As expected, both Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner denied responsibility for the worst aspects of the AIG bailout--overpaying counterparties and the secrecy.
But Congress let us down by completely failing to follow up with either Paulson or Geithner. The question they absolutely had to ask was: if you weren’t running things, who was? Give us a name, Mr. Secretary.
Laughably, the blowhards on the oversight committee didn’t ask that question. So we still have no idea who was making the decisions as we bailed out AIG and its counterparties.
Why didn’t the panel members ask this question? It’s not as if they were surprised by Geithner’s and Paulson’s excuse. Everyone knew they’d say this. We were talking about it two hours before the hearing started.
There are a number of possibilities for the identity of the non-primary dealer domestic source of enormous purchases at the longer end of the yield curve in recent US Treasury auctions.
It could be a misclassification, a branch of a bank representing a foreign power. The problem with this theory is that [they] have a particular reluctance to buy the long end of the curve.
It also could be a legitimate domestic purchaser like a pension fund compelled to match duration of obligations, as is required by a little noted ruling of the US government a couple of years ago. They might be shifting out of other long term instruments with similar durations but more risk.
It might even be PIMCO. They certain have the money as the world’s biggest bond fund, and they do offer two Treasury ETF’s which although not directly related to the buys might be relevant on a cross trade. And they have recently been talking down Treasuries in favor of corporates, which doesn’t mean anything since traders often ‘talk their book.’ Still, unless its for the ETF it is hard to justify buying the long durations straight up in size. And while PIMCO says they do not like Treasuries, Benny and the Fed said they are buying long to keep interest rates lower. Why doubt them?
And of course, it might very well be the Federal Reserve Bank, or the Treasury via the Exchange Stabilization Fund.
It could also be the one big bidder who comes in with some regularity and smashes down the price of precious metals with the obvious intent of manipulating the market like clockwork just after the PM fix in London.
It might even be the big bidder who stands ready to buy the SP futures market at every turn, maintaining a floor on the market and a steady drift higher in prices with no change in fundamental underpinnings. Their hand in the market is apparent.
It is less probable, given the state of market manipulation by a few big proprietary trading desks riding another wave of cheap FEd money, but it might even be the party that entered the US equity market yesterday at 12:03 PM with a HUGE order (228,000…
This week’s treasury auctions have seen massive buying strength from direct bids, which represent U.S. institutional investors.
Such has been the strength that traders suspect a single massive contrarian buyer could be at work, purposefully trying to conceal itself:
FT: Auctions of US Treasury notes this week have attracted extremely strong buying from domestic institutional investors, fuelling speculation that "one big bidder" has decided to defy the conventional wisdom on Wall Street that US government debt is due for a fall.
The surprising demand for Treasury notes has come in the form of "direct bids", the term used for US institutional investors who bypass the so-called primary dealers that underwrite government bond sales.
Yesterday, direct bids accounted for 17 per cent of the sales of $21bn in 10-year Treasury notes, far higher than the recent average of 7.4 per cent. It was the highest percentage of direct bids in a 10-year Treasury auction since May 2005.
On Tuesday, direct bids accounted for a record 23.4 per cent of the bidding for $40bn in three-year notes, up from an average direct bid of 6 per cent.
Market participants say the unusually high level of direct bidding suggests that a large investor is looking to accumulate Treasuries without alerting the primary dealers on Wall Street to its intentions.
Whoever it is, they may have backed off from today’s auction, given that direct bids were only 5% of the total this time. Nevertheless, the auction appeared to do well regardless since the high yield (at 4.64%) came in lower than where similar treasuries traded ahead of the auction Check out today’s treasury auction results here >
Should we use taxes to deter financial By Paul Krugman, courtesy of Clusterstock
Should we use taxes to deter financial speculation? Yes, say top British officials, who oversee the City of London, one of the world’s two great banking centers. Other European governments agree — and they’re right.
Unfortunately, United States officials — especially Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary — are dead set against the proposal. Let’s hope they reconsider: a financial transactions tax is an idea whose time has come.
A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system is a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs pay themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with money they don’t have to customers who can’t pay back the loans.
In those dark days between the fall of Lehman Brothers and before the presidential election, we were often carried through that time by the small glimmer of hope that at least we would soon have a new leader who would hopefully fix this mess and punish those responsible.
Yet in the past 9 months, not only has the administration failed to fix anything, they have actually made things much worse for anyone who isn’t a Wall Street banker. Therefore, we are past the point where anyone in power still gets the benefit of the doubt — the process of taking back our country for all citizens must begin now.
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This is why I think we must ask if U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is still the right person for the job. It has become clear recently that, back in his previous role as New York Federal Reserve Governor, he unnecessarily gave billions of dollars of US tax money to banks and insurance companies with few strings attached. And it is now becoming clear that his lack of meaningful action is helping many of these same banks steal more by legalizing their most economically dangerous, socially destructive and self-enriching practices.
Yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Secretary Geithner again endorsed House bank reform legislation that would allow, by my calculations, as much as 80%, or $475 trillion, of the bank’s $600 trillion in crooked insurance schemes to still be held in secret. It was and is the secret risks held in this very market that led to our collapse in the first place, and that continue to pose massive future risk to the global economy.
Geithner also continued to employ the bankers’ favorite and most ludicrous lie : that the taxpayer must somehow
When the historians finally finish sorting through the appalling decisions that have been made in the past two years, this one will probably be at the top of the heap.
Last fall, as AIG began to realize how screwed it was, it started negotiating with the counterparties to all the credit default swaps it had written. One of the AIG’s goals was to persuade these counterparties--including Goldman Sachs--to accept buyouts discounts of as much as $0.40 cents on the dollar.
These sorts of negotiations are exactly what should happen when a company gets in trouble. It goes to its creditors and says, look, we can’t pay you everything, so here’s your choice: Take something, or take your chances in banktuptcy court. (And, in this case, this wouldn’t have been much of a choice, given the standing of CDS holders in the liquidation line).
But then Tim Geithner, head of the New York Fed, stepped in.
A few weeks later, the counterparties--all of whom voluntarily did business with AIG and understood the risks--were bailed out at par: 100 cents on the dollar.
Thus began the most nauseating giveaway in the history of the country.
By Sept. 16, 2008, AIG, once the world’s largest insurer, was running out of cash, and the U.S. government stepped in with a rescue plan. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the regional Fed office with special responsibility for Wall Street [run by Tim Geithner], opened an $85 billion credit line for New York-based AIG. That bought it 77.9 percent of AIG and effective control of the insurer.
The government’s commitment to AIG through credit facilities and investments would eventually add up to $182.3 billion.
Beginning late in the week of Nov. 3, the New York Fed, led by President Timothy Geithner, took over negotiations with the banks from AIG, together with the Treasury Department and Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s Federal Reserve. Geithner’s team circulated a draft term sheet outlining
Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.
Although there has been a lot of doomsaying about the falling dollar, that decline is actually both natural and desirable. America needs a weaker dollar to help reduce its trade deficit, and it’s getting that weaker dollar as nervous investors, who flocked into the presumed safety of U.S. debt at the peak of the crisis, have started putting their money to work elsewhere.
But China has been keeping its currency pegged to the dollar — which means that a country with a huge trade surplus and a rapidly recovering economy, a country whose currency should be rising in value, is in effect engineering a large devaluation instead.
And that’s a particularly bad thing to do at a time when the world economy remains deeply depressed due to inadequate overall demand. By pursuing a weak-currency policy, China is siphoning some of that inadequate demand away from other nations, which is hurting growth almost everywhere. The biggest victims, by the way, are probably workers in other poor countries. In normal times, I’d be among the first to reject claims that China is stealing other peoples’ jobs, but right now it’s the simple truth.
So what are we going to do?
U.S. officials have been extremely cautious about confronting the China problem, to such an extent that last week the Treasury Department, while expressing “concerns,” certified in a required report to Congress that China is not — repeat not — manipulating its currency. They’re kidding, right?
The thing is, right now this caution makes little sense. Suppose the Chinese were to do what Wall Street and Washington seem to fear and start selling some of their dollar hoard. Under current conditions, this would actually help the U.S. economy by making our exports more competitive.
In fact, some countries, most notably Switzerland, have been trying to support their economies by selling
A year ago, Wall Street was on its deathbed--having played a large role in helping the country and financial system nearly destroy itself. But just as Wall Street began to pay the price for its own stupidity, Washington D.C. rushed to the rescue. A year later, a few firms are once again paying out record bonuses.
Even more galling: The banks aren’t lending money to Main Street, which was the stated reason for saving them in the first place. They’re just minting it borrowing for free from the taxpayer (Fed) and collecting interest on old loans. And, of course, they’re trading for their own accounts.
Nothing surprising about that, of course: You can’t blame Wall Street for taking free money. Any sane person would do the same. And we have only Washington to thank for it.
The problem with the ludicrous policy "too big to fail" is finally revealed…
Graham Bowley, NYT: [O]ne of the most powerful forces driving the resurgence on Wall Street is not the banks but Washington. Many of the steps that policy makers took last year to stabilize the financial system — reducing interest rates to near zero, bolstering big banks with taxpayer money, guaranteeing billions of dollars of financial institutions’ debts — helped set the stage for this new era of Wall Street wealth.
Titans like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making fortunes in hot areas like trading stocks and bonds, rather than in the ho-hum business of lending people money. They also are profiting by taking risks that weaker rivals are unable or unwilling to shoulder — a benefit of less competition after the failure of some investment firms last year.
So even as big banks fight efforts in Congress to subject their industry to greater regulation — and to impose some restrictions on executive pay — Wall Street has Washington to thank in part for its latest bonanza.
“All of this is facilitated by the Federal Reserve and the government, who really want financial institutions to get back to lending,” said
If you or anyone you know still believes the government (or the media) tell us only the truth, please pass them this direct admission that lying is a primary strategic device for so-called “authority figures”:
Translation: when our elected representatives and their appointed officials believe we need to be manipulated, they rationalize their lies based on whether they think we need them at the time.
I am not naive. I firmly believe we have a problem with ignorance and sheeple in our country. However, the only way to fix the problem is to distribute more accurate information — not the opposite. Further, for those of us who work hard to stay educated, we expect to be treated like adults!
In this specific case, the Treasury Department’s lies (via Hank Paulson) encouraged people to hold their investments. Therefore, if you listened to Paulson et al, you literally lost your hard earned money and life savings. Last time I checked, citizens should not expect to get fiscally hosed by their Treasury Secretary.
To be fair, this is not only a Wall Street and Washington problem. Seemingly, most public discourse these days centers around complete lies, myths, and other rhetorical strategies aiming to put insular interests ahead of what’s best for the nation. It’s time to demand at least our public stewards accurately explain the true state of affairs so we can make informed decisions.
Whatever President Obama says today about financial reform, Charlie Gasparino says the U.S. government is sowing the seeds of another financial crisis — and it’s nothing new.
NY Post: But the biggest villain, in my view, is that ultimate enabler of Wall Street’s greed and stupidity — the federal government, in the form of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department.
Throughout the last 30 years of market ups and downs, the feds have bailed out the financial system by cutting interest rates to excessively low levels or, when Long-Term Capital was about to explode, by orchestrating a bailout of a hedge fund that had spread its virus throughout the banking system.
Each time, the financial bureaucrats told us the bailout was necessary to prevent total financial calamity — and that Wall Street had finally learned its lesson and wouldn’t engage in the risky practices again.
Well, not quite. Here’s Gasparino’s solution:
Goldman, Morgan and the rest of the “banks” should either become hedge funds — with no backing from the federal government and taxpayer funds when they engage in risk — or start handing out debit cards and toasters and become real commercial banks by concentrating on signing people up for checking accounts, instead of trading esoteric bonds If we don’t impose such hard rules, expect a repeat of what happened last year. If history is any guide, that implosion will be bigger and more dangerous than ever before.
Jobless claims improve while leading indicators decline in today’s economic report card
by Wall Street Sector Selector Staff
Weekly jobless claims declined to 424,000 from last week’s 432, 000 but stubbornly stayed above the all important 400,000 level for another week.
August Leading Indicators came in at +0.3% compared to 0.5% for July, as the economy continues registering weakness.
Good news came from July Home Prices which rose to +0.8% from the previously reported +0.7%.
But the biggest economic news of the week came yesterday when the Federal Reserve said it saw “significant downside risks to the economic outlook, including strains in global financial markets.”
Global stock markets responded negatively yesterday an...
Shares of Priceline.com Incorporated (NASDAQ: PCLN) are trading higher in the after-hours following the release of its Q1 earnings results. Currently, shares are up 2.74%, trading at $548.60; they closed the regular session down 0.67 %, at $533.97.
The company said that its Q1 EPS came in at $2.66 on revenues of $809.3 million; this compares to the Street's estimate of $2.46 per share on revenues of $779.5 million. Revenues rose 38.6% year over year.
"In the 1st quarter, the Group benefited from strong growth in our global hotel business, particularly at Booking.com and Agoda," said Jeffery H. Boyd, Priceline President and Chief Executive Officer.
He added, "Room nights booked grew by 55.8% and our international gross bookings grew by 79% compared to prior year...
The damage control to the Fukushima explosion reported earlier is coming fast and furious. According to CNN, "the explosion at an earthquake-damaged nuclear plant was not caused by damage to the nuclear reactor but by a pumping system that failed as crews tried to bring the reactor's temperature down, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Saturday. The next step for workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant will be to flood the reactor containment structure with sea water to bring the reactor's temperature down to safe levels, he said. The effort is expected to take two days." While the government is trying to play down the threat from the explosion, it has nonetheless double the evacuation zone radius from 10 to 20 kilometers: "Radiation levels have fallen since the explosion and there is no immediate danger, Edano said. But authorities were nevertheless expanding the evacuation ...
Note from dshort: I retired this chart series last summer in deference to my prefered inflation-adjusted series that aligns the S&P 500 2000 high with the Nikkei peak in 1989. However, I continue to receive requests for this version, despite the "V" shape of the the recovery since the March 2009 low. This chart series overlays the current S&P 500 with the L-shaped "recoveries" after the Dow Crash of 1929, the Nikkei 225 after Japan's 1989 bubble, and the post Tech Bubble NASDAQ. Click the chart below for a larger version and use the links to see various comparisons.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...
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February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.
Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011
 
Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...
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This week’s treasury auctions have seen massive buying strength from direct bids, which represent U.S. institutional investors.
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When the historians finally finish sorting through the appalling decisions that have been made in the past two years, this one will probably be at the top of the heap.
If you or anyone you know still believes the government (or the media) tell us only the truth, please pass them this direct admission that lying is a primary strategic device for so-called “authority figures”:
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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