Yves here. This post cites a number of recent Western commentaries on China’s currency policies; I suggest, for one stop shopping, you read Martin Wolf comment, “Why America is going to win the global currency battle.” There are several points in the argument below that are curious, to say the least. One is the notion […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator. Crossposted from New Deal 2.0. It’s time to put the perps of this scandal in jail. Yves Smith, Bill Black, and Mike Konczal have already done yeoman’s work in seeking to explain the lender fraud scandal in the securitized […]
Read more...Einhorn is the famous Lehman short of 2008; he got a lot of flak from Clueless Charlie Gasparino for that. I seem to remember our own Lehman bear, Yves, getting snarled at by Charlie G somewhere along the line, too. But of course, Einhorn, via his vehicle Greenlight Capital, had it right; as did Yves […]
Read more...It keeps getting better. From Bloomberg, we have this tired-looking plaint What were banking regulators doing while some of the biggest U.S. lenders routinely filed false foreclosure documents in local courthouses around the country? …but, since that is Jonathan Weil speaking, there’s a twist: In the case of IndyMac Federal Bank, it turns out the […]
Read more...By Wallace C. Turbeville, former CEO of VMAC LLC and a former Vice President of Goldman, Sachs & Co, now Visiting Scholar at the Roosevelt Institute. Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0 Why would such a large swaps market be a possible exemption from FinReg? The traded foreign exchange market is the big enchilada. It is […]
Read more...Another little escalation of the pressure in Belgium. Via EuroIntelligence: The political situation in Belgium is becoming increasingly dramatic. After negotiations have broke down twice, the king asked for a new round of consultations to find a compromise over institutional reforms, possibly the last chance before organising new elections. Many expect that new elections would […]
Read more...The Irish authorities priced the third and apparently final batch of bad loans to be transferred from maimed Irish banks into NAMA, in exchange for some nice, clean, heavily haircut NAMA bonds. Since that announcement, ten days ago, Irish bond yields have dropped a tiny bit (20bps) from their all time highs at the beginning […]
Read more...The disastrous twins, ratings agency credit ratings and RWAs (risk weighted assets), are still embedded in Basel III. Dodd-Frank does not like this much. The ratings agencies are still a big part of Basel III, though the December draft does allow for the alternative possibility of using bank-internal models for assessing credit risk. Alas, the […]
Read more...By Michael M. Thomas, Wall Street veteran, journalist, frequent commentator on Wall Street, and the author of eight novels set in the world of high finance; with a ninth—about the financial crisis and bailout—in progress. Cross posted from The Daily Beast. Washington is swirling with the usual rumors—the White House’s man was pushed! He jumped! […]
Read more...Arriving at the rush, with extra impetus doubtless imparted by the recent and ongoing Eurobanking panic, we have the Basel III capital and liquidity reforms (there’s a one pager, a full press release and, oh, not wholly unexpectedly, a somewhat anticlimactic phase-in timetable). In fact, the liquidity reforms here are just timetable entries – the […]
Read more...A little shock for the Germans while we’re at it, with resonances for the whole Eurozone. From FT Deutschland: The chief economist of the European Central Bank (ECB), Juergen Stark, considers the German banks to be undercapitalized. Stark made this statement on Wednesday at a meeting with the head of Unions Parliamentary Group in Berlin, […]
Read more...One of the striking features of a really slap-up financial disaster is the immense scale on which those hackneyed old stages of grief (Shock, Denial, Bargaining, Guilt, Anger, Depression, Acceptance and Hope) are worked out. With an eye to illustrating this progression one more time, my last post on Ireland was just a snapshot of […]
Read more...Morning all. A spot of short term cover for Yves, who will be back later today after a mini-epic, with the head of Medusa maybe. In Euroland, Ireland (on which more later if I have time), Portugal (whose banks turned out to need still more funding help from the ECB in August) and Greece (where […]
Read more...Probably one more set of links to come from Ed, but I think that’s it from me. Unless Yves has once again succumbed to the lure of Water Eaton, on the way back home to the States. Special thanks to Ed, Tom, John Bougearel, Francois T, Bob G, Mike G, Scott F, MA, anonymous, dd, […]
Read more...One more guest post to come, plus a farewell; I had more of my own in mind, but I’ve overrun, again. It’s certainly been demanding, or stretching, and a sharp reminder of what I do and don’t know well, and can and can’t do well; but it was also enjoyable to blether away at you […]
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