I'm starting to believe that everyone in power over the last few decades were all completely incompetent: FDIC collected little in premiums. Do these people have any idea how fucking insurance is suppose to work? You collect premiums to pay out later when you need it, and like most insurance compani...

For 10 years—including the boom times banks enjoyed in the first half of this decade—the FDIC was prevented from collecting fees from 95% of financial institutions, which it would have used to further build up its safety net in the event it would someday have to bail out a bunch of stupi...

Big fun coming: The federal agency that insures bank deposits, which is asking for emergency powers to borrow up to $500 billion to take over failed banks, is facing a potential major shortfall in part because it collected no insurance premiums from most banks from 1996 to 2006. The Federal Deposit ...

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The new guys running the Treasury Department are such jokers! They said that federal bailout money required a financial institution to participate in screwing over mortgage loan holders. Ha! And you believed them! Now it turns out that Treasury was just joshing, folks. No whips and chains. Yet. Here...

In this morning’s WSJ, William Isaac, the 1980s FDIC chair, argues against nationalization of the insolvent mega banks. Isaacs oversaw the nationalization of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, and uses that as the basis of his opinion. Unfortunately, it makes for an awful co...

No more eager beavers in Beaverton: Beaver, USA Buy From Art.com Pinnacle Bank, Beaverton, Oregon, was closed today by the Oregon Division of Finance and Corporate Securities, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered in...

Last fall, theology professor R.R. Reno wrote a long blog piece at First Things that defended the federal government's bailout from the attacks of his more ideologically pure brethren on the right. Professor Reno recently came back with a follow up piece this week that concedes that he angered a lot...

Yesterday's The Wall Street Journal documented the most detailed evidence to date that many community banks who don't need the government's TARP money are backing away from participating in the Capital Purchase Program, primarily because their "fear of the unknown" is being tipped into near paranoia...

Words from the (investment) wise for the week that was (Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2009) “Words from the Wise” this week comes to you in a shortened format as pressure from my “day job” precludes me from doing my customary commentary. However, a full dose of excerpts from interesting ...