By my calculation, the two largest U.S. banks, Citi and Bank of America, have over the last year lost roughly as much in market capitalization as is the current value of the other six U.S. banks combined.

To be specific, Citi and BofA have together lost $296-billion in market capitalization over the last year, while JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York, Wachovia, WaMu, and U.S. Bank currently have a remaining combined capitalization of $283-billion. Staggering stuff.

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As a related aside, and just in case anyone thinks the U.S. is alone in its banks seeing major share price declines, here is a 12-month graph of the share price performance of the 10 largest banks in the world (according to Euromoney in 2007):

Last week was the sixth consecutive week during which the U.S. market declined. The longest consecutive-week decline in U.S. history was 8 weeks, which has happened twice, as has a 7-week decline.

Anyone care to guess when we had the 8 weeks of consecutive declines?

I had someone recently tell me that they were seeing more and Google people exiting the company after shorter periods of time. Assuming that's true, and it is anecdotal empiricism, has it gotten that much worse to work at Google, given its size, or is something else going on?

You might blame the mini resurgence in consumer-centric stuff going on in the Bay Area, and that has certainly had an impact. Many ex-Googlers are off starting other companies, while others are cruising the world, or spending their days (ahem) training for triathlons.

But I want to suggest something else. For most of its young life as a public company Google has been able to wave its rapidly-appreciating stock at employees. That was a great goad to get people motivated and hanging around, but that's now changed. The company's stock has seen the worst trailing six-month performance in its history for the last few months, and trailing one-year numbers aren't pleasant either. With the stock off more than 20% over the last six months, and down 4% over the last year, that has to be making some employees sit up and take notice that free food ain't everything.

Just so folks know, I'm heading out on holidays for almost two weeks starting tomorrow. While I may show up here now and then, I'm going to try really hard not to. I'm also going to try to stay off email/Twitter/etc. We'll see how that goes.

It won't be completely quiet here, however. I am just finishing up lining up a bunch of different people to post here through the period, including some interesting surprises. Should be fun.

My friend Doug Kass at RealMoney has an interesting catch today:

A Buy Signal?
7/15/2008 9:11 AM EDT

Short seller David Tice (Prudent Bear Fund and Behind the Numbers) is selling his firm to Federated Investors.

If you are looking for a (thin-reed) buy signal, consider that short seller David Tice (Prudent Bear Fund and Behind the Numbers) has announced the sale of his firm to Federated Investors today.

Makes me say, Hmmmm....

Just 'cause I know most readers of this site can't bear Congressional testimony any more than I can, here is a tag cloud of Ben Bernanke's closely-watched speech this morning on monetary policy.

Today's pick for bad financial jargon is the expression "terminal wealth". It sounds, of course, like what happens to some rich guy who gets nailed by a bus: You were wealthy, but now you've been terminated.

Instead, however, it refers to what an investment is worth at end of its planned holding period. The expression shows up regularly in the institutional fund management literature -- and it gives me the heebie-jeebies every time.

Today's news that SEC Chair Chris Cox is trying to create a kinder stock market by announcing a rule that already exists -- you must pre-borrow stock before you can short it -- reminded me of something straight out of Dr. Strangelove. In particular, it put me in mind of one of my favorite scenes: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

As an aside, I think the SEC should always announce new rules that are actually existing ones. It's simpler and much less trouble than bringing out new real rules.

Great stat from the good folks at Bespoke today:

Looking at the [$5-billion] market cap requirement [for S&P 500 membership], there are currently 126 companies (25.2% of the index) in the S&P 500 which would not be large enough to be added to the index today.

Yow. One-quarter of the index no longer meets the market cap requirement for membership? Apparently the S&P 500 is out right now.

[via Bespoke]

Hedge fund manager -- and Fannie Mae short-seller -- Bill Ackman's presentation on "saving" wildly wayward mortgage finance company Fannie Mae.

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