Category Archives: Credit markets

“The Fed, Treasury, and AIG”

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. The Fed has recently come under heavy criticism, largely for its role in the AIG bailout. The Fed deserves […]

Buiter has concerns other than Dubai, warns of sovereign debt delusion

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns Willem Buiter has just taken on a new role at Citi. The news of Willem Buiter’s role as Chief Economist at Citigroup comes via DealBook at the New York Times below. Afterward, I have some comments about Dubai contextualizing Yves’ recent post detailing a reluctance by the government to […]

Dubai Will Not Guarantee Debts of Dubai World

This is starting to get interesting. One of the problems of doing business in the Middle East is that the the boundary between the private business of the ruling families and state matters is often murky. Dubai World is forcing a some clarification, and the line is being drawn to cut off the real estate […]

“A Radically Simple Approach to Resolving Financial Crises”

Of late, the Treasury, House, and Senate have put forward proposals for how to resolve large financial institutions. The problem is that none of them seem to deal with the elephant in the room, namely, how the responsible grownups are going to deal with particular creditors and counterparties. For better or worse, bankruptcy procedures are […]

UAE Central Bank Makes Reassuring Noises

The United Arab Emirates offered a reassuring statement today after sending a bit more tough-minded message yesterday. The markets will not doubt take heart from the cheery word today, but we need to remind ourselves that the fat lady hasn’t sung yet. Unlike the conduct of banking authorities in the US towards their wayward charges, […]

“Can’t Get Enough: Goldman’s Profit is Citi’s Pain?”

By Thomas Adams, at Paykin Krieg and Adams, LLP, and a former managing director at Ambac and FGIC. Many thanks for the thoughtful comments on my earlier post. If you can take a little more on the subject, I thought I would add some clarification to some of the issues raised. First, on the merits […]

Bernanke Tries to Defend the Fed

In a sign that the Federal Reserve is circling the wagons, chairman Ben Bernanke has an op-ed in the Washington Post that attempts to defend the central bank’s role. What is interesting is how much the tables have turned. The Obama effort to make the Fed into the uber bank regulator has become a rout, […]

Quelle Surprise! Treasury Mortgage Mod Program Produces Zero Permanent Mods

For the record, zero is a very impressive achievement, so we have to give the Treasury department credit where credit is due. From Bloomberg: More than 650,994 loan revisions had been started through the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program as of last month, from about 487,081 as of September, according to the Treasury. None […]

Dubai World Restructuring: Sovereign Risk Shock or No Big Deal?

Today, a story about the need to restructure state-owned Dubai World created a bit of a frisson. Dubai is proposing to delay debt payments as it negotiates to extend maturities. According to Bloomberg: Dubai World, with $59 billion of liabilities, is seeking to delay debt payments, sending contracts to protect the emirate against default surging […]

More on the Miller-Moore Amendment and Unintended Consequences

Yesterday, I went after two targets in one post. The primary one was Andrew Ross Sorkin, who despite the considerable reporting and storytelling skills he demonstrated in Too Big Too Fail, seemed unable to keep a heavy-handed pro-Fed posture out of an article yesterday on the Paul-Grayson-DeMint bill, which more popularly goes by monickers like […]

British regulators disclose terms of emergency aid during panic of 2008

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns The Financial Times reports that British regulators have now opened up to reveal more of the details surrounding the emergency aid banks received during the most acute periods of stress to date in the financial crisis. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Federal Reserve continues to resist providing greater details. […]

Goldman/AIG Conspiracy Theories: There’s a Reason They Won’t Go Away

Note: this post is by Thomas Adams, at Paykin Krieg and Adams, LLP, and a former managing director at Ambac and FGIC, with some minor additions by yours truly. This is a significant piece of some puzzles he, some other experts who prefer to remain anonymous, and I have been pushing on for several months. […]

Scare-Mongering Over Fed Oversight Bill

Full disclosure: I love Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail and think everyone should read it. But having said that, Sorkin has spent a bit too much time running with the big dogs. In today’s piece in the New York Times, he hones in on an amendment added to the Paul/Grayson bill passed last […]

Very Abbreviated Takedown on SIGTARP Report on AIG CDS Payouts

Dear sports fans, your humble blogger, along with a ton of others, got the not-very-embargoed copy of the SIGTARP report on the New York Fed’s conduct with respect to its full payout on AIG’s credit default swaps to its counterparties. The press is treating the report as if it was tough. I was sputtering with […]

“Dudley and the Missing Lessons of the Financial Crisis”

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. On Friday, William Dudley, President of FRBNY, gave an excellent presentation on the financial crisis. The speech was a […]