There are three major categories of problems that can cause bank instability. In his article "A Tale of Two Crises" Bloomberg's John Authers tells us that they are: a liquidity crisis- When customers pull their money out. a solvency crisis- When borrowers can fail to repay their loans. a confidence crisis- When shareholders sell the bank's stock, sending their shares down making it harder to raise money. And beyond true crises, changes in economic and financial conditions can attack their profits — which is bad for shareholders and ultimately might tend to imperil everyone connected to the bank. Understanding a Liquidity Crisis One of the primary causes of a Liquidity … [Read more...]
Video: Bond Issuers Aiming Toward Debt Man’s Curve
By Jason Lureman Thu, 09 Sep 2010 They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so a chart as startlingly clear as our Debt Man's Curve must be worth 10,000 words. EWI analyst Jason Farkas first created and wrote about this parabola that displays different risk levels of bonds in late July 2010. Specifically, the chart plots sovereign, municipal and corporate issuers on the same spectrum. The resulting sharp curve up makes it easier to see why we think that bond issuers are flirting with a bad crash the same way the driver does in Jan and Dean's hit song from the 1960s, "Dead Man's Curve." More recently, Jason recorded this 10-minute video to take his Currency and Interest Rate … [Read more...]
