Read About W-N NP story on W-N Contact W-N and Map Invite to Wed1369 Wednesday Night Salon #1369 28 May 2008 Page 2 Introduction Thursday 25 Apr 2007 To day NYT Podcast | Menu Radio Like the report of Mark Twain's death, reports of the death of radio –at least FM – are greatly exaggerated. Real estate Bulletin Board www.flickr.com More of davidnicholson's photos tagged with Wed1369 Wed 1369 slide show Canadian dollar is expected to decline against its U.S. counterpart. The economy See also JACQUES CLEMENT: Pages ON THE ECONOMY Previous Videos Notes by Herb Bercovitz OWN Editor: Diana Thébaud Nicholson OWN Radio, the long-lasting treasure intro Wed1369 | Wed1369 slide show Oil Diana Nicholson OWN slides | hands | all | & Louise 3-M slides | albums | all Gerald Ratzer OWN Note Wednesday-Night creates charts and follows stocks, including timely related financial news items, in which Wednesday Nighters are interested and in order to demonstrate a service that could eventually be developed and marketed. Wednesday Nighters are invited to participate and help to test the service. see Wednesday-Night.com Flip charts QUOTES of the EVENING from recent Wednesday Nights 2008 From #1369 invite It’s not a Bush problem, it’s an American problem. He is playing double or nothing. He is trying to shift the responsibility from the Coalition to the Iraqis New York City has more police officers than Iraq has troops More Quotes Short | Full List www.flickr.com This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from davidnicholson tagged with diananicholson. Make your own badge here. Diana Nicholson Past Quotes Best or All Mouse bio see Diana show hands | RJG | Album Herb Bercovitz OWN Galbraith imges his page See slides | Album and Art slides | Album W-N Links for this W-N nsnbc Economy Where Next a NewYorker Cartoon every 30 sec. see w-n Right Menu => Harper's Home 2008 Notes for this Wed-Night Diana's site | RSS feed US Bank Sector Thank goodness it’s more bank comments: The latest statistics from the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) shows recent financial turmoil in the U.S. has caused pain in the banking industry. Commercial banks and savings institutions insured by FDIC reported net income of $19.3 billion in the first quarter of 2008, a decline of $16.3 billion (45.7%) from the $35.6 billion that the industry earned in the first quarter of 2007. The primary reason for the drop of the profits is higher provisions for loan losses as more than half of all insured institutions (50.4%) reported lower net income in the first quarter. The numbers were better than the Q4 results. FDIC reduced industry earnings for that quarter from the $5.8 billion previously reported to $646 million, as a result of additional charges for goodwill impairment. That is the lowest quarterly net income for the industry since Q4 1990. FDIC is still concerned that: 1) Non-current loans are still rising sharply; 2) Earnings remain burdened by high provisions for loan losses; 3) The industry’s “coverage” ratio – its loss reserves as a percentage of nonperforming loans – continued to erode; and 4) The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) reserve ratio fell. Given the crisis is not over, the Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it will make more short-term cash loans available to squeezed banks, marking the latest round in a program that was launched in December to ease stressed credit markets. The Federal Reserve said it will conduct three auctions in June, with each one making $75 billion available in short-term cash loans. LIBOR Rate Doesn’t everyone lie about their number? Several weeks ago we highlighted a Wall Street Journal article, which expressed concern that the very important Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) was not properly reflecting the actual cost of interbank borrowing. LIBOR is a daily reference rate based on the interest rates at which banks offer to lend unsecured funds to other banks in the London wholesale money market. The difference between the LIBOR rate with the “risk-free” government shortterm money rate is frequently used to measure the perceived health or risk of the banking sector. Everyday at about 11am (London Time) traders from 16 banks report what it would cost them to borrow unsecured money for lengths of time range from overnight to a year. The reported borrowing rate for each participating bank is then published by Thomson Reuters (TRI). The Libor rate is then calculated by averaging the rate for each time period after removing outlier data. The Libor rate sets a benchmark borrowing rate for trillions of dollars of financial instruments globally, including residential mortgages, exotic derivative products and commercial lending. Some market participants and analysts believe that banks are mis-reporting the true costs of their borrowing rate. As each bank’s borrowing rate is published, the banks could be motivated to under report their true borrowing rates, as a higher than average rate would broadly signal to the market that lenders view the bank as having higher than average liquidity risk. The WSJ compared the banks’ self-reported borrowing rate with the credit default insurance and noted that the spread between these number varied greatly with some banks, including Citigroup (C), J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) and UBS (UBS) – possibly indicating misrepresentation of the Libor rate. Incidentally, the Royal Bank (RY) was noted as one bank who’s published Libor rate was very close to the implied credit insurance risk rate – oh, those honest Canadians. The WSJ reported that the BBA (British Bankers Association) is expected to meet today to discuss possible djustments to the system, although major changes to the system are not expected. Thursday 29 May 2008 Oil stocks still a bargain It's a matter of when, not if, commodity analysts come out with new, higher targets Talisman shares give back their gains Rex Murphy's Point of View index see also Wednesday-Night.com MedicalNotes Would you like to the Computer Box Click Here To Add Wed1369page2.asp To Your Favorites More Info About... Read Cookie for Site Please click here to see new/updated pages since last visit www.iedm.org/ coming Events Wed1369 report Wed1369 invite Wed1370 invite The views above are neither those of the authors nor the owner of the website, but merely reflect discussions that took place on this evening