Bailout and Financial Crisis News

Senate candidate and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal explained the new lawsuit he’s filing against the ratings agencies on Bloomberg this afternoon. What’s his rationale? Basically that the Moody's (MCO) and S&P were operating at the behest of their Wall Street overlords (who were looking for good ratings) rather than offering objective judgments. Join the conversation about this [...]

By Jacob Goldstein Some day, the Senate will finally unveil its big finance-reform bill. Until then, we’ll have to survive on the endless stream of leaks about what’s likely to be in it. Like, for example, the $50 billion trust fund that may be created to wind down big, failing financial institutions. The proposed pool, described [...]

“People are starving for yield because rates are at zero. They’re taking more risk than they think.” -Paul Tramontano, Constellation Wealth Advisors, > One of the factors that caused the great credit crisis to spread far and wide was the “reach for yield.” This is one of the most expensive ways a fixed income investor can obtain a [...]

The US stock market seems to be getting rather tired after what can only be described as a remarkable rally on light volumes and program trading. The market is trying to rise here, with announcements like the Cisco backbone router for carriers and the AIG unit sales being hyped incessantly on financial [...]

Going into last Friday it sounded as though China’s National People’s Congress would be pretty benign, with few major restrictions on lending announced. But this sounds significant, and it suggests, perhaps that the country’s central leaderhip is concerned about the deteriorating financial health of its local governments. Bloomberg: China plans to nullify all guarantees local governments have provided [...]

There is a fascinating cover story in the April Bloomberg Markets magazine about Steve Cohen, head of the firm whose name bears his initials: SAC Capital. You may have missed this when it was at Bloomberg online, unfortunately titled as “Cohen Trades Secrecy for Golf With Investors Lured by 30% Gains.” The magazine’s cover story is [...]

From Bloomberg: Volcker Criticizes Greek Budget Derivatives ‘Abuse’ (ht jb) “Surely the recent revelations about the use (and abuse) of complex derivatives in obscuring the extent of Greek financial obligations reinforces the need for greater transparency and less complexity,” Volcker said in the text of a speech to the American Academy in Berlin. Ouch. And at the [...]

This is an update on a great series by Kelly Bennett of Voice of San Diego. First a little background: According to Kelly, in 2008 - after the bubble burst - James McConville bought distressed condos from developers in bulk, and then sold them to straw buyers at inflated prices (individuals with solid credit records [...]

In his latest testimony, Vikram Pandit blamed short-sellers for Citigroup’s (C) pathetic share price (about $3.50/share). This Bloomberg chart, showing the complete lack of correlation between Citi’s share price and short-interest, would beg to differ. Join the conversation about this story » See Also: CHART OF THE DAY: See The Countries Short-Sellers Are Abusing What Do Citi and Apple Share [...]

First a quote from a Bloomberg story: U.S. Economy: Pending Sales of Existing Homes Decline “When you take away all the support from the housing market, the underlying demand for housing is a lot weaker than we thought,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. “We clearly pushed [...]

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