On Wall Street, Membership Has Its Privileges - Just Ask Deutsche Bank -05/17/10 at 9:37 AM CDTby Judd Bagley

One of the great episodes of The Simpsons follows Homer as he comes to realize that not all Springfield citizens are treated equally. The difference, Homer eventually discovers, is membership in a secret society known as the Stonecutters. Once on the inside, Homer is delighted to find his new affiliation subjects him to an enviable set of alternate rules....

Goldman's Gold Has Lost Its Luster -05/11/10 at 1:17 PM CDTby Judd Bagley

The most clichéd, yet satisfying, moment in any movie comes when the brutally bullying antagonist discovers he’s lost that which had empowered his abusive nature. Wait…I take that back. Seeing that fear in the bad guy’s eyes is the second most satisfying movie moment, the first being the inevitable administration of long-overdue ...

The SEC's Culture of Regulatory Capture Prior to Goldman Sachs -04/30/10 at 12:31 AM CDTby Judd Bagley

Perspective is a funny thing. The full taxpayer cost of the S&L bailout came to an enormous, inflation-adjusted tab of around $255-billion; and yet, in the shadow of the latest spate of bank bailout checks written by Congress, that doesn’t seem like much. Similarly, the $60-billion Madoff fiasco tends to make the many Ponzi scheme busts that fol...

Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Others Who Pumped and Dumped O... -04/20/10 at 6:05 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

It is perhaps beyond the ability of an innocent public to believe this, but there is a growing body of evidence that a few mad scientists might have engineered the near-destruction of the American financial system. Except they weren’t scientists, per se – they were unscrupulous, market manipulating hedge fund managers, and we can almost hear t...

Guest Thrown Off Live TV Show For Calling CNBC Hosts "Public Relation... -04/17/10 at 9:12 PM CDTby Reggie Abaca

It was as if a security breach had occurred at CNBC.  A first time guest to the show by the name of Sylvain Raynes, author of The Analysis of Structured Securities and an upcoming title, The Elements of Structured Finance, was bullied and thrown off a program after he broke some kind of previously unknown rule of not bringing up CNBC ties with Gold...

How David Einhorn and Dan Loeb along with Goldman Sachs Brought Their... -03/04/10 at 2:49 PM CSTby Mark Mitchell

You don’t hear much about it, but the March 2007 bankruptcy of a company called New Century Financial was arguably one of the most important events leading up to the financial crisis that nearly caused a second Great Depression. It was the demise of New Century, then the nation’s second largest mortgage lender, that triggered the collapse of t...

John Paulson's "Greatest Trade Ever" - Something of a Scam -01/20/10 at 10:34 PM CSTby Mark Mitchell

By now, everybody knows that the market for collateralized debt obligations was riddled with fraud in the lead-up to the financial crisis. What is less known is the fact that hedge fund managers helped create and inflate the market for these toxic securities specifically so that they could bet against them and profit from the inevitable collapse. An examp...

Did The Markit Group, A Black-Box Company Partially Owned By Goldman ... -11/17/09 at 5:44 PM CSTby Mark Mitchell

Although much attention has been directed at the contribution made by credit default swaps  to the financial crisis, most discussion has focused on the companies, such as American International Group (AIG), that posted big losses because they sold these instruments without sufficient due diligence. Another line of inquiry has not been pursued, howeve...

Did Hayman Capital Spread The Goldman Sachs Rumor That Helped Destroy... -10/30/09 at 5:17 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

It was perhaps the single most important moment leading to the downfall of Bear Stearns. On March 13, 2007, reporter David Faber, live on CNBC, said, “I’m told by a hedge fund that I know well…I’m told that [last night] Goldman would not accept the counterparty risk of Bear Stearns.” Faber and that hedge fund might as w...

Congress prepares to bypass impotent SEC -10/20/09 at 2:36 PM CDTby Judd Bagley

Something of great importance in the effort to finally end illegal naked short selling took place recently. Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware, together with three colleagues, distributed a letter to the remaining 96 members of the Senate formally requesting co-sponsors for SB 605: A bill to require the Securities and Exchange Commission to reinstate The Upt...

Three Short Hours Inside the SEC, and an International Bancshares Cor... -10/01/09 at 12:19 AM CDTby Judd Bagley

And so it was with today’s second and concluding session of the SEC’s roundtable on securities lending and short selling: I expected the absolute worst, but in the end was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t quite as bad as I feared. That’s not the same as proclaiming it a good thing, because it was not. Indeed, I stick by ...