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Here is a good video from Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch explaining the mechanics of the now infamous Lehman Brothers 105 transactions.
One or two tidbits, first. Even though Hirsch mentions Lehman undertook these transactions to pretty itself up during the credit crisis, evidence shows they had been doing these sale Repo agreements since 2001.  [...]

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Lehman

Lehman Whistle-Blower’s Fate: Fired – WSJ.com
Blogs Beat the Press on the Lehman Brothers Scandal : CJR
ABN Amro hielp Lehman bij manipulatie – Het Financieele Dagblad
Dealbook Column – At Lehman, Watchdogs Saw It All – NYTimes.com
Lehman’s Repo 105: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know – MarketBeat – WSJ

Financial News

Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis: Misconceptions [...]

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This is a post by Edward Hugh, who also blogs at Global Economy Matters.

“If you don’t fully understand an instrument, don’t buy it.”
To the above advice from Emilio Botín, Executive Chairman of Spain’s Grupo Santander, I would simply add one small rider: Don’t sell it either, especially if you are a national government trying to [...]

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Employees of US states and cities have much better pension plans than do Average Americans and this is creating some serious budgetary problems, one reason to be very careful in assessing municipal bonds, particularly general revenue ones.
A recent FT article puts some numbers on this problem:
The US public pension system faces a higher-than-expected shortfall of [...]

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While many companies can use the huge increase in market returns to mask a looming pension crisis, the problem is still acute. Because of actuarial accounting, pension funding problems are pro-cyclical.  Companies look flush with cash during upswings to the point where the pensions can actually goose earnings.  During downswings, this process works in reverse.
When [...]

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Credit Writedowns has made it clear how little will there is in Washington for substantive reform in financial services.  But, let’s be more explicit in this post about what policy makers are doing.  I will use the recent Citigroup TARP brouhaha and changes to the implementation timetable of accounting rules as the vehicle for this [...]

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The Washington Post is reporting that the federal government has quietly decided to exempt Citigroup from a large future tax bill in allowing it to exit the TARP program.  This is a backdoor bailout worth billions and is an outrage that demonstrates the lengths to which government will go to gift these organizations taxpayer money.
At [...]

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When I read Yves Smith’s recent comments on Bank of America’s repayment of its TARP funds, I couldn’t help but think of a post I wrote six months ago called "Asymmetric information and corporate governance in bank bailouts." The gist is of the post is about the same as Yves’ and it was inspired by [...]

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My post title is an ode to Yves Smith, who likes to feign surprise when the blindingly obvious finally comes into plain view for all to see. The latest sign that underneath the surface weakness remains at large financial institutions comes courtesy of Standard & Poors. According to the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, S&P believes many [...]

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This is a pretty wonkish post but I hope you appreciate the concepts presented.
I made some allusions to modern monetary theory in a recent post when I asked, “If the U.S. stopped issuing treasuries, would it go broke?” The short answer is no. But that still leaves questions about the inflationary impact of all of [...]