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Frontrunning: February 15
- More bad news for Goldman - Greek Probe Uncovers ‘Long-Term Damage’ From Swaps Agreements (Bloomberg)
- Goldman goes rogue - special European audit to follow (Baseline Scenario)
- Europe's finance ministers face pressure over Greece (Bloomberg, BankingNews.gr)
- Looming problem of local debt in China - $1.6 trillion and rising (Chinese Politics, h/t Bruce)
- Mark Pittman remembrance: Battle over the bailout (NYT)
- Charges in web video bring unusual rebuttal from FDIC (NYT)
- Charlie Gasparino leaving CNBC for Fox Business News (TVNewser)
- There's Greece - and also some U.S. States (Barrons)
- ICAP reviewing options for cash equities business (Bloomberg)
- We've misjugded China (RCM)
- Why we shouldn't fear deflation (FT)
»
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Metastasis
The moral hazard flipside, for lack of a better term, from the European point of view is that the European Central Bank, as well as some governmental offices in Brussels and Luxembourg, have at the very least been asleep while these shenanigans were ongoing, and who knows even actively participating. Moreover, it’s very possible that other European countries were (or even still are) setting up similar deals, and that other banks besides Goldman were assisting them. The New York Times mentions Italy and JPMorgan. A truly serious investigation should therefore be expected to cause quite a few political heads to roll. In other words, there'll be plenty of incentive for those in power to derail any truth-finding process.
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
A return to the Dhrachma,italian lira,pesetas with continuous downwards pressure on the currencies would do well for the foreign lenders books and incidentally for their borrowers. Dickens never finished its novels.
For how long are the nations of the world going to permit Goldman Sachs to wreck havoc on our global financial system before they act decisively to curb this behavior?
What a disgusting company. They should be black balled.
A Hundred Thousand Homeowners – Voices of Hope & Change
A. We want Congress to act to strengthen the HAMP program by adding hard and fast rules under which banks MUST write down a mortgage. The program is funded by tax dollars and is NOT WORKING on a voluntary basis. Here’s how banks view loan modifications.
B. We want the Treasury Department or Congress to impose penalties on lenders and servicers who break the rules under HAMP. Here’s what a judge said about HAMP rules.
C. We want Congress to allow judges to modify mortgages in bankruptcy court, just like what President Obama spoke of in his speech introducing the program that would allow for judicial loan modifications. The threat alone wold motivate banks to do it themselves. My article on the subject: WE NEED JUDGES TO MODIFY THE WAY BANKS BEHAVE.
D. We want HAMP to require principal reductions under appropriate circumstances. It’s not fair for banks to be able to foreclose on a home and then sell it to a new buyer for half the balance on the mortgage just to get it off of their books. FDIC’s SHEILA BAIR AGREES: Read About What She Says Here.
E. Congress must remove incentives that banks have to foreclose. Read Diane Thompson’s testimony in front of the senate.
http://tinyurl.com/yj5bao6
Yeah, well, liar-loans were a two-way street. Judges shouldn't have to 'change the way banks behave'. If somebody can't keep the note updated, the property belongs to the bank. Modification rules are popular now because, hey, the big banks got it, so why can't we? It's still morally hazardous, and the wrong-headed way to go about things financial. I see why people think they've suddenly got a right--the government, after all, bailed out AIG and the TBTF banks. Now this is why the government should have stayed out of it. Everyone wants a bailout now.
how do you lie on a no doc loan?...please explain
You lie by stating your income is $100,000 when it really isn't.
What part of "lie" do you not understand?
There is a difference between Stated income
A Stated Income loan because you just "state" how much income you have without offering any proof
and
No Ratio and No Doc loans, you don't even say how much you make. You can think of these as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" loans.
What part of the question don't you understand?
So it's like a government bond auction for the last 2 years?
Where did the money come from? Out of thin air. It's rigged. You pay all the prinicpal based on a fractional reserve banking system.
People will just walk away en masse. It's slavery.
Goldman will answer the special European audit with a 10% + haircut in all equity markets.
I'm beginning to wonder, seriously, if the day is approaching wherein Goldman is going to get stomped on hard by a number of parties....there is the potential for a tipping point here.
I agree, and I am being somewhat sarcastic above. Goldman's days are numbered, at least as they are in their current state.
One does well to remember that Goldman is only a group of people...and groups don't take action or make decisions, relationships, people do.
Point being, the same people that tended to coalesce in the recent past at GS, will tend to do the same in other, probably more obscure firms in the future. They will respond to the economic incentive of a tipping point same as any of us.
Bingo.
As long as there are governments looking to spend more than they collect in taxes, there will be "banks" like GS looking to "help" them do it.
Say NO to the next Goldman bailout.
Every company or government helped by Goldman to go to the market or borrow money, should be black balled from the beginning by investors!
How can we say NO to the next Goldman bailout (which I agree will come)? The government DID NOT ASK the taxpayers the first time, it was just done.
maybe the world should respond with a haircut that exceeds 10% of their collective hairline?
Well you might have to take a pound of flesh from Blankfein since he doesn't have much of a hairline.
The Greece issue with Goldman-Sachs hiding the true nature of the Country's debt is interesting. Of course complex derivatives are used to hide things. That's one of their main reasons for existance, since Government Regulators can't understand what's going on.
The big question is how far has this gone elsewhere? With Portugal, Spain, Ireland and the U.K. for starters.
Why are people surprised that Goldman "pitched" swaps and accounting tricks to Greece?
Someone should write a book -- GoldmanSachs: Swaps and Tricks.
Let's not underestimate the squid. They have their people in high places all over the world.
http://germany.usembassy.gov/about/ambassador/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Draghi
A single rogue trader can bring down a bank – remember the case of Bearings. But a single rogue bank can bring down the world’s financial system.
Goldman will dismiss this as “business as usual” and, to be sure, a few phone calls around Washington will help ensure that Goldman’s primary supervisor – now the Fed – looks the other way.
The status quo becomes the cannon fodder of an age. A quality point of general acceptance has now been realized. Namely, when Goldman got its BHC the Fed got Goldman. In Toto, or at least until Goldman/The Fed prove as successful at transferring this hazard to the public book as it has with all the trillions that have preceded it.
The FED is Goldman Sucks' supervisor?
Yu have that backwards.
To have it backwards then Goldman supervises JPM, MS, C, SocGen, Barclays, DB, ABN Amro, BAC, WFC and the rest. I don't buy it. This goes deeper to some Executive Orders that were written by The Clearing House for the benefit of the Fed's member institutions and ironically, the member institutions of some EU nations as well.
> Goldman goes rogue - special European audit to follow
Watch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutherland spring into action.
There is a great quote from the Greek FinMin in the Bloomberg piece - "..swaps should be strictly limited to those that lead to a permanent reduction in interest spending.."
This shows how little they understand.
Anyway, I am sure there will be some whitewash of an inquiry, but you don't want to start poking your nose into the use of derivatives and financial engineering games by sovereigns, or it could get pretty ugly fast....
Front-run this too. Janet Tavakoli has balls.
http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-is-a-high-on-crack-driver-tha...
Saw Ms. Tavakoli on 60 minutes last night. I didn't realize she was darned attractive.
If Janet has balls I'm queer.
Janet's definitely got her heart in the right place, but to say "Reform Starts with the President and Congress" is just beyond absurd.
It sounds like something Denninger would say.
Yeah,... politicians, political hacks, and lobbyists will get this all figured out. Right.
Start holding your breath now.
pretty hefty charges without naming names. Fraud, corruption, organized insider dealing, etc, wow. How about mixing in some names? Who were these folks who acted in concert to take out mortgages galore at the beck of insiders so the banks could package known fraudulent securities to others who could do off-book chicanery all to make bottom lines bulge and thereby reap untold bonuses?? This was obviously some massive organized criminal activity... no balls here, and no names either.
GO Charlie! because Fox news is where the REAL reporting happens!...not.
Now he can have his breaking news "EXCLUSIVES" at Fox, lol.
Bravo!!!! Charlie...I know you refused to drink the Kool aid...now just convince Rick to join Fox and they can cancel CNBC...:-)
Hey Sqworl, good to see you again. Been along time since our days in Guyana circa 1978. Those were good times, and I remember you being a big drinker.
Sorry, wrong Sqworl...Never been to guyana.....mb, you really need to get over your issues!!!
this is going to get velly interesting
don't forget, during the debacle in fall 08, euro folks fired all of there bankers and replaced them, ie, they don't screw around when they are found to be fools
european companies as a whole are extremely furgal penny pinchers, that go all by the bottom line numbers, come hell or highwater
gs is not one of them, if they need a fall guy and they are factually proven to be not doing gods work but the devil, eu will have nor problem them rotting in hell
tis each country and man women for themselves
and now we know why jamie and lloyd take teeney bonuses, in trials they would get skewered as fast as HFT, me thinks they know the hammer is coming and nothing they can do about it except hunker down
xlf is duh tell
The Mark Pittman/Bloomberg case goes directly to the very basis of the implied policy of Judicial Exclusion. Are major aspects of society in a republic, Holding Companies, Corporations public & private, unions and the rest "persons" who are exempted from the rule of law simply because the sum total of their actions would be too destabilizing if revealed? I suspect that what we'll end up with is an effort at national/regional blame fixing. Unless, of course, the American and European legal systems surprise everyone through the reinstitution and actual enforcement of the rule of law just as those that make up the other institutions like the press and so many others decide where their loyalties reside be they with those who write their checks or to the institutions they serve.
No Pun Intended
US Wrap: Goldman offers more downside participation
Goldman Sachs has launched a new accelerated growth note with leveraged downside participation in the MSCI Eafe Index. The product has 150% upside participation over two years, subject to a cap of 26–30%. Capital is protected by a 10% buffer, but participation in the index beyond that is limited to 111.11%.
http://www.risk.net/structured-products/news/1589169/us-wrap-goldman-off...
Simon Johnson: Goldman Faces Special Audit and Possible Ban in Europe
Regular readers will be aware of our thesis that the American Wall Street banks have become dominated by a culture of compulsive sociopaths who are incapable of reforming or restraining their greed. Like all addicts, they push the envelope looking for a new high, emboldened by each successful scam, the weakness of regulators, and the craven support of politicians, going further and further until at long last they go one step too far, with spectacularly destructive results.
Goldman Sachs may have reached that point. And as also suggested here, the rebuke may be coming from European and Asian nations who become weary of the extra-legal antics of the rogue American banks.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/02/simon-johnson-goldman-f...
And don't forget that our politician are too sociopaths
We desperately need to purge our entire system of the sociopaths. We continue this process in the November Mid terms.....Sociopaths are devious, so we need to be diligent,
for many years.
The Eu should be careful. The last time they declared war on goldman, the goldman financed Stalin to destroy europe. They could do it again. Just a few trillion to Putin and his Red army. But would Putin take the deal from goldman? I say, Yes. Nothing has changed.
Lenin referred to the western bourgeois as "utter simpletons" more commonly paraphrased as "useful idiots". The US has donated billions in aid to North Korea does that imply that the US controls NK. What about the government of pakistan, afghanistan, etc. Nothing seems to be working in America's favor. Pakistan is strongly allied with China.
China and Japan "financed" the Iraq and Afghan wars, does that imply that China and Japan control America's directive in execution of military policy? NO
The West is finished. Russia would have to attack the US too, naturally in cooperation with China.
Look at what happened to the decadent Ottoman bourgeois who that they had controlled the world too. What happened to them? They were wiped out.
I just had an epiphany. The dollar has to stay strong. The only way that can be achieved is by the destruction of the Euro. This is devious brilliance. Pure evil.
It is not that I think people are BAD people because they let the government create their worlds, it is that I think they are stupid. Poor sheeple.
US Census is Getting Personal!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUMurKinTVE
ol Jerry is gonna wake up in Guantanimo Bay some spring mourning with green shoots under his fingernails.
Is Goldman one of these entities? ie ROGUE
In this interview Jim discusses the wreckless actions of an out of control banking system and also shares information that has never before been broadcast to the public, the gold market, criminal banking syndicates, their control of markets and governments as well as the fact that they are sociopaths, these sociopaths out of control and are now attacking countries - not just companies, loss of confidence in currencies, the problems in Greece, the fact that many states are bankrupt, bankruptcy of the system, why the little guy gets hurt, Bert Seligman & Jesse Livermore, JP Morgan’s appeal to Jesse Livermore, and more.
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/2/15_J...
http://tinyurl.com/yeznmpu
Happy President’s Day!
On the day when we very briefly acknowledge some Americans who served their Nation with distinction & courage, I had a little bout of inspiration after lunch (but I’m better now). The result is today’s Outside The (Cardboard) Box essay which answers the vexing question: What is the inescapable result when too many Dead Presidents find their way into the hands of too many Senators?
"Senate Considers Rule Modifications for Extended Service"
http://outsidethe-cardboard-box.tumblr.com/post/391496514/senate-conside...
SATIRE
I hope you enjoy it.
There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution." … Aldous Huxley's lecture to The California Medical School in San Francisco in 1961
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