What is left in the governments bag of tricks to get the banks back on track? One topic that I wrote about — 5 months ago — has popped up this past week with more and more frequency. We are finally starting to hear more and more chatter about relaxing “Mark to the market” regulations. [...]
Are you Receiving a 0% Yield For Your Treasury Bills?
December 14, 2008 by
It was reported this week that the Treasury Department sold $32 billion in T-bills at a yield of 0%. Yes, that’s NOT a misprint: zero percent yield. These are treasury bills which mature in four weeks. Yields on these kind of investments have dropped from 1.75% this summer to zero in December 2008. Clearly, investors [...]
Nationalizing Banks Could Be The Key To End The Recession
October 11, 2008 by
The Treasury announced they will begin to inject capital (money) into banks, under terms created under the bailout bill. This article will try to walk through, in English, what this all means. As part of the bailout bill (or TARP: troubled asset recovery plan), one provision that was mostly overlooked during the congressional hearings and [...]
Failed Banks: Your Anchor Banker Understands
July 26, 2008 by
Bank Failures in Nevada and California The headlines this past weekend showed that US regulators took over two banks Friday afternoon and sold them both to Mutual of Omaha bank. This was the sixth and seventh bank failures this year. Before becoming a broker, over 25 years ago, I spent some time working at Anchor [...]
Warren Buffett’s Annual Letter To Shareholders
Warren Buffett writes an annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway each year. If you’ve never read them, you really ought to. They are priceless gems. Not a laugh a minute, but an interesting observation on what’s happening. This year’s version is about 22 pages and he comments on Mark to the Market, derivatives, [...]