Posted on 12/11/2008 6:03:58 PM PST by rabscuttle385
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jim Rogers, one of the world's most prominent international investors, on Thursday called most of the largest U.S. banks "totally bankrupt," and said government efforts to fix the sector are wrongheaded.
Speaking by teleconference at the Reuters Investment Outlook 2009 Summit, the co-founder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund, said the government's $700 billion rescue package for the sector doesn't address how banks manage their balance sheets, and instead rewards weaker lenders with new capital.
Dozens of banks have won infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program created in early October, just after the Sept 15 bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (LEHMQ.PK). Some of the funds are being used for acquisitions.
"Without giving specific names, most of the significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt," said Rogers, who is now a private investor.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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blowhard camera-whore alert.
Do you think most major banks are solvent? Except Wells Fargo and a select set of mid-tier banks, the rest are bankrupt considering their CDS exposures.
ping
Most of them are morally bankrupt as well.
What is CDS exposure?
I liked what Rogers said when the first bailout bill was in the news. When the Fox repoter askes him what he thought we should do he said, “First thing we do is shoot everyone in congress”.
To be fair the only banks that I know are solid are Wells Fargo, Bank of America and US Bank..
I don't know, but I would think a prophylactic would have been in order.
Credit Default Swap - A credit default swap (CDS) is a credit derivative contract between two counterparties. The buyer makes periodic payments to the seller, and in return receives a payoff - if an underlying financial instrument defaults.
The underlying financial instruments, in many cases, are the overvalued mortgages that have lost their values.
CDS stands for Credit Default Swaps, a type of derivative security that acts kinda like insurance (on default of a particular debt). Unfortunately, the "big boys" were making all sorts of crazy bets using CDS. Add that to the fact that CDS, like other types of derivatives, are kinda hard to understand and require complex mathematics and computational power, and that they are loosely regulated...and you have the makings of a perfect financial storm.
Anyone know how HSBC is doing? Trying to decide whether to switch to little local bank, or leave whatever little money we have there.
LOL, so true.
--
Adversity employs great talents; prosperity renders them useless and carries the inept, the corrupted wealthy and the wicked to the top.
May they bear in mind that virtue often contains the seeds of tyranny.
May they bear in mind that it is neither gold nor even a multitude of arms that sustains a state, but its morals.
May each of them keep in his house, in a corner of this field, next to his workbench, next to his plow, his gun, his sword, and his bayonet.
May they all be soldiers.
May they bear in mind that in circumstances where deliberation is possible, the advice of old men is good, but that in moments of crisis youth is generally better informed that its elders.
Denis Diderot
Apostrophe to the Insurgents, 1782
which is why I use a dutch bank. ING direct all the way.
Their "insurance" was always an illusion...
I don’t know....
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