IndyMac Bancorp Inc. (IMB) based in Pasadena, California with 33 retail branches and $32 billion in assets was seized by federal regulators on Friday. One of the latest victims of the credit crisis, the bank was a major player in the real estate boom this maybe one of the largest bank failures since the savings and loan scandals of the early 80s…

But IndyMac had long focused tightly on mortgages to customers who can’t provide the documentation required for conventional home loans - what are known as “Alt-A” mortgages. This sharp focus left no other business line on which the company could lean, he said.

Other analysts share that view.

Frederick Cannon of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. said IndyMac had only “a limited…

You and I are riding China’s economic tiger. The whole Western world is. It has been a pleasant rise so far. We have the electronic gadgets and cheap toys to prove it. “Made in China” is everywhere. But this tiger is a paper tiger - paper money.

I recently heard a radio interview with a prominent economist who was defending Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s moves to shore up the markets on Wall Street. Bernanke, the economist said with emphasis, had spent years studying the “mistakes” of the Fed during the Great Depression and was not going to repeat the “errors” that the Fed directors committed from 1930 to 1933.