[Petronski]

Hat tip: Kathryn Jean Lopez, NRO's The Corner

[BGHater]

‘The huge European bank Fortis is apparently about to fail.’

Gee, Will, do you think this will help Fortis, or do you want to bat clean up for Charles Schumer?

[FlingWingFlyer]

This is Saturday. The world didn’t end Friday as had been predicted by the “national news media.”

[Nascar Dad]

Think ING will buy them up? We are now starting to witness the quickest consolidation of any industry in the history of time. 6 months from now, the landscape of financial co’s/banks will look completely different than it did 1 yr ago. Wow.

[raptor29]

Still cheerleading the bailout, a bailout you have no clue about, you don’t know any of the details, other than the fact that the same people who engineered the problems in the first place are in charge of distributing the bailout money. And Bill Kristol is just another soft-ass wuss republican, part of the eastern ‘elite’ pusses who are in bed with so many of these Wall Street crooks that I won’t believe anything he says.

[RochesterFan]

No. No. No. How can one insure something when one does not have an accurate understanding of the risks and the value of the holdings???. The person with the correct answer is Karl Denninger

The solution is simple, it is elegant, and it will work.

1. Force all off-balance sheet "assets" back onto the balance sheet, and force the valuation models and identification of individual assets out of Level 3 and into 10Qs and 10Ks. Do it now. [Denninger calls this 'transparent balance sheets']
2. Force all OTC derivatives [i.e. credit default swaps] onto a regulated exchange similar to that used by listed options in the equity markets. This permanently defuses the derivatives time bomb. Give market participants 90 days; any that are not listed in 90 days are declared void; let the participants sue each other if they can't prove capital adequacy.
3. Force leverage by all institutions to no more than 12:1. The SEC intentionally dropped broker/dealer leverage limits in 2004; prior to that date 12:1 was the limit. Every firm that has failed had double or more the leverage of that former 12:1 limit. Enact this with a six month time limit and require 1/6th of the excess taken down monthly.

Once 1-3 are put in place then send in the OTS and OCC examiners and look at every financial institution in the United States. All who are insolvent and unable to raise private capital immediately are forced through receivership where the debt is converted to equity and existing equity is wiped out. With the CDS monster caged the systemic risk is removed, the bondholders provide the cushion for recapitalization (as it should be) and the restructured firm emerges with no debt while the former bondholders are now the owners (of the equity) in the resulting firm.

This will also help with the coming bad car loan crisis and bad credit card debt crisis.

[Dawn531]

We’ve been taking small amounts of cash out for weeks(Wachovia) and keeping it in case of an emergency...we’ve left a substantial amount in, also. I’m not worried about eventually getting our cash, I just am not one who would enjoy standing in a queue waiting to make a withdrawal if there should be a run on the bank. We have enough cash squirreled away to tide us over until the panic passed. We have a 20 year old who’s in college and he never has cash always uses his debit card. We advised him to have a little stash for gas/groceries, etc. should his bank fail and he not be able to use his debit card. It’s just like preparing for a hurricane, IMHO, the preparations include having cash on hand, it only makes sense.

[Mark was here]

Quick, lets use taxpayer money to re-inflate the housing bubble!

[1035rep]

bttt

[narses]

A must watch video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH—o

[Bernard]

Anybody who doesn’t know that the FDIC limit is $100,000, and is at risk of losing funds over that, deserves to lose it. When somebody runs through the gates and gets run over by the train, I can’t feel that bad about it. Sorry.

[roamer_1]

1. Giving the FDIC authority to provide unlimited deposit insurance through the FDIC for transaction accounts in banks.

No.

2. Authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to provide unlimited protection of principal in money market funds through the Treasury's exchange stabilization fund.

No.

At most, offer an easy way to refinance loans back into local banks to get them all out of the speculative market- They don't belong there in the first place.

[LomanBill]

>As Larry put it, this really will be 1933 soon if we don't move rapidly to stabilize the banking...

 

Giving in to the demands of the protection schemers is not going to "fix" anything.

 

The pyramid on the Dollar is a metaphor for stable civilization.  Per the illustration, stable civilizations have a broad productive base (the citizenry), overseen by a small, wise, God (big G) fearing system of governance.

 

The problem is the system is supposed to look like this:

 

 

 

But is currently configured like this:

 

 

 

 

The observed systemic corruption and instability is caused by the fact that the pyramid is upside down (but governance is still at the top), and there is no God in the Secular Humanist picture - no god other than the structure of organization, which is the system of financial governance, itself.  

 

Presto changeo,  Republic becomes Fascist collective - worshiping and subjugated by the organizational structure of financial governance.

 

 

So, how is creating a credit pipeline with a 700 Billion dollar revolving credit limit going to fix that?  It's not.

 

 

 

 

[Tempest]

Funny I thought we were on the precipice last week?

[PUGACHEV]

Deutche Bank invested heavily in U.S. mortgages. How long can it be before they fail too?

[dr_who]

It’ll be harder for the US to bailout a foreign bank, one would think. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see what European governments do, besides find a way to point fingers at the US.