Why It’s So Hard to Lookup Bank Ratings

the risk of a run on the bank is exactly why the information should be made public. If a bank sucks then good riddance! That is what capitalism is all about. But it wouldn’t be a “run” per say but more like a trickle, like the trickle off effect, not the other trickle down effect from Reagan years. I’m assuming the rating changes from quarter to quarter depending on movement of capital in and out of the bank. The fact that these movements will be transparent will make the bank more diligent in their investments. The fact that revealing them now will cause runs on certain banks is just growing pains. Let’s have them out now instead of sneaking up on us like this last fiasco.

Veribanc is the best bank rating service, but what you need to know is are the small bank profitable and have enough capital to survive the derivative bomb and its results. Large banks will have something on their reports called level three assets. The numbers in level 3 are huge for larger banks, and unfortunately it is because they ran SIV’s on commericial paper based on bad mortgage bonds for a small profit. As subprime declined, banks had to take these non-performing assets back on there books, causing greater losses, which caused most of them to book derivatives faster. The reason that AIG, Fanny and Freddy, and Bear were bailed out is because they all involved more than 500 million in CDS going off. A CDS is a idoitic piece of paper that a stupid person pays a probably stupider person for to guarantee that if a company defaults, this other person will pay them. They are stupid because people usually do this if they have bought bonds in a declining company with many other people, or if they are a bank. They are stupid because if the US allowed F+F to default instead of accepting a trillion dollars to the nation debt because this, more than a trillion dollars of CDS contracts would have triggered. If anyone thinks that one of the major players in derivatives could with stand the failure of a majorly hedged bond position, they are pretty stupid. Say GM fails, immediately most of the bond holder, and many people who are not bond holders with show up with more than 20 times the debt value of GM and want and investment banking house to pay it. They are even stupider because although they have been using derivatives to print money, tax free, for the last 20 years, they will all be bankrupt soon if no can defuse the CDS’s. Total value of outstanding derivatives, over one quadrillion dollars. Everyone better get used to being nice to the Chinese.

Maybe also have a look at http://www.bank-ratings.ne where I found something useful about it.