Archive - Jul 2009

Some more thoughts on High Frequency Trading in theory and practice.

Barney Frank puts on his indignation hat on after realizing that the President has decided he doesn't need congressional approval on funding international financial institutions including the IMF and the World Bank. Here is the ensuing response when Barney realizes that for all his posturing, he is a third (and quite overinflated at that) wheel: "During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the President’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of congressional statutes he was required to enforce. We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude." Most odd is why the President wants unopposed decision making with regard to these organizations: is Larry Summers smelling a massive, upcoming global bail out that the American people are not allowed to be heard on?

The full SIGTARP report is below. It took Steve Liesman 5 minutes to read the 262 pages and refute it. Read between the lines and find out just how you, dear taxpayer, are being robbed by the Too Big To Fails and the Reserve Banking System. Much more info contained in this report, which attempts to grasp just how pervasive the involuntary taxpayer support of Wall Street is, including a great overview of the Federal Reserve Banking System. Neil, you are doing a tremendous job: please contact Zero Hedge at your convenience for some of our thoughts on the matter: sigtarp@zerohedge.com Neil's presentation (happening on his birthday) to the Congressional Oversight Committee which is going on live right now can be seen here... Much more relevant than the Federal Reserve propaganda spewing forth from General Electric subsidiaries.

As Bernanke heads to Congress to defend the Fed's Independce, he releases this WSJ Op-Ed:

The depth and breadth of the global recession has required a highly
accommodative monetary policy. Since the onset of the financial crisis
nearly two years ago, the Federal Reserve has reduced the interest-rate
target for overnight lending between banks (the federal-funds rate)
nearly to zero. We have also greatly expanded the size of the Fed’s
balance sheet through purchases of longer-term securities and through
targeted lending programs aimed at restarting the flow of credit.

So many titles to choose from...

UK and Europe Highlights - 21 July 2009.

I have a limited supply.

Laboring tirelessly, an unsung Zero Hedger works behind the scenes into the wee hours and regularly saves my ass.

Tim Geithner is watching the Paulson interrogation clip and sweating hard.

Ye of the junk comment, you have been flagged.

The FDIC has been making noises for a couple of months about a dry-run of the PPPIP for Legacy Loans, where Uncle Sam will provide half the equity and and up to 6 turns of seller-financed leverage for Public Private Investment Funds to buy whole loans off failed institutions. Well, the first run is here. Peek under the hood...

Dear Pension/Endowment/etc Trustees and Investment Committees:

I understand you enjoy your secure, relatively well-paid job, and your forgivable desire to maintain this status-quo for as long as possible. So long as you like your job and want to keep it, don’t you think its in your best interest to get rid of nonsensical, self-defeating policies like the following (from CalPERS)?

Advanta Corp., embattled small-business lender and sponsor of the renowned World TeamTennis league (wtt.com), has been winding down its credit card business over the past few weeks, another victim of the failed wholesale funding model. Today the company announced a dramatic increase in charge-offs on it's credit card lending book. The numbers are shockingly bad.