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By now, you know about the much-discussed swaps that Greece used to conceal it’s debt load.  While the amount of debt concealed is low relative to the total, the mere fact that Greece attempted to conceal its true fiscal position is damning in light of revelations in October that the government’s fiscal hole for 2009 [...]

I said: “Here’s my question: when does this affect the Greek sovereign credit rating? That has to be next because the scenario I just scoped out would indeed suggest lower tax revenue and more budgetary pressure. Sure sounds like a death spiral to me.” And now (25 Feb 2010) S&P is saying, indeed , they may downgrade the sovereign debt next month.

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I referenced Matt Taibbi’s latest work at Rolling Stone “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle” recently when talking about a movie on Ponzi schemes and fraud that aired on 60 Minutes. I liked the piece and recommend you read it – fully aware of the awaiting hyperbole Taibbi uses to hype his case.
The interesting bit is Taibbi [...]

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Yves Smith and I received a tip at the weekend from a friend who reads the German press regularly about credit default swaps (CDS) on Greek government debt. Read Yves’ piece based on that article here. Below is mine.
Previously, I had mentioned the CDS exposure of the hapless German Landesbanks (banks owned by the individual [...]

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Apparently, some of the ‘best reforms’ now being instituted in the U.S. to prevent a liquidity crisis in the future include limitations on demand deposits (hat tip Karl Denninger). What financial institutions are trying to prevent is a bank run in whatever form it can take – via depositors in the case of IndyMac and [...]

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In the wake of the most recent Matt Taibbi polemic “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle,” I think the video below about financial fraud is appropriate viewing. I liked the Taibbi piece – although it certainly had a certain over-the-top gonzo feel to it which Taibbi’s detractors use to discredit his work. However, Taibbi was very much [...]

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Marshall Auerback warns that unchecked speculation and fraud are threatening the European Monetary Union.
Marshall Auerback here with a post which I originally published at New Deal 2.0
Surprise, surprise: Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece, Spain, Portugal, and undermined the euro by [...]

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Source
Banking Compensation – St. Louis Fed

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There are a lot of interlocking threads in the Greek saga. One consistent theme that ties all of the different threads together is the fragility of complex systems. In our globalized and complex world of finance and banking, every major actor has  innumerable ties to other major actors such that devastating collapses in one entity [...]

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President Obama made a couple of comments in an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek that, while potentially true, point yet again to someone out of touch with populist rage in America.  It seems that Obama is still courting big business, especially Wall Street, after Republicans have said they are going after Wall Street money in the [...]