Bank on it: The news about banks and their accounting isn't over

That's just the way it is. Banks be banking, hedging, haircutting, and lately failing again.

That's just the way it is
Some things will never change

Banks and bank accounting continues to be in the news. Although many like to draw lines and say that there’s no systemic risk, the issues sure seem to me to have the same rings to them.

Here in Philadelphia we saw Pennsylvania’s banking department seize Republic First Bancorp last Friday, citing the bank’s “unsafe and unsound condition, in order to protect depositors.” Republic's assets were transferred to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp..

Make sure you are "informed"[1] about the right bank. Matt Levine said last March that the name is common and prone to market mix-ups.

I once joked on Twitter that the “biggest risk to the US banking system is there are 4000 banks and they all have like six names.” That was in response to a Bloomberg News story about Republic First Bancorp, which put out a statement saying that it was not First Republic Bank. Easy mistake to make! First Republic was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. last weekend; Republic First is fine I guess. The US is a republic, and banks tend to get ordinal numbers that restart frequently (except poor Fifth Third), so there are a lot of US banks with “Republic” in their names, and a lot with “First,” and the combination can’t be that rare.

Levine spoke too soon and, like a lot of shareholders, did not look at the financials.