Urge to purge

Credit Suisse has bitten the credit crunch bullet. After holding up pretty well last year, the Swiss bank’s investment bank took SFr5.3bn in writedowns on risky leveraged loan and CDO positions in the first quarter of this year – more than the whole of 2007. That looks like an attempt to purge its system of potentially toxic assets. It’s the right move. Sure, the writedowns are big enough to push the group SFr2.2bn into the red. But that’s chicken feed compared with losses at some peers, includi...