"My dear sir, the Treasury order is popular with the people everywhere I have passed. But all the speculators, and those largely indebted, want more paper. The more it depreciates the easier they can pay their debts… Check the paper mania and the republic is safe and your administration must end in triumph."

President Andrew Jackson writing to President
Martin Van Buren regarding the Specie Circular
1837

Last week the financial markets received a wake-up call courtesy of our former PruSec colleague Mike Mayo, now of Caylon, who appropriately suggested that Citigroup (NYSE:C) may be required to start recognizing the impairment of some $10 billion in deferred tax assets in its Q4 earnings. The good folks at C responded as only bank IR flaks can, saying that they did not know where Mayo came up with his estimate.