Category Archives: Investment banks

Satyajit Das: The Past, The Present and an “Unusually Uncertain” Future

By Satyajit Das, an international expert on financial derivatives and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives.

Nicholas Phillipson (2010) Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life; Allen Lane

Matt Taibbi (2010) Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire and the Long Con That Is Breaking America; Random House

Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean (2010) All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis; Portfolio

Hamish MacDonald (2010) Mahabharata in Polyester: The Making of the World’s Richest Brothers and Their Feud: New South

Jeff Kingston (2011) Contemporary Japan: History, Politics and Social Change Since the 1980s; John Wiley

On MBIA’s Suit Against Morgan Stanley on a Second Lien Deal Gone Bad

n theory, I’m a wee bit late to the item at hand, a suit by failed mortgage bond insurer MBIA against Morgan Stanley on a second mortgage deal. But in practice, I’ve not seen any commentary on it and the suit has some interesting wrinkles.

Before we get to the details, however, a general issue: looking at this case is like deciding which of Cinderella’s bad sisters is less ugly. While mortgage bond originators and sponsors did not cover themselves in glory in the later years of the subprime business, MBIA is no prize. Of all the monolines, MBIA was the most dubious. In addition to the general, and now well known problem with the industry business model, that they were running at such high leverage levels that they could not take on any real risks, MBIA has its own special cause for concern, namely a less-than-arms-length reinsurance operation. And management has major ‘tude. I’ve never read investor reports that were as haughty and obviously truth-stretching as MBIA, and thus any claims it makes about the merits of pending litigation need to be taken with a fistful of salt.

Credit Default Swap Volumes Fall Before Pending Rule Changes

On the one hand, I’m being proven somewhat wrong in my dismissive views of the impact of Dodd-Frank. Credit default swaps, a product I’ve viewed as essential to rein in (it’s a fee machine for Wall Street that has produced clear harm and has almost no socially productive uses) have fallen markedly in volume prior […]

Obama’s Problem Simply Defined: It Was the Banks

By James K. Galbraith, the author of The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too. He teaches at The University of Texas at Austin. Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0, this post originally appeared at Common Cause. Obama must break his devil’s pact with the banks in order to succeed. […]

Guest Post: Is there a bubble in the bond market?

By John Y Campbell, Adi Sunderam, and Luis M Viceira, first posted at VoxEU The historically low yields on Treasury bonds are the hallmark of a bubble, according to some commentators. This column analyses the relationship between bond yields, the stock market, and inflation over the past 50 years. It finds that the riskiness of […]

A critical assessment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

By Viral Acharya, Professor of Finance, Stern School of Business, New York University, Thomas F. Cooley Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business and Faculty of Arts and Science, New York University, Matthew Richardson, Professor of Applied Economics, Stern School of Business, New York University, Richard Sylla, Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business, New […]

Guest Post: Bill Isaac Vs. Hank Paulson’s Bailout Machine — How The Former FDIC Chairman ALMOST Stopped TARP »

By Dr. Pitchfork, an iconoclast who writes at Daily Bail. The little-known story behind the House’s initial rejection of TARP from Bill Isaac’s new book Senseless Panic. — Bill Isaac was Chairman of the FDIC from 1981-1985 during one of the most tumultuous decades in American banking. He oversaw the banking system during the Latin […]

Foreclosure Fraud: We Need to Fix the Banks Again

By Marshall Auerback, a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator. Crossposted from New Deal 2.0. It’s time to put the perps of this scandal in jail. Yves Smith, Bill Black, and Mike Konczal have already done yeoman’s work in seeking to explain the lender fraud scandal in the securitized […]

On the Curious Timing and Content of Volcker’s Mislabeled “Blistering” Speech

Today, quite a few commentators fell in with the take of the writeup by Real Time Economics on a speech by Paul Volcker given a conference on macroprudential regulation hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Its lead-in: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker scrapped a prepared speech he had planned to deliver at […]

Inside Job: A Movie Wall Street is Sure to Hate

Tom Adams and I saw an advance screening of the Charles Ferguson film Inside Job, a documentary on the financial crisis, due for theatrical release in New York on October 8. Given how well each of us knows the subject matter, we’re not easily swayed, but I can speak for both of us in giving […]

Lehman Black Hole Update: It’s Gotten Bigger!

The Financial Times provides an update on the Mess That Ate the Markets, circa September-October 2008. As we’ve harped on, Lehman’s bankruptcy advisors have been remarkably unhelpful in providing much insight on why the firm had such a big hole in its balance sheet. The previous estimate we had seen was $150+ billion (a swing […]

Basel III vs Dodd-Frank on ratings agencies and risk weights

The disastrous twins, ratings agency credit ratings and RWAs (risk weighted assets), are still embedded in Basel III. Dodd-Frank does not like this much. The ratings agencies are still a big part of Basel III, though the December draft does allow for the alternative possibility of using bank-internal models for assessing credit risk. Alas, the […]

This is Basel III??

Arriving at the rush, with extra impetus doubtless imparted by the recent and ongoing Eurobanking panic, we have the Basel III capital and liquidity reforms (there’s a one pager, a full press release and, oh, not wholly unexpectedly, a somewhat anticlimactic phase-in timetable). In fact, the liquidity reforms here are just timetable entries – the […]

Summer Rerun: Ban “No One Could Have Foreseen the Crisis”

This post first appeared on April 10, 2008 Floyd Norris of the New York Times, in an otherwise fine piece, “It’s a Crisis, And Ideas Are Scarce” has a paragraph that set my teeth on edge. But let’s deal with the parts that have merit first, and hold the rant in abeyance. Norris uses the […]