Crazy Nut Job
At Least the Saab Deal is Finalized

Look, good news. MarketWatch reports Spyker Cars said it’s finalized Saab deal. And while this is good news for Saab fanatics moorewr and benkraal, it wasn’t the news that set the tone for the day.

The stock market responded rather negatively to the report that Consumer Confidence in U.S. Falls More Than Forecast. The drop from 55.9 to 46.0 was a huge swing. The most noteworthy change was the dismal outlook on employment, which itself isn’t too surprising. People are waking up to the fact that the jobs outlook is terrible.

Speaking of a terrible jobs outlook, a Gallop poll found that Nearly 20% of US Workers Underemployed in January. This is about 3 percentage points worse than the DoL U-6 numbers (which measure something slightly different).

And finally, the FDIC announced FDIC-Insured Institutions Report Earnings of $914 Million in the Fourth Quarter of 2009. There should be some concern that reserves for loan losses have shrunk, just as Elizabeth Warren on the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP has been warning about increased losses caused by Commercial Real Estate impacting 2,988 banks (out of 8,012 total US banks). Another concern is that while banks have pre-paid billions in FDIC insurance premiums, the FDIC fund decreased by $12.7 billion during the fourth quarter to hit negative $20.9 billion. This isn’t panic-inducing concern, though. The FDIC has $23.1 billion in cash. The balance of the fund includes losses that haven’t been paid out yet. The FDIC is much better than banks at accounting for future losses. Insured deposits increased last quarter, and the number of banks on the FDIC “Problem List” jumped to 702.

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