Widespread Signs of Credit Market Froth
I’m getting a bad case of déjà vu from reading the Financial Times over the last week.
Read more...Category Archives: Risk and risk management
New Zealand: the Shell Company Incorporation Franchises (IV) (and Latvia)
New Zealand: more dubious companies in the New Zealand register, and another elusive company incorporator
Read more...Abigail Field: Privatization Is Driven By Private Greed and Public Cowardice (and Public Greed, Too)
“Privatization” and “public-private-partnerships” for infrastructure and other public assets are scams driven by private greed and public cowardice.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Hidden Leverage Threatens To Blow Up the Markets
Leverage-on-leverage vehicles were the big driver of the global financial crisis. Some investors are going back to their overly-risky ways.
Read more...While New Zealand’s Company Law Reform Stalls, GT Group Helps a Thieving Ukrainian Despot
Since the Great New Zealand Shell Company Deregistration Frenzy of 2009-2011, which we rounded up here and here, the New Zealand Government, and the New Zealand Companies Office, have managed to catch a bit of sleep, bless them.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Biggest Credit Bubble in History Flashes Warning – ‘Seek Cover’
Wolf Richter and Gillian Tett worry about evidence of credit mania in the US.
Read more...Private Equity’s Lake Woebegon Fallacy: All Investors Are Above Average
How absurd are the goals of the pension funds that invest in private equity? Plenty absurd, it turns out.
Read more...In Echo of Runup to Crisis, Bond Investors Reaching for Yield
An article in the Financial Times by Tracy Alloway gives yet another sighting that bond investors are getting a bit frantic in their hunt for yield. The piece has the eyepopping title, Yield-hungry investors snap up US homeless bond. It uses recent deals in the CMBS (commercial mortgage backed securities) market as a proxy for bond investors’ QE-driven hunt for more return.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: Interest Rates and Animal Spirits – A Response to JW Mason
Clarifying what believing in risk versus uncertainty means for how you view the role of interest rates.
Read more...Amar Bhidé on How Following Hayek Leads to Regulating Banks Like Utilities, Looking Askance at Liquidity and Securitization
I highly recommend this short interview by John Authers of the Financial Times with Amar Bhidé, a professor at Tufts, in which he argues that a proper reading of Friedrich Hayek would lead to considerable skepticism about whether most of the changes in finance over the last three decades actually represent progress.
Read more...Banks Start Volcker Rule Blame Game
Nothing like being able to use something in the headlines to hide your real behavior. And even better if you can get a banking stalwart columnist to run PR for you.
Read more...Eric Ben-Artzi: How Risky is Citigroup’s New, Improved Version of a Once-Toxic Type of Synthetic CDO?
We are all still paying the price for the stream of ever more leveraged credit derivatives that fueled the world’s greatest credit bubble. It appears that some of these are attempting a comeback.
Read more...Speculation About Whether the Fed Manipulates the Stock Market Becoming More Mainstream
Even during the pre-Lehman days of the financial crisis (yes, Virginia, there were three acute episodes before the Big One), blogs and professional investors in my various e-mail conversations would discuss the idea that the Fed had a “plunge protection team” which would intervene to stem market routs.
Read more...CNI (UK) and its Lawyers Complain to Blogs, But Appear to Shy Away From the Daily Mail
CNI (UK)’s confusing attitude to its connections with Carbon Neutral Investments, service provider to carbon scams
Read more...The Wall Street Code: HFT Whisteblower Haim Bodek on Algorithmic Trading
Haim Bodek is a former Goldman and UBS trader, more recently the founder of his own trading firm, who has come firmly out against how stock exchanges work with high frequency traders. Readers spoke approvingly of this recently-released short documentary about his efforts.
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