Jim Sinclair’s Commentary

This one is a humdinger.

Note the letter from CIGA Richard B who looked at all five from Friday in light of an undercapitalized FDIC. Drain liquidity or reduce QE? You have to be kidding.

Apparently they waited to announce the fifth failure of the week! Based on the size of the bank we can see why.

Bank Failures Hit 120 as United Commercial Bank Fails
By MICHAEL R. CRITTENDEN

WASHINGTON — U.S. regulators closed five more banks on Friday, reaching 120 for the year, as souring loans and the lingering effects of last year’s financial crisis continued to weigh on the nation’s financial institutions.

San Francisco-based United Commercial Bank became the fifth and largest bank to be taken over by regulators on Friday evening, as annual failures hit levels not seen since the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s. There were 25 bank failures in 2008, and three in 2007.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a release that East West Bank of Pasadena, Calif., would take over United Commercial’s roughly $7.5 billion in deposits, as well as $10.2 billion in assets. The deal includes all of United Commercial’s branches in the U.S., a branch in Hong Kong, and a subsidiary headquartered in Shanghai, China.

The agency said that it would continue to protect the bank’s domestic deposits, while Hong Kong deposits would be covered by the Hong Kong Deposit Protection Scheme. U.S. regulators are also working with their counterparts in China on the bank’s operations in that country, the agency said.

The failure is estimated to cost the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund an estimated $1.4 billion. That’s represents a significant hit for the fund, which has come under increasing pressure this year as failure costs have topped the agency’s initial loss projections. Federal regulators are currently considering a proposal that would have U.S. banks pay three years worth of premiums in advance in order to raise $45 billion to provide more liquidity to the fund.

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Jim Sinclair’s Commentary

Loss of confidence by a public is the reason for every event of currency driven hyperinflation ever.

With that in mind it is interesting to see the New York Times publicly embarrass the Administration’s statistical unemployment level.

Yes, it is even higher, but the sheeple are as dumb as a rock.

Public revelation by establishment media that the unemployment figure is BS is the material from which confidence eventually implodes.

Broader Measure of Unemployment Stands at 17.5% 
By DAVID LEONHARDT
For all the pain caused by the Great Recession, the job market still was not in as bad shape as it had been during the depths of the early 1980s recession — until now.

With the release of the jobs report on Friday, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department has reached its highest level in decades. If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression.

In all, more than one out of every six workers — 17.5 percent — were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982.

This includes the officially unemployed, who have looked for work in the last four weeks. It also includes discouraged workers, who have looked in the past year, as well as millions of part-time workers who want to be working full time.

The official jobless rate — 10.2 percent in October, up from 9.8 percent in September — remains lower than the early 1980s peak of 10.8 percent.

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