Highlights include American International Group, Inc. (AIG), Citigroup, Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC).This morning, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech on the topic of financial regulation and the lessons learned from the recent disaster. Here is a key section of the speech, with my thoughts interspersed: 

"Looking forward, I believe a more macroprudential approach to supervision--one that supplements the supervision of individual institutions to address risks to the financial system as a whole--could help to enhance overall financial stability. Our regulatory system must include the capacity to monitor, assess, and, if necessary, address potential systemic risks within the financial system. Elements of a macroprudential agenda include:   

"monitoring large or rapidly increasing exposures--such as to subprime mortgages--across firms and markets, rather than only at the level of individual firms ...

By Ted Butler

A number of different factors have converged, creating what could be a lift-off point for the price of silver (and gold). This confluence of readily verifiable factors shows the silver market to be in a low risk and high reward situation. The factors involve both the paper and physical silver markets. The only question, as always, is if the manipulators, led by JPMorgan and protected by the CFTC, can thwart the set up once prices rally.

The structure in the paper markets, as defined by the CFTC’s latest Commitment of Traders (COT) and Bank Participation Reports, as well as the year-end OTC Derivatives Report by The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, are extremely bullish on any objective historical basis. This means that the commercials, as a whole, have a greatly reduced total net short silver position after the recent engineered sharp sell-off. Normally, when the commercials have

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Both gold and silver rose in Sunday evening trading on the Globex [counterparty...Western Pacific Ocean]. The peak prices in Far East trading occurred around lunchtime in Hong Kong. From there, both metals drifted slightly lower…and remained there all through European trading until the Comex open in New York…then away they both went.

Gold managed a $10 rally before some not-for-profit seller showed up at 9:15 a.m. Eastern time. Once the London p.m. gold fix was in, gold rallied again…making it a hair above $900 for a few seconds…before some other [probably the same] not-for-profit seller showed up. From there it got sold off into the close.

Silver’s 8:00 a.m. rally on the Comex was like a moon shot…and heaven only knows how high the price would have gone [certainly north of $13] if the same not-for-profit seller hadn’t showed up at exactly the same 9:15 a.m. time. Silver got sold off a

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As governments around the world fight rising unemployment, falling exports and bank credit crunch, and several central banks are facing liquidity traps, many are turning to restrictions that privilege national producers. These populist measures attempt to minimize growth impact, social unrest and pain from the credit crunch that poses a risk to several ruling governments, especially those facing elections soon. Furthermore, some officials hope that such restrictions will reduce the leakage of the scarce funds used in bank bailouts and fiscal stimulus to other countries.

But as history shows, the impacts of trade protectionism on exports and job creation if any are small in the short-term and instead may lead to global retaliation, and in the long-term result in inefficient allocation of labor and capital and trade distortions, affecting potential

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by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /“For Austria, the actual crisis is yet to come. The decline of the eastern European economy will hit Austria in 2009".br /Peter Eigner, Professor of economic history at the University of Vienna”br /br /br /The yield difference, or spread, between 10-year Austrian securities and benchmark German bunds has been rising substantially of late, and hit 137 points on Feb. 18, the widest yet recorded (see chart below). At the same time Austria now has a higher default risk than those Mediterranean "laggards" Italy, Portugal and Spain, at least according to credit-default swap prices as quoted by CMA Datavision. Austrian swaps were trading at 253.3 basis points on March 3, compared with 17.5 points 12 months ago. That means it costs 253,300 euros a year to protect 10 million euros from default for five years. br /br /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SbFfRtpHzcI/AAAAAAAAM9E/eiB4kvwG70A/s1600-h/austria+bund.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310130193561013698" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /blockquoteKeynes’s genius – a very English one – was to insist we should approach an economic system not as a morality play but as a technical challenge.br /Martin Wolf, a href=”http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/be2dbf2c-d113-11dd-8cc3-000077b07658.html”Financial Times/a/blockquotebr /br /The euro fell again yesterday, by 1.1 percent against the dollar (to $1.2860) and by 1.2 percent against the yen (to 117.52 yen). The change, even if quite large in a short space of time, is hardly dramatic, but what is of more interest is the why. Russian companies announced yesterday that they were thinking of opening negotiations to “restructure” their debt. a href=”http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101sid=aq5iyuLURj1srefer=japan”Bloomberg/a:br /br /blockquoteThe euro fell after a Russian bank official said the nation’s lenders asked the government to help moderate talks with foreign lenders on $400 billion of loans, adding to speculation financial turmoil in Europe is worsening. br /br /The euro fell versus 13 of the 16 most-active …

blockquote“A significant amount, if not all, of the speculative attacks on the ruble are funded by the central bank itself,” said Vladimir Osakovsky, Moscow-based economist for UniCredit/blockquotepThe underlying dynamics of the current ruble devaluation are provoking more than a little consternation in Russia at the moment. In the forefront of the debate are data from Bank Rossii (the central bank) which show they lent 7.7 trillion rubles ($214 billion) in overnight and seven-day loans (secured with bonds or other collateral) in just 16 trading days last month - this was about double the 4.8 trillion rubles provided via so-called repurchase auctions in December. Over the same period the ruble lost 18 percent against the dollar. The question is, is there a connection here?/ppRussia's banking authorities now certainly seem to think there is and Kommersant reported (Friday) that policy makers planned to reduce bank loans in an attempt to limit ...

Bank of American Corp. (BAC), which is getting $15 billion from the U.S. government as part of the Treasury Department’s $250 billion “recapitalization” effort, is doubling its stake in state-owned China Construction Bank Corp., and will hold a 20% stake worth $24 billion in China’s second-largest lender when that deal is finalized.

PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (PNC), which will get $7.7 billion from Treasury’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), is using that cash infusion to help finance its $5.2 billion buyout of embattled National City Corp. (NCC).

And U.S. Bancorp (USB), which received a $6.6 billion capital infusion from that same rescue package, has acquired two California lenders – Downey Savings & Loan Association, F.A., a subsidiary of Downey Financial Corp. (DSL), and PFF Bank & Trust, a subsidiary of PFF Bancorp Inc. (OTC: PFFB). U.S. Bank

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h1 style="text-align: center;"bBank Nationalization/b/h1h2 style="text-align: center;"bspan class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"Bank Nationalization Day/span/b/h2a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tvshDVnXSLc/SS_l74vGpJI/AAAAAAAAAf4/J6EgOxMC024/s1600-h/RBS-DundasHouse.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tvshDVnXSLc/SS_l74vGpJI/AAAAAAAAAf4/J6EgOxMC024/s320/RBS-DundasHouse.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273686505679135890" border="0" //a Old HQ pictured. Following failure of shareholders to buy more than 0.24% (only £36m for 56m shares) of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group's £20bn share issue, RBS (1) (including Citizens Bank, USA, and NatWest Bank, England) today became the third to be formally nationalised (nearly 58%). The small take-up of the issue by existing shareholders had been expected as the offer price of 65.5p was 10p higher than the price at which the shares were trading, so those who did buy on paper lost £5m doing so. The share issue by RBS was part of the government's plan to recapitalise banks. The government will pay £15bn for the majority stake in the bank plus £5bn of ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelona Yesterday, the Ukraine received a USD16.5bn loan from the IMF and the IMF at the same time said that it would agree with the Hungarian government on a rescue package in the coming days. Under normally circumstances this would be good news for CEE assets. However, it seems like the markets are totally giving up on CEE. This morning the Hungarian stock markets have dropped more than 10% despite the promise of an IMF package. ......it is worrying that the CEE markets continue to sell-off despite IMF’s clear commitment to support the region’s markets and economies. One might in fact see the lack of positive response to IMF’s rescue packages for Hungary and the Ukraine as an indication that these packages are in fact making the markets even more nervous that something “is seriously wrong in CEE”. Lars Christensen, Chief Analyst Danske Bank, CEE: Markets fail to respond ...