(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co said on Tuesday that it would fold up 122 California branches due to its takeover of Wachovia Corp last year, the Los Angeles Times reported.The closures, scheduled to occur in April, will involve shutting down 101 Wachovia offices and 21 Wells Fargo locations, the...

(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co said on Tuesday that it would fold up 122 California branches due to its takeover of Wachovia Corp last year, the Los Angeles Times reported.The closures, scheduled to occur in April, will involve shutting down 101 Wachovia offices and 21 Wells Fargo locations, the...

Pulitzer Prize winner Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times wrote a must read article (“Revisiting a Fed Waltz with AIG,” November 21, 2009) on Sunday in which she recaps salient points from the November 17, 2009 report of the Office of the Special Inspector General (Neil Barofsky) for the Troubled Asset Relief Programs, “Factors Affecting Efforts to Limit Payments to AIG Counterparties,” and wrote:[More...]

If you are not familiar with what an option ARM mortgage is, read this piece (Aug 13, 2008: Option ARMs- Who Thought Up these Time Bombs?)).  I too was unfamiliar with it, despite following markets closely, until I read a BusinessWeek article in October 2006.  Interest only mortgages? Yep I knew about those.[More...]

I track portfolios using software on my computer network and I use web-based applications. I even use simple tools like Yahoo Finance for instantaneous access to data. Yet Yahoo Finance has an inexplicable quirk when it comes to the SPDR Barclays Capital Convertible Bond Fund (NYSE: CWB). If you set up a portfolio with CWB in it, you'll often get a message, "No Such Ticker Symbol." It's been that way for 6 solid months, ever since the fund's inception.

Question-and-Answer SessionOperator Operator Instructions Your first question comes from the line of Steven Silver. Please go ahead, sir. Kent Thiry Steven? Is your mute on, Steven? Operator, perhaps we go on to the next one and come back to him. Operator Absolutely, of course, next question comes from...

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, has stayed carefully on the sidelines while a major argument has broken out among and around senior policymaking circles: Should our biggest banks be broken up, or can they be safely re-regulated into permanently good behavior? (See the recent competing answers from WSJ, FT, and the New Republic).[More...]

It seems that not a day goes by when you don’t hear about some asset sale in Citigroup’s far-flung empire. Of all the major too-big-to-fail institutions, it is easily the most troubled: the poster child for everything that is wrong in finance in America.[More...]

Last week, Charles Calomiris wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that big banks are better for various reasons. Simon wrote last week saying that Calomiris underestimated the political dimension, and that his proposed solution — a cross-border resolution mechanism for large institutions — is the policy equivalent of assuming a can opener.[More...]

Earnings Call ExcerptWells Fargo & Company WFC Q3 2009 Earnings Call October 21, 2009 8:30 am ET Executives Bob Strickland – Director of Investor Relations Howard I. Atkins – Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive Vice President Presentation Bob Strickland Hello, this is Bob Strickland. Thank...

"You know what the news is-- in a minute, you're going to hear the rest of the story"- Paul Harvey Today, Bank of America CEO, Ken Lewis, was stripped of his 2009 salary and bonus by the U.S. Treasury Department's pay czar. Lewis, who was not a "brother" of the Wall Street Gang gets burned at the stake, while the the other "brothers from another mother" continued to collect millions in bonuses.[More...]

How to give an economics writer a coronary: Recommend something that has been done twice before, and both times led to disaster, including being a major contributor to The Great Depression.[More...]

U.S. stocks rebounded today, aided by a rally in financials. Why was the group strong? Because a team of analysts at a well-known Wall Street firm upgraded the large banks sector. And why did they do that? Bloomberg gives us the lowdown in "Wells Fargo, Biggest U.S. Banks Raised by Goldman":[More...]

Marshall Auerback sent me a link to a recent Simon Johnson missive about Goldman Sachs. I had already seen and liked this article, but his e-mail prompted me to write this post. My question is: Why is Goldman a bank holding company?[More...]

Adam K White submits:

Andrew Ross Sorkin is releasing excerpts from his new book “Too Big To Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves” in this month’s Vanity Fair magazine. I am looking forward to reading the whole book but just from the excerpts Sorkin provides it gives the strong impression that rather than being “of the people, by the people, for the people,” our U.S. Government officials are/were devoted to Wall Street more than anything else.

Take for instance these two quotes:

Complete Story »

Many of my clients and readers understand my general preference for exchange-traded funds (ETFs) over mutual funds.* It isn’t that I doubt the ability of any active mutual fund managers to outperform their benchmarks—plenty of them do.[More...]

If you're investing for doomsday, try ammo and dried beans. If you're investing for returns, try the right stocks.

"You know what the news is-- in a minute, you're going to hear the rest of the story"- Paul Harvey It's only a matter of time before the current market jeers turn to tears.[More...]

This was the frightening headline that appeared on my screen just two days ago. Just when I thought the financial markets were gearing up for a big rally, and Uncle Ben Bernanke would be taking good care of us for another four years, the media dungeon of "the keepers of the stock market crypt" tried to spook me and the rest of us.[More...]