Month: February 2009
Below are all the posts archived for the month.
Interesting Reads – 28th Feb
in Opinion
This week I tried out Vilkri’s Budget Planner, which I thought was really good. I have never used a Budget Planner before so I don’t have anything for comparison, but this is certainly much better than the excel sheets I used to maintain. The primary problem with those excel sheets was that I used to
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Securum – Bad Bank of Sweden
in Articles
Sweden had its own banking crisis in 1993 and at that time – Securum – was created. Securum was structured as an Asset Management Company, rather than a bank to give it more flexibility, but the press and media referred to it as a bank and in a lot of cases, as a “Bad Bank”.
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Dilbert Comic About Bailouts
in Opinion
I couldn’t resist posting this hilarious cartoon here, please laugh as much as you can in the first few seconds of seeing this, because it takes about that much time to realize how true this is. Source: Dilbert
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Take Your Pick
in Opinion
The Daily KOS lays out the four things that the government is trying to achieve to solve the banking crisis: a.) lifts Big Shitpile off the balance sheets of the banks, while at the same time leaving them b.) solvent and c.) in the hands of private investors, without d.) constituting a flat-out transfer of
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AIG Restructuring
in Opinion
I was happy to read this AIG Restructuring piece in the Financial Times. AIG is expected to report a loss of 60 billion dollars this Monday. If a company that has taken government aid twice in the last six months – reports the biggest loss that any company has ever reported – then it is
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Bank Nationalization
in Opinion
There is a lot of talk about Nationalizing the banking sector and in general there is a lot of resentment against it. To me, most of this is because of the connotation of the – N word, rather than the actions that are expected out of this process. What Would Nationalization Mean? There have been
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Citi Zooms Up as the Dow Dives
in Opinion
It has been a very interesting day today. A little depressing perhaps, but interesting. In the morning there was news that the US Government will convert its Citi Preferred Stock which it bought for a cool $45 billion dollars a few weeks ago into a 40% equity stake. The total market capitalization of Citi was
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Cost of 14 Failed Banks in 2009
in Articles
So far in 2009 – 14 banks have failed , and have been taken over by the FDIC. These banks are much smaller than Citi or Bank of America, and the latest one to fail – Silver Falls Bank, Silverton, OR – had assets worth $131.4 million dollars. The FDIC facilitated a purchase agreement with
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Crisis of Credit Explained
in Opinion
I am not sure how viral this video has gone yet, but I am really sure it is going to get very popular in the next few days. This is excellent work done by Jonathan Jarvis who has made this video explaining the current crisis in easy terms with a great creative visual on his
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Interesting Reads – 21st Feb
in Opinion
I guess the most interesting thing I saw or read this week was Rick Santelli’s Tea Party video at CNBC. I must admit that I feel a certain relief that someone has gone ahead and said this out loud on television. I am sure most of you must have seen this video, but if you
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Moral Hazard
in Opinion
Recently a friend of mine told me that – “he didn’t care what they (government) did, they should just fix it (the economy)”. I was amazed at his conviction that “they” could fix “it”. When I was in school – one of the dominant right wing political parties in India was trying to alter History
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Obama’s Help for Homeowners
in Articles
President Obama unveiled his “Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan” today which aims at helping stem the tide of foreclosures, and bring respite to hapless homeowners. The NYT puts a price tag of $75 billion on it, however this is just an estimate. The actual cost may turn out to be much higher, but whats a
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