Frontrunning: April 19

• Thomas Hoenig op-ed: Keep the Fed on Main Street (NYT)
• Internal Goldman inquiry found Fab Fab to be in the clear, probably will not fire the Frenchman, as the SEC's probe commenced in August 2008 (FT)
• Weil: Goldman's Abacus spin dodges the big question (Bloomberg)
• Lowenstein: Goldman's staged explosion deserves apology (Bloomberg)
• Schroeder: Buffet rented good name to Goldman too cheap (Bloomberg)
• Radioshack sale rumors getting more aggressive, someone really needs to dump their position: Shack sale talk heats as CEO eyes pay'Day' (NYPost)
• Citi, with a meaningless market cap, beats meaningless estimates on lower writedowns as FASB 157 is a long lost memory and mark to myth is the norm (Bloomberg)
• Clinton raises prospect of "regional conflict" over Iran (FT)
• Bloomberg's DC bureau strikes again: Recovery tilting to V-shape as profits prompts growth revision (Bloomberg)
• Must Germany bail out Portugal too? (Telegraph)
• The VAT tax is no budgetary panacea (RCM)
• In Goldman Sachs we no longer trust (Forbes)
• US Exports where and what? (Brown Brothers)
• John Paulson needs a good lawyer (Simon Johnson)

Comments

[illyia]

Hey! Are those real articles?

Kind of hard to tell...

[doublethink]

Countrywide Criminal Investigation

(AP) A newspaper is reporting that federal authorities are picking up the pace in a criminal investigation of former mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corp. and its role in the meltdown in 2007 and 2008 of the U.S. housing and finance industries.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/18/1885757/report-countrywide-financia...

[metastar]

Good thing Citigroup has profits as I recall the headline: "U.S. Government May Sell Citigroup Shares after April 19th".

(http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/bove-thanks-to-hank-paulson-citi-shares-set-to-double-from-here-445327.html)

[WaterWings]

Here's the dumbest article of the day. Propoganda de jour from Friedman.

You’ve heard that saying: As General Motors goes, so goes America. Thank goodness that is no longer true. I mean, I wish the new G.M. well, but our economic future is no longer tied to its fate. No, my new motto is: As EndoStim goes, so goes America...

Here’s the short version: EndoStim was inspired by Cuban and Indian immigrants to America and funded by St. Louis venture capitalists. Its prototype is being manufactured in Uruguay, with the help of Israeli engineers and constant feedback from doctors in India and Chile. Oh, and the C.E.O. is a South African, who was educated at the Sorbonne, but lives in Missouri and California [tent poles in respective real estate markets], and his head office is basically a BlackBerry. While rescuing General Motors will save some old jobs, only by spawning thousands of EndoStims — thousands — will we generate the kind of good new jobs to keep raising our standard of living.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/18friedman.html?src=me&ref=gen...

People eat this bullshit up. We're fucked.