Australian banks

A civil war of sorts has broken out between the big four banks over lending standards pertaining to first home buyers.

In separate interviews with 7News Sydney and Melbourne on Friday evening, I discussed how Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ approval of ANZ’s acquisition of Suncorp Bank would harm Australian banking competition as well as the ACCC’s ability to regulate competition policy.

The most incompetent Treasurer in modern Australian history has approved ANZ Bank’s $4.9 billion takeover of Suncorp’s banking arm.

Arguably, the most useless role in Australia’s political system is that of the Governor-General, who is a figurehead position with ceremonial and constitutional duties.

I’m very much alive to the possibility that the Mag7 stocks and the associated Artificial Intelligence (AI) craze are a bubble in the US equity market.

It’s been burning in the background unabated: New York Community Bancorp, one of the winners as regional lenders struggled and collapsed last year, plunged a record 46% as investors worried it’s now the harbinger of the industry’s next source of pain: commercial real estate.

CBA is the overvaluation that just keeps on giving: Investors local and international have powered Commonwealth Bank’s share price to consecutive records even as analysts warn it is the most overvalued lender in Australia.

Rising interest rates via bond yields are not innocent for banks.

LOL, at Banking Day.

Borrowers in Australia with “zombie mortgages” are failing to make their mortgage payments, placing $270 billion in home loans at risk of default or severe stress in the coming year.

As MB readers will know, Australian banks are grotesquely overvalued versus global peers: Their protected status justifies some premium but this is kind of ridiculous.

The Council of Financial Regulators is out with its quarterly update: The Council continues to closely monitor the resilience of Australian households to higher interest rates and cost-of-living pressures.

A whiff of panic today in Aussie bank selling: As US regional banks increasingly fall apart thanks to deposit flight, crushed margins, CRE bad loans, tight liquidity, soaring counterparty risk, equity and capital evaporation.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read Goldman Sachs and the iMSM declare the banking crisis “easing”.

Are bank hybrids safe?

The market is hunting banks: ELIZA RONALDS-HANNON: We’re seeing widening CDS spreads in banks other than Credit Suisse, with the cost of Deutsche Bank and Barclays swaps hitting new highs.

Barclays has some interesting analysis that is more reassuring than it should be perhaps because it is coming from Barclays.

Customer Owned Banking Association CEO Mike Lawrence, who represents 56 customer-owned banks, says the federal government should review the levy on Australia’s four major banks and Macquarie Group.

This is not yet threatening in the sense of triggering out-of-cycle mortgage rate move changes.

But, but, but they are safe they said.

Is it any wonder?

US regional banks are not stabilising: Partly it is the bank run.

It’s official.