The Writedowns Continue

From Bloomberg:

The world's biggest financial institutions have announced about $100 billion in writedowns and loan losses sparked by the U.S. subprime mortgage slump. Zurich-based UBS AG, Europe's biggest bank by assets, said today this will probably be another difficult year for the industry, urging shareholders to back its plan to raise $11.8 billion from Singapore and the Middle East.

It's taken us about 6 months to get $100 billion in writedowns. Total estimates for the writedowns have ranged between $300 - $500 billion. So assuming the same time scale we have about another year of writedown news. Well, let's start the year off right, shall we?

Merrill Lynch & Co., the third- largest U.S. securities firm, may write down $15 billion related to U.S. mortgage losses, almost twice its original forecast, the New York Times reported, citing people briefed on the plan.

.....

Citigroup, the biggest U.S. bank, may post about $14 billion of writedowns when it reports fourth-quarter earnings next week, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts estimated today. Bank of America Corp. may announce writedowns linked to collateralized debt obligations of about $5 billion, they said.

Personally, I wish every bank would come out and say, "we're taking a really big hit this quarter of XX%, but that's it." Just get it over with. Instead, we're in a slow bleeding scenario where the markets have no idea when the next writedown will happen or how much it will be.