One of the horrorshows that has been moving along in the background is the disaster of the funding of a sewer project in Birmingham, Alabama, which looks pretty likely to produce the biggest municipal bankruptcy since Orange County back in the mid 1990s. Orange County did have one Robert Citron to blame for its woes. […]
Read more...Paul Krugman is back to his old form on the financial services beat, now that the cracks in the Paulson/Geithner/Bernanke “give the banks what they want now, in size, worry about cleanup later” strategy is proving to have been the wrong way to go. My big beef is that he didn’t go far enough and […]
Read more...Wolfgang Munchau has a solid, thoughtful piece at the Financial Times which argues that the widely applauded rallies in stock and commodity markets are already looking very much like bubbles, and the efforts to contend with them (either directly, or as a result of the need to start reining in liquidity) is likely to kick […]
Read more...Actually, despite the somewhat churlish headline, the story “Bailout Helps Fuel a New Era of Wall Street Wealth,” by Graham Bowley at the New York Times, is a solid job of reporting and does not tiptoe around the issue of the big bennies that the financial services industry is enjoying and their role in creating outsized […]
Read more...This is starting to get interesting, although it is far from conclusive. Massachusetts Land Court judge Keith Long reaffirmed a 2009 ruling (Ibanez) that invalidated foreclosures on two properties because the lenders did not hold clear title to them at the time of the foreclosure sale. Now this decision is still subject to appeal, and […]
Read more...An interesting contract in reporting today. Reader (Tom C) sent me the Wall Street Journal version of this story, by Michael R. Crittenden and Liam Pleven, titled “AIG Execs Returned Only $19M Of $45M In Pledged Repayments.” I decided to look at Bloomberg as well, as found one on the same subject, “AIG Should Trim […]
Read more...I have a weakness for seeing movies in theaters; the home variety, even with the super large screens, is just not the same. And it has been so long since I have seen a movie that all the trailers looked good to me (well, I must confess I like trailers. The tacky soda and car […]
Read more...An unannounced but evidently coordinated effort to arrest or at least slow the fall of the dollar is underway. The Financial Times indicated that Asian central banks were aggressive dollar buyers on Thursday, but the information came via currency traders rather than an official pronouncement. Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan made substantial purchases; Hong Kong and […]
Read more...When markets were more agitated than they are today, one source of background worry was the Baltics. The countries went on a debt binge, borrowing heavily from Swedish banks. And while the amounts at issue are hardly earth-shaking by credit crisis standards, there is always the possibility that unexpected knock-on effects could lead to more […]
Read more...The New York Times has a good update on the progress, or more accurately, lack thereof, in the efforts to return to normalcy in the credit markets. The story highlights the fact that the securitization markets, to the extent they are operating, are heavily dependent on government intervention and it does not appear likely that […]
Read more...You have to hand it to those bankers. They are very creative in finding ways to argue that life for them should continue more or less as it did before, despite the spectacular damage that they have exacted on the global economy. Had the industry put together a reform program, or even fessed up to […]
Read more...Monoline insurers were last year’s story, but I have a prurient interest in some of the smoldering hulks of the credit crisis. Readers may recall that in January-Feb of last year, seemingly imminent demise of monolines looked to be ready to set off financial armageddon, since monoline (and AIG) credit enhancement was critical to a […]
Read more...By Swedish Lex, an expert and advisor on EU regulatory and political affairs: If you belong to those who believe that the debate on how to fix finance is mightily underwhelming when compared to the latter’s monumental failure, then I suggest reading Martin Wolf’s latest column in the Financial Times. Wolf essentially trashes the financial […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives: One year ago, AIG was brought to the brink of bankruptcy as a result its exposure under credit default swaps (“CDS”) (a form of credit insurance). Asset backed securities and Collateralised Debt Obligations […]
Read more...Given how beleagured ratings agencies are, you would expect them to adopt the usual best policy when in trouble with authority figures: act terribly contrite and use all sorts of apologetic language without admitting to much and/or admit profusely to stuff you cannot deny, and make extremely vague but very earnest promises to do better. […]
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