The banking landscape in the U.S. has changed drastically over the past few months. At the beginning of the current year, three major banking acquisitions were completed. With the acquisition of Merrill Lynch (MER), Bank of America (BAC) has now become the largest bank in the country by assets, ahead of JP Morgan Chase (JPM), which had recently purchased Washington Mutual's banking operations, and Citigroup (C). At the same time, Wells Fargo (WFC) and PNC Financial Services (PNC) completed the acquisitions of Wachovia and National City to become the 4th and 5th largest bank in the country.Earlier, in September last year, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the other two major investment banks Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman Sachs (GS) converted to bank holding companies.Twenty-five banks had collapsed last year under the burden of loan losses, and ...

In this article, we cite Merrill Lynch (MER), Bank of America (BAC), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Citigroup (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), PNC Financial Services (PNC), Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman Sachs (GS).The banking landscape in the U.S. has changed drastically over the past fewmonths. At the beginning of the current year, three major banking acquisitions were completed. With the acquisition of Merrill Lynch (MER), Bank of America (BAC) has now become the largest bank in the country by assets, ahead of JP Morgan Chase (JPM), which had recently purchased Washington Mutual's banking operations, and Citigroup (C). At the same time, Wells Fargo (WFC) and PNC Financial Services (PNC) completed the acquisitions of Wachovia and National City respectively, and became the 4th and 5th largest banks in the country.Earlier, ...

From "Trade-Finance Pinch Hurts the Healthy," WSJ, 12/22/08:

The global financial crisis is drying up the financing that firms depend on for trade. That's making the global recession nastier and deeper than it otherwise would be.

As with all kinds of credit these days, financial institutions are making less trade finance available and charging more for it. But the squeeze in trade stands out because it pinches otherwise healthy companies that should be driving a recovery in global commerce. Already, the World Bank predicts trade will contract next year for the first time since 1982.

The Deteriorating Trade Outlook

Here's the IMF's recent forecasts for exports -- from October and then November -- for world trade, disaggregated into advanced and developing country groupings.

Figure 1: Real goods and services exports by country group. Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook Oct. 2008; Nov. 6 WEO update.

These developments in trade financing suggest that

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An article in the New York Times last week about careers in solar energy revealed a shocking number - one that would certainly make me look elsewhere for job. As an investor, this particular number would also call into question the true growth of solar energy over the next few years.

The Times’ story cited the Solar Energy Industries Association as reporting that 3,400 companies in the solar energy sector employ only 25,000 to 35,000 workers, including installers, manufacturers, distributors and project developers and materials suppliers. Those numbers are expected to hit more 110,000 employees by 2016, according to the association.

Wait a minute: So seven years from now, this highly touted, save-the-world market will employ only 110,000 people?

From an investor’s perspective, I thought that number was absolutely puny. Let’s put that into perspective…

– Toyota employs 110,000 part-time workers. – That’s the number of foreclosure notices sent to homeowners in California during

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a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZckZ-8naz0/SUG2SNw9ChI/AAAAAAAACPY/DdWvl8fGFRA/s1600-h/XLF.JPG"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 155px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZckZ-8naz0/SUG2SNw9ChI/AAAAAAAACPY/DdWvl8fGFRA/s400/XLF.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278700662303820306" border="0" //aThe chart compares the Financial Sector SPDR (XLF) versus the Samp;P 500 going back to about the time XLF peaked.br /br /What prompted this post was noticing yesterday's more than 7% drop. At $11.90 it is up 37% from its low of $8.67. As you can see it is close to down 70% from its all time peak. That is in the same neighborhood as the tech sector decline at the start of the decade.br /br /That two sectors could implode like this in one decade is truly astonishing. Here we are all these years after the peak in tech and really the sector has not come anywhere close to recovering. Is the financial sector facing the same fate, years without making it back?br /br /I'm not ...

MCG Capital Corporation (MCGC) is a financial services firm that primarily provides capital to support the internal growth and corporate development initiatives of the small-to-medium sized private companies in domestic growth industries such as media, communications, information services and technology.Originally consisting of the media communications lending group of Signet Bank (which was acquired by First Union in November 1997 and later merged into Wachovia), MCGC was bought by the management and affiliates of Goldman Sachs in June 1998 and went public in December 2001.In its latest quarter, total revenue decreased 33.5% year-over-year. The company reduced its workforce by 27% and intends to pay down the statutory minimum dividend for 2009. It is now focused on opportunistic asset monetization to preserve its net asset value, deleveraging its balance sheet and preserving capital to enhance shareholders value. However, given current market challenges, we expect ...

Last week’s gold rally has fizzled out. But Ed Bugos says we could be in line for very bullish move. Outside of Japan, countries are inflating rapidly, which is extremely bearish for paper currency. And the supply and demand fundamentals of physical gold remain bullish.

More from The Daily Reckoning:

The late November rally in gold prices wasn’t quite as spectacular as mid-September’s gain, but it was still impressive. There was good follow-through too, though the momentum softened as bulls knocked on resistance near $850.

The rally was a no-brainer. There is a strong line of support at $700, which was resistance during 2006 and the first half of 2007. Moreover, the market was, and is, oversold.

The catalyst was news that the U.S. government had to bail out Citigroup (NYSE:C), the world’s largest bank by revenues. The event has given way to new concerns about the economy, which weighed on

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Friedman Billings Ramsey is reiterating their Underperform rating on Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) noting that following its $11 billion capital raise, WFC's tangible common equity to assets ratio is just 3.3%. Given this low level, and their expectation that WFC will have to come back to the market and raise more capital, they reduce their price target to $20 (from $25). Target equals to 2.0x 3Q08 tangible book value.Why is tangible common equity important? It is the most important measure of a company's capital, as it is in a first loss position, and is a significant driver of a company's share price. If common equity is reduced by losses, book value shrinks and a stock will trade lower, regardless how much preferred equity is outstanding. FBR considers 3.3% tangible equity to assets a level of considerable leverage, particularly when faced with deteriorating credit quality, merger integration risk, economic weakness, ...

Thursday November 6, 2008 Navivest

Shares of Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) are falling in after hours trading, after the bank announced that it priced an $11 billion offering at $27 per share. That equates to 407.5 million shares of WFC common stock.

Wells Fargo (WFC) is raising the funds to shore up its capital base, as well as to help it complete its October 3rd announced acquisition of Wachovia, which it is buying for $12.4 billion. When that deal is completed, Wells Fargo (WFC) will become the fourth largest U.S. bank, with 6,653 branches and $1.4 trillion in assets.

The $27 pricing was a 6.2% discount to Wells Fargo’s (WFC) 11/05/08 closing price of $28.77.

Wells Fargo (WFC) shares are off $1.55 down to $27.22, a 5.39% fall in after hours trading, after shedding $2.91 or 9.19% in regular trading.

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Further evidence that the small business segment of the economy is undergoing stress. From the ADP National Employment Report:

[Joel] Prakken added, "This month's employment loss was driven by the goods-producing sector which declined 126,000 during October, its twenty-third consecutive monthly decline. The manufacturing sector marked its twenty-sixth consecutive monthly decline, losing 85,000 jobs. These losses were compounded by an employment decline in the service-providing sector of the economy which fell by 31,000, the first loss in the serviceproviding sector recorded by the ADP Report since November of 2002."

"Large businesses, defined as those with 500 or more workers, saw employment decline 41,000, while medium-size companies with between 50 and 499 workers declined 91,000. Employment among small-size businesses, defined as those with fewer than 50 workers, declined 25,000. This is the first outright decline in small business employment reported by the ADP Report since November of 2002, and the largest percentage decline since the economy was emerging from recession

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