Archive for the ‘Financial Monk’ Category

Today’s News

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Pressure Grows to Investigate Interrogations – On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said on the ABC News program “This Week” that “those who devised policy” also “should not be prosecuted.” But administration officials said Monday that Mr. Emanuel had meant the officials who ordered the policies carried out, not the lawyers who provided the legal rationale.

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Scheduled to Debate – Former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush will appear together in Toronto next month on a public stage for the first time since Mr. Bush ended his presidency, in a remarkable twist on the cultural cold war that Barack Obama and others are trying to lay to rest.

NYT Confirms: Harman Pressed Paper To Spike Wiretap Story In ‘04 – The New York Times adds some details to yesterday’s blockbuster CQ report about Rep. Jane Harman and AIPAC.

U.S. to give Chrysler, GM new aid – The Obama administration will make about $500 million available to Chrysler LLC through the end of this month as it seeks to reach an alliance with Fiat, and up to $5 billion through May to help General Motors Corp restructure outside of bankruptcy, an independent oversight report on the Treasury Department’s corporate rescue fund said on Tuesday.

Today’s News

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Texas Senate defies Perry by voting to take stimulus money for jobless fund – In a sharp rebuff of Gov. Rick Perry, the Senate on Thursday tentatively voted to accept $555 million in unemployment aid from the federal economic stimulus plan.

Perry Secession Talk Anti-American, Democrats Say – In a state that once was its own nation, a Republican governor who talked about secession without completely dismissing the idea has Democratic lawmakers in an uproar.

Rasmussen Texas Secession Poll: 75% Of Texans Say No

The Methods List for Interrogation – One of the legal opinions authorizing various methods of interrogation, in exceptional detail.

Citi records first profit in six quarters – The US bank said on Friday it made a net profit of $1.6bn compared with a net loss of $5.1bn a year earlier, marking its highest earnings since the second quarter of 2007.

Obama Explains Real Cause of The Recession

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Obama: Irresponsibility caused recession

[Video]:

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Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Congressional Oversight Panel: Fire Managers, Liquidating Banks – A congressional panel overseeing the U.S. financial rescue suggested that getting rid of top executives and liquidating problem banks may be a better way to solve the economic crisis. (Panel’s 6 Month Report)

Patriot Games – [Talking Points Memo] started tracking yesterday the emerging meme that Obama’s restructuring of the defense budget amounts to being weak on defense. It’s an important early framing of the debate, driven by Republicans, and all too often adopted by media who should know better.

Biden rebukes Cheney, guarantees we’re ’safer today’ – Vice President Joe Biden brushed aside recent criticism by predecessor Dick Cheney that moves by the Obama administration had put the United States at risk, telling CNN on Tuesday that the former vice president was “dead wrong.”

Poll: Obama Approval Hits New High – 66%

Hints of Obama’s Strategy in a Telling 8 Days – In eight days in Europe, President Obama has started down the road to remaking the global financial system, reinvigorating the NATO commitment to Afghanistan and Pakistan, rewriting nuclear policy, and repairing relations with the Muslim world.

Allen Stanford: Defiant, Tearful

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Flamboyant financier ‘Sir’ Allen Stanford expects to be indicted by a federal grand jury in the next two weeks, he told ABC News in an interview in which he cried, denied wrongdoing and threatened to punch his questioner in the mouth.

More at ABC News

Pilgrim’s Pride Lays Off More Workers

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

Today, Pilgrim’s Pride announced that it was laying off approximately 115 of its administrative staff. The eliminated positions were mostly at the company’s corparate headquarters in Pittsburg, TX.

Today’s News

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

As Crisis Loomed, Geithner Pressed But Fell Short – In September 2005, Timothy Geithner made one of his most visible moves as a supervisor of the U.S. banking system. He summoned the nation’s top financial firms and their regulators to streamline an antiquated system that threatened Wall Street’s boom.

Jobless Rate Hits 8.5% After 663,000 Jobs Lost in March – The American economy shed another 663,000 jobs in March, the government reported Friday, bringing the toll of job losses during the recession to 5.1 million.

Palin Wants Senate Do-Over In Alaska – Gov. Sarah Palin and the head of the Alaska Republican Party said Thursday that Sen. Mark Begich should give his Senate seat up to a special election now that prosecutors have abandoned their case against Ted Stevens.

Obama Calls Out European “Anti-Americanism” And American “Arrogance” – Urging a common effort to restructure the world economy and rebuild international alliances, President Barack Obama did not hesitate on Friday to call out his own country for “arrogant” patriotism and Europe for “insidious” anti-Americanism.

Unanimous ruling: Iowa marriage no longer limited to one man, one woman – “The Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution,” the justices said in a summary of their decision.

Too Many Cars, and They’re Not on the Road – “There was a car bubble,” Steven Rattner, who President Obama recruited to head a Treasury Department group charged with finding solutions to the mountain of problems facing the American auto industry, said in an interview last month. “We had this artificially high sales rate.”

AIG May Have Received Bailout Funds Illegally

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

The Institutional Risk Analyst has put together a great article on how AIG got into the Credit Default Swap business.

Basically, AIG, Gen Re and others used reinsurance to fraudulently transfer Liability from ceding companies (lowering the ceding company’s reserve requirements, increasing the ceding company’s capital, etc) by using “side letters” which absolved AIG from actually paying on any losses it reinsured.

“It was easy for AIG to become addicted to the use of side letters. The firm, which had already encountered serious financial problems in 2000-2001, reportedly saw the side letters as a way to mint free money and thereby help the insurer to look stronger than it really was. AIG not only helped banks and other companies distort and obfuscate their financial condition, but AIG was supplementing its income by writing more and more of these reinsurance deals and mitigating their perceived exposure via side letters.”

When the AIG managers realized “that state insurance regulators and the FBI where on to the reinsurance/side letter scam”, AIG moved the reinsurance/side letters model to create Credit Default Swaps (CDS) for finance firms; unregulated “insurance” for securities of derivatives and sub-prime mortgages.

The article concludes that AIG received bailout funds illegally from the Fed and Treasury, because AIG then gave those funds to counter-parties like Goldman Sachs to make them whole on losses that were a result of illegal AIG CDS contracts.

The entire article is worth reading.