Sorry if you were looking for listing of the various Greek assets on offer. You need to be a really heavyweight investor (and have been verified as such) to get a real viewing. And you are late if you are taking interest only now. The Guardian last week visited a road show of sorts in London (note that the properties were being hawked BEFORE the Greek parliament had approved the sale). The potential bidders were very cool:
Read more...Of the many low points of the Clinton presidency, one was its questionable money dealings. Remember how Hillary managed to turn $1000 into $100,000 via successful commodities trading? 70% of retail commodities traders lose money. Boy, for a newbie trader, the First Lady was clearly a natural!
A former contact of mine, low profile but with a serious reputation among professional traders, was asked to review Hillary’s trading records by some Congressmen (they apparently asked two other market professionals).
Read more...The latest column by Gillian Tett provides further support for our pet thesis: that the role of the state in banking is so great and the subsidies so wideranging that they cannot properly be considered private companies and should be regulated as utilities.
Key extracts:
Read more...Bill Clinton’s favorite attack dog, James Carville, once said of Paula Jones: “Drag $100 bills through trailer parks, there’s no telling what you’ll find.”
Add a few zeros, and you can get the cooperation of much bigger players.
The noted financial services industry analyst Bill Clinton weighed in on the proposed $8.5 billion Bank of America mortgage settlement. Per Bloomberg:
Read more...The conspiracy theorists in France will have a field day with this development. And I must say, with good reason.
The New York Times reports that even though the forensic evidence makes clear there was a sexual encounter between the former head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the prosecutors (!) have found the witness to have told enough lies to them to put their case in jeopardy. She may have connections to drug dealers and criminal rings.
Read more...The so called Bank of America settlement, in which the Charlotte bank is set to pay $8.5 billion to settle representation and warranty liability on 530 mortgage trusts representing $424 billion of par value, is being hailed as a possible template for other mortgage issuers and servicers.
I sure hope not, because some of the things I see in this deal look plenty troubling.
Read more...Oregon judges have delivered a series of setbacks to servicers and securitization trusts. A recent decision, Hooker v. Northwest Trustee Services, ruled that assignments of the beneficial interest (as in, transfers of the note) needed to be recorded. That makes any foreclosure in the name of the mortgage registry MERS a non-starter, since MERS was never and could never be the holder of the beneficial interest. This will have little impact going forward, since MERS has instructed servicers to stop foreclosing in its name, but there are plenty of foreclosures in the pipeline that were initiated in the name of MERS.
The latest move is that Judge Grand reversed a foreclosure sale due to the failure of the parties representing the lender to satisfy the requirements of Oregon’s recording statute
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and hedge fund manager. Cross posted from New Deal 2.0.
Markets are celebrating the triumph of an anti-labor, pro-capital agenda. But is social unrest the consequence?
The Europeans genuinely must genuinely believe that they can get blood out of a stone. Or perhaps resort to a modern day equivalent of turning lead into gold. There’s no other reason to explain the euphoria now prevalent in the markets, in light of the approval by Greece’s lawmakers to pass a key austerity bill, thereby paving the way for the country to get its next bailout loans that will prevent it from defaulting next month.
Read more...Andrew Sheng, Chief Adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission, is wonderfully straightforward and realistic for an economist. He is willing to say, as he does in this video, things that are obvious yet somehow unacceptable to ‘fess up to in policy circles, like the planet simply cannot support 3 billion people in Asia living European lifestyles. He warns of the danger of creating the mother of all crises if governments cannot stem the tide of leveraged capital flows, and also discusses the role of China on the global stage.
Read more...I must confess I am surprised that Bank of America is close to settling a litigation threat by a group of investors headed by the New York Fed, Pimco, and Blackrock, which was discussed in the media quite a bit last fall for a reported $8.5 billion.
While most threatened litigation is settled out of court, this case in theory had to overcome procedural hurdles for any suit to be filed, and no group of investors had ever surmounted this impediment. Chris Whalen similarly noted that BofA could simply tell the investors to “pound sand.” However, we had noted that if it moved forward, that this type of case, a representation and warranties case, is always settled because they are too expensive to fight in court.
Read more...Jon Daniellsson of the LSE has spotted something odd about the Basel III debate on capital levels…
Read more...We’ve taken an interest in tax havens thanks to Nicholas Shaxson’s book Treasure Islands, which is a must read. Although the book gives a historical account of the rise of what he calls “offshore”, which includes forms of tax avoidance that extend beyond the use of secrecy jurisdictions, which gives the UK the leading role, Shaxson discusses is that the US is the now the biggest tax haven in the world. He discussed briefly the role of Wyoming, which has incorporation rules that are so lax that it is trivial to hide the owners of Wyoming domiciled companies.
An article in Reuters fleshes out this topic in more detail. I encourage you to read it in full. Key extracts:
Read more...Several readers sent me links to a Brad DeLong post which they took to be a rebuttal to a takedown I did of a recent Ezra Klein piece.
Since DeLong did not link to or mention my post, I doubt his piece had anything to do with mine. But his post is noteworthy for a completely different reason: it illustrates how economists have refused to learn much, if anything, from the crisis.
Read more...By Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive
Barron’s published a detailed take down of the mortgage insurance industry weekend that highlights how Treasury’s approach to the mortgage mess will ultimately make matters worse. As the article points out, in the fairly likely scenario that mortgage claims exceed the amount of capital the insurers have available to pay them, the parties taking the biggest hit will be Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That means taxpayers are probably on the hook for more bailouts.
Despite having questionable capital reserves for the future claims they face, mortgage insurers are still continuing to write significant insurance business. Why would anybody want to continue to buy insurance from such shaky companies?
The continuing business of the mortgage insurers help shed light on the fact that virtually the entire mortgage industry is run through zombie companies that ought to have expired years ago.
Read more...Corporate American, and apparently important agencies, much prefer to hire people who’ve had Big Jobsno matter how poorly they’ve performed in them, that are very similar to the one at hand, rather than hire someone who relevant skills and experience but for whom a Big Job would be a step up.
You cannot make this up. From the Banking Times, “Ex-Lehman chief risk officer appointed World Bank treasurer,” hat tip Richard Smith:
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