Banking has suffered a not-sufficiently-acknowledged loss of know-how on the lending side. Back in the stone ages when I got an MBA, there were a few fellow students from big commercial banks like Chase (and no former investment banking analysts, the two year posts for college graduates) and they had all gone through credit training. […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns Yesterday, I posted a video in which two auto experts argued that the dissident creditors were getting a raw deal (See “A discussion about Chrysler’s bankruptcy plan on Charlie Rose“). The crux of the problem is their belief that they were being railroaded into a deal […]
Read more...Submitted by Tyler Durden, publisher of Zero Hedge In an interview of momentous importance, WJR’s Frank Beckmann interviews Tom Lauria, the Head of Restructuring at law firm White & Case, in which the lawyer, who represents Chrysler hold-out hedge funds Stairway Capital and Oppenheimer Funds, discusses on the record the amazing treatment by the White […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. New York’s Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said on Friday that his office was issuing more than 100 new subpoenas to investment firms and intermediaries who brokered deals with public pension funds, in the latest expansion of his corruption investigation: Mr. Cuomo said a preliminary review by […]
Read more...Parrots Join Humans On The Dance Floor NPR Lithium in water ‘curbs suicide’ BBC Extinction has a weird appeal Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times Banking Fortunes – From “Catastrophic!” to “Just Awful”! Satyajit Das Public pawnbroker keeps Parisians’ secrets safe Reuters (hat tip Dimitris). Late to this, but interesting nevertheless. Same Data, Conflicting Forecasts Joe Nocera, […]
Read more...One of the arguments apparently being made in Washington by those who oppose regulation of credit default swaps is that it would reduce liquidity and that of course would be a terrible thing. My impression is that no one has endeavored to put metrics on this assertion (as in how and where liquidity would be […]
Read more...The latest leak, arriving curiously after the markets closed, is that the Treasury wants Citigroup to raise $10 billion as a result of the famed stress tests, which the bank is fighting tooth and nail. Another rumors circulating in the media Is that Bank of America is being asked to convert $45 billion of preferred […]
Read more...Plated by Jesse of Le Café Américain The ‘fails to deliver’ statistics on debt instruments is almost as interesting, and a bit less opaque, than the naked short selling of equity instruments. A “fail to deliver” occurs when someone sells an asset such as a Treasury note to another party and then does not deliver […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. It didn’t take Michael Sabia long to shake up the ranks at the Caisse, Canada’s largest fund manager. Konrad Yakabuski of the Globe and Mail reports that Mr. Sabia is targeting risk controls: The new head of the powerful Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec has […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns The first bank nationalization in German history is about to take place. At issue is Hypo Real Estate (HRE), a troubled Munich-based company that lends to commercial property developers and to build offices, hotels, roads, airports, you name it. This issue has been building for nearly […]
Read more...Marijuana Sniffing Drone in Netherlands Zeitgeist. Sure to be coming to a neighborhood near you. Kenyan women call for sex boycott Financial Times. Life imitates art, albeit with a delay of a few thousand years. Despite Green Shoots, Odds Favor More Easing Tim Duy Additional confirmation China bought US equities from mid-2007 to mid-2008 Brad […]
Read more...The financial crisis has gone enough rounds to have evolved from tragedy into farce. The stress tests are a prime example. It’s hardly news that some banks are mucho unhappy with their grades. Wells Fargo and US Bank were complaining about the tests even before they began, clearly anticipating less than stellar scores based on […]
Read more...Americans are a profoundly optimistic people. While it’s part of the national mythology that it makes us resilient, it comes with a price. As Susan Webber noted in “The Dark Side of Optimism“: Overly positive thinking is difficult to reconcile with the need to make realistic, objective assessments. Finding the right balance between healthy optimism […]
Read more...The Fed never met a bubble it wasn’t keen to reflate. The latest wrinkle is that it is trying to learn from its old behavior, although most of us would disapprove of the lessons it has drawn. One of the cognitive biases in the readings of past crises is to attribute failure to official intervention, […]
Read more...In another disheartening development on the banking front, the Senate defeated legislation giving judges the authority to modify residential mortgages in bankruptcy. Note that the popular description is often misconstrued in short form descriptions. Judges would not have had open-ended authority to make changes. The construct is that mortgages are collateralized loans. The mortgage balance […]
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