Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
This is a person who apparently was not invited to speak at the yearend economic and dollar pep rally on F-TV.
"This year, "on a conservative basis, you’re going to have two, three, four times" last year’s total of bank seizures, said Charles Wendel, founder of Financial Institutions Consulting Inc., of Ridgefield, Conn."
Fifteen local banks under regulatory scrutiny for problems By Harold Brubaker Inquirer Staff Writer
The Philadelphia region escaped last year with no bank failures, but that does not mean federal bank regulators are failing to scrutinize local institutions.
At the end of the year, 15 of 101 banks based here were operating under regulatory agreements to address weaknesses in loans and other areas, such as staffing.
Three of the banks with agreements – Harleysville National Bank & Trust Co., First Keystone, and the First National Bank of Chester County – are being sold. Another, ISN Bank, had a deal that failed to win regulatory approval.
Experts characterized the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s closure of 140 banks across the country last year as a warm-up for the agency, whose board last month authorized a 55 percent increase in the FDIC budget and a 23 percent increase in staffing to 8,653.
This year, "on a conservative basis, you’re going to have two, three, four times" last year’s total of bank seizures, said Charles Wendel, founder of Financial Institutions Consulting Inc., of Ridgefield, Conn.
More…



In The News Today Posted: Jan 03 2010 By: Jim Sinclair Post Edited: January 3, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Filed under: In The News
Dear CIGAs,
This article says it all.
If you read this extremely well written and easily understood piece you will see the inherent message.
Form will not overcome substance. MOPE will fall to economic law in 2010.
The means do not justify the ends especially when the ends are an illusion in the first place.
I see my mission as one to protect you from the increasing weak economic structure insured by the rescue of financial firms (privileged paper shufflers) temporarily at the cost of real business that creates something tangible for society.
This is the reason that I label the 2009 dollar rally as a pimple on the ass of an elephant, a sucker’s rally created by luncheon agreements on the carry trade (unknowable as to volume) concluded by hedge fund managers.
Prepare for a Keynesian Hangover Our government’s spending orgy will haunt us in 2010. DECEMBER 28, 2009, 8:49 P.M. ET By BENN STEIL
In 2008, as the U.S. economy teetered under the weight of years of reckless credit expansion, the Bush administration decided against proposals to sweep out the bad debts from the banking system and then fix the regulatory structure—an approach based on tried and tested models from the S&L crisis and other financial crises.
We will pay the price for this decision in 2010. That’s because the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are plowing forward with Plan B: Nationalize credit creation and "stimulate" the private sector by spending in its stead.
Richard Nixon’s famous line, "We’re all Keynesians now" never seemed more apropos. With the budget deficit at an eye-popping $1.4 trillion, and on track to stay above $1 trillion indefinitely, Berkeley economist Brad DeLong writes breezily in his Nov. 30 blog that "anything that boosts the government’s deficit over the next two years passes the benefit-cost test—anything at all."
On the monetary side, the fireworks have been even more spectacular. Since the financial crisis of late 2008, the Fed has flooded the globe with newly conjured dollars in an unprecedented no-holds-barred effort to prod private credit expansion. Watching the booms in the markets for distressed debt, junk-rated corporate bonds and poor-country sovereign bonds since the summer, one might be forgiven for concluding that the Fed had succeeded well beyond its expectations, and that the market’s flight to safety had given way to a flight to Vegas. Yet "the truth is that policy should be piling on," Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes in his Nov. 25 blog, "not looking for the exit."
More…