ContagionEx is For You!
I’m in the middle of a serous shredding which is taking longer than I’d like. But for your viewing pleasure in the meantime, Mark Ames has found this tidbit:
Read more...Category Archives: Curiousities
IMF and ECB to offer Italy a 600 billion euro bailout (sources)
Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns There is a flurry of activity going on in Euroland this weekend. I have a number of stories up on different proposals in the offing. Clearly, European policy makers have got religion about saving the euro. Expect some kind of announcement soon. According to Austrian daily Der Standard, Italy is to […]
Read more...Black Friday Antidote: George Carlin on Advertising and Consumerism
Americans roll from a holiday that has come to be about overeating to a day where merchants hope to seduce customers into an orgy of overspending.
In an interesting bout of synchronicity, Michael Thomas just sent me a link to this George Carlin video.
Read more...Bill Black: Best Satire of Faux Austrian Economics Ever
Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
Someone has created a fabulous, richly detailed parody of Austrian economics. They call it The Daily Bell and claim that its perspective reflects Austrian economics. In reality, it satirizes faux Austrian economics’ sycophancy toward elite white-collar criminals.
I was delighted to learn that they used my recent column: The Virgin Crisis: Systematically Ignoring Fraud as a Systemic Risk as the vehicle for their send-up.
Read more...More Evidence That Judges Have Had it With Banks
Today, we linked to an article in the New York Times that illustrates a considerable change in the attitude of some judges in the wake of the robosigning scandal. Before, the assumption was that of course, the bank was right and any borrower trying to block a foreclosure had better have an awfully compelling case. But a lot of judges were stunned by the level and institutionalization of bank abuses of procedure. And in a small, happy note, some of the employers of the worst foreclosure mills are finally cutting them lose. Per Michael Olenick, Fannie Mae has ceased doing business with the Baum law firm in New York (the one with the now notorious 2010 Halloween party that made fun of mortgage borrowers fighting foreclosures as future homeless people).
We first got wind of this decision below from Matt Weidner. Frankly, it reads like a parody, but we got it from April Charney, and it does have the stamps you’d see on the real deal. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it even if it is an artful fabrication, and even more if someone with access to Pacer can confirm that it is genuine.
Read more...Validated Carbon Credits and Baron Traders Limited Have (Update: Briefly) Left the Building
The FT and a scammer respond to a Carbon Credits post at NC
Read more...Cheer Up, FTAdviser: At Least You Don’t Publish Threadbare Excuses from Scammers, Like Reuters Does
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By Richard Smith
Having hooted mildly at FTAdviser yesterday, for their somewhat skimpy fact checking, I found my eye caught today by a similar miss from Reuters (in bold):
Read more...“FTAdviser” Tricked Into Lending the Good Name of the Financial Times to Carbon Credit Scammers
This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. Over 620 donors have already invested in our efforts to shed light on the dark and seamy corners of finance. Join us and participate via our Tip Jar or read about why we’re doing this fundraiser and other ways to donate, such as by check or another credit card portal, on our kickoff post and one discussing our current target.
Read more...Naked Capitalism: the First Five Years (Nearly)
The fifth anniversary of Naked Capitalism’s first post is due on 19th December. According to WordPress, another 8,361 posts have gone up since 2006. 7,453 of them are posted by Yves, who thus averages four posts per day, week in, week out, for all that time: unnerving. For all the generosity of Yves’s tributes to other contributors, it’s pretty obvious where the lion’s share of the engagement is coming from, though I would have to single out Ed Harrison as the most wonderful near-full-time helper when Yves is having one of those bandwidth-challenged annual “holidays”.
From direct observation, and deduction, the average Yves Smith working day, which is to say, the average Yves Smith day, splits up something like this:
Read more...Chinese bubble bursting: A probable non-event
By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland In waking a tiger, use a long stick. – Mao Tse-tung Well, it looks like it could finally be happening. The Chinese housing bubble could well be bursting right before our eyes. The bubble has long been present for all to see, with news […]
Read more...The money scoreboard
I am going to fill in a few posts for Yves while she is away on conference. Here’s one that is a thought piece I wrote last week at Credit Writedowns. It is a mental model of the economy I am toying with based on some comments the modern monetary theory folks have made to […]
Read more...Making a mockery of sovereign CDS
What happens when you get a default that equates to a 50% loss for most investors without triggering default insurance? Massively negative unintended consequences. Europe has just made a mockery of the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) market by trying to structure a default via voluntary 50% haircuts in order to avoid triggering CDS claims. […]
Read more...New Zealand Science Minister Mapp’s Sudden Disappearance from New Image’s Web Site
NZ Science Minister who praised New Image runs for cover…New Image spokesperson in a spin…New Image “stand by” colostrum quack cure testimonials but simultaneously repudiate them by taking them off their web site…New Image still flogging worthless fuel economy product Powerpill Fe-3 to Malaysia.
Business As Usual in New Zealand!
Read more...New Zealand’s Miracle Cure Peddler and “The Most Spectacular Fraud in Australian History”
New Zealand company New Image Group is the supplier of the bogus fuel economy product behind Australia’s biggest stock fraud. And New Image is still selling it!
Read more...New Zealand Science Minister Wayne Mapp Endorses Dubious “Miracle Cure” Multi-Level Marketing Company
My last pop at New Zealand’s regulatory set-up mentioned New Image International, the company that uses multi-level marketing techniques to sell Colostrum as a miracle cure. The New Image product pitch is a generic hoax, as explained last time out:
…major warning signs include:
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