Greece Lifts a Page From Citigroup’s Playbook - by Jonathan Weil
Is it too much to ask for the world’s titans of government and finance to speak credibly when they open their mouths? Some of them sure seem to think so, judging by the latest news from the financial-crisis front.
To hear Vikram Pandit tell it, Citigroup Inc. was a healthy institution when it got bailed out by the
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In April 2008, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. CEO Dick Fuld declared the “worst is behind us,” while blaming short sellers for his bank’s faltering share price. (In a short sale, an investor sells borrowed shares in hopes of buying them back at a lower price later and pocketing the difference.)
By July, the Securities and Exchange Commission had unveiled the first in a series of emergency short-selling rules that made it harder for investors to bet against the stocks of Lehman and 18 other “substantial financial firms.” Instead of helping the companies, the move wound up highlighting which financial-services companies the government was worried about the most, including Fannie and Freddie.
That same month, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified in Congress that Fannie and Freddie were adequately capitalized. Two months later, Paulson directed the government to seize both companies because they were insolvent.
- Prem Watsa's 2012 Shareholder Letter - Fairfax Financial
We continue to fully hedge our common stock portfolios because of the reasons first discussed in our 2010 and 2011 Annual Reports. Those reasons have not changed! Total debt (private and government) as a percentage of GDP in the U.S., Europe and the U.K....
- Credit Default Swaps (cds) Are Insurance Products, Not Tradeable Assets - By Barry Ritholtz
Our story thus far: The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, sponsored by Texas Senator Phil Gramm as a favor to his wife Wendy (who sat on the Board of Directors of Enron, which wanted to trade energy derivatives without oversight) was rushed...
- How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself...
- Say Goodbye To Fannie And Freddie - By William Poole
Found via The Big Picture. THE Federal National Mortgage Association — known as Fannie Mae — and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation — Freddie Mac — were poorly structured from the time, 40 years ago, when they were set up as so-called...
- Ny Times Op-ed From Michael Lewis And David Einhorn
A two-part Op-Ed piece from Michael Lewis and David Einhorn. First part – “The End of the Financial World as We Know It”: AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We’ve been viewed by the wider world with mistrust...