Morgan Stanley

Zombie Bank's Recent Losses, some details

What a surprise. Citigroup posted a $7.8 billion dollar loss in Q4 2009.

LA Times:

The bank said that it lost about $1.6 billion in 2009 — after a $18.72 billion loss the year before. It also reported $7.6 billion loss in the fourth quarter, mostly as a result of a $10.1 billion accounting charge tied to the repayment of its bailout money, which ended any chance of a profit. Last year, the bank had a fourth quarter loss of $8.29 billion or a $1.72 a share.

At Citigroup, most of the fourth-quarter loss stemmed from an accounting charge linked to the company's exit from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. Even without that charge, Citigroup would have lost $1.4 billion in the period.

Speaking of Stuffing CDOs with Toxic Waste - Investors Sue Morgan Stanley Over CDOs

While we were just chatting about how to stuff a CDO with toxic waste, speak of the devil, someone is suing trying to get their money back.

Morgan Stanley is being sued over a $1.2 billion worth of defaulted CDOs.

Morgan Stanley (MS.N) has been sued by a Virgin Islands pension fund that accused the Wall Street bank of defrauding investors by marketing $1.2 billion of risky mortgage-related notes that it expected to fail.

The lawsuit filed December 24 in Manhattan federal court said Morgan Stanley collaborated with credit rating agencies Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's to obtain "triple-A" ratings for notes marketed in 2007 as part of a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) known as Libertas.

If you havn't read Institutional Risk Analyst yet, you need to NOW

Last week ago, Institutional Risk Analytics interviewed Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher & Co and David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors, and the discussion is one of the most direct and revealing of the true political nature of the financial collapse I have yet seen. As I have written before, using reports from the Fed, FDIC, and Comptroller of the Currency, the financial problems are very tightly concentrated in a handful of the largest banks, with over 8,000 plus smaller and regional banks having declined to participate in Wall Street’s derivatives madness.