Category Archives: Curiousities

More Evidence That Judges Have Had it With Banks

Today, we linked to an article in the New York Times that illustrates a considerable change in the attitude of some judges in the wake of the robosigning scandal. Before, the assumption was that of course, the bank was right and any borrower trying to block a foreclosure had better have an awfully compelling case. But a lot of judges were stunned by the level and institutionalization of bank abuses of procedure. And in a small, happy note, some of the employers of the worst foreclosure mills are finally cutting them lose. Per Michael Olenick, Fannie Mae has ceased doing business with the Baum law firm in New York (the one with the now notorious 2010 Halloween party that made fun of mortgage borrowers fighting foreclosures as future homeless people).

We first got wind of this decision below from Matt Weidner. Frankly, it reads like a parody, but we got it from April Charney, and it does have the stamps you’d see on the real deal. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it even if it is an artful fabrication, and even more if someone with access to Pacer can confirm that it is genuine.

Validated Carbon Credits and Baron Traders Limited Have (Update: Briefly) Left the Building

The FT and a scammer respond to a Carbon Credits post at NC

Cheer Up, FTAdviser: At Least You Don’t Publish Threadbare Excuses from Scammers, Like Reuters Does

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By Richard Smith

Having hooted mildly at FTAdviser yesterday, for their somewhat skimpy fact checking, I found my eye caught today by a similar miss from Reuters (in bold):

“FTAdviser” Tricked Into Lending the Good Name of the Financial Times to Carbon Credit Scammers

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Naked Capitalism: the First Five Years (Nearly)

The fifth anniversary of Naked Capitalism’s first post is due on 19th December. According to WordPress, another 8,361 posts have gone up since 2006. 7,453 of them are posted by Yves, who thus averages four posts per day, week in, week out, for all that time: unnerving. For all the generosity of Yves’s tributes to other contributors, it’s pretty obvious where the lion’s share of the engagement is coming from, though I would have to single out Ed Harrison as the most wonderful near-full-time helper when Yves is having one of those bandwidth-challenged annual “holidays”.

From direct observation, and deduction, the average Yves Smith working day, which is to say, the average Yves Smith day, splits up something like this:

Chinese bubble bursting: A probable non-event

By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland In waking a tiger, use a long stick. – Mao Tse-tung Well, it looks like it could finally be happening. The Chinese housing bubble could well be bursting right before our eyes. The bubble has long been present for all to see, with news […]

The money scoreboard

I am going to fill in a few posts for Yves while she is away on conference. Here’s one that is a thought piece I wrote last week at Credit Writedowns. It is a mental model of the economy I am toying with based on some comments the modern monetary theory folks have made to […]

Making a mockery of sovereign CDS

What happens when you get a default that equates to a 50% loss for most investors without triggering default insurance? Massively negative unintended consequences. Europe has just made a mockery of the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) market by trying to structure a default via voluntary 50% haircuts in order to avoid triggering CDS claims. […]

New Zealand Science Minister Mapp’s Sudden Disappearance from New Image’s Web Site

NZ Science Minister who praised New Image runs for cover…New Image spokesperson in a spin…New Image “stand by” colostrum quack cure testimonials but simultaneously repudiate them by taking them off their web site…New Image still flogging worthless fuel economy product Powerpill Fe-3 to Malaysia.

Business As Usual in New Zealand!

New Zealand’s Miracle Cure Peddler and “The Most Spectacular Fraud in Australian History”

New Zealand company New Image Group is the supplier of the bogus fuel economy product behind Australia’s biggest stock fraud. And New Image is still selling it!

New Zealand Science Minister Wayne Mapp Endorses Dubious “Miracle Cure” Multi-Level Marketing Company

My last pop at New Zealand’s regulatory set-up mentioned New Image International, the company that uses multi-level marketing techniques to sell Colostrum as a miracle cure. The New Image product pitch is a generic hoax, as explained last time out:

…major warning signs include:
Read more...

New Zealand: Where Health Scam Companies Get Stock Exchange Listings

New Zealand is playing host to the sort of large scale miracle cure scam that would get investigated for wire fraud in the US. One company even has a New Zealand stock exchange listing!

Randy Wray: Euro Toast, Anyone? The Meltdown Picks Up Speed

Yves here. Readers may note that Wray cites the cost of the US bailout of the financial crisis as $29 trillion. I’ve never seen a figure like that (the highest estimate I’ve seen was from SIGTARP, which set the “theoretical maximum” at $23 trillion, and that figure was widely criticized. Barry Ritholtz has kept tab over time, and his tally has been in the $10-$11 trillion range). But this estimate is not core to his argument.

By L. Randall Wray, a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Cross posted from EconoMonitor

Greece’s Finance Minister reportedly said that his nation cannot continue to service its debt and hinted that a fifty percent write-down is likely. Greece’s sovereign debt is 350 billion euros—so losses to holders would be 175 billion euros. That would just be the beginning, however.

New Zealand: a Great Place to do Business…and Scams

By Richard Smith

The little story NC carried a couple of months ago about New Zealand scam companies has come out from behind the paywall, courtesy of the NZ Herald (hat tip: John G.). We hinted at the time that the problem’s large and nasty, and the NZ Government admits this in a cabinet paper:

More on the European Bank Bailout

Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns Overnight, a group of us were exchanging e-mails on the recent coordinated central bank action to provide European banks the funding being denied them by the markets. I haven’t been active on the e-mail chain, but I did find some of the commentary interesting. I had a few comments of note […]