Let's go back to the financial crisis and the practices that brought this country to its knees. Banks developed a fancy scheme whereby they absolved themselves of all risk from the loans they made. They simply wrapped them up in a bundle and sold them to someone else. What they were doing is essentially packaging and reselling "junk."

When the news of how bad things were became known, the markets froze and collapsed. No one knew who had which securities, and if they did, they didn't know their true value.

When dealing with large companies, have you ever felt you were living through a scene from a Seinfeld episode?

In January Wells Fargo (WFC) completed a majority of its integration with Wachovia, and I fear it will take years working out the bugs in the system. I say this because I am a major client, shareholder and trader dealing with the company on numerous levels, and the past few weeks would be comedic if not so infuriating.

Early Friday morning, Bank of America (BAC) reported a fourth-quarter loss of 16 cents per share ($1.2 billion). This includes the company's previously announced goodwill impairment charge of $2 billion that was related to its home loans and insurance business. Taking this charge out of the equation, BAC earned 4 cents per share. It could be an interesting morning for BAC, as experts predicted earnings of 18 cents per share.

Shares of BAC were down more than 2% as we await the opening bell. This drop should push the stock low enough to mount a serious challenge to the support of both BAC's 20-month moving average and the $14 level.

Citigroup, Inc. (C) could have done better. Revenue from bond trading took a big hit. John Gerspach, Chief Financial Officer acknowledged that fixed income was weak and needs fixing.

Citi's profit was $1.3 billion compared with the year earlier loss of $7.6 billion. Revenue more than tripled to $18.4 billion from $5.4 billion a year ago. However it fell 11% from the third quarter. Citi has been aggressive in hiring more bankers causing expenses to rise. Earnings per share were four cents compared with a loss of 33 cents a year ago, as reported in the Wall Street Journal.

Economies go in cycles. They push to their breaking points, then move in the opposite direction. We saw it clearly in the '90s when there was no end to up (except there was and we abruptly hit it in 2000). In 2008, it felt like there was no end to down. But we now know there is. Things are picking up, and there are numbers to prove it.

Don't be the last to figure out we're in an economic recovery. Sitting on the sidelines, waiting for one more chance to buy a stock at the bargain price you saw in March of 2009 isn't going to happen. Times have changed. The U.S. economy is on the mend.

Top central bankers and regulators from 27 countries have agreed on new rules for central banking, according to The New York Times.

Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said, "The agreements reached today are a fundamental strengthening of global capital markets." The agreement requires banks to raise the amount of common equity they hold to 7% of assets from 2%. Often known as Basel III, the group set a deadline of Jan. 1, 2013 for member nations to implement the rules.

Looks like UBS (UBS) isn't going to hand over files on its American clients to U.S. tax authorities.

Nationalist and left-wing lawmakers blocked a treaty with the U.S. that would have allowed UBS to hand over said files. This "treaty" was reached last August between the Swiss government and Washington in order to put to rest a disagreement about UBS's supposed role in tax evasion. The boondoggle was that the Social Democrats wanted a commitment from the government to tax bankers' bonuses and the People's Party wanted a vote against the tax before dealing with the U.S. tax treaty.

The bank failure rate slowed a bit last week, but the tally remains alarming. Two banks in Georgia and one in Florida hit the skids, bringing the 2010 total to 40.

The victims this time around were McIntosh Commercial Bank in Carrollton, Georgia, Unity National Bank in Cartersville, Georgia, and West Bank of Key West, Florida. Together the three bank failures are expected to cost the FDIC insurance fund approximately $213.6 million.

Four more banks bit the dust last week, bringing the total to 30 -- just shy of 75 days into 2010. Regulators closed banks in New York, Florida and Louisiana, representing in aggregate nearly $1.1 billion in assets and a little over a billion dollars in deposits.

Park Avenue Bank in New York was shut down by the FDIC this week. It had $520.1 million in assets and $494.5 million in deposits as of the end of last year. Its deposits will be assumed by Valley National Bank, which is based in Wayne, New Jersey, and it will pay a small premium for them. Valley National also agreed to pick up virtually all of the bank's assets.