Tom Adams Discusses Criminal Investigation of Goldman on BNN
Enjoy! You can view the segment here.
Read more...Category Archives: Credit markets
Goldman (and DeutscheBank) as Predator
One of the things that has been striking as revelation of bad behavior in the collateralized debt market has gotten more press is that a number of commentators who had taken the “nothing to see here, move on” stance have gotten religion. Even more dramatic has been the change in perception of Goldman. The firm […]
Read more...Is Geithner in SIGTARP’s Crosshairs?
A Bloomberg story today on Neil Barofsky, the head of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or SIGTARP, contained this explosive little item (hat tip Tom F): The TARP watchdog has also criticized Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner in reports and in congressional testimony for his handling of […]
Read more...The inevitability of Greek default
A version of this post appeared yesterday at Credit Writedowns. I am running a poll on whether Greece will default. Please click here to vote. And feel free to comment on why you voted as you did. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is feeling pressure to force German banks to take a haircut on Greek debt […]
Read more...Alford: Why Dismantling Too Big To Fail Firms Makes Economic Sense
By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. Economists have joined the debate about the merits of requiring the downsizing of too big to fail (“TBTF”) financial […]
Read more...Greece Downgrade: What Shoes Will Drop Next?
The Financial Times indicator is looking more and more reliable: when the pink paper starts playing at the top of its form, the wheels are about to come off. The most troubling aspect of the Standard & Poors downgrade of Greece to junk and Portugal’s downgrade came in its release. It isn’t just that Greece […]
Read more...Notes on Senate Hearings on Goldman Sachs (Updated as of End of Hearings)
Opening Remarks Overview: The Senate committee presented a case that sought to refute the prior public statements of Goldman Sachs and establish that Goldman was, in fact, betting against clients and had rampant, and unacceptable, conflicts of interest. Senators Levin, Collins, McCain and McKaskill made statements that seem to anticipate many of the defenses that […]
Read more...Your Humble Blogger Discusses Financial Reform on PBS Newshour
Enjoy! You can view the segment here. PS Reader Independent Accountant correctly chided me for giving the bill too high a grade. This part was a classic example of anchoring.
Read more...Quelle Surprise! Goldman Knowingly Sold Garbage Barges
As Goldman and the Senate Committee on Investigations are duking out The Battle of the E-Mails, with each side claiming the other has painted a misleading picture, it is becoming pretty clear that Goldman, contrary to its sanctimonious twattle about putting clients first, actually puts its fees first. This should come as no surprise to […]
Read more...Spitzer/Black: Questions from the Goldman Scandal
By Eliot Spitzer and Bill Black, cross posted from New Deal 2.0: For those who have spent years investigating fraud, it was no surprise to hear that Goldman Sachs, the (self-described) jewel of Wall Street, is the latest firm to emerge from the financial crisis with tarnished reputation. According to a lawsuit brought by the […]
Read more...Greece: Dead Man Walking?
I’m mystified as to the cheerleading in some circles on Greece. It is not clear that its €45 billion EU-IMF band-aid will be deployed (among other things, it faces a legal challenge in Germany) and even if it is, it falls well short of Greece’s anticipated needs beyond one year. More important, a successful deal […]
Read more...More Proof the Bubble is Back
A correspondent e-mailed me about his belief that credit market valuations are more than a big dubious. For instance, subordinated tranches of commercial real estate bonds, which at the lows of last year were trading at 30 cents on the dollar are now at 90 cents. He thinks (and this is a space he knows) […]
Read more...New Goldman PR Disaster: Execs Celebrated Subprime Implosion
It’s ironic how the “Goldman was so smart to have shorted subprime” meme is now being turned on its head in the MSM as Goldman’s conduct in the run-up to the crisis is begin re-examined in a new light. The underlying premise of the Goldman defenders is that it is fine for the firm to […]
Read more...The Greek Crisis Has Me Thinking About 1931
This post originally appeared at Credit Writedowns. The news about Greece’s bailout has me thinking a lot about Creditanstalt, the Austrian bank which collapsed in 1931. This account bears remembering because we should see the 1929-1933 descent as a two-part episode, with the second part starting in the Spring of 1931 with Creditanstalt. It should […]
Read more...CDO Market – Rife With Collusion and Manipulation?
By Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive, and Yves Smith Despite extensive credit crisis post mortems, many of the widely accepted explanations of what happened are at odds with facts on the ground. These superficial explanations are hard to dislodge because they tally with widely held beliefs about how the real estate and […]
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