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Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is now/finaly meeting. Perhaps the public is interested in watching their elected leaders berate the perceived Wall Street villains, but it is interesting to...
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Goldman’s exposure to AIG – we will learn how much and to whom?
One of the big stories of the bailout of AIG was that it indirectly bailed out institutions with direct exposure to AIG, such as those having sold insurance on the quality of AIG’s debt (through the...
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More on Proprietary Trading
I have written before on the problems with proprietary trading. Now comes this disclaimer from Goldman Sachs with the research that it gives clients: Our salespeople . . . may provide . . . trading...
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They Just Can’t Help Themselves
An impish grin spreads across [Goldman CEO Lloyd] Blankfein’s face. Call him a fat cat who mocks the public. Call him wicked. Call him what you will. He is, he says, just a banker “doing God’s work” —...
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Corruption, in Short, Still Seems a Small Part of the Problem
Housing prices and securitization, and their collapses, are the central causes of the Great Recession, and the debate now rages over their deeper causes and, related and more forward-looking, how to...
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Why Magnetar was Not Indicted
According to ProPublica (source) “Magnetar worked with major banks, including Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and UBS. At least nine banks helped Magnetar hatch deals. Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and UBS all...
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Adverse selection and the Goldman Stuffed Suit
The SEC action against Goldman again has me asking whether the industry might not actually be better off with some serious regulation of adverse selection. Goldman sold an asset hand-picked to fail as...
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Politics, Law Enforcement, and Independence
The SEC’s suit against Goldman has clobbered the bank’s stock, and energized the public so as to shift the balance of power away from the banks towards the government. It is now much harder to oppose...
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Goldman’s Excuses
On April 20, David Letterman read the Top Ten Goldman Sachs Excuses. Oddly, the list includes all three of Goldman’s main arguments against the SEC charges. See if you can guess which three (answers...
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Disclosure of material information? You want disclosure? You can’t handle...
My brother-in-law pointed out this post on the WSJ blog and it made me laugh. It has a fair bit of truth: John Q. Public does not understand the extent to which derivatives and banks support business...
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