Category Archives: Credit markets

Quelle Surprise! More Proof that the FCIC was a Whitewash, Thanks to Angelides and Born

It is unpleasant to face up to the fact that quite a few of the people who are lauded as courageous were not as brave as their PR would lead you to believe.

China’s Ultimate Debt Holders—Not the Borrowers

In China, things are not looking pretty.

Robert Prasch: The “Lessons” that Wall Street, Treasury, and the White House Need You to Believe About the Lehman Collapse

Five long years have passed since the demise of the once venerable firm of Lehman Brothers. To mark the occasion, Wall Street, the United States Treasury Department, the White House, and their several political proxies and spokespersons have taken to the mass media to instruct the public in the “lessons” to be drawn from the financial crisis of 2007-09. Regrettably, we are witnessing the propagation of several self-serving falsehoods in the hope that the public can be induced to embrace them now that the immediacy of the events in question is in the past. Some of the lessons are so flagrantly false that they demand immediate correction.

Pending JP Morgan Settlement on Whale Trades Leaves Criminal Investigation Open

A new article up at the Wall Street Journal blares, “J.P. Morgan Still Faces Criminal Investigation for ‘Whale’ Trades.” This headline is narrowly accurate and shows some refreshing tough-mindedness among regulators in how they are negotiating with JP Morgan over its London Whale trades

What the Orgy of “Lehman Five Years On” Stories Missed

One of the reasons I haven’t weighed in with the obligatory Lehman five year anniversary piece is that so many of them are variations on a limited range of themes. So it may be more instructive to discuss the stories that it would have been nice to see instead.

James Galbraith, Neil Barofsky, and John Coffee Discuss Lessons from Lehman Meltdown

I have to confess that given the length of this panel discussion presented by Better Markets, I’ve looked only at the start, which is quite promising. Given the caliber of the participants, I’m hoping to get to it over the weekend, since it will be a departure from the bromides the MSM seems to be serving up on this anniversary of the Lehman collapse. This talk is oriented towards a discerning audience and offer more insider detail.

Why You Should Learn to Love the Brave New World of Low Liquidity

The Financial Times reported earlier this week (hat tip Scott) how banks are cutting the size of corporate bond trading desks and reducing the size of trading inventories, all as a result of big bad regulations. As a result, the banks would like us to know, investors might be hurt by a lack of liquidity! Horrors!

Bill Black: SEC Flacks Paint Lehman’s Looters as the Victims of a “Political” SEC

Yves here. With the fifth anniversary of the Lehman collapse nearly upon us, the financial media is awash in crisis-related retrospectives. That’s including more than a little revisionist history. Here, Bill Black corrects the record on some SEC propaganda that the New York Times saw fit to run. The idea that the SEC deemed Lehman’s Repo 105 transaction (which allowed it to hide $50 billion of liabilities, when its total balance sheet was $660 billion) to be not material is such a preposterous notion that, if anything, Black’s treatment is restrained.

Money as a Hierarchical System: Legal and Economic Perspectives

If you are in NYC, this event at Columbia tomorrow is a must-see! Be there or be square!

Gaius Publius: Are We Having “Bank Deregulation” Crises or “Unrestricted Capital Flow” Crises?

Yves here. For the last four years, we’ve been highlighting research that has found that high levels of international capital flows are strongly associated with frequent and severe financial crises. Gaius describes how more economists are endorsing this idea, and how the proposed trade deals, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the US-EU trade agreement, will only make matters worse.

David Dayen: BofA/Merrill Lynch Analyst Says QE and Housing Policy Boosting Inequality

Anyone surprised by the housing recovery is simply blind to the context that the Federal Reserve has administered a bazooka full of aid and comfort over the past few years. They bought up enough mortgage bonds to force interest rates to near-record lows, boosting the fortunes of asset holders. And in so doing they made housing an attractive investment product, bringing lots of Wall Street cash into the REO-to-rental play, at least for a short while. That predictably increased demand and put housing prices on their current trajectory.

Cathy O’Neil: Short Your Kids, Go Long Your Neighbor: Betting on People Is Coming Soon

Yet another aspect of Gary Shteyngart’s dystopian fiction novel Super Sad True Love Story is coming true for reals this week.

Besides anticipating Occupy Wall Street, as well as Bloomberg’s sweep of Zuccotti Park (although getting it wrong on how utterly successful such sweeping would be), Shteyngart proposed the idea of instant, real-time and broadcast credit ratings.

David Dayen: Regulatory Apparatus To Provide Full Employment For Chroniclers of Future Bailouts, as Useless Mortgage Origination Rules Introduced

There’s no way to possibly count the various ways in which Dodd-Frank rules have been watered down, even from their already waterlogged original intent. But we got another example of it yesterday, the product of a corrupt bargain between the mortgage industry and so-called “progressive” housing groups.