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Bitcoin price doubled after DJT's election, and crypto firms having supported DJT received lenient treatment. The Genius Act was passed in 2025 and the Clarity Act for a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency is being negotiated with Banks raising questions. In 2026 Feb the price of Bitcoin is back to where it was under Biden in 2025 having lost half of its value. Reasons given for the fall in value are that there are othe speculative investments such as AI and gold, silver. The last speculative bubble burst with 2022 collapse of Bankman-Fried FTX Exchange. Much of the crypto currency surge is a speculative effort to make money.  

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THe Economist says that the efforts of banks like Chase JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo to rewrite history are wrong and dangerous. They are wrong because there was acomplete collapse of confidence by December 2009 and these banks benfitted from state guarantees and government efforts to help the banks without which Goldman, and Morgan Stanley and other banks would be in serious difficulty or in danger of collapsing. It is dangerous because it is being used to distort the process of putting in place the right compensation incentives to avoid overleveraging and risk taking, putting in place prudent regulation, and taking all the right steps to prevent a future banking crisis, with the argument that this should apply only to the weaker banks. It is dangerous on two other points. The banking regulations should apply to the entire banking industry, and especially on banks that are too big to fail. These banks now are content to leave the toxic assets on their books where they are and consider government efforts to purchase these toxic loans and securoities or otherwise resolve these assets in some kind of good bank-bad bank scheme, as unnecessary. All this is happening even as the banks themselves remain poorly capitalized, even after raising funds in the capital markets recently, and remain very dependent on the government. The danger is that this may make everyone complacent in the event of a developing new storm....

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The average rate on about $2 trillion in so called Sweep accounts is less than half a percentage point says this report in WSJ. This is a source of revenue and makes up a big part of profits for brokerage firms in the US including Schwab and others. 

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The influence of business executives who helped shape president Trump's views on Mexico, China, Export Import Bank, and other issues is covered by Stokols and Bender of WSJ. On Mexico the departure of Mike Flynn helped moderate views, Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary also provided a moderating influence. The plans are now to change NAFTA but not entirely redo the agreement. On the Export Import Bank the views of Boeing CEO Muilenburg, who explained to Trump why the Bank supported U.S. exports and how other countries had similar banks, led to the president filling the bank vacancies. On China the influence of NEC head, Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs, and other business executives, led to a less confrontational position. The president once called NATO obsolete during the campaign but he met this week with NATO secretary general Stoltenberg this week and expressed strong support for NATO after rising tensions with Russia.

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Independent Bank has used the $72 million in TARP funds to shore up its tattered finances. But it has done little of the lending that was the intent of the TARP program. It has a large number of delinquent loans. Lenders are cautious lenders and borrowers are also cautious.

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Tushar Morzaria, CFO at Barclays is leading the effort for restructuring of Barclays and its large investmetn banking business. He was hired from JP Morgan Chase, where he was made the finance chief for the investment bank in 2010. Morzaria is the son of Indian immigrants to Britain who left Uganda during the Idi Amin dictatorship. Colleagues at Chase say he has a broader outlook and is able to look beyond the numbers.

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Stress test performed by the consulting firms of Oliver Wyman and Roland Berger used data as of Dec 31, 2011, and a scenario of a 6.5% decline in GDP and a 26.4% fall in housing prices by 2014. An international panel of experts from the Bank of Spain, the Spanish government, the ECB, the IMF, the European Banking Authority and the EC was formed to oversee the consultancies report. A separate more detailed audit of 14 individual banks will be made by Deloitte Touche, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG International with results by the end of July. The four banks that need capital injections are Bankia, CatalunyaCaixa, NovaCaixaGalicia and Banco de Valencia. The consultancies estimate was for 51-62 billion euros needed according to Oliver Wyman, and 51.8 billion euros needed according to Roland Berger, for recapitalization of Spanish banks by 2014. The issue now is about any remaining questions about additional losses, and whether rescue funds from the EU fund the EFSF should go directly to the banks as favored by the IMF and the government of Spain. This is because of the stress on yields of Spain's 10 year bonds with rescue money going to the Spanish government at the insistence of German chancellor Merkel....