CDO

Friday Movie Night - Inside Job

Tonight's documentary is Inside Job.  Made in 2010, this is probably the best documentary on the financial crisis and it also won an Academy award.  It should also make your blood boil and then bubble over considering business as usual is still going on.  The conflicts of interest alone exposed in this film will stun you  In short it's a must see and if you have watched it already, well, see it again.

 

Will the S&P Fraud Case Be Just Another Wrist Slap for Financial Alchemy?

The Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against Standard and Poor's for fraud.  Will the DOJ finally nail credit rating agency Standards and Poor's for slapping AAA ratings on rigged CDOs backed by mortgage toxic waste?   Or will justice be just another slap on the wrist?

They Got Away With It

dojlogoIt there was ever a message from our government, it's this. If someone has enough money and power, they can get away with anything. There will be no consequence and no punishment for the rich and powerful.

Once again, Goldman Sachs gets completely away with it. The Department of Justice, closed the books on pursuing Goldman Sachs. Now this is most interesting, you cannot find the statement, press release, nothing on the DOJ website or anywhere. Some claim the DOJ statement is in Goldman Sachs 10-Q, but no, not there either.

About the only place you can get the DOJ statement, it appears, is ABC News, second hand and not directly uploaded.

Based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report.”

The Copious Copula Blame Game

Seems the infamous mathematical probability distribution function, the Gaussian Copula, is at the forefront of controversy once again. It seems those financial engineers, the Quants, the ones who use advanced probability and statistics to model financial markets, upon whose work many derivatives are based, knew the use of Gaussian Copulas was fundamentally flawed.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Build Up Post Economic Armageddon

Remember those time bombs called derivatives which threatened to economically blow up the world in 2008? Not only were they never really regulated, they are back with a vengeance. A new report, by the Comptroller of the Currency, on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities, Q2 2011, shows derivatives have increased 11.6% from one year ago to a U.S. holdings of $249 trillion dollars.

Five large commercial banks represent 96% of the total banking industry notional amounts and 86% of industry net current credit exposure.

According to DealBook, those banks are, pretty much the same banks who were given massive bail outs via TARP. BoA especially is already in trouble due to their Countrywide holdings. 99% of all derivatives are held by just 25 banks.

The nation’s four biggest banks — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs — are the biggest players, holding roughly 95 percent of the industry’s total exposure to derivatives. JPMorgan, which holds the most among commercial banks, carries some $78 trillion worth of derivatives on its books, according to the report. Citi is next on the list, with $56 trillion, up from $54 trillion in the first quarter.

Seeking Alpha has a good explanation of how the actual loss risks are much less than the frightening $249 trillion dollar amount.

Yet, the OCC report still shows a huge financial risk associated with derivatives:

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