~~~~ ” Treasuries “are yielding next to nothing,” said Robert Millikan, who manages $5 billion at BB&T Asset Management in Raleigh, North Carolina, including the $51 million BB&T Short U.S. Government Fund. “Trying to do something for your shareholders, it’s hard to sit there and buy a bond that yields less than any fees you [...]
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The collapse of the interrelations between units of the global financial system has created chaos… many voices are trying to reestablish the threads that weave the various levels of the system back together… limits… everyone is calling for limits…
But are limits really a sound framework for controlling the world’s financial system?
Who defines, controls and enforces [...]
Friday, November 28, 2008
This is a clip from Aug 12th on Bloomberg News (running time ~~ 4 minutes)… it concerns the auction rate securities markets…analysis by Adam Dean, President of SVB Asset Management and Joe Mysak, Bloomberg columnist…
Mr. Dean talks about the approx $ 200 billion dollars of ARS that the large banks had to bring back on [...]
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is guaranteeing the debt of Goldman Sachs and other banks whose customers are the wealthiest people in the world…
I’m a little slow so I don’t understand why hard working Americans of middle and low income are subsidizing the richest people?
Isn’t this honestly just a giveaway to Goldman Sachs so that they can [...]
Monday, November 17, 2008
Bloomberg is reporting today that several institutional investors have accused Goldman Sachs of naked short selling high yield loans… which generally hadn’t happened in that market as loans were trading at par until recently… uh oh…
In the Bloomberg article there is also the suggestion that GS has been intentionally delaying settlement of trades which [...]
Monday, November 10, 2008
Jim Cramer sings a love song to Goldman Sachs… he feels that they will be taking a $5 a share writedown and cleaning up a big group of their Level 3 assets… 2 technicians he queried said the shares would bottom at about $40 or approx 1/2 of book value… Cramer believes that GS will [...]
Another Sunday night awaiting the word of the crisis resolution team at the Federal Reserve on Liberty Street…
It’s AIG this time… other Sundays we awaited word of the fate of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG-1, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley… you would think Tim Geithner and his staff deserved some time off… if this is [...]
Saturday, November 8, 2008
I love Bloomberg… they got a shotgun aimed at the heart of secrecy at the Federal Reserve… they say “open the kimono“… let the light in… let information flow… let markets act and allocate…
~~~~ “Bloomberg Sues Fed to Force Disclosure of Collateral (Update1)
By Mark Pittman
Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) – Bloomberg News asked a U.S. court today to force [...]
This chart is from an Economist article on risks to the financial system from credit default swaps (CDS)…
The title of the chart says it all… “Treacherous Waters“… check out the exponential rise in counterparty risk in 2 years… this is nuclear risk…
~~~~ “… As rising defaults trigger CDS payments, the effect on other markets is likely [...]
Thursday, November 6, 2008
From Dean Starkman writing in the Columbia Journalism Review (hattip to Chris Whalen)…
~~~~ “… On September 29 …. Bloomberg’s Mark Pittman published a story that blows away any inference that Goldman had no stake in the bailout. This story was brought to my attention after I wrote the earlier piece. Here are excerpts with my emphasis:
Sept. [...]