The Institutional Risk Analyst

“Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." Irving Fisher October 1929 This Thursday The IRA’s Christopher...

In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we speak to John A. Kanas, Chairman of BankUnited (NYSE:BKU). Kanas rose to prominence...

"[F]rom early spring throughout 2009 and until mid-year 2010, the Fed engaged in the first major quantitative easing program of purchases...

Financials swooned this week as investors now seem to accept that much of the Trump program is in doubt – at least for 2017. No surprise...

In the mid 2000s, just before the financial crisis began, US banks were reporting credit metrics for all asset classes in loan portfolios...

In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we speak to Sanjiv Das, CEO of Lonestar’s Caliber Home Loans, a home mortgage originator...

“Europe is now a continent of widespread economic misery, of financial collapse, of disappearing faith in ‘mainstream’ political parties...

In an October 1925, speech in Birmingham, Michigan, Senator James Couzens, the business partner of Henry Ford, sketched out a vision of...

What do the US residential housing market, the stock market and the dollar all have in common? All of these markets represent bubbles...

Last week The IRA’s Chris Whalen participated in the Executive Roundtable in San Francisco, hosted by the Morrison Foerster Law firm. We...

This week provides an interesting comparison between two “financials,” Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS). The...

“Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable – as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead.” Friederich...

Since the November 2016 election, large cap financials have moved sharply higher, in the case of Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) up almost 60%....

This week brings the start of Q1 2017 earnings for many banks, large and small. In order to better inform the subsequent...

JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) boss Jamie Dimon says there’s something wrong with the US economy and he is obviously right. Here’s our short list:...

Over the past decade we have periodically talked to our brother Michael Whalen (MW), Emmy award winning composer, film editor, and now...

David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital recently proposed that General Motors (NYSE:GM) divide its common equity into two parts, one that...

New York --- Mohamed A. El-Erian’s day job is Chief Economic Adviser at Allianz, but he is also a key indicator – a canary -- for the...

Below follows an extended soliloquy by my friend and mentor Fred Feldkamp, who was a partner at Foley & Lardner in Detroit, about how the...

This essay is part of a longer paper on the US banking system that is part of my research for a future book. What makes a bank good or...