Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Which banks are weakest?

Matt at Discursive Monologue compares the banks' mysterious black-box "level 3 assets" with the value of shareholder equity, to give an idea of the scale of the risk the investor in financial stocks may be taking.

Turkeys should note that Thanksgiving is on November 22 this year.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous15 November 2007 at 13:16

    "John Varley, the Barclays chief executive, said today that the bank has now written down the value of its sub-prime mortgage backed collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and its second lien loans to zero."

    Zero! Had Barclay's bought particularly risky stuff, or is this what the American banks ought to have done too?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sackerson15 November 2007 at 14:31

    Hi DM: I guess Varley takes the view that it hurts less if you rip the sticking-plaster off quickly; I suspect the US banks are pulling it free slowly, hair by protesting hair.

    ReplyDelete

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