Fund Insider

Credit Card Defaults Set a New Record

Grow up you people. Maybe you should have avoided purchasing/leasing that new car every 3 years, the flat panel TV, the cruise tickets and saved for a rainy day. Get used to it, you live in America, and there is no safety net for the little guy. You need to create your own. That, or start a bank and then have the govt rescue you.

Don't Bet Against the Bond Market

Investing in the long or short end of the curve depends not just on economic forecasts (and who can ever predict that with certainty), but also on your purpose for being in Fixed Income. If you are managing a purely FI portfolio (maybe a retiree or institutional FI portfolio), then these bets are what you are paid to make. If you are an asset allocator (typical younger to middle age investor or balanced fund manager) then you need to consider other items, such as whether your bond portfolio truly offers diversification from your equity or other assets. Going with mmkt or short bonds there is no reverse (or any) correlation. I often consider this short/long conundrum discussed here, but in the end, I remind myself that the purpose of my FI portfolio is to offset the risk of my equity portfolio.
There are days I make money in stocks, lose in bonds, and vice versa. A portion of my FI portfolio is just for this purpose. Other portions I use to make specific bets, such as when I loaded up on corp bonds during the peak of the crisis (time to start thinking about getting out now ???). Point is, your strategy for FI investing should be based on your goal(s), not just on the markets and yield curves.

Let's Keep Big Banks from Ruining America Forever

Moronic article. Gold standard, you have to be kidding.
Why would you have any more faith in a mineral dug up from the ground than currency issued by a government. The government's use of gold is what made gold valuable and lack of use renders it useful for jewely only.

As far as the big banks being evil, I have kept personal accounts with both Citi and a small community bank for many years. Each has much to offer. Citi was the first in online banking many years ago, in the 1990s, and first with touchscreen ATMs. See if a community bank will come up with such innovations. I do keep my community bank account as they do give superior service for those services they do offer. I could live with or without either one and both offer consumers a value proposition.

I also worked many many years ago for Citi (late 80s), and while it has changed a great deal over the years, and I did leave for a smaller firm, it was not because Citi was evil, but rather I just saw more opportunity in a smaller more entrepreneurial firm. Citi was a great place to work, even as they were lobbying against Glass Steagall. They did all the same stupid thinks other big banks did, going overboard on volume of credit cards and mortagages, and not always so forthright on those loans, but the company was efficient and a highly automated machine in providing commodity services. If you'd buy a factory robot made car over a hand made car (Rolls?) then why wouldn't you buy the factory robot made banking services ?

If you believe in capitalism, the dream of every entrepreneur is to grow their firm and make more money. Why would you think bankers are any different ? That small community bank doesn't really want to stay a small community bank forever, no more than your own business. Any business in any industry takes risks to grow, and sometimes they pay off, sometimes they crash and burn.
Many big banks crashed and burned, some did not (JPMorgan).

Finally, you seem to have a major problem with lack of transparency of these complicated institutions. Well how often
in life do you want to know how something works in detail ?
You want to turn the key in your car and it goes, you don't really want to know why/how, do you ? You only get interested in the inner workings of your car when it breaks down and you have to pay to fix it. Well some banks are broken, the bank mechanic wants to get paid, and we all want to know how it broke and why we should ever rely on this car again. Well sell your Rolls and buy a Toyota or Ford if you like, but don't condemn the concept of cars and mass producing them efficiently, nor mass production of banking services. Do you know much about your own physiology until you are ill ? Do you job and each your veggies, or does the average person wait until they have a heart attack to take interest in their own body ? Why should they take interest in their bank if they don't care about their own health until too late. Should we stop EMTs from giving CPR and let people die in the streets ?
If so, then let all the banks that can't hack it fail, and there will be
more profits to go around for the healthy banks. Fine with me, but don't say all big banks are evil.

There are poorly run large and small businesses in every industry,
and bashing any industry or size of organization just because they screwed up is ignorant.