Archive - Oct 2009

The tone change in Mr. Lewis Liman's missives seems to correlate 0.999 with BofA/ML's desire to (not) cooperate with however many investigations the firm is mired in at any given moment.

"Because Bank of America has decided to reconsider its position with respect to your investigation, it will also produce privileged information to federal regulators and to the Congress... We are proceeding as quickly as possible so that we can waive the privilege in connection with your investigation and also promptly be in a position to produce privileged information to the others who have requested it. We presently hope and expect to be able to effect the waiver, both with respect to your Office and others, no later than Friday, October 16, 2009. While we regret the brief delay, the need for a fair and orderly process in connection with the waiver of the privilege with respect to multiple parties in unavoidable." - Lewis Liman, Cleary Gottlieb

Project Mayhem reviews the most important financial and geopolitical news of the past week and takes a look at the week ahead.

The place where the real big boys play, high yield cash bonds and CDS in IG, has seen unprecedented activity over the past year. Overall, more than $1 trillion in corporate issues were sold in 2009, although in fairness $192 billion of this amount is courtesy of taxpayer subsidized TLGP sponsored financial issuance (Mr. Blankfein, speaking of transparency, when do you plan on paying back your portion of TLGP debt?). Yet real speculative mania has never been as evident as what has transpired in the junk bond domain: YTD more than $103 billion of BB- and below rater paper has been issued, compared to just $48.8 billion for all of 2008.

• Goldman cut to "neutral" by Whitney (Bloomberg)
• Excess liquidity, plunging dollar now swiftly taking Gold into stratosphere - AU at new record (Bloomberg) - is the currency crisis finally upon us?
• Lloyd Blankfein redefines irony: To avoid crises, we need transparency (FT)
• John Crudele digs through more Goldman phone conversations: Somebody in Congress need to look into this (Post)
• CIT's CEO Peek to resign at year end, as company likely prepares for bankruptcy filing (AP)
• CIT debt swap struggles, bankruptcy looms (Reuters)

• Asian stocks were mixed Tuesday, with caution ahead of U.S. earnings.
• Bank of England likely to expand its bond-purchase program to $316B next month.
• China Vice PM: 3Q,4Q GDP to each grow higher on year vs. 7.1% in 1H 2009.
• China September passenger vehicle sales up 83.6% on year
• Contractors expect cuts in big weapon sales; Congress to vote on 2010 defense budget by month's end.
• Crude oil futures trade above $73/barrel, helped by a weak dollar, early strength in equities.
• German investor confidence unexpectedly drops as economy remains `fragile'

It appears as if the guys from the SEC that read my blog are contemplating doing the right thing. They have actually looked into the company which I have nicknamed the "Flim Flam Scam" (my opinion only, but I feel it is aptly coined of course) after many years of flim flamming and... (you can guess the rest)

We're in the process of a series of upgrades to hardware at Zero Hedge in conjunction with several new features we will be adding in the coming weeks. Actually, we've grown so fast that it is quite difficult to keep up with the hardware demands of the site. We owe that to you, of course. Thank you. (We think)

One effect of the changes we are making is that we have had to temporarily move RSS feeds off of Zero Hedge's servers and onto Feedburner. If you've been using RSS feeds, point your RSS client here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/zerohedge/feed

Yes, change is annoying, but we are convinced you will quickly make our many new features essential daily reading.

More risk? More complexity? What are investors and trustees to do? Let me share some comments with you. The financial engineers are working hard to "tame risk" but in my experience when everyone is rushing to play the same game, they all knowingly (or inadvertently) add to systemic risk.

Three months ago Zero Hedge, amidst a whole lot of hyperventilating, schizo-paranoid ramblings, managed to discuss sponsored, or naked access, as a key concern in the ongoing debate against HFT. Once again, we feel humbled that the WSJ (SEC) has decided to read between our disjointed commentary and make a prominent article (regulatory issue) of this critical topic.

Did Comcast think it can poach the crack Power Lunch (no pun intended) CNBC team all on its own? Turns out the answer is a flat out no. According to Reuters not only will GE likely exit its Comcast venture within 4 years (apparently the Comcast deal is virtually a certainty now, much to the chagrin of the Squawk Box team et al), but others media conglomerates are also considering getting involved in what could soon become a heated bidding war for the ample assets partially hidden by variousgrotesquely stretched sweaters.

A month ago Zero Hedge speculated that the SEC was preparing to throw Wachtell Lipton and Ed Herlihy at the wolves, in case its planned settlement to indemnify Ken Lewis of all sins failed. Well, it failed, now that a jury trial is in the works to determine just how guilty Ken Lewis et al have been of shareholder fraud. And, as expected, Wachtell Lipton is about to be run over by a 200 ton freight train.

We Wouldn't Want Anyone to Get Hurt, Now Would We?