Investment bank Lehman Brothers (1); Lehman Brothers bankruptcy proceedings (1); Lehman Brothers careened (1); Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (1); Lehman Brothers Stategist Becomes (1); Lehman Brothers Vice Chair Peter Solomon (1).
Mon 2010-09-20 18:49 EDT
Many commentators have argued that interbank lending froze following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. This column presents evidence from the fed funds market that, while rates spiked and loan terms became more sensitive to borrower risk, mean borrowing amounts remained stable on aggregate. It seems likely that the market did not expand to meet additional demand for funds.
Wed 2010-05-19 13:23 EDT
...a nationwide conspiracy in which financial advisers to municipalities colluded with Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Wachovia Corp. and 11 other banks... rigged bids on auctions for so-called guaranteed investment contracts, known as GICs, according to a Justice Department list that was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24 and then put under seal. Those contracts hold tens of billions of taxpayer money...The workings of the conspiracy -- which stretched from California to Pennsylvania and included more than 200 deals involving about 160 state agencies, local governments and non- profits -- can be pieced together from the Justice Department's indictment of CDR, civil lawsuits by governments around the country, e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News and interviews with current and former bankers and public officials. "The whole investment process was rigged across the board," said Charlie Anderson, who retired in 2007 as head of field operations for the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt bond division. "It was so commonplace that people talked about it on the phones of their employers and ignored the fact that they were being recorded." Anderson said he referred scores of cases to the Justice Department when he was with the IRS. He estimates that bid rigging cost taxpayers billions of dollars...
zero hedge Fri 2010-04-23 20:02 EDT
Recently, Zero Hedge presented a snapshot analysis of the various securities that made up the triparty repo agreement involving JPM, Lehman and the Fed. We uncovered numerous bankrupt companies' equities that were being pledged as collateral for what ultimately was taxpayer exposure. To our surprise, this discovery is not an exception, and in fact in the days immediately preceding the collapse of Bear Stearns first, and subsequently, Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve established and refined a program that permitted banks to pledge virtually any security as collateral, including not just investment grade bonds and higher ranked securities, but also stocks of companies, the riskiest investment possible, and a guaranteed way for taxpayer capital to evaporate in the context of a disintegrating financial system, all with the purpose of bailing out Wall Street's major institutions. On two occasions last year: on March 16, 2008, and subsequently on September 14, 2008, the Federal Reserve first established what is known as the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), and subsequently amended it, so that the Fed, in becoming the lender of last resort, would allow any collateral, up to and including stocks, to be funded by the Federal Reserve's credit facility, in order to prevent the $4.5 trillion repo financing system from imploding. By doing so, the Federal Reserve effectively gave a Carte Blanche to primary dealers to purchase any and all equities they so desired, with such purchases immediately being funded by the US taxpayer, via the PDCF. In essence, this was equivalent to the Fed purchasing equities by itself through a Primary Dealer agent...
equity markets; Fed's interventions; overview; Primary Dealers Credit Facility; Zero Hedge.
Fri 2010-04-23 19:59 EDT
As Lehman Brothers careened toward bankruptcy in 2008, the New York Federal Reserve Bank came to its rescue, sopping up junk loans that the investment bank couldn't sell in the market, according to a report from court-appointed examiner Anton R. Valukas. The New York Fed, under the direction of now-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, knowingly allowed itself to be used as a "warehouse" for junk loans, the report says, even though Fed guidelines say it can only accept investment grade bonds...
books; examinations s reported; new York Fed Warehousing Junk Loans.
naked capitalism Wed 2010-04-21 12:20 EDT
In a letter to Senate majority leader Harry Reid and minority leader Mitch McConnell, luminaries including former SEC Chief Accountant Lynn Turner, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, hedge fund owner Jim Chanos, former Lehman Brothers Vice Chair Peter Solomon, former S&L investigator Bill Black, former Senate Banking Committee Chief Economist Rob Johnson, economists Dean Baker, Barry Eichengreen and others pointed out that Dodd's proposed financial reform legislation wouldn't have prevented the current crisis ... and won't prevent the next crisis...
cheese; Dodd Financial reform Bill; Guest Post; holes; naked capitalism.
Jesse's Café Américain Mon 2010-04-12 18:11 EDT
This analysis from the Wall Street Journal indicates that most of the big US Banks are engaging in the same kind of repo accounting at the end of the quarter that Lehman Brothers was doing to hide their financial instability until deteriorating credit conditions and liquidity problems made them precipitously collapse, as all ponzi schemes and financial frauds do when the truth becomes known. The basic exercise is to hold big leverage and dodgy debt, but swap it off your books with the Fed at the end of each quarter for a short period of time when you have to report your holdings...
Fed; hide; Jesse's Café Américain; Risk; Wall Street Banks Using Lehman Style Accounting Trickery Enabled.
THE PRAGMATIC CAPITALIST Wed 2010-04-07 18:22 EDT
``Panics do not destroy capital -- they merely reveal the extent to which it has previously been destroyed by its betrayal in hopelessly unproductive works'' -- John Mills ...We should draw a distinct line in the sand between banks and diverse risk taking firms. There are always going to be Enron's in the economy, but why should we allow our entire banking sector to mirror Enron? Taking a 30,000 foot risk management view I say something must be done to ensure these banks can never do this again. Turn banks into true banks. Hedging and exotic business models are fine. Just don't commingle them under the same umbrella as a deposit taking ``bank''. With that, a few ideas come to mind: * Our banking system should be aligned with the goals of the nation to help ``grease'' the wheels of the economic growth engine of the United States. Banks should be more like utilities and less like hedge funds. Otherwise, banking becomes counter-productive and potentially destructive. * Banks should not be allowed to exact onerous fees on the public or enact a business model which is inherently dependent on driving their customers deeper and deeper into debt. This undermines the entire goal of productive economic growth. * ``Banks'' should be true lending institutions. Non-traditional banking operations and products such as CDS, ``off balance sheet'' finance, derivatives as collateral and such would be deemed illegal unless performed only by non banking/lending institutions (such as hedge funds) so as to insulate the public and true lending institutions from the risk taking, ``hedging'', and ``financial innovation'' of firms such as Lehman Brothers.
Fri 2010-04-02 17:25 EDT
...In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham was only $14.71 -- but that was before the county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet -- "the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants" is how one county worker put it. What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street -- and misery for people...And once the giant shit machine was built and the note on all that fancy construction started to come due, Wall Street came back to the local politicians and doubled down on the scam. They showed up in droves to help the poor, broke citizens of Jefferson County cut their toilet finance charges using a blizzard of incomprehensible swaps and refinance schemes -- schemes that only served to postpone the repayment date a year or two while sinking the county deeper into debt. In the end, every time Jefferson County so much as breathed near one of the banks, it got charged millions in fees. There was so much money to be made bilking these dizzy Southerners that banks like JP Morgan spent millions paying middlemen who bribed -- yes, that's right, bribed, criminally bribed -- the county commissioners and their buddies just to keep their business...
American cities; brought; Greece; Looting Main Street; nation's biggest bank; predatory deals; RIP.
Wed 2010-02-03 19:45 EST
A federal bankruptcy court judge in New York ruled earlier this week that long-held assumptions about payments owed to a counterparty in securitization deals cannot be enforced under US Bankruptcy Code, in a decision set to upend the securitization market. The decision was handed down by Judge James Peck, the judge overseeing the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy proceedings, who said that certain contractual provisions in a Lehman collateralized default obligation (CDO) are unenforceable under Chapter 11.
Bankruptcy Judge Invalidates Securitization Payment Structure; HousingWire.
Mon 2009-12-21 18:29 EST
One of the most popular memes repeated by mainstream media since the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year is the idea that China will manage to avoid the consequences economic downturn by shifting from an export-based economy to one based on local consumption...the "decoupling" theory proved to be false: The downturn in the developed world had a significant impact on China's economic well-being, causing a dramatic rise in unemployment and a sharp slowdown in economic growth...A new study published by Professor Hung Ho-fung...compares China's development path to that of other Asian economies, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It provides a concise summary of political and economic events in East-Asia since World War II as well as some colorful predictions and recommendations...
Mon 2009-10-26 09:13 EDT
A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers -- and the feds have yet to bust the culprits. [naked short selling]
Fri 2009-10-23 08:55 EDT
(Goldman Sachs, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, John Rogers, John Whitehead, AIG, Neil Barofsky, Troubled Asset Relief Program, Morgan Stanley, Hank Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein, John Thain, Lehman Brothers, Standard & Poor's, Tim Geithner, JPMorgan Chase, Jon Winkelried, David Solomon, Richard Friedman, Jamie Dimon, Robert Rubin, Dan Jester, Eric Dinallo, Hank Greenberg, Edward C. Forst, Neel Kashkari, Edward Liddy, Stephen Friedman, Sidney Weinberg, TARP, Joseph --Stiglitz, Lucas van Praag, Frank Suozzo, Mike Morgan, Matt Taibbi, Edith Cooper, Byron Trott, Warren Buffett, Barney Frank, John Thornton, Michael Lewis, Larry Summers, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Robert Hormats, Eliot Spitzer) Inside Goldman Sachs, America's most successful, cynical, envied, despised, and (in its view, anyway) misunderstood engine of capitalism. [2009-07-26]
2009-07-26; Goldman Sachs evil; good; just; New York magazine.
Fri 2009-09-04 19:05 EDT
*** Communication breakdown revealed in first-hand accounts of bank collapse *** Blame game goes on as G20 ministers prepare for crucial London talks A breakdown in communications at the highest level between the US and the UK led to the shock collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in September last year, a Guardian/Observer investigation has revealed. The downfall of Lehman, which triggered the biggest banking crisis since the Great Depression, came after a rescue bid by the high street bank Barclays failed to materialise. In London, the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority all believed that the US government would step in with a financial guarantee for the troubled Wall Street bank.
naked capitalism Fri 2009-09-04 18:45 EDT
Joseph Stiglitz takes issue with the view of economists (well, economists surveyed by Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, which not surprisingly have a Pollyannish optimistic streak) that the economy is in or on the verge of a recovery. ``In most quarters, there is a feeling we should move away from the dollar system. The question is do we do it in an orderly way, or a chaotic way,'' Stiglitz said. ``The size of the deficit and the size of the balance sheet of the Fed have just increased the anxiety and the desire that something be done...'' Between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Lehman Brothers was ``the short period of American triumphalism, where we dominated the global scene. That period is over,'' Stiglitz said.
Wed 2009-04-01 00:00 EDT
Why Lehman Brothers is the Model for Fixing the Zombie Banks
bailed; big; Fix; Institutional Risk Analyst; Lehman Brothers; model; zombie banks.
Tue 2009-02-24 00:00 EST
Why Lehman Brothers is the Model for Fixing the Zombie Banks, by Institutional Risk Analytics
bailed; big; Fix; Institutional Risk Analyst; Lehman Brothers; model; zombie banks.
Mon 2007-08-13 00:00 EDT
Quant Bloodbath Revisited, A Primer: Lehman Brothers Stategist Becomes The Sage of The Subprime Contagion Theory, by John Carney ()
