December 2008
2 tags
“By ruling that credit-default swaps were not gaming and not a security, the way...”
– Eric Dinallo, the superintendent of New York State’s insurance department, quoted by Brady Dennis and Robert O’Harrow Jr. in A Crack in The System - washingtonpost.com
2 tags
“Brooksley Born, the 57-year-old head of the Commodity Futures Trading...”
– Brady Dennis and Robert O’Harrow Jr. in A Crack in The System - washingtonpost.com
2 tags
“Credit-default swaps exemplify the contradictions of modern finance. At a basic...”
– Brady Dennis and Robert O’Harrow Jr. in A Crack in The System - washingtonpost.com
2 tags
“The models suggested that the risk was so remote that the fees were almost free...”
– Tom Savage, former AIG Financial Products president, quoted by Brady Dennis and Robert O’Harrow Jr. in A Crack in The System - washingtonpost.com
2 tags
“At the end, though, the story of Financial Products is not about math and...”
– Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Brady Dennis in The Beautiful Machine - washingtonpost.com
1 tag
“The United States believes the greatest contribution we can make to world...”
– Ronald Reagan, in the addres to the 41st session of the U.N. General Assembly in September 1986, quoted in The Beautiful Machine - washingtonpost.com
2 tags
“The post 1976 economic policy we have been following has quite frankly been...”
– Divorced one like Bush in Angry Bear: Income distribution and GDP, it matters
1 tag
“With the Long-Term Capital bailout as a precedent, creditors came to believe...”
– Tyler Cowen in Economic View - Bailout of Long-Term Capital - A Bad Precedent? - NYTimes.com
1 tag
“Recent figures show Chinese industrial firms’ profits standing at 2.41...”
– Gerald Warner: Economic collapse could be the downfall of China’s rulers - Scotland on Sunday
2 tags
“We hope to do to this industry what Wal-Mart did to theirs, Starbucks did to...”
– Kerry K. Killinger, chief executive of Washington Mutual, in 2003, quoted in The Reckoning - WaMu Built an Empire on Bad Loans - Series - NYTimes.com. On September 25, 2008, Washington Mutual Bank was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was named...
1 tag
“It now costs $67 per year to insure $10,000 against US default for the next five...”
– Prieur du Plessis in Credit Crisis - Signs of Progress | The Big Picture
1 tag
“9.2 million [personal] bankruptcies in the past seven years. Is this a serious...”
– Noni Mausa in Angry Bear: Who has “bad credit” when a million Americans file for bankruptcy?
1 tag
“Industrial production fell as much as 8.1% in November from the previous month...”
– V. Phani Kumar in Japan November industrial output falls ‘off the cliff’ - MarketWatch
“Customer visits to U.S. retailers fell 24 percent last weekend compared with a...”
– Bloomberg
2 tags
“It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario … within...”
– Joe Cassano about AIG CDS operations at an analyst meeting in August 2007, quoted in AIG’s $150B bailout (cont.) - Dec. 23, 2008. In February 2008 AIG reported more than $11 billion of 2007 unrealized losses on the $80 billion of multisector CDS then outstanding (and an additional $23 billion...
“Unexpected losses on structured finance investments could thus become an issue...”
– Conclusion of the BIS Report submitted in January 2005 by a Working Group established by the Committee on the Global Financial System: The role of ratings in structured finance: issues and implications
2 tags
“During the years in question, 2003 - 2007, banks, Realtors, regulators and...”
– Mr. Mortgage’s Guide to the TRUTH! » Morgan Stanley - It’s Big Part in the Great Housing/Mortgage Crisis
1 tag
Financial Services Debt as % of GDP
The financial services industry is a behemoth unlike the military-industrial complex, which has taken on an ever larger share of U.S. jobs, U.S. GDP, and until recently what we thought was U.S. profits. However, witness the extreme levels of debt used to achieve these phantom profits in the chart below.
The fact is that two decades of deregulation has created a financial services monster, which...
2 tags
“When Countrywide Financial felt pressured by federal agencies charged with...”
– Binyamin Appelbaum and Ellen Nakashima in Banking Regulator Played Advocate Over Enforcer - washingtonpost.com
1 tag
“Japan’s export crash is finally upon us, and this is the worst thing that could...”
– Yoshiki Shinke, a senior economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo quoted in Japan Exports Plunge Record 27% as Recession Deepens (Bloomberg.com: Worldwide)
1 tag
“I would not be surprised if between 10 and 15 national and regional chains...”
– Nick Hood, partner at Begbies Traynor, quoted in High street braced for Christmas sales carnage - Times Online
1 tag
“Instead of propping up each bank, and swamping the market with cash, we need to...”
– Wolfgang Münchau in FT.com / Columnists / Wolfgang Munchau - Following the Fed cannot save the world
1 tag
“I do not believe (yet) that we are about to beat each with bones back to the...”
– Cassandra in naked capitalism: Guest Post: “If You Can’t Tell Who The Sucker Is….”
2 tags
“If you want to know why a sociopath like Madoff slipped throught the cracks — as...”
– Barry Ritholtz in Vast Under-Investment in Due Diligence | The Big Picture
2 tags
“Credit Suisse announced today that bonuses for its top executives would be made...”
– Joe Weisenthal in Credit Suisse Paying Top Execs With Illiquid Securities
1 tag
“Expenditures on housing construction are not’improvements’ yielding...”
– Mr. Smith, a professor of law and economics at George Mason University, is the 2002 Nobel Laureate in economics, in December 2007 in The Clinton Housing Bubble - WSJ.com
2 tags
“No one wanted to stop that bubble,” Mr. Lindsay said. “It would have conflicted...”
– Lawrence B. Lindsay, George W. Bush’s first chief economics adviser, quoted in The Reckoning - Bush’s Philosophy Stoked the Mortgage Bonfire - Series - NYTimes.com
2 tags
“Also worth noting is the creative use of mark-to-market accounting that first...”
– Kate Murphy in Enron Lessons Ignored - Portfolio.com
2 tags
“As a result of the extraordinary growth at Merrill during my tenure as C.E.O.,...”
– — E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, March 2008, quoted in The Reckoning - On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real - Series - NYTimes.com
2 tags
“The thing about option ARMs is they fly under the umbrella of adjustable rate...”
– Option ARMs for Dummies: Why 4.5 Percent Mortgages Rates will do Absolutely Nothing for these Toxic Assets. » Dr. Housing Bubble Blog
2 tags
“Looking back, we now see just how big a proportion of US growth since 2001 was...”
– Niall Ferguson in FT.com / Comment / Analysis - The age of obligation
2 tags
“Whenever a fund had money with Madoff, it raised a red flag. It means that they...”
– Salomon Konig, chief investment officer for Artemis Capital Partners LLC in Aventura, Florida, quoted by Tom Cahill and Katherine Burton in Bloomberg.com: Worldwide
2 tags
“Bernie Madoff is running the world’s largest unregistered hedge fund....”
– Harry Markopolos in his 2005 complaint to the S.E.C., quoted in The Curious Capitalist - TIME.com » Blog Archive Harry Markopolos really did have the goods on Bernie Madoff «
2 tags
“In recent years the finance sector accounted for 8 percent of America’s G.D.P.,...”
– Paul Krugman in Op-Ed Columnist - The Madoff Economy - NYTimes.com
2 tags
“What do you call giving a worker who makes only $14,000 a year a nothing-down...”
– Thomas L. Friedman in Op-Ed Columnist - The Great Unraveling - NYTimes.com
1 tag
“For two decades, a parade of U.S. officials came to China and lectured Beijing...”
– Qu Hongbin, the chief economist for China at HSBC, quoted in Op-Ed Columnist - The Great Unraveling - NYTimes.com
1 tag
“This pattern of withdrawals from hedge funds probably accounts for a fairly...”
– Kurt Brouwer in Fundmastery Blog » Blog Archive » Many Hedge Funds Closing
1 tag
“If any other company were to go bankrupt the way Lehman did — and if there is a...”
– FAS 157 and the significance of distress versus bankruptcy | Credit Writedowns
2 tags
“The OTC derivatives industry has been a wellspring of growth and revenue for the...”
– Testimony of Robert Pickel, Chief Executive Officer International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Before the Assembly Standing Committee on Insurance
1 tag
“For example, at the time it filed for bankruptcy on 14 September 2008, Lehman...”
– Credit default swap - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1 tag
“Like Robert Oppenheimer and his team of nuclear physicists in the 1940s,...”
– Matthew Philips in How Credit Default Swaps Became a Timebomb | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com
1 tag
“If the NRF behaved like the RIAA, we’d see nothing but anti-shoplifting info.”
– Peter Kirn in Create Digital Music » RIAA Website: Portrait of an Industry Group Out of Touch with its Own Interests
1 tag
“Lehman failed September 15, just about 100 days ago. Since then the stock market...”
– Vincent Farrell, Jr. is Chief Investment Officer of Scotsman Capital Management LLC., in You know what they say, don’t fight the Fed | The Big Picture
2 tags
“I am gravely concerned by the apparent multiple failures over at least a decade...”
– Christopher Cox, S.E.C. Chairman, quoted in S.E.C. Says It Missed Signals on Madoff Fraud Case - NYTimes.com
1 tag
“The Harvard team aren’t just defending Joel: they have a counterclaim. The basic...”
– Create Digital Music » Judge to Record Industry: Lay off Mom and Dad’s Computer, For Now
1 tag
“I have never heard of a single band deciding not to record a song because it...”
– Dave Rowntree, Blur’s drummer, quoted in FT.com / Comment / Opinion - Copyright extension is out of tune with reality
2 tags
“Since the financial meltdown, people have been asking, ‘Where was Congress? Why...”
– Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, quoted in The Reckoning - A Champion of Wall Street Reaps the Benefits - Series - NYTimes.com
1 tag
“But just as US overconsumption must decline, so must Asian overproduction. This...”
– Michael Pettis, professor of finance at Pekin University in FT.com / Comment / Opinion - Asia faces a tough 2009 as output decreases
2 tags
“The flimsy executive-compensation restrictions in the original bill are now all...”
– Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), ranking Republican on of the Senate Finance Committee quoted in Limits on Executive Pay May Prove Toothless - washingtonpost.com
2 tags
“Geez, did these guys really spend every dime they made in profits on stock...”
– Barry Ritholtz in Quote of the day: “Earnings, Dividends & Buybacks” | The Big Picture