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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bobby beara who wrote (34600)	12/2/1999 10:49:00 PM
From: dennis michael patterson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

bb, I am always nervous when things get out of hand. In techland, things are nutz/s! Did you see ADI today!! Up 9+ The semis are rippin again. I can hardly keep up. But I may sell a wee bit here and there. Hard to do though, what with everything flying. I can't sell Sunw with the split! What to sell? So difficult. But buying the dips has-- for the umpteeeenth time--- worked. Regards,

To: bobby beara who wrote (34600)	12/2/1999 10:53:00 PM
From: John Madarasz	Respond to of 99985

Bank regulators warn about lending standards... ... To the nation's top bank regulators, the early warning signs look suspiciously similar to those associated with the savings-and-loan crisis of a decade ago. Bond defaults are on the upswing, commercial loan portfolios are growing too fast and the banking industry seems to be forgetting that after nine years of expansion, the economy may well slow down. To Jack Wixted, senior vice president of banking supervision and regulation at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the numbers just don't add up. "Commercial lending is growing at 10, 12, 15 percent in an economy that's growing at 4.5 to 5 percent," Wixted said. "We're in for some choppy waters, where banks have to be on guard. And they're being overly optimistic about the borrowers they lend to."... But banks are not setting loan terms and collateral levels high enough, regulators say. For example, they often do not require enough collateral to back commercial loans. "We had deteriorating loan standards for four years, and this one year of tightening of pricing isn't really going to change that. It doesn't do much to reverse the trend," Gibbons said. Loan standards are becoming looser particularly in the construction and commercial real estate sectors, regulators say. Problem loans in those areas helped sink hundreds of banks and savings and loans during the late 1980s and early 1990s.... What they forget, Gibbons said, is that most failed banks have excellent-seeming loan portfolios until a few months before they crash. "They should look at the 90-degree angle when a bank goes from virtually no past-dues and losses to the loss levels of a failed bank," he said. "It happens almost overnight." chicagotribune.com Regards, JM