Archive - Jun 10, 2009

The $3 billion Las Vegas casino which Zero Hedge discussed at length previously (must read for anyone curious how big banks now decide which companies get to live or die), has thrown in the towel. Deutsche Bank's strong arming tactics have won yet again: that other bloated monstrosity, the Cosmopolitan, will now be safe knowing that its biggest competitor on the crappy side of the strip will likely face liquidation.

Since the creation of Zero Hedge 5 months ago, the blog has exploded. In that brief period, we have had over 5 million visitors, average 120k hits a day (and higher by the day), the number of contributors has increased to four, and Zero Hedge has become the fastest growing financial blog on the internet. The smartest people on Wall Street and Main Street come here daily, not just for the posts, but for the community and commentary, to which each and every one of you has contributed.

After many weeks of cumulative derisking, the CDS market rerisked violently, most notably in the Consumer Goods and Consumer Service sectors, where a total of $169 billion in net notional open interest rerisking occurred. One explanation is that the big move is due to unwinding of new issue basis trades put on over the past month as horrendous companies issued all sorts of garbage debt.