The Administration put on a full court press this weekend to shore up Bernanke’s confirmation vote, which was looking increasingly doubtful as of Friday. Over the weekend, Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate said they were confident that Bernanke would be confirmed. The media took up the call, with stories appearing in virtually every […]
Read more...Early on in the TARP fee discussion, we mentioned in passing that it would probably have an impact on repo financing. Repo means “sale with agreement to repurchase.” It’s a pawn-broker-like procedure that involves securities. The borrower gets to park his holdings with another party, with an agreement to buy them back at a specified […]
Read more...True to form, the White House set forth a sketchy program to limit the proprietary trading activities of banks, and it is a vote for the status quo which is being tarted up as something else. I’m amazed that someone of Volcker’s stature is allowing himself to serve as the branding for ideas that are […]
Read more...OK sports fans, I’m old school. When I grew up, the uptick rule was in place, and no one seemed troubled by it. The uptick rule simply means that a short sale can be executed only when the last sale of a stock is at a higher price than the immediately preceding sale. It was […]
Read more...You will hear much more about this topic (AIG and Fed secrecy) here on Friday, but Bloomberg reports the lengths to which the Fed has gone to try to keep the details of Maiden Lane III, the entity created to buy drecky CDOs from AIG counterparties who received 100% credit default swap payouts. Get a […]
Read more...Bloomberg reports that Obama will announce provisions to limit the proprietary trading activities of banks. This all sounds well and good, in fact, I’ve advocated prohibiting prop trading (you’d need pretty active monitoring of overnight positions to make sure it has not simply been moved back to order flow desks). It is not a socially […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns CNBC’s Diana Olick has the breaking story on alleged fraud in the mortgage industry. She has been writing about this for a few days now. See Big Banks Accused of Short Sale Fraud – Realty Check with Diana Olick at CNBC’s website. Basically, second liens on properties like home […]
Read more...The brazenness of the financial services industry knows no bounds. The latest sighting comes in the form of a leak (or a plant? of the fact that Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association which is considering mounting a constitutional challenge to the proposed TARP fee of 15 basis points of uninsured liabilities announced last week. […]
Read more...Yves here. Several readers wrote, appalled by a Time Magazine article defending Timothy Geithner. Marshall Auerback took it upon himself to examine the quality of its reasoning. By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. It was only a matter of time before someone emerged to defend Tim […]
Read more...Today, Obama said to the banking industry, “We want our money back and we’re going to get it.” Has he forgotten that possession is nine-tenths of the law? While Uncle Sam is normally able to defeat such long odds, all bets are off with our “Speak moderately and carry no stick” President. The fact that […]
Read more...Well, as much as Dodd was not as tough on banks as many would like, his lame duck status is turning Potemkin reforms into an utter joke. The element of the proposed consumer financial protection agency that would have had a real impact on the predatory practices was the requirement to offer plain vanilla products. […]
Read more...The opening hearings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was somewhat upstaged by the tragedy in Haiti, but nevertheless compelled Wall Street chieftans to put in an appearance, which is more than President Obama has been able to d. And while Angelides himself was combative and slapped Lloyd Blankfein around a bit (pretty much every […]
Read more...Normally, I would not have paid much attention to the Wall Street Journal article today on Citigroup’s GTS, or Global Transactions Services, unit. But what was disturbing was that the normally-astute Columbia Journalism Review’s blog was taken in by a pretty questionable argument that was presented as fact in the piece. GTS is a big […]
Read more...While I am not normally on the UN beat, I guess I sorta am on the corruption beat (actually, truth be told, my real mission is to revive critical thinking, a skill that has atrophied badly in America). I received an e-mail from a former UN staffer highlighting that, as typically is the case, when […]
Read more...Ah, the machinations that Faustian bargains produce! The Obama Administration is now caught in its own machinations and is having to backpedal fast and hard from its bankster friendly posture, or at least have the public believe it is executing that maneuver. While I cannot fathom the logic, Team Obama clearly decided to throw in […]
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