David Einhorn delivered a speech at the 2009 Value Investing Conference that is creating a lot of buzz in the blogosphere. He said a lot of interesting things about the investing and political climate.  A surprising amount of it comes out of the playbook here at Credit Writedowns.
Below are the quotes I want to highlight [...]

The title of this post is somewhat misleading – designed to be provocative to get you to read what I have to say. Indeed, I am going to defend Goldman Sach’s right to pay what it likes to its employees. But, I am also going to defend your right to be outraged and to look [...]

In what looks to be a central line of attack in the quest to re-balance the global economy, the Treasury Department has ratcheted up the rhetoric against China’s currency peg. The Treasury’s semiannual report to Congress slammed the Chinese for their lack of exchange rate ‘flexibility,’ but stopped well short of accusing the Chinese of [...]

In one of my latest posts I said “greed is not good.” Quite frankly, I looked at this statement as self-evident in the wake of an economic catastrophe where greed was a defining element.  Yet, a remarkable number of people commented in defense of greed; they seem to believe greed is a good thing. So, [...]

Below is a YouTube clip featuring Elizabeth Warren, the chair of Congress’ oversight panel of TARP (the Troubled Asset relief Program), the bailout started by Hank Paulson and passed by Congress.  In it she talks about her fears regarding the lack of real regulatory reform in the world of finance and how this is setting [...]

In the 1987 movie classic Wall Street, the sinister protagonist Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas gives this famous quote:

In the last seven deals that I’ve been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.

Since that time, this quote has become famous as the “Greed is Good” philosophy of capitalism.

Earlier today I wrote a post featuring comments by Marc Faber as I like to do from time to time.  In this particular case Dr. Faber was waxing prosaically about an eventual bankruptcy of the U.S. government.  His money quote was:
“Next station is when the U.S. government goes bust.”

I love this guy. Quite frankly, the [...]

Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke told us when the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was launched that they were not concerned about the health of our banking system.  In fact, this was not the case. They were concerned about specific institutions and the overall health of the system. The U.S. financial system was much weaker [...]

The following is my translation of a much-discussed article that appeared in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet at the weekend.  This information was being withheld from the public and leaked at an inopportune moment.
Note that the Swedish government has secretly been preparing the banks for financial Armageddon, encouraging Swedbank into a rights issue which arguably was [...]

I have been very interested in the concept of legal tender of late because of the revelation this summer that the State of California was issuing I.O.U.’s to honour its debts instead of paying in U.S. Dollars, which are legal tender and I.O.U.’s from the U.S. government (see posts here and here). What I found [...]