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 ...

SAC Capital Gets "Tips" from Goldman Sachs; If Only There Were a Pattern -08/31/09 at 10:23 AM CDTby Mark Mitchell

Earlier this week,  The Wall Street Journal published what should have been a fairly explosive story implicating Goldman Sachs (GS) and its favored hedge fund clients in yet more market miscreancy. Predictably, though, this story did not have what journalists call “legs.” No other mainstream media outlets picked it up. There was no outrag...

Goldman Pillages, Goldman Steals, Goldman Sachs -08/19/09 at 11:07 AM CDTby Judd Bagley

Consider below a simple timeline from one of the strangest periods our financial markets had ever experienced. As you read it, keep in mind that following the demise of Bear Stearns, the strictest interpretation of the so-called investment bank “Bulge Bracket” included just four entities: Goldman Sachs (GS), Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and ...

SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami Jokes About Causing The Marke... -08/09/09 at 12:11 PM CDTby Perry Rod

In a speech for the New York State Bar, Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami made a joke that for some might be more telling that it is funny.  He stated: "I'm pretty proud of my own 100-day accomplishments. So how have things changed? Before I joined the Division in March, the Dow was struggling around 6500 points....

Goldman Sachs Predicts the Future -08/07/09 at 12:18 PM CDTby Perry Rod

Conspiracy theorists will love this.  Yesterday, Jan Hatzius, the chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs (GS) revised his forecast of job losses from 300,000 to 250,000. The prediction was very accurate.  Today, we learned that the number turned out to be 247,000. Is it golden analysis or does Goldman somehow own the government, as many have rec...

No Such Thing As Bad Press For Goldman Sachs -07/03/09 at 3:42 PM CDTby Perry Rod

Matt Taibbi has written a scathing piece in Rolling Stone magazine about how Goldman Sachs (GS) is the "Great American Bubble Machine."  He basically makes yet another case that Goldman Sachs makes money by controlling America's politicians and regulators.  He is not the first to make this case. For example in 2006, Kyle Pope, a former writer a...

Barack Obama: Another Captured Pawn of Goldman Sachs' Wall Street -04/27/09 at 6:05 PM CDTby Perry Rod

It isn’t really a conspiracy or a criticism.  It’s just a fact. In 2006, The Los Angeles Times did a story entitled, “Goldman Sachs Rules The World,” pointing out that former President Bush’s team of economic experts were basically a team of former Goldman Sachs executives.  That list included Henry Paulson, who ra...

Bank Of America Corp's Preferred Trusts Continue to Trade at Irration... -03/04/09 at 10:21 PM CSTby Perry Rod

In my first installment of this issue on February 20th, I highlighted an unusually enormous spread between the yields of nearly identical Merrill Lynch and Bank of America preferred trusts.  In particular, MER-C on that Friday closed with a yield of 26.79% while BAC-U closed with a yield of 15.58%.  It turns out that on that parti...

With Citigroup and Bank of America Leading The Way, The S&P 500 Is Ha... -02/23/09 at 6:45 PM CSTby Mahyar Hashemi

Things are getting ugly in an unprecedented way.  Last month, The New York Times reported that the S&P 500 was having its worst decade yet as of the end of January 2009, with a 5.1% ten year drop after accounting for inflation and reinvested dividends.  That beat the previous record of 1974 when the S&P 500 dropped 4.7% in a ten year per...

An In Depth Look Into Bank Of America Corp Preferred Trusts And Their... -02/21/09 at 5:07 PM CSTby Perry Rod

In my last installment, I showed that Bank Of America (NYSE: BAC) preferred trusts are trading at yields that are completely arbitrary when compared to their own nearly identical trusts.  I further pointed out that the Merrill Lynch Trusts, which are basically the same trusts with the exact same terms, trade at an even greater discrepancy. Let's get...

Bank Of America Preferred Stocks Trading At Dramatically Different Yi... -02/20/09 at 5:37 PM CSTby Perry Rod

Only in unprecedented times like these will you ever see the following situation.  Merrill Lynch Trust Preferred stock (stock symbols MER-D, MER-E, MER-F, MER-K, MER-P, MER-U) closed on Friday with an average yield of over 26%, while the virtually identical and better known Bank of America Trust Preferred stock (stock symbols BAC-B, BAC-C, BAC-U, BAC...