Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Today it’s Joe Mysak of Bloomberg, the Muni Czar, singing the skepticism song… he says…
~~~~ ” …On my own beat, I keep thinking about all the public officials who were pitched swaps and derivative deals and investments by bankers.
The officials couldn’t understand them. It looks like the bankers who were selling them couldn’t quite understand [...]
Hubris unchecked … arrogance unleashed… gross greed.
Pirates of profit… from the New York Times article about a German bank on a rapacious route through gullible US municipal “institutional investors”…
~~~~ ” ….Mr. Bruckermann once told a trade publication that Depfa, unlike German banks, understood how to benefit from the global economy.
“With our efforts, we are like [...]
The Christian Science Monitor editorial today preaches the value and risks of buying municipals…
~~~~ ” With stock markets swinging wildly and credit markets trying to claw their way out of an icy freeze, investors have been searching for stability anywhere they can find it.
But the quest for financial security does not mean investors have to jettison [...]
Thursday, October 23, 2008
From BBG…
~~~~ ” California’s Lockyer Chides Raters Over Delay in Muni Overhaul
By Michael B. Marois
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) — Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings are wrong to delay plans to change how they grade U.S. municipal bonds because of turmoil in global financial markets, California Treasurer Bill Lockyer said.
The upheaval on Wall Street should be an impetus [...]
~~~~ Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) — California, the biggest U.S. state borrower, raised $5 billion to avert a cash shortage by turning to the bedrock of the municipal bond market: its own taxpayers.
California, a bellwether for state and local government debt, was able to boost its offering of short-term notes this week by 25 percent from [...]
I’ve thought that we should have a standard for Wall Street’s interaction with municipalities… because the Jefferson County disaster proves that investment bankers prey on the unknowing (and another recent example is the Florida Local Government Investment Pool cash freeze ) … and municipalities often have officials charged with managing large sums who know very little [...]
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Former SEC Chairman Levitt testified to the Senate Banking Committee today… (testimony here)
He urged more transparency, more enforcement from the SEC, the regulation of hedge funds and CDS and the repeal of the Tower Amendment which excludes municipalities from the same standard of disclosure as corporate issuers…
He sings a paean for the SEC as the “investor’s protector”…
~~~~ [...]
Saturday, October 11, 2008
“The wise man bridges the gap by laying out the path by means of which he can get from where he is to where he wants to go.”
+ + John Pierpont Morgan + +
I’m giving a talk in Washington this week entitled… “U.S. Bond Market Basics & Recent Events“… timely…
I’ve been developing some thoughts about [...]
Filed in Liquidity, Pricing, Regulatory, Restructuring, Trading
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Also tagged ATS, Bear, bonds, clearing, Congress, exchange, Federal Reserve, fixed income, Goldman Sachs, Lehman, Morgan Stanley, OTC, ratings, SEC, securities, TRACE, Trading, Treasuries, Treasury
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Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Semantics are very important when you launch new programs and products…
I thought that the term “toxic assets” was not the best descriptor for the subprime mortgage assets that the Treasury program was created to bail out…
I felt they should be called “corrupt assets”… Wikipedia defines “corruption” as…
~~~~ ” …Corruption, when applied as a technical term, [...]
This is an enormous disappointment… Moody’s and Fitch are delaying the standardization of the corporate and municipal rating scales… the rational is the stressed condition of the muni market… errr… rater people… all the fixed income markets are stressed now…
It would seem it would actually help markets allocate capital more efficiently to have the scales comparable… [...]