Anxious Depositors Withdraw Cash From Asian Bank

[tpsbmam]

Source: NY TImes

Throngs of depositors lined up outside the headquarters and branches of the Bank of East Asia here on Wednesday to withdraw their money, underlining widespread anxiety in Asia that Wall Street’s recent difficulties might spread across the Pacific.

The Bank of East Asia, Hong Kong’s third-largest with $51 billion in assets, said that malicious rumors had begun spreading through electronic messages late Tuesday, and the Hong Kong police said they would investigate. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the bank itself denied that there was any basis to rumors that the bank was in financial distress.

.....

Standard & Poor’s nonetheless reduced the credit outlook for six Asian banks and six Asian insurers from positive to stable late last week. The credit rating agency expressed concern not so much about the short-term prospects for Asian financial institutions — practically none had sizable exposures to United States mortgage-backed securities or Lehman Brothers — but rather about the longer-term consequences of a probable slowing in exports.

.......

Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s both lowered their credit outlooks for Bank of East Asia late last week to negative, from stable, after the bank was forced to restate its earnings for the first half of this year. The bank announced that it had discovered an unauthorized “manipulation” of how it valued equity derivatives and restated its first-half profit, reducing it by $16.8 million. The bank attributed the loss to a rogue trader, not global credit problems.

Read more: vhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/business/worldbusiness/25emerging.html

[Ganja Ninja]

1. uh oh!

[TalkingDog]

6. I'll add a ruh-roh!

and raise you a smoking baby...

[Virginia Dare]

2. Damn, and I see people posting here that they're ready to do the same..

geez, you better fucking talk miracles tonight monkeyface.

[firedupdem]

3. Bush and his cronies have not just ruined America, they are

ruining the world!

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. twas predicted for last couple years,

This is a global economy.

The globalization all the Neo-cons were so happy about cuts both ways.

Pundits have been talking about "possibility" of world wide recession, at best, or
world wide depression, at worse.

Not that Cheney et al, or Carlyle or Halliburton will suffer much.

[Tunkamerica]

5. wouldn't they be called withdrawers?

[Javaman]

7. Let the bank runs begin!!! nt