The government guaranteed all their debt

• Oh yes — this is surely a sign that the credit crunch is behind us. Regulators closed seven more regional banks last Friday, bringing the tally for the year to 106. There have been more bank failures this year than in the past 15 years combined, and the only reason why the big boys never followed suit was because the government guaranteed all their debt and then allowed them to hide their losses by switching to mark-to-model accounting from mark-to-market. Believe us when we tell you that even the most renowned experts could not tell you what is really sitting on the balance sheets of these large U.S. banks — but there is limited downside risk because Uncle Sam has deemed them all to be ‘too big to fail’. Those who were investors in American United Bank, well, we are sorry to have to tell you that you were involved in an institution that was small enough to close down.
• We realize that this did not make it anywhere in the weekend press (outside of a microscopic piece in the IBD) but the ECRI leading economic indicator actually fell (by 0.2 of a point) for the second week in a row (and the smoothed annualized growth rate declined 1.6% —- now what is that all about?).