Sat 2010-08-07 19:56 EDT

Why founding a three-person startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs. | AdGrok

I joined Goldman Sachs in 2005, after five flailing years in a physics Ph.D. program at Berkeley...I was a pricing quant on the Goldman Sachs corporate credit trading desk...Giving sophisticated models and fast computers to traders is like giving handguns and tequila to teenage boys. Only complete mayhem can result (and as we saw recently, complete mayhem did result)....The quants were there to make sure the guns were loaded, but also to make sure the traders didn't shoot themselves in the foot...

AdGrok; better; Found; Goldman Sachs; person startup; working; zero revenue.

zero hedge - on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero Mon 2010-07-19 16:18 EDT

Financial Reform Bill Fixes the Economy ... Not!

Washington's Blog

Congress, Bernanke, Geithner and the boys are patting themselves on the back for passing the financial "reform" legislation...In reality, as discussed below, none of the real problems have been addressed...little in the legislation really restores trust in the system...the bill does nothing to address the ever-widening gap in wealth...The rule of law has not been restored...Unemployment continues to plague the economy...bailing out the banks has simply spread their problems into sovereign crises...the U.S. hasn't reined in its profligate spending...the U.S. has become a a kleptocracy, an oligarchy, a banana republic, a socialist or fascist state ... which acts without the consent of the governed...

dropped; economy; Financial Reform Bill Fixes; long; survival rate; Timeline; zero; Zero Hedge.

Jesse's Café Américain Wed 2010-05-05 16:22 EDT

Market Manipulation, Systemic Risk and Fraud, Pure and Simple, And It Continues Today

Jesse

This article by the Financial Times should remove any doubt in anyone's mind that Goldman Sachs was willfully selling fraudulent financial instruments. It appears that they were working in conjunction with Ratings Agencies, Mortgage Origination Firms, and Hedge Funds to cheat investors...Tom Montag, then a senior Goldman executive and now head of corporate and investment banking at Bank of America, was quoted as describing the deal in an e-mail as follows: ``Boy that timeberwof (sic) was one shi**y (sic) deal,'' according to the Senate subcommittee...Within five months of issuance, Timberwolf lost 80 per cent of its value...

continued; fraud; Jesse's Café Américain; Market Manipulation; Pure; simple; systemic risk.

zero hedge Sun 2010-04-25 14:23 EDT

Exclusive: Second Whistleblower Emerges - A Deep Insider's Walkthru To Silver Market Manipulation

A second whistleblower speaks. As the topic of physical delivery has gained prominent attention recently, it is crucial to complete the circle and show how this weakest link in the PM market is (ab)used by the big boys: Phibro and Warren Buffet. Pay particular attention to the analogues between the methods employed in the 90's commodity market and how the PM (and equity) market is being gamed currently. And to think that each new generation of traders believes it has discovered something new...As a market maker in silver options from 1989 to 2000 I was present during both the 1994 and 1997 silver events. They were seminal in my education of gamesmanship in trading and how probabilities can come up short...

Deep Insider's Walkthru; exclusive; Silver Market Manipulation; whistleblower emerging; Zero Hedge.

zero hedge Tue 2009-10-27 11:25 EDT

The Manhattan Project: Did Bernanke Use The Monetary Nuclear Option?

Geoffrey Batt

...was the Fed's policy response on March 18, 2009 the financial equivalent of Fat Man and Little Boy? (The direct purchase of equities?)...did the Fed exceed its policy statement by directly buying assets not contemplated therein?...Did Bernanke, encouraged by Goldman's Hatzius, heed his own advice and monetize the equity markets?

Bernanke used; Manhattan Project; Monetary Nuclear Option; Zero Hedge.

Thu 2009-10-22 14:25 EDT

Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > Where's the reporting on the fraud that led to the crash?

University of Texas economist and author James Galbraith believes the press has paid too little attention to investigating the ``criminal and felonious behavior'' involved in the economic crash of last year. ``The press as a whole used [Ponzi-schemer] Bernie Madoff as the emblem of wrongdoing, but compared to the wrongdoing in the housing sector, the Madoff scandal was small-bore,'' Galbraith told Nieman Watchdog in a recent interview. ``The press has tended a bit to treat this issue [mortgage related fraud] as a kind of boys-will-be-boys phenomenon. The press has not been aggressive in investigating this the way they should, to point out to readers the extent to which we're talking about fraud -- criminal, felonious behavior -- that will end up with people in the penitentiary.''

commentary; Crash; fraud; led; Nieman Watchdog; report; s.

Jesse's Café Américain Thu 2009-09-17 09:39 EDT

"It has now become clear that this was no ordinary crash."

Jesse

Here is an informative piece on the banking crisis in Iceland...in all banking collapses of this sort, fraud and duplicity are always at the heart of it, as larceny is in most great fortunes through history. Investigating Icelandic banking collapse, Icelandic economist Jon Danielsson believes the root of Iceland's problems that have now decimated its economy appear to have started when the government decided to privatize the banks in the early 1990s...the government had no understanding of the dangers of banks or how to supervise them. They got into the hands of people who took risks to the highest possible degree...Central banking IS an old boy's network. It is the best and biggest network of all. In this one, you actually get to print money...

becomes clear; Jesse's Café Américain; ordinary crash.

naked capitalism Sun 2009-09-13 16:32 EDT

Guest Post: The Economy Will Not Recover Until Trust is Restored

George Washington of Washington's Blog

...our economy is not fundamentally stabilizing ...because the government and the financial giants are taking actions and releasing data which encourage more distortion and less trust..all of the happy talk in the world won't turn the economy around when the fundamentals of the economy are lousy, or there has been a giant bubble and vast overleveraging, or there has been massive fraud, or the government has gone so far into debt that it has formed a black hole... the chair of the congressional oversight committee of the bailouts (Elizabeth Warren) and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis (William Black) both say that hiding the true state of affairs and trying to put a happy face on an economic crisis just prolongs the length and severity of the crash...trying to instill false confidence will actually backfire on Summers, Geithner, Bernanke and the boys and make the crisis worse.

economy; Guest Post; naked capitalism; recover; restore; trust.