By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns Let me add a few words to Yves’ last post because I don’t think she was explicit enough about what’s going on here. This was looting and a cover-up plain and simple. A quick review: Damaging e-mails have revealed that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged AIG to withhold crucial […]
Read more...This latest revelation confirms the Fed’s commitment to secrecy and, although troubling, at this point should come at no surprise. The most important element is that AIG itself determined it should provide information about its swaps transactions (the ones it settled at 100 cents on the dollar at the New York Fed’s instigation and approved […]
Read more...We put up a post in late December which keyed off a discussion by Patrick Chovanec . Chovanec argued that real estate was increasingly serving as a vehicle for speculation, with many units kept vacant by investors: In China, however, “flipping” is not the problem. Some people may be engaged in short-term ”flipping,” but as […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns As a writer, Matt Taibbi is a lot more vitriolic than I am. He curses, makes some pretty over-the-top personal attacks, and divines a policymaker’s intent where I don’t think he can. But, this goes mostly to style. Substantively speaking, he has a lot to say and we should […]
Read more...Most of the time, I try to stick to writing up the worst abuses in the generally corrupt realm of financial services, but it’s important not to overlook the nickel and diming. First, if done on a big enough scale, it adds up to lots of money, and the amounts at issue are so small […]
Read more...OK, this factoid is just San Diego, one of the epicenters of the housing implosion. But the flip side is conventional wisdom is that the worst hit locales are bottoming first….right? Maybe not. Again, generalizing based on one data point is not advisable, but this one is so striking that I can’t help but think […]
Read more...Sandy Weill, former chief poohbah of Citigroup, tells us that he had nothing to do with the implosion of the sprawling behemoth. Everything he did was right, it was his successor, Chuck Prince, who screwed up (well maybe he was an itty bitty bit responsible by virtue of recommending Prince). Oh, and it’s Jamie Dimon […]
Read more...Are we going to finally start seeing some pointed mainstream media coverage of the Administration’s limp wristed, industry-favoring financial “reform” plans? While it has been woefully slow in coming, the answer appears to be yes. One has to wonder whether the more skeptical coverage follows the increasing evidence that things may not be working out […]
Read more...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 […]
Read more...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 […]
Read more...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 […]
Read more...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 […]
Read more...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 […]
Read more...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. […]
Read more...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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