Yearly Archives: 2009

Best Antidotes of 2009 (Part 1)

Reader Robert Oak asked for a recap of particularly good Antidotes. Since there are many good year-end retrospectives and forecasts, I figured this was one area less heavily covered that readers might enjoy. This is a completely arbitrary, personal selection. It is deliberately skewed towards the first half of the year, and I favored oddball […]

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Links New Year’s Eve 2009

Why Powerful People — Many of Whom Take a Moral High Ground — Don’t Practice What They Preach Science Daily (hat tip reader John M). Research shows Lord Acton was right! Blue Moon on New Year’s Eve NASA (hat tip reader Michael T) A Convenient Delusion TruthOut (hat tip reader John D) California Science Center […]

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More on Goldman Shorts: McClatchy Weighs In

McClatchy has a breathless piece up on CDOs and other “exotic” transactions that Goldman did in the Caymans (hat tip reader John D). The problem is that the author got his hands on some very solid information (prospectuses of 40 deals) but the story itself is a bit of muddle. While it has some helpful […]

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Guest Post: Find a Local Credit Union and Assess Its Safety

In support of Huffington Post’s call for people to move our money from the giant banks to community banks and credit unions: Here is a site which lets you find local credit unions Here is a site which rates the safety of banks, thrifts and credit unions And here is another site which rates the […]

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Guest Post: Economist Says Health Care Bill “Is Just Another Bailout Of The Financial System”

It is obvious that many republicans oppose the proposed health care bill. But many liberals and progressives oppose it as well. For example, economist L. Randall Wray writes: Here’s the opportunity, Wall Street’s newest and bestest gamble: there is a huge untapped market of some 50 million people who are not paying insurance premiums—and the […]

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Links 12/30/09

San Francisco’s Famous Sea Lions Have VANISHED Huffington Post. Aaaw! I saw them. They were very entertaining. Do not despair, however, some still remain. Kodak, Bill Gates and efficient markets John Hempton GMAC Set for Another Cash Infusion Wall Street Journal. Don’t trust those servicers Felix Salmon Opinion: Australians are now the biggest borrowers in […]

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On Goldman’s (and Now Morgan Stanley’s) Deceptive Synthetic CDO Practices (aka Screwing Their Customers)

Goldman is trying to diffuse the increasingly harsh light being turned on its dubious practices in the collateralized debt obligation market, with the wattage turned up considerably last week by a story in the New York Times that described how a synthetic CDO program called Abacus was the means by which Goldman famously went “net […]

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DC For Sale: Health Care and Financial Services as Case Studies

It would be very hard not to notice, even if one is paying only cursory attention, how oversold the various “reform” programs underway are, and how they would be more accurately called, “Politicians Take Boatloads of Cash From Special Interests While Pretending They Help the Little Guy.” While cynics will argue that out that this […]

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Links 12/29/09

Israelis and Gazans reflect on the war, one year on BBC More herbicide use reported on genetically modified crops Christian Science Monitor (hat tip reader Michael T) Search for extraterrestrial life is growing SFGate (hat tip reader John D) International outcry after Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo sentenced to 11 years Times Online which was followed […]

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“2010: Foreseeable and Unforeseeable Risks ~ The Room For Policy Error is Enormous”

By John Bougearel, author of Riding the Storm Out and Director of Financial and Equity Research for Structural Logic Policymakers managed to extinguish a financial panic in 2008-09 by March 2009. This rescue operation allowed the broad U.S. stock market as measured by the SP500 to rally nearly 70%. Extinguishing the panic was to be […]

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“What’s in Store for 2010”

By Bruce Krasting, a former foreign exchange and derivatives trader and hedge fund manager. Mohammad said, “One cannot foretell the future”. I think he was on to something. What looks predictable rarely happens. There are always surprises. I have been tripped up so many times. The following are not predictions of things that will happen. […]

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How not to solve a financial crisis

By Edward Harrison As we head into the New Year, I am trying to look back at the last one with some semblance of a coherent interpretation of events that leads to a strategic vision of the future.  I have already touched on stimulus, kleptocracy and crony capitalism as dominant themes for the year 2009.  […]

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Links 12/28/09

Over 100 whales dead in NZ mass strandings Times Online Acacia plant controls ants with chemical BBC Over/Under on Jet Fuel Consumption Paul Kedrosky 2009: The Year Wall Street Bounced Back and Main Street Got Shafted Robert Reich Catholic Group Supports Senate on Abortion Aid New York Times (hat tip reader James P) Obama’s Lost […]

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“Is Blaming AAA Investors Wall-Street Serving PR?”

By Thomas Adams, at Paykin Krieg and Adams, LLP, and a former managing director at Ambac and FGIC. In my view, Goldman, and a host of other clever bankers, are deliberately obscuring one of the most important points about modeling, CDOs and sophisticated investors. One of their defenses against the tremendous losses these products delivered […]

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