Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain Some White House Banking summit. A one on one with Jamie Dimon and a few second tier, TARP-bound moneylenders. John Stumpf of Wells Fargo is running late but surely on his way. Tied up signing some last minute foreclosures. The opening topic must be how to spin 26% credit card interest rates as a consumer benefit. It appears that Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein, Read More...

The Mess That Greenspan Made Shortly after the Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF (NYSEArca:GDXJ) began trading almost exactly one month ago, the detailed data that Van Eck Global provides on a daily basis at their website was collected so as to prepare the chart below in order to get a better idea of how the ETF was being received by investors. So far, the results are fairly impressive, but th Read More...

AC Investor ( click to enlarge ) AIB made a strong upside reversal today. For now, expect a run up to next resistance area around $4.28. If the stock is able to cross it and sustain above it, then it might go to $4.54. Support lies around $3.75. Things to focus on the technical daily chart is the spike in volume today. It probably marked the end of the slide and beginning of bottoming. Although bo Read More...

From CNBC: Worst of Bank Failures Isn’t Over Yet: FDIC’s Bair Bank failures will continue to accelerate into next year despite “some encouraging signs” that things are turning around for the battered industry, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair told CNBC. … Bair did not quantify how bad the failures would get but said the worst isn’t over yet for institutions that will suf Read More...

MISH One might think that 159 bank failures in the last two years would be the primary concern to Sheila Bair. Unfortunately, that is not the case as noted by Bloomberg in FDIC’s Bair Concerned Banks Making Only ‘Safest Loans,’ Urges More Lending Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said she’s “concerned” that U.S. banks are making only the safest loans, and Read More...

Tyler Durden Even with lots of worthless chatter coming out of the White House in the past 24 hours, one solitary fighter for “the common man” emerges in the form of Barney Frank. Whether this is due to the Congressman not getting a thick enough envelope endorsed and signed by the Big 5 banks, or not, we don’t know yet. However, courtesy of our sources on the Hill, the latest de Read More...

Courtney Comstock of Clusterstock Dealbook got hold of Citi’s internal memo explaining the TARP repayment. Here it is: Dear Colleagues, Today, we announced a series of transactions to repay the $20 billion of TARP outstanding and terminate the asset guarantee we received from the U.S. government. The Treasury also announced its intention to sell its ownership in Citi stock in the coming mon Read More...

By Nic Lenoir of ICAP  H/T Zero Hedge We start the outlook for the week outlining Gold and EURUSD. Gold exhibits a lot of divergence on the hourly chart and has seen almost down to the dollar the Elliott extension for the 5th leg of the bearish impulse from the highs at 1,113.2. We expect a retracement towards 1,165/1,170 which corresponds to the 50% retracement from the highs and a move back t Read More...

Your government just blew it again.  Big time. How? By allowing the biggest zombie banks, Bank of America and Citigroup, to pay back TARP before we dealt with the biggest problem plaguing our financial policy of the past few years: Too Big To Fail. As long as the banks were on the hook for that TARP money, the government had some ability to dictate reform.  Now it has none. And in case you miss Read More...

Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider Last week Meredith Whitney declared that the government is out of bullets, and now Alan Greenspan is saying the same thing about his old place of employment, The Fed. Reuters: The U.S. Federal Reserve has done all it can do to reduce unemployment and needs to worry more about the risk of inflation from the stimulus it poured into the economy, former Fed Chairman Read More...

CalculatedRisk Press Release from Citigroup: Citigroup, U.S. Government and Regulators Agree to TARP Repayment Citi to Issue $17 Billion of Common Stock and $3.5 Billion of Tangible Equity Units Citi to Repay $20 Billion of TARP Trust Preferred Securities Agreement with the U.S. Government and Regulators to Terminate Loss-Sharing Agreement U.S. Treasury to Sell Up To $5 Billion of its Commo Read More...

Donald W. Pendergast Jr. So, we’ve seen a substantial correction in the Gold market over the past couple of weeks, and that means that Gold is now ready to rocket higher to fresh highs, isn’t it? Probably not, at least not right away, and patient and wise traders/investors will want to wait a bit to see what Gold does as it interacts with any number of key support levels. Let’s take a closer Read More...

The past three weeks have been interesting to watch as the Dow (DIA ETF) has broadened causing traders to be shaken in and out of positions. Commodities have been under pressure as the US dollar has risen. Below are some charts of these investments and what I think could happen in the next couple weeks. DIA – Exchange Traded Fund As you can see the broadening formation is bearish as it results Read More...

AC Investor ( click to enlarge ) The technical daily chart of Motorola is showing that the stock is trading in a tight range and I think it is getting ready to break. The resistance point is 8.61. You can see from the chart that the overhead resistance has been hit twice before, but not penetrated. All oscillators are floating on neutral territory without a distinct price direction. Nevertheless, Read More...

Recognize this chart? You really should. It’s the price of oil in 2008, which started falling precipitously in July, presaging a violent, deflationary crisis a few months later (pay no mind to the September spike — that had something to do with a contract expiry). The sharp fall in oil was a good signal to GET OUT. And though the stock market had a good week, we’re seeing the fi Read More...