If ya all are wanting some blood on the floor, the Goldman Sachs hearing may give it to you. Below is Senator Levin questioning a Goldman Sachs internal email labeling a toxic asset, a CDO called Timberwolf, as caca:
The news started today with S&P downgrading Greek bonds to junk. It wasn't just the sovereign debt that became junk, but also the debt of many of the major Greek banks as well.
Update: The GOP managed to stop the current bill by a vote of 57. Back to "negotiations" it goes. "Democratic" Ben Nelson voted with the GOP.
Did you know Warren Derivatives are Weapons of Mass Destruction Buffett was lobbying Congress to exempt existing derivatives contracts from collateral requirements? Did you know that Brookshire Hathaway, Buffett's company, has a $63 billion derivatives portfolio?
Well, this is a first. Warren Buffett's lobbyists were denied a derivatives provision in the Senate bill, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Harvard Professor Kenneth Rogoff is warning that the IMF bailout of Greece is just the first of many to come.
“It’s more likely than not that we’ll need an IMF program in at least one more country in the euro area over the next two to three years,” Rogoff, a former IMF chief economist who has co-authored studies of financial and sovereign debt crises, said in a telephone interview. “The budget cuts needed in Europe in many countries are profound.”
Portuguese, Spanish and Irish bond yields jumped last week as investors questioned their ability to reduce budget deficits and avoid Greece’s fate....
At 14.3 percent of gross domestic product, Ireland had the euro region’s largest deficit last year. Greece’s was 13.6 percent, Spain’s was 11.2 percent and Portugal’s 9.4 percent.
Ready to Rumble, Senator Carl Levin is on a roll. In preparation for the Goldman Sachs hearing on Tuesday, Levin released Goldman Sachs emails (pdf). From Senator Levin's press release:
“Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis,” said Sen. Levin. “They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities, and sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients.” The 2009 Goldman Sachs annual report stated that the firm “did not generate enormous net revenues by betting against residential related products.” Levin said, “These e-mails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market.”
The Durable Goods advance report for March 2010 was released yesterday and showed a -1.3% decrease for new orders. Just like last month, the report (original on Census.gov), was driven by non-defense commercial aircraft & parts, which plunged in new orders, -67.1% in a month. As mentioned previously, air-o-planes and such are huge, big ticket items and also something not ordered every day, so the below will look at the overall report, trying to remove this volatile metric.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
Frontline did a documentary on all of the sleazy backroom deals done to pass Obama's Health Care bill.
The White House encouraged Baucus to quietly negotiate deals with the insurance lobby, drug companies and other special interest groups, despite promises to run a different kind of White House.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
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