Banks easily fudge quarterly earnings

The stress tests for the banks are going to be useless because of new lax accounting rules.  Read here.

Introducing the new DC Lotto

You too can invest in risky toxic bank assets. The treasury wants you to lose twice on the toxic asset bailout. 1) put your tax dollars up to guarantee the scheme and 2) put your non-tax dollars up to fund it.

Mark to Market

At the center of the banking crisis is "mark to market" pricing.  The reason why everyone is having trouble pricing the troubled "bad" assets on the bank's books is that there are more than one way to price assets.  If you mark the assets to the price the market is willing to pay for them today you get a much smaller number than pricing the assets based on future cash flows.  The reason why banks have be writing down huge sums of money over the last few quarters is not only because their bad assets are worthless, it is because they are required to mark their assets to the price the market is willing to pay for them.  This action of marking assets every quarter was brought about because of Enron, and it is making the banks insolvent. visit here.

Paul Krugman's best article in weeks. here.