CERF Blog

The FDIC’s quarterly banking report, QBR, came out yesterday. This report contains one of the CERF Indicators, which are a set of special economic indicators that we began tracking in the aftermath of the “Great Recession”. The CERF Indicator in the QBR report is net bank charge-offs. The other CERF Indicators are: the home ownership… Read more

Interest rate spreads are returning to higher levels, levels that indicate financial and economic instability. This could indicate that an economic regime shift may occur this year. The normalized TED, which is the 3 month LIBOR minus the 3-month Treasury divided by the 3-month Treasury, has reached a level not seen since the fall of 2008.… Read more

The FDIC’s quarterly banking profile, providing data for quarter 2, was released today. The number of 2010 United States bank failures will likely exceed the 2009 failures, the FDIC reported. This was as I reported in this space back in May. Thus far this year there have been 118 bank closings, which compares to about… Read more