Archive - 2009

In a press release filed yesterday, another highly leveraged gaming LBO Station Casinos announced that it was pursuing a pre-packaged restructuring with its creditors.

From the rumor bag:

Goldman commodities group is up already $800 million year to date, and this despite a very range bound oil price of $35-$50 over the past 2 months. Implies either massive leverage on smallish moves, a big contango play (for our musing on this here) or something rather novel...

Now sees 2009 EPS of $2.85-$3.00 versus $3.41 consensus.

The Treasury will try to slide a massive $67 billion in long-term debt next week. Not only that, but apparently it is reincarnating the 7-Year Note, which it will start using later on in February and throughout the year.

The specifics of the Auction are:

$32 billion in 3-Years on February 10
$21 billion in 10-Years on February 11
$14 billion in 30-Years on February 12

And this very ominous warning in the Treasury's press release:

After yesterday's hilarious news that Michael Zimmerman was hoping investors would promptly forget about his near -90% performance and just shower him with pesos, today's Lazarus Watch focuses on none other than John Meriwether.

According to Usnews.com, we might have a Tarp 1 situation on our hands.

As most financial firms were busy blaming each other and Lehman's bankruptcy for the upcoming $500,000 salary cap, Goldman was offloading bad assets (leveraged loans, residential and commercial real estate).

As most financial firms were busy blaming each other and Lehman's bankruptcy for the upcoming $500,000 salary cap, Goldman was offloading bad assets (leveraged loans, residential and commercial real estate).

As we have pointed out before (here and here), the free-for-all that is the Lehman bankruptcy case is a gold mine for a whole lot of scavengers.

As we have pointed out before (here and here), the free-for-all that is the Lehman bankruptcy case is a gold mine for a whole lot of scavengers.

Russia was downgraded by Fitch this morning from BBB+ to BBB, the second lowest investment grade level. Both the MICEX and the rubble get additional pounding as a result.

• Alleged Saks acquisition candidate Baugur files for bankruptcy (Bloomberg)
• Toxic asset guarantees have won over bad bank: Senate to take easy yet ineffective way out as usual (Bloomberg)
• Financial triage means ta
  

• Good summary of Obama's first two weeks in office (New Editor)
• Live Nation and Ticketmaster merging (NY Post)
• Kyrgyzstan to force closure of airbase critical to US Afghanistan presence (NYT)
• UBS tried to sell Paine Webber as recently as few weeks ago (

Good to know that we are not the only ones scratching our heads over why the market was so much higher today. Goldman Sachs is also confused, but they are better than we are at goalseeking arguments to conclusions, so we present their commentary uninterrupted:

Last week's significant net rerisking in consumer services has continued and has now spread to the basic materials and consumer goods sectors. The only sector which saw a notable derisking was financials, with $25 billion in net notional, or 5,546 contract increase. Net single-name notional did not change from last week at $1.4 trillion, however the reduction in gross single-name notional continues and has dropped by $200 billion to $14.2 trillion this week.