I just came across a post on Zero Hedge called “An Overview Of The Fed’s Intervention In Equity Markets Via The Primary Dealer Credit Facility.” Now, that’s a mouthful. As far as I can discern, the post’s purpose is to expose alleged equities market manipulation by the Federal Reserve. However, I found the argument rather [...]

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 [...]

Ireland has made heroic strides in trying to deal with its economic problem after a spectacular property bust. But it is looking increasingly like it will not be enough. According to a senior Irish minister, the next stop for Ireland could be the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout.
The crisis has been building for [...]

Marshall Auerback here.  I want to add a few thoughts on the situation in Latvia which Ed has highlighted on several occasions. His allusion to Argentina to describe the situation in the Baltics last July was on the money. I have a solution here out of the Argentine playbook.
In Latvia, the neo-liberal insanity continues.  The [...]

The banks have been the ones benefitting most from free money via the Federal Government and U.S. taxpayers.  Given 9.8% base unemployment and 17.0% comprehensive unemployment, it is a bit galling for ordinary Americans that these same institutions are making record profits and poised to hand out record bonuses. Detroit is one of the hardest [...]

A friend sent me the following article from USA Today:
The U.S. taxpayers’ investments in smaller banks are increasingly at risk.
In a sign that more banks are under great pressure from the recession, 34 financial institutions did not pay their quarterly dividends in August to the Treasury on funds obtained under the Troubled Asset Relief Fund [...]

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 [...]

Bloomberg News editor-in-chief Matt Winkler wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday explaining why he is after the Federal Reserve to come clean about it’s secret lending program during the height of the financial crisis.
Bloomberg has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Reserve to force the Fed to reveal the name of the [...]