Reader JPKK says: JP Morgan Buys a Bear and the Fed Cleans Up the Woods How did Bear Stearns (BSC) go from planning to report decent earnings for the current environment to being hours away from filing? It all comes down to keeping liquid in an illiquid market. Last week starting late Wednesday and through […]
Lifted from comments Brad DeLong style: Reader howard says: The issue is whether Bear Stearns management in the days and weeks leading up to this collapse exercised sufficient due diligence and managerial oversight, whether they should have for seen problems through greater rigor and controls, and whether they should have therefore not ended up in […]
OMB Watch caught this item and reports: After significantly delaying the release of a report that identifies alarming toxic health risks for the Great Lakes region, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now reportedly planning to release a substantially modified document. Originally, Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in Twenty-Six U.S. Great […]
Watch the video of how the last two days unwound.
They could see the meltdown coming. (LA Times) Freelance financial watchdogs who examined the paperwork on sub-prime home loans being sold to Wall Street had an inside view of the boom in easy-money lending this decade. The reviewers say they raised plenty of red flags about flaws so serious that mortgages should have been rejected […]
CNN money points to pushback from non-US banks simply refusing to have a BS counterparty. Seems they were simply refusing to stay at the party. It’s unclear what exactly started Bear Stearns’ nightmare this week. Veteran repurchase agreement traders told Fortune.com that a major European bank last week refused to accept Bear Stearns as a […]
NYT sells bailout story with no alternatives: “You get to where people can’t trade with each other,” said James L. Melcher, president of Balestra Capital, a hedge fund based in New York. “If the Fed hadn’t acted this morning and Bear did default on its obligations, then that could have triggered a very widespread panic […]
The NYT reports on the Fed, Bears Stearns valuation, and interventions. The Fed, working closely with bank regulators and the Treasury Department, raced to complete the deal Sunday night in order to prevent investors from panicking on Monday about the ability of Bear Stearns to make good on billions of dollars in trading commitments. In […]
Obama’s energy plan. Clinton’s energy plan. John McCain’s site John McCain ran into a lot of trouble with Republicans the last time he proposed a bill on climate change, getting only 38 votes in the senate. I could not find an energy policy different than the current President’s. If you have access to one, let […]
Here is a list of some of the possibilities floating around the media and blogs concerning what is relevant to the Spitzer case: 1. Use of campaign funds to finance the activity.2. Violation of the Mann Act.3. Suspicion of making bank transfers to avoid the $10,000 alert threshold.4. A public official contributing to a criminal […]