Thu 2009-05-07 00:00 EDT
non-governmental regulator Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) pre-sold auction rate securities shortly before bottom fell out; current SEC head Mary Schapiro formerly FINRA head
Investors; naked capitalism; officials; Securities Industry Regulator Takes Care; Self.
Mon 2009-05-04 00:00 EDT
Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail, by David Evans and Caroline Salas, Bloomberg.com; ``As the U.S. has spent, lent or pledged about $12.8 trillion in efforts to revive the slumping economy...no one has taken steps that would substantially fix a broken ratings system.''
Mon 2009-04-06 00:00 EDT
ex-banking regulator William K. Black calls fraud: ``make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you're a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there's going to be a disaster down the road.''
Wed 2009-04-01 00:00 EDT
$5 BILLION IN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS BOUGHT WALL STREET FREEDOM FROM REGULATION, RESTRAINT, REPORT FINDS; Robert Weissman
Wed 2009-04-01 00:00 EDT
bank; called; naked capitalism; Regulators; Willem Buiter Strikes.
Thu 2009-01-15 00:00 EST
Jesse's Café Américain: Too Big to Fail, Too Well-Connected to Jail: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit; ``Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations.'' Akerlof and Romer; Yves Smith
bankruptcy; big; Economic Underworld; fail; jailed; Jesse's Café Américain; profits; well connections.
Mon 2008-12-15 00:00 EST
``I have been both a central banker and a market regulator. I now find myself questioning whether my early career, largely devoted to liberalising and deregulating banking and financial markets, was misguided.''
Fisher s Debt Deflation Theory; Great Depression; London Banker; possibly revising.
Fri 2008-11-07 00:00 EST
(1994); ``Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations.''
bankruptcy; Economic Underworld; George Akerlof; Paul Romer; profits; SSRN-Looting.
Sat 2008-11-01 00:00 EDT
Jesse's Café Américain: Does a Weakening of Banking Regulation Result in Economic Imbalances and Asset Bubbles?
assets bubble; Banking Regulation Result; Economic Imbalances; Jesse's Café Américain; weakening.
Tue 2008-09-23 00:00 EDT
Credit Default Swap; naked capitalism; New York; Regulators.
Tue 2008-08-26 00:00 EDT
The End of the Beginning - Developments in the Credit Crisis, by Satyajit Das (Prudent Bear); 2008-05-27; ``limited recognition of the massive de-leveraging of the global financial system that is under way.'' ``The banking systems ability to supply credit is significantly impaired and will remain so for the foreseeable future.'' ``Changes in financial markets will have a significant impact on many companies that now rely on financial engineering rather than real engineering'' Das proposes: ``holdings and values of risky assets held by banks and investment banks must be accurately determined...Risky assets must be valued on a hold-to-maturity basis...Mark-to-market accounting should be suspended...Capital levels should be set on a bank-by-bank basis by regulators...Capital requirements should be eased...government [should] guarantee of all major bank liabilities''
Sun 2008-08-24 00:00 EDT
by Martin Hutchinson (Prudent Bear); auction-rate securities (ARS); credit default swaps (CDS); ``CDS market creates many times as much risk as it hedges or transfers''; GSEs ``leveraged more than would have been possible without the governments quasi-guarantee, lobbied like to crazy to ensure they were not properly regulated and collapsed thankfully into the arms of the taxpayer as soon as ill winds began to blow...by their presence they turned the soundest product in financial markets, the home mortgage, into an obscene speculative casino, causing collateral damage of many times their own losses.'' ``much of the financial services innovation of the last generation was spurious and unsound, and needs to be done away with''
