nationalization

Here’s a fun accounting term to remember: accretable yield. That’s the difference between a loan’s value on a bank’s balance sheet and the expected cash flow from the loan. Bloomberg reports:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. stands to reap a $29 billion windfall thanks to an accounting rule that lets the second-biggest U.S. bank transform bad loans [...]

This little primer from the Wall Street Journal on bank nationalization is worth a look, especially if you are trying to figure out whether the government should be moving more quickly to take over some ailing banks.
Here are some of the cons of nationalizing banks, for example. It’s not pretty:

Merrill Lynch — the former Wall Street titan that was recently acquired by Bank of America — like most investment banks, typically pays about 50 percent of its revenue in compensation. The chart (after the jump) depicts Merrill’s revenue and compensation data since 2000 — and it demonstrates that the Wall Street giant dramatically broke [...]

Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain announces his new economic plan today, just after his rival, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, grabbed headlines on Monday with his new economic plan. I would expect at Wednesday night’s debate to hear the two argue over their new economic plans. As opposed to their old [...]