- How Much Does It Cost to be TBTF?
<a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1548105">How Much Did Banks Pay to Become Too-Big-To-Fail</a> and to Become Systemically
Important?
Julapa Jagtiani & Elijah Brewer
Federal Reserve Bank Working Paper, December 2009
Abstract: This paper estimates the value of the too-big-to-fail (TBTF) subsidy. Using
data from the merger boom of 1991-2004, we find that banking organizations were willing to pay an added premium for mergers that would put them over the asset sizes that are commonly viewed as the thresholds for being TBTF. We estimate at least $14 billion in added premiums for the eight merger deals that brought the organizations to over $100 billion in assets. In addition, we find that both the stock and bond markets reacted positively to these deals. Our estimated TBTF subsidy is large enough to create serious concern, since recent assisted mergers have allowed TBTF organizations to become even bigger and for nonbanks to become part of TBTF banking organizations, thus extending the TBTF subsidy beyond banking.
(Nod to Kevin L)
- Sweet Strange Stories
What I like about <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/sideshow-performers-josh-bladzik-and-jackie-molen-find-love/19350061">these stories</a> is not that they are so strange (though they are), but rather that they are so sweet.
Since he was reported to be 8 feet, 4 inches tall, everybody looked up to Al Tomaini ? especially his wife, Jeanie, who measured 2 feet, 6 inches. She was born with no legs.
The Half Lady and The Giant met and fell in love in 1936 when their separate shows chanced upon each other in the same place. Six months later the couple eloped, believe it or not, in Ripley, N.Y. The Tomainis went on to work with Ringling Bros. and eventually ran their own sideshow.
In 1950, the couple settled in Gibsonton, Fla., where they raised a family and opened the Giant's Camp restaurant and fishing camp. Al also organized the town's first fire department and served as its chief.
The Giant passed away on Aug. 30, 1962. Jeanie continued to operate the Giant's Camp for decades, living there until she died on Aug. 10, 1999, just weeks before her 83rd birthday.
Their adopted daughter, Judy Rock, never thought there was anything unusual about her parents. "Our home life was wonderful," she remembered. "It was what everybody wishes theirs was: no talk of divorce, no big fights, no drinking, no smoking. Just a family."
(Nod to Angry Alex)
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