Stability has finally come to Greece, where a labor-democracy coalition party won a near-majority in the election and pledges to begin undoing the damage from six years of fiscal austerity. The new government has already stopped the sale of public assets. Banks in Russia are in worse shape than their balance sheets indicate. One sign of this is the large number of home mortgages, millions of them, denominated in foreign currencies. This is an accounting trick to make banks’ net foreign obligations appear much smaller than they really are. Probably every bank that employed this trick is in fact already insolvent after the 60 percent decline in the ruble — and this includes some government-owned banks.
Update: There was a Friday night credit union closing in Philadelphia. American Bakery Workers Federal Credit Union had 1,500 members. Member share accounts are being transferred to TruMark Financial Credit Union.
