The Institutional Risk Analyst

The key thing to remember with commercial real estate is the change in price volatility and direction that has occurred since COVID.

As the public debt of the US grows, after all, the implicit claim of the Treasury on all private US assets also grows.

The key term for risk managers and investors in 2024 remains unchanged from this year: Volatility.

Simply stated, with T-bills trading significantly above the yield on RRPs, there is no reason for MMFs to leave cash at the Fed

Instead of seeking authority from Congress, Chairman Bernanke and other members of the FOMC merely turned on the public spigot.

One of the effects of QE has been making many banks and real estate investors insolvent, a precursor to debt defaults.

Rising interest rates are not good for bank earnings or bank equity valuations.

Bank earnings can be best described as cautiously mediocre, but as usual the Street proclaimed that three banks "beat the estimates"

The Powell Fed needs to drop short-term interest rates back down to 4% and leave them there indefinitely.

The public behavior and decision-making processes of SoftBank suggest that the organization is in trouble.

With a 75bp average total gfee, would the market for private label MBS return? Or would conventional lending volumes simply crater?

Whether we have Donald Trump or Joe Biden in the White House next Christmas, the US seems to be on a trajectory to a financial crisis...

S&P was the first to call out the growing lack of fiscal discipline in Washington, downgrading Uncle Sam in 2011

Inflation is called a “hidden tax,” but lately the tax is not even barely concealed.

So when we ask why large banks are so big, the answer is that the Federal Reserve Board allows large BHCs to use more leverage

We all dodged a bullet in Q2 2023 because the repricing of assets and deposits slowed from the crazy levels seen at the end of March.

JPM has an impressive lead in earnings and growth over WFC and C, neither one of which is positioned to catch up with Jamie Dimon in 2023.

The sad fact is that even with another 2% capital, most US banks are arguably insolvent thanks to the Fed “going big.”

The world of secured finance is still coming to grips with the idea of several more increases in the federal funds rate this year.

JPM is really a large mutual fund with a bank attached, as shown in the table below.