All US Banks and their Texas Ratio
Chris Brunner at the Lew Rockwell Blog posted this interesting article about how to get a clue as to what banks might be the shakiest at the moment, and more likely to fail.
Brunner:
A few days ago, a friend of mine called me to ask if I had any idea how to figure out which banks would be the next to fail. Some extensive googling revealed that while lists of troubled banks obviously exist, none of them seem to be readily available to the public. Why? Because the bankers do not want you to have this. Just watch the president of the American Bankers Association in this interview talk about how important it is to keep this private.
This is a list of all of the banks in the United States and the corresponding Texas Ratio for each one. Developed by Gerard Cassidy, the Texas ratio is a measure of a bank’s credit troubles. Basically, the higher the ratio, the worse the situation is for that particular bank. Banks with a ratio of 100 and higher are in very serious danger of collapse, and banks with a ratio of 50 or higher are vulnerable.
This is the formula I used:
100 * ((Non-performing Assets – U.S guaranteed loans) + Other REO) / (Equity + Loss Reserves)
… I recommend Chris’s post – read it!
I have put the list together as a word .doc file and as an excel spreadsheet sorted (ascending) by state and city and then (descending – worst to best) by Texas Ratio.
View: doc spreadsheet
-dcm
AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Still Owe Senator Kohl (And their Customers) Some Explanations
There’s a reason costs for text plans have skyrocketed recently, and it’s not due to increased overhead. From Randall Stross’s What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting:
“…text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network. That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted.
Senator Herb Kohl would like to talk with the wireless carriers about that.
So far they haven’t been very forthcoming. Stross writes:
The written responses to Senator Kohl from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile speak at length about pricing plans without getting around to the costs of conveying text messages. My attempts to speak with representatives of all three about their costs and pricing were unsuccessful. (Verizon Wireless would not speak with me, either, nor would it allow Mr. Kohl’s office to release publicly its written response.)
The carriers will have other opportunities to tell us more about their pricing decisions: 20 class-action lawsuits have been filed around the country against AT&T and the other carriers, alleging price-fixing for text messaging services.
We should All listen to what they have to say.
I wonder if they’ll get around to talking about what Common Carrier means. Does the bus company charge You to use the bus’s rest room while enroute? It’s there, on the bus, whether or not any passenger uses it. And You’ve paid for it in the cost of the ticket.
From Ars Technica Sept 10 Article Senator to cellular carriers: UR TXTS R 2 XPENSIV:
Kohl’s office is asking each carrier to explain the method behind the text message rate madness, including any cost, technical, or other factors that justify the 100 percent increase between 2005 to 2008. Kohl also wants data on how text messages are utilized, comparisons of how text message packages stack up against competitors, and—perhaps most importantly—price comparisons against per-minute charges for voice plans, and per-KB charges for mobile Internet and tethering plans. It should be fun to hear AT&T defend why it charges over $1,300 per megabyte for text messages.
Again, Kohl’s office made it clear that this letter is more of an conversation starter (though a fairly forceful one) in what could turn out to be an embarrassing (for the carriers) discussion over high cost of text messages. The staffer did, however, hold out the possibility of further investigation, and even a request that antitrust regulators to look into the matter, should the situation call for it.
Donald Melanson at Engadget filed this report at the time.
Here is Senator Kohl’s letter:
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For Immediate Release: 9/9/08
KOHL CALLS ON CELL PHONE COMPANIES TO JUSTIFY RISING TEXTING RATES In Three Years, Text Message Charges Have Doubled for Wireless Customers WASHINGTON, DC — Today, US Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, asked the presidents and chief executive officers of the four largest wireless telephone companies to justify sharply rising rates for its customers to send and receive text messages. In a letter, Senator Kohl requested an explanation from Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, which collectively serve more than 90 percent of the nation’s cellular phone users. The text of Senator Kohl’s letter follows below. September 9, 2008 Lowell McAdam President and CEO Verizon Wireless Randall Stephenson Chief Executive Officer AT&T Dan Hesse Chief Executive Officer Sprint Robert Dotson President and Chief Executive Officer T-Mobile Dear Messrs. McAdam, Stephenson, Hesse and Dotson: I am writing to express my concern regarding what appear to be sharply rising rates your companies have charged to wireless phone customers for text messaging. Some industry experts contend that these increased rates do not appear to be justified by any increases in the costs associated with text messaging services, but may instead be a reflection of a decrease in competition, and an increase in market power, among your four companies. Your four companies are the nation’s leading wireless telephone companies, collectively serving more than 90% of the nation’s wireless subscribers. Since 2005, the cost for a consumer to send or receive a text message over each of your services has increased by 100%. Text messages were commonly priced at 10 cents per message sent or received in 2005. As of the end of the month, the rate per text message will have increased to 20 cents on all four wireless carriers. Sprint was the first carrier to increase the text message rate to 20 cents last Fall, and now all of its three main competitors have matched this price increase. What is particularly alarming about this industry-wide rate increase is that it does not appear to be justified by rising costs in delivering text messages. Text messaging files are very small, as the size of text messages are generally limited to 160 characters per message, and therefore cost carriers very little to transmit. Text messaging files are a fraction of the size of e-mails or music downloads. Also of concern is that it appears that each of companies has changed the price for text messaging at nearly the same time, with identical price increases. This conduct is hardly consistent with the vigorous price competition we hope to see in a competitive marketplace. What has changed in recent years is the level of consolidation in the wireless telephone industry. The number of major national competitors has declined from six to four. And the large national wireless carriers continue to acquire their smaller, regional competitors, with the announced acquisition of Alltel by Verizon Wireless being just the latest example. As Chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, I am concerned with whether this consolidation, and increased market power by the major carriers, has contributed to this doubling of text messaging rates over the last three years. Therefore, I specifically ask each of your companies to explain why text messaging rates have dramatically increased in recent years. Please explain the cost, technical, or any other factors that justify a 100% increase in the cost of text messaging from 2005 to 2008. Please also provide data on the utilization of text messaging during this time period. Please provide a comparison of prices charged for text messaging as compared to other services offered by your companies, such as prices per minute for voice calling, prices for sending e-mails, and prices charged for data services such as internet access over wireless devices, from 2005 to the present. Finally, please state whether your text messaging pricing structure differs in any significant respect from the pricing of your three main competitors. Please provide this information no later than Monday, October 6, 2008. If you have any questions regarding this request, please contact Jeff Miller or Seth Bloom of my Antitrust Subcommittee staff at (202) 224-3406. Thank you for your attention to this matter. ###
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-dcm
Republican IT Consultant Mike Connell Masterminded 
external GWB43 email accounts
(update 1) (update 2) (update 3) (update 4)
So let me get this straight. Rawstory is reporting that Mike Connell, Karl Rove’s IT Contractor, has been killed in a plane crash.
“A top level Republican IT consultant who was set to testify in a case alleging GOP election tampering in Ohio died in a plane crash late Friday night.
Michael Connell — founder of Ohio-based New Media Communications, which created campaign Web sites for George W. Bush and John McCain — died instantly after his single-prop, private aircraft smashed into a vacant home in suburban Lake Township, Ohio.”
This is the guy who ran the company whose mail servers handled the President’s mail for the two year period which the administration variously claims is “lost”, “archives destroyed”, “archives never created”, i.e., unavailable. (And now, ) No matter what course of legal action, unavailable.
dead men tell no tales?
Connell’s mail servers handled at least 88 White House email accounts, according to Think Progress. This included the VP’s and Carl Rove’s and other inner circle officials and operatives email, too.
Larisa Alexandrovna, who has reported on Connell for some time, posted this about it on her blog at-Largely yesterday (emphasis added):
Michael Connell died in a plane crash last night. He was a key witness in the Ohio election fraud case that I have been reporting on. More importantly, however, he had information that he was ready to share.
You see, Mike Connell set-up the alternate email and communications system for the White House. He was responsible for creating the system that hosted the infamous GWB43.com accounts that Karl Rove and others used. When asked by Congress to provide these emails, the White House said that they were destroyed. But in reality, what Connell is alleged to have done is move these files to other servers after having allegedly scrubbed the files from all “known” Karl Rove accounts.
In addition, I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman. This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened.
It is interesting how Alexandrovna was led to Mike Connell, while investigating the US Attorney firing scandal.
So all this mail has been lost.
And now the IT guy who ran the thing is dead. And he was getting ready to talk. And he was frightened.
And he just happened to have had a fatal accident.
Uh Huh.
-dcm
Update 1 – Pissed Off Democrat is reporting that Ohio’s Election Attorney had requested Witness Protection for Connell due to threats from Karl Rove and his associates. Also that Velvet Revolution has called for a full federal investigation after their contacts with those close to Connell revealed the threats and concern for Connell’s safety.
Update 2 - Here is VR’s press release in yesterday’s NY Times.
Update 3 – The Brad Blog has been covering this for a while. Also, Lisa Derrick published this piece about it on Huffington Post. A search of YouTube video’s about Connell’s various alleged crimes is here. Below is a video explaining a bit of the context of Mike Connell’s suspicious and untimely death.
Update 4 - 1 Boring Old Man offers a couple of informative posts, Red Flags, and Re: Mike Connell. There’s a discussion over at E. Pluribus Media. Locally, CantonRep.com has an accident report that brings some perspective here, which includes the below video at the scene.
Post Script
Here are the background links Larisa compiled for her post’s second update. They are valuable for understanding the context for Mike Connell’s death.
Documentary GOP Insiders Failed to Block Now Online
A compelling video about the Bush – Cheney Administration’s path to their torture policies is now available online.
(Update 1) (Update 2 – above)
Glenn Greenwald at Salon:
Last month, I interviewed Harper’s Scott Horton regarding a piece he had written on the efforts of several PBS officials, including Jay Rockefeller’s wife (the CEO of Washington’s PBS affiliate) to block broadcast of the documentary Torturing Democracy, 
which compellingly documents how virtually all of the torture and other illegalities and abuses of America’s interrogation programs were authorized and ordered at the highest levels of the Bush administration (of which waterboarding is but one small example).
That documentary is now available to be viewed in its entirety online — here — and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
(Note – Jay Rockefeller is the ranking GOP member and Co-Chair of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee.)
Ditto for me. Here’s a link to each of the 3 parts:
And here is an excerpt:
Also, There’s a pretty good timeline at the Torturing Democracy site, as well as all the key documents in the Bush administration’s decisions to stray beyond the boundaries of the Law.
Building Asset-Based Market Infrastructure Best Alternative for Global Economy
(Updated 102408 – Formatting)
DJIA 9 October 2008
Few doubt that the collapse of the world economy will be a Game Changer. But the change needed is to a new game – a new infrastructure. Not a set of minor changes to the same game.
What is the “game?” The current model, which has gone down like a house of cards in a stiff breeze, is one tilted towards the interests of corporations, governments, and against those of the Individual. It is based on various gradations of slavery, wage-slavery, consumerism predicated on freely available credit at usurious rates, predatory lending practices against victims disarmed by law, and perpetual debt. We have created a debt-based global political economy, not an asset and equity based model.
Yet a non-debt based economic system is what we, the Individual Humans who collectively comprise the global economy, need the most.
We need to base our 21st Century political economies on equity, and assets. Debt is a tool to grow equity and assets, not a substitute for it. (Unless You are designing a slavery or permanent indentured sort of system. It’s tougher to do that in a civil democracy. And bear in mind the sort of Individually held asset and equities basis of global political economy hypothesised here is not the same as asset-egalitarianism. It merely alludes to a reworking of the global financial system in a way that moves the advantage to the Individual accumulation of wealth over the current emphasis and advantage accorded to the corporate concentration of wealth.)
DJIA 15 October 2008
It is truly ironic that the heedless masters of the universe who invented opaque and impossible to value derivatives, hedges, indices and credit default swaps, and the predatory mortgage instruments they stood upon – It is truly ironic that they have so cannibalised the engine of this debt economy – Consumer Spending – that they have effectively killed this goose that laid such golden eggs for so long.
As Mike Whitney observed in his recent article at CounterPunch,
“No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they’re leaving behind is the insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity and the carefully arranged levers of a modern police-surveillance state.”
The past three weeks have seen the front line dominoes tumble as the jury-rigged infrastructure of perma-debt collapsed before the eyes of those reputed to for years to be the smartest and boldest “risk takers” leading the global economy. The most rabid force for de-regulation, the US Republican Party led by George W. Bush, is winding up its occupation of the Oval Office by nationalising the most pivotal parts of the US Banking System.
One by one, the remaining investment institutions have queued up for a government bailout that gives governments an equity stake.
US - China Trade Deficit Growth Through 2006 : Source - Hoover Institute
Of course, in the US these massive infusions of government cash and guarantees are backed by the Treasury – which means borrowing from other nations, principally China. And the repayment of this new debt will naturally fall on the US taxpayer, absent any serious reform.
LIBOR and the TED Spread are only immediate indicators of the credit market’s liquidity. The larger issue of infrastructure reform needs to consider how to build an asset-based, as opposed to debt-driven, political economy. And that means encouraging the accumulation of assets and equities by Individuals, as opposed to corporations. This impacts the structure and regulation of credit markets.
International leaders participating in the upcoming series of summits need to pay particularly meticulous attention to this.
For unless they obey the current inflection point and switch the game over to an asset-backed model of consumer spending, no amount of government intervention will preserve the current debt-driven model based on cannibalised captive markets.
Bubble Gum, Spit, and String
Such efforts as purchasing toxic assets, and injecting captial into the banks are short term patches of bubble gum, spit and string, and I surely hope our international leaders realise that. There are already signs from the banks such injections, alone, won’t work. The upcoming series of economic summits needs to focus on establishing a long term market model that honestly gives Individual Citizens a fair shake, and a more prominent role as stakeholder in the global system.
In the recent past I have been pessimistic about the real willingness of our leaders to address the root causes of this crisis. On September 26, before the bailout was passed, in an email to Congress, I asked “Where is the call for an international summit with our WTO trading partners, particularly China?”
But the pressure on the US by international leaders for it’s participation in a series of summits to address the current crisis in the economy gives me cause to reconsider my cynicism.
Consumer Savings
For this culture of debt, the dead end is clearly visible. In the past 20 years and more Congress has let the Consumer Credit industry run hog wild, more recently letting predatory mortgage instruments do the same. Debt. Not assets. Not equity.
In this sort of environment, consumer spending drives everything. Like Love, it makes the world go ’round. Henry Blodget did a lucid piece the other day on ClusterStock, entitled “US Consumers are Broke.” I highly recommend it.
Equity/Asset Based Games vs Debt Games
If our global economic system threatens to collapse, as it is, and if consumer spending (particularly US consumer spending) is the engine; then we need to pay particularly close attention to the infrastructure changes our international leaders will try to design to address the crisis.
We don’t need to merely patch up the existing debt-based paradigm, except on the shortest term. What we need to do is change the game to an asset and equity basis.
Consumer Debt
Consider: Consumer spending is vital to either game as the driving force, but only in an asset / equity based economy is it guaranteed to grow, because the game is designed to build up the middle class – not hollow it out with predatory, usurious, and perpetual debt.
Consumer Credit should no longer be used as an Orwellian cyber-leash on the populace. Instead, in building an asset-based market, the Individual owns and excercises real and legally enforceable control over their credit and other financial information. The role for reporting agencies are transformed to data services competing to be the delivery agent for the Individual. That means a much more direct relationship with those who would access that information – which would no longer be the sort of commercial product that automatically becomes subject to data mining.
Real protections against predatory lending instruments need to be instituted – that means no more Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs), no more Balloon Payment, or Interest Only, or so-called option-ARMs.
That also means a cap on credit card rates, and a prohibition of unilateral rate changes based on the consumer’s account status with any other lender. So one’s credit card rate doesn’t suddenly jump from 8 to 62 percent because you forgot to pay the electric bill last month – a bill you never pay with that credit card. But the card company data mines your payment stream, sees the omission, and cranks up the rate. Such behavior tends to gut the future ability of the account to maintain a credit relationship, and is thus cannibalistic of it’s own market.
This is what has happened to the US Consumer in this economic game of debt. This is why the US Consumer is broke. This is why the US Consumer is wary of credit, mortgage, and investment instruments tilted against them. Any serious infrastructural reform that will last must address these very real concerns, and not just give them lip service.
Money To Be Made- More Reliably in Asset Based Economy
If US consumer spending has been such a great engine for growth and expansion in international trade, think of what a robust middle class would mean when combining the consumer spending of the US, China, India, and the EU. In an international monetary system driven by the Individual accumulation of wealth, the emergence of a solid middle class would be an increasingly strong economic engine. Perhaps international leaders should consider flattening the economic landscape in their upcoming efforts to build a newer, more resilient global economic system. Rules and regulations should be guided by the express intent to enable and build up individual assets and equities, as opposed to corporate debt.
We must abolish the current idea of “minimum” wage and migrate to the concept of the Living Wage, indexed to the actual cost of living.
We need to encourage the invention of financial instruments for Individuals which give them certain and distinct advantages over existing corporate institutions, as a safeguard of their ability to accumulate wealth and contribute to the engine of asset and equity based consumer spending. Predatory corporate and financial instruments are a certain death to such aims.
This means eliminating all taxes on personal income, personal savings and investments, to encourage and facilitate the accumulation of wealth regardless of class.
This will mean not just more banking regulation and tighter supervision over the mortgage and derivatives markets, but increases in wages across the board, across the world, in all countries participating in this restructuring.
In a global political economy that properly uses debt as just another tool to facilitate the building up of the actual wealth of the People, and not as a centerpiece to drive markets, the health and robust growth of a more reliable form of Consumer Spending is ensured.
That’s all I have time to write for this weekend. More later. Until then, the Fabulous O’Jays!
-dcm
Looking over the postings I’ve made so far, looks like some pretty grim stuff. But one of the reasons for this blog is to highlight golden opportunities engendered by this current global economic collapse.
9 October 2008 Dow Jones Industrial Average
Opportunities to press for a more equitable structuring of the current economic infrastructure for the Individual Citizen. Changes that would give People some relief.
What sorts of changes?
… and a few other measures I’ll probably rant about later.
Merely recapitalising the banking system isn’t enough without an international capital market restructuring that includes utter transparency for derivative products. Otherwise derivatives are worse than worthless as a liquidity device – but serve in that case merely as a dodge, as current efforts will, without the buy-in of an angry populace. Without credible effective transparency and regulation of derivatives, bailouts and bank nationalisations serve only as a temporary, jury-rigged patch of confidence, bubblegum, spit, string. Our trillions will only buy us a shoeshine, a smile and a wink.
But the good news is that it can be done. In all probability Barak Obama wil be the next President. And he seems to be open to suggestions and innovative ideas.
My first suggestion is more an exhortation to keep on a course to rebuild the middle class. And to start by instituting some or all of the reforms noted above. After all, as virtuoso bassis Victor Wooten says, “You can’t hold no Groove if You ain’t got no pocket.“
CERT Glenn Greenwald Clusterstock – Economy Economist – Daily News Analysis EFF Media Matters Le Monde Diplomatique
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