No real substance here other than a look into algorithms and hedge fund trading.

They want to “protect” the investing public….

Too much opposition to deal with say the companies 

People need liquidity and safety huh….wonder why

Full article

So the forced acquisition of Contry Wide probably held off bankruptcy for the past few years….smart Bearded Clam intervention….

Full article 

NEW YORK (AP) — It was a bumpy summer for credit card issuers, but most of the top banks reported that their customers continued to make their payments on time.

Default rates were down at four of the five companies that reported their August results by midday Thursday. Only Capital One Financial Corp. had an uptick in the rate of its write-offs of uncollectible balances.

Capital One also posted a slight increase in its rate of payments late by 30 days or more, which is considered an indicator of future default.

Discover Financial Services, American Express, Chase and Bank of America reported continued declines in both rates.

Citibank is expected to report August results to the Securities and Exchange Commission later Thursday.

The results were similar in July, with a few banks reporting slight increases but most reporting improvements in defaults, or charge-offs, and delinquencies.

Overall, both defaults and delinquencies have dropped sharply since hitting their peaks. Late payments, in particularly, are now at historically low points.

Charge-off rates for cards peaked in the second quarter of 2010 at 10.96 percent, according to Fed data, and were down to 5.6 percent in the latest second quarter. Monthly data from most card issuers has shown continued declines, which will be reflected in third-quarter figures. Industrywide delinquency rates were down to 3.62 percent in the second quarter, after peaking in the second quarter of 2009 at 6.76 percent.

One reason consumers are able to keep up with their payments is that balances have dropped sharply since the height of the recession. Lower balances translates to lower minimum payments.

Full article

Full preliminary report 

Another look

In Play

On the Wires

Full duh article

Rogue traders take a bite off the balance sheet indeud…

Despite high unemployment and public protests Greece is moving forward with more austerity measures to instill confidence that they will do what is necessary to stay in the EU and receive bailout tranches.

Full article

Full article

“No urgency to raise them until the global recovery strengthens, weakening the local currency it called overvalued.”

Full article

Hurray for a relief rally and some follow through…

Full article

The Euro traded higher against 13 of 16 major currencies.

Full article

Full article

This is a good question, but one that probably does not have to be answered for a long time. Perhaps next year sometime we may be asking this very question.

Full article

“China is willing to buy bonds from nations involved in the sovereign debt crisis, National Development and Reform Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Xiaoqiang said in an interview with the media in Dalian yesterday.

China is willing to offer assistance, Zhang said without elaborating, adding that Premier Wen Jiabao made similar remarks earlier, according to a transcript distributed on the planning agency’s website yesterday evening. Caijing magazine attended the briefing and published an article earlier.

Wen, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Dalian yesterday, signaled that that developed nations should cut deficits and open markets rather than rely on China to bail out the world economy. China can best contribute to the global economic recovery by ensuring steady growth at home, he said.

“Countries must first put their own houses in order,” Wen said. “Developed countries must take responsible fiscal and monetary policies. What is most important now is to prevent the further spread of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.”

Full article 

This paper basically sums up the key problem with bailouts in general. The banks that received funds, realizing they had the option to never lose, started throwing hail mary passes buying up high yielding garbage with the off chance hope that they could luck out and regain their former glory.

What a huge waste of resources.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (TheStreet) — The government bailout made banks appear safer but actually caused them to take on more credit risk, according to a University of Michigan study released Wednesday.

According to a working paper by finance professors Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura of the university of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, banks participating in the government’s Capital Purchase Program as part of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, “significantly increased their investments in risky securities,” by 10%, “displacing safer assets, such as Treasury bonds, short-term paper, and cash equivalents.”

The study also found that although the banks receiving TARP money weren’t any more likely to expand their lending, the group’s lending activity shifted toward riskier mortgages “as measured by the borrower’s loan-to-income ratio and the high-risk loan indicator based on the loan rate.” According to the study, “the fraction of the riskiest mortgages in the originated credit increased for banks approved for participating in TARP but declined for banks denied TARP money by the regulators.”

According to the study, the receipt of TARP money also led to “significant effect on the risk profile of corporate lending,” similar to that seen for mortgage lending.

Duchin and Sosyura say that although TARP helped improve participating banks “capitalization ratios,” the net effect was “the net effect is a significant increase in systemic risk and the probability of distress due to the higher risk of bank assets.”

Among banks participating in TARP by selling preferred shares to the U.S. Treasury, the largest bailout recipients were Citigroup , which received $49 billion from the U.S. Treasury, and Bank of America , which received $45 billion in government money. Bank of America fully repaid TARP and Citigroup repaid $20 billion in TARP money, after converting $25 billion its TARP preferred shares to common shares, which were later sold by the government.

Other large banks receiving $25 billion in TARP money apiece included JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo , both of which fully repaid the government.

The publicly traded bank with the largest amount of TARP preferred shares outstanding is Regions Financial , which owes $3.5 billion in government bailout funds.

So Austria is not rejecting expansion of EFSF, but rather a fast track vote on it. Markets are hopeful of a meeting taking place with Germany, France, and Greece.