Hudson City Bancorp (HCBK) announced yesterday its intention to change its regulator to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Currently the bank is under the regulation of the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). The bank is planning to file an application with the OCC to change its organization from a savings bank to a nationalized bank.

The OCC regulates and supervises more than 1,500 national banks and 50 federal branches of foreign banks in the U.S., accounting for nearly two-thirds of the total assets of all U.S. commercial banks.   The motives behind such reorganization are ensuring safety and soundness of Hudson City Bank, continue with solid performance and growth in the banking industry and maintaining customers’ trust and confidence. The move by Hudson City comes as a "preemptive" action as reform proposals from the U.S. Treasury and Congress have offered to merge the OTS with the OCC.

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So many explanations have been offered for the financial crisis, then reheated and reexamined, that it’s nearly impossible to imagine a new theory worth considering. However, Jeffrey Friedman of the Cato Institute has found one. He looks at a little-discussed regulatory mechanism that incentivized banks to put a disproportionate share of capital into what turned out to be some very toxic assets.  

Friedman explains in the Cato Policy Report:

“In 1988, financial regulators from the G-10 agreed on the Basel (I) Accords. Basel I was an attempt to standardize the world’s bank-capital regulations…

“It differentiated among the risks presented by different types of assets. For instance, a commercial bank did not have to devote any capital to its holdings of government bonds, cash, or gold — the safest assets, in the regulators’ judgment. But it had to allot 4 percent capital to each mortgage that it issued, and 8

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• John Embry (via GATA): Gold bull has years and thousands of dollars to go, December 24, 2009. Sprott Asset Management’s chief investment strategist, John Embry, explains in detail in the new issue of Investor’s Digest of Canada why gold is not in a bubble, why today’s gold price suppression by central banks is many times greater than it was in the 1970s, and how declining production has made gold a fantastic supply/demand imbalance investment.

• Allen Sykora (The Wall Street Journal): Metals-linked ETFs closer to reality, December 26, 2009. Regulators took another step toward smoothing the way for exchange-traded funds linked to the metals to trade in the US – news that sent platinum and palladium prices to

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• John Embry (via GATA): Gold bull has years and thousands of dollars to go, December 24, 2009. Sprott Asset Management’s chief investment strategist, John Embry, explains in detail in the new issue of Investor’s Digest of Canada why gold is not in a bubble, why today’s gold price suppression by central banks is many times greater than it was in the 1970s, and how declining production has made gold a fantastic supply/demand imbalance investment.

• Allen Sykora (The Wall Street Journal): Metals-linked ETFs closer to reality, December 26, 2009. Regulators took another step toward smoothing the way for exchange-traded funds linked to the metals to trade in the US – news that sent platinum and palladium prices to

...

This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• John Embry (via GATA): Gold bull has years and thousands of dollars to go, December 24, 2009. Sprott Asset Management’s chief investment strategist, John Embry, explains in detail in the new issue of Investor’s Digest of Canada why gold is not in a bubble, why today’s gold price suppression by central banks is many times greater than it was in the 1970s, and how declining production has made gold a fantastic supply/demand imbalance investment.

• Allen Sykora (The Wall Street Journal): Metals-linked ETFs closer to reality, December 26, 2009. Regulators took another step toward smoothing the way for exchange-traded funds linked to the metals to trade in the US – news that sent platinum and palladium prices to

...

This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• John Embry (via GATA): Gold bull has years and thousands of dollars to go, December 24, 2009. Sprott Asset Management’s chief investment strategist, John Embry, explains in detail in the new issue of Investor’s Digest of Canada why gold is not in a bubble, why today’s gold price suppression by central banks is many times greater than it was in the 1970s, and how declining production has made gold a fantastic supply/demand imbalance investment.

• Allen Sykora (The Wall Street Journal): Metals-linked ETFs closer to reality, December 26, 2009. Regulators took another step toward smoothing the way for exchange-traded funds linked to the metals to trade in the US – news that sent platinum and palladium prices to

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Dr Stock Pick HOT News & Alerts!

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FREE Daily Stock Alerts From DrStockPick.com

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Friday October 30, 2009

DrStockPick.com Article

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Too big to fail, is still heavy in the derivative market, and primed for a gigantic collapse.

Congress needs a chimney sweep to clean the soot from the smoke they’ve been blowing. Our do nothing congress; well we can’t really say do nothing, they did bail out the banks, and they have raised more money for themselves this session from Insurance, health care and bank lobbyists than in any other one year period, and the year isn’t even over. Now they are spreading the word, the gospel of Obama, it’s time to

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Woohoo!…U.S. stocks racked up their biggest quarterly advance since 1998! The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index soared more than 15% between March 31 and June 30 - lifting its year-to-date performance marginally into the black, and breaking a streak of six consecutive quarterly declines for the S&P 500, the longest since 1970.

This champagne-cork-popping performance obscures a few trends that should be worrisome to the celebrants. First, the S&P 500 has gained no ground whatsoever since May 8, the first trading day after the Federal Reserve triumphantly announced the results of its banking sector “stress tests.” Second, the BKX Index of financial stocks has DROPPED more than 16% since May 8. (As we have noted in prior editions of the Rude Awakening, the finance sector has been leading the overall stock market - both to the upside and downside - for the better part of four years.

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Gold price action on Monday looked similar to Friday’s. The bottom for gold in the Far East came shortly after 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong…rose until shortly after London opened, declined a couple of bucks…but once the London a.m. gold fix was in [10:30 a.m. in London...5:30 a.m. in New York], gold rose to its high of the day shortly after 11:00 a.m. This high [once again over $940] lasted until 9:00 a.m. in New York, shortly after the Comex opened…then it got taken down eight bucks to its low of the day at 10:00 a.m. in New York…which just happens to be the London p.m. fix…3:00 p.m. over there.

From that point it rose right into the Comex close…and was taken down and closed below $940 once again in the electronic market.

Silver’s chart pattern was virtually identical to gold’s.

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL - June 30, 2009 - Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: J.P. Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), Wells Fargo (WFC) and Omnicell Inc. (OMCL).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Monday's Analyst Blog:

Supreme Court Rules Against Banks

In a surprising 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that national banks are still subject to the laws of the states they operate in. What made the ruling unusual is that Justice Scalia wrote the opinion and the other four conservative

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