked to take - fungible money, remember?