State Street (STT) just put out some gnarly news. It’s new, so I can’t find a linkable copy. Only seeing it on on Etrade when logged in, which is odd. The source is Dow Jones. Here’s a snippet of tonight’s release:

The Boston-based financial services company said that at the end of 2008, it had $5.5 billion in unrealized after-tax losses in its long-term portfolio of investment securities classified as available for sale and held to maturity.

They made the following statement at the end of 2008, which estimated a much smaller loss:

At the end of 2008, State Street said, “there were $3.6 billion of after-tax net unrealized losses associated with portfolio holdings of the conduits.”

Note the timing of this release. A Friday night, on a holiday weekend, after the close of after-hours trading, when only true losers like myself are obsessively analyzing the market and scanning for nasty pre-holday weekend news.

Looks like the loss was related to “stable value” type funds. I’m looking for more info and will post an update.

Note – The FDIC also chose this prime-time to announce the takeover of National Bank. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Releasing negative news before a long holiday weekend sucks all-around. It makes the whole system look dishonest and like they’re hiding something. A lot of something.