Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

Egan-Jones may have been barred from rating sovereigns for 18 months due to missing a comma here or there in its NRSRO application (when everyone knows this was merely retribution for downgrading the US ahead of all the other rating agencies), but now the time has come for that other rating agency which dared to follow in EJ's footsteps and downgrade the US of AmericaAA+ in August 2011 to be punished: Standard & Poors. Moments ago we learned that federal and state prosecutors will five civil charges against S&P for its mortgage bond ratings during the housing crisis.

Meet the man, who many say (most of whom correctly) has been running pretty much everything from deep behind the scenes.

Addressing his perception of lessons learned from the financial crisis, Ben Bernanke is speaking this afternoon on poor risk management and shadow banking vulnerabilities - all of which remain obviously as we continue to draw attention to. However, more worrisome for the junkies is the total lack of QE3 chatter in his speech. While he does note the words 'collateral' and 'repo' the proximity of the words 'Shadow, Institutions, & Vulnerabilities' are awkwardly close.

Latest from Ed Pinto, who piles on the blame the GSEs argument with some new data and analysis in #1e439a;">The American, AEI's online magazine. This will not help the cognitive illusion being so skillfully maintained by our friends Ritholtz and Nocera, who still cannot bring themselves to admit that Wall Street runs the GSEs just like a private SIV. Lawyers and first loss exposure is the only difference.

Here I present hardcore grassroots analysis compared to Wall Street's best and brightest. It's disappointing to say the least and leads us through a traipse through very recent history that brings us full circle to a major bank failure/run today... Okay, maybe not today, but sometime between tomorrow afternoon and the end of the 4th quarter.

You have read Dealbook's superficial (and practically dictated) defense of Goldman's subprime bet. Below we present David Fiderer's a vastly different perspective than the one shared by straight-to-HBO expert A.R.S., which provides a far more realistic perspective of what really happened with Goldman and its "big short."

Update: Hearing has been delayed until 3 pm.

While we await to find and bring to our readers the channel that will carry today's hearing between the House Financial Services Committee on the topic of "Federal Reserve Lending Disclosure: FOIA, Dodd-Frank, and the Data Dump" chaired by Ron Paul and Fed and NY Fed General Counsels, Thomas C. Baxter, Jr., and Scott G. Alvarez, below we present their prepared testimony that was just released by the New York Fed. The key section from the testimony: "We remain concerned that a more rapid release of information about borrowers accessing the discount window and emergency lending facilities could impair the ability of the Federal Reserve to provide the liquidity needed to ensure the smooth working of the financial system. If institutions believe that publication of their use of Federal Reserve lending facilities will impair public confidence in the institution, then institutions may choose not to participate in these facilities. Experience has shown that banks’ unwillingness to use the discount window can result in more volatile short-term interest rates and reduced financial market liquidity that, in turn, can contribute to declining asset prices and reduced lending to consumers and small businesses." Luckily, courtesy of $1.6 trillion in excess reserves, and the stigma now associated with Discount Window borrowings, for everyone except for Dexia, we doubt the Fed will ever have to worry about the discount window before the banking kleptoracy blows itself up once again.

The Fed may be talking like Smokey the Bear, but it continues to hand out matches trying to increase leverage ...

David Stockman concludes his two part series on Crony Capitalism (part one here) with this scathing take down of the Federal Reserve. Hopefully this is nothing new to anyone at this point... "The destructive result of the Federal Reserve’s earlier housing and consumer credit bubble became the excuse for embracing a destructive zero interest rate policy which is self-evidently fueling even more destruction. This destruction is namely, the exploitation of middle class savers; the current severe food and energy squeeze on lower income households; the illusion in Washington that Uncle Sam can comfortably manage $14 trillion in debt because the interest carry is close enough to zero for government purposes; and the next round of bursting bubbles building up among the risk asset classes... So in the present circumstances, ZIRP and QE2 amount to a monetary Hail Mary. There is no monetary tradition whatsoever that says the way back to U.S. economic health and sustainable growth is through herding Grandma into junk bonds and speculators into the Russell 2000."

Looking through the Federal Reserve’s newly released Discount Window data fills in some missing pieces surrounding the credit crunch in 2008. We now know why Senator Chuck Schumer was so concerned about IndyMac. In the three business days after June 19, 2008, IndyMac had to double its discount window borrowings from $200 million to $400 million. Four short days later, Schumer’s leaked letter forced IndyMac to ask the Fed for $1 billion. Beyond some of these little details that end up providing granularity to the whole picture, there is still one piece of data that stands out as a singularity. Although it had become public knowledge over a year ago, the Lehman Brothers activity on September 15, 2008, still flashes a deepening warning as our economy and markets depend more and more on central banks. On the surface, Lehman’s use of the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF, the investment banker’s discount window) seems to be insignificant. It was a momentous day, after all, with turmoil in every corner of the global marketplace. Why shouldn’t Lehman borrow $28 billion from the Fed on that Monday? It had filed for bankruptcy at about 1:30am that morning, so clearly it was in need of financing. A lot has been published already about that volatile week. However, I still believe there is a hole in the “official” story as it relates to overall monetary policy. What is truly striking is not that Lehman used the Fed that Monday; rather the significance was that it was Lehman’s first use of the PDCF since April 16, 2008. Lehman Brothers did not use the Fed’s liquidity until after it had declared bankruptcy.

Christine Harper, Michael Moore and Bob Ivry have been quite busy today. After poring through the lifetime legacy project of their late colleague Mark Pittman, the trio may have just made a discovery that in a non-banana republic could be enough to at least force a special hearing into whether Goldman COO Gary Cohn committed perjury while testifying to the FCIC on June 30. The culprit: Goldman's (ab)use of the discount window not once, not twice, but five times. Well everyone else was doing it, especially Goldman's insolvent peers like JPM, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Wachovia, UBS, Credit Suisse and, well, everyone else. So what's wrong with that? Here's what: "Goldman Sachs President and Chief Operating Officer Gary D. Cohn told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission June 30 that “we used it one night at the request of the Fed to make sure our systems were linked with their systems, and it was for a de minimis amount of money.” Peter J. Wallison, a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, then asked, “you never had to use it after that?” “No, and as I said, we used it on the Fed’s request,” Cohn replied. Alas, that is a lie. And last time we checked, lying to Congress under oath is not quite the right the way to conduct God's work (and yes, a perfectly innocuous "I don't recall" ala David Sokol from his CNBC interview would have sufficed). Alas no: Goldman just had to demonstrate how very immune from the legal process it is, by "risking" its credibility and reputation with the assumption that it is either never wrong, or, like Warren Buffett, that it can never be caught doing wrong. Well, it just was.

Q: Is it fair to say that financial regulators are both a source and perpetuator of financial instability? Yes. Financial regulators have a unique position. They are the only financial market participant who can see the current asset and liability level data at any financial institution.

The following is another exclusive transcript put together by the guys at Santangel's Review. In his must read testimony in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Warren Buffett explains what he believes saved the global financial system during the depths of the crisis.

In California ...

Thanks to the guys at Santangel's Review for transcribing David Einhorn's presentation to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Topics covered include the investment banks' business model, rating agencies and FAS 157 (mark to market accounting).