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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 [...]

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Marshall Auerback here with a post which I originally co-wrote at New Deal 2.0 with Randall Wray.
In recent weeks, there has been much discussion about what to do about Greece. These questions become all the more relevant as the country attempts to float a multibillion-euro bond issue later this week. The Financial Times has called [...]

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In another blow to a quick resolution of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, reports are surfacing that multiple banks may have arranged swap contracts with Greece to hide their fiscal shortfalls. Bloomberg is now reporting that up to fifteen banks may be involved.
The debt concealment story started two weeks ago when news of swap contracts [...]

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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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This post originally appeared at Global Economy Matters.
The Eurozone’s current problems are not mainly a result a of profligate and reckless spending of government resources in the Eurozone periphery [1]. Even Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has begun to forcefully push this argument arguing that the real source of the malaise is the steady build up [...]

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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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One of the larger problems in the unfolding meltdown in Greece is the fraud apparently perpetrated by past Greek governments to conceal their true levels of debt. This is having a very adverse effect on Greek credit spreads to (German) Bunds. 
10-year Greek bonds are trading at 6.67%, while German 10-years are at 3.14%, a [...]

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In the lead-up to the credit crisis, I really didn’t write a considerable amount about second mortgages despite my focus on credit writedowns. At that time, I was more focused on writedowns from securitized mortgage paper (and later construction loans and commercial real estate because of the stress these loan types put on regional financials). [...]

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This is a great graphic showing the money and asset flows in the AIG bailout that makes it far easier to understand why people are calling the AIG bailout a backdoor bailout of AIG’s counterparties.  Take a look.

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CHART OF THE DAY: How The AIG Bailout REALLY Worked – Clusterstock

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The video is pretty all-encompassing and runs just under 30 minutes. Buffett is down on Kraft-Cadbury, raising rates and the bank tax. He is up on Wells Fargo. That sums it up pretty well.
 

 
Quotes
On Wells:
Well, my guess is that the revenue and all of that is more or less like I expected.  I mean, Wells, [...]