Goldman CDS Hits 140 As Stock Plunges

Yesterday we speculated Goldman CDS should hit 140. It is there now, as the stock is plunging by nearly 5%. At this point the Stock-CDS arbitrage is negligible, and declined from 16% yesterday to just 4% today. Currently CDS is fairly valued on a relative basis, assuming the stock price is fairly valued, which it isn't if prop trading is killed. LBO prospects are still not considered.

Larry Summers: Use The Rising Market As An Indicator Of Our Success, But Ignore It When It Is Going Down Please

Larry is asked on his view of the ever escalating war with Wall Street
and its implications: "If you do the right things for the fundamentals
and for soundness, over time markets tend to work out. And if you let
your policies be guided by day to day market movements, that's what
tends to be the problem. If you ask yourself 'how did we get here?' one
central part of how we got there, one central part was all those people
who believed all those prices, believed all those credit spreads, who
let day to day market levels be their guide through 2006 through the early part of 2007." Wow, Larry - maybe Obama's speechwriter should tone down the constant reference to the "Dow Jones" in that case to highlight just what a great job the increasingly clueless president is doing.

As the administration's every TV appearance is predicated first and foremost by indicating just how high the market has "risen" in the past x minutes, hours, days, and months, Larry's statement that it is perfectly ok to use the market response when things are going ok, but to ignore it when its says the administration has fucked up beyond compare, is the supreme epitome of hypocrisy.

Frontrunning: January 22

• A declaration of war on Wall Streeet (FT)
• Mort Zuckerman: The Great Recession continues (WSJ)
• Obama's bank plan impact hinges on how to define client trades (Bloomberg)
• Goldman, JPMorgan may be forced to sell buyout units under Obama proposal (Bloomberg)
• Goldman's escape route might be the private road (Bloomberg)
• Obama bank plan shows lack of global coordination (Bloomberg)

Obama’s Plan To Be Judged By A Goldman Breakup

As we drill down into the details of ideas for breaking the economic and political power of oversized banks, we need this litmus test against which serious suggestions should be judged: Does a proposal, at the end of the day, imply that Goldman Sachs should break itself up into at least four or five independent pieces, with the biggest being no more than 1 percent of gross domestic product, or roughly $150 billion?

If the answer is yes, we are making progress in moving our financial system back toward where it was in the early 1990s, when it worked fine (and Goldman was a world-class investment bank) and was much less threatening to the global economy. If the answer is no, we are merely repainting -- ever so gently -- the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Barney Frank Backpedals On Why His Proposed Reform Was Thorougly Trampled By Obama

Since we can't understand a single word he is saying, we assume it is just the usual worthless drivel we have all grown to love and expect from the adorable megalomaniac. One part we could understand that caused an immediate liquification of our collective frontal lobes: we didn't feel like proposing the type of sweeping reform seen today, because "how do we not know that the next administration will not undo it and cause the kind of problems we had before." Then the Frankster says he will push off asset sales for 5 five years - just in time for this hypothetical "next administration" to come in an undo everything proposed by Obama. It is time Barney Frank follow the example of Dodd and spend much more time with his wife and children...

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet Update: Week Of January 21 - $2.3 Trillion - Rolling Record Highs

This is it - we have gotten to the stage where every week we expect the Fed's balance sheet to reach new record highs. As the Fed has practically rolled off its emergency liquidity measures (foreign FX swaps are practically zero this week), the only variable on the margin will be direct securities holdings... and those are going to continue growing for at least 3 more months, and likely much longer. Look for the Fed's balance sheet to be at least $2.5 trillion by mid March.