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Many will suffer at the hands of Lehman Brothers. That is the verdict by white-shoe law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz – a firm I had the pleasure of working with during my previous life in finance. They are very good. Apparently, the bankruptcy laws will not be a protection for [...]

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For those of you concerned about the Fed’s risky behavior, its ballooning balance sheet, and its acceptance of dodgy collateral, well you may be about to see whether the American democracy can allow this unchecked power to continue without oversight. Bloomberg News has sued the Federal Reserve to force them to reveal what kind [...]

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According to the Times of London, that’s what Lehman’s creditors seem to suggest in Lehman’s bankruptcy filings. Apparently, JP Morgan cut Lehman off the night before it filed for bankruptcy and creditors are blaming this action for Lehman Brothers failure.
RUUUBBISH! I don’t buy it one bit — Lehman was bankrupt all on its own. [...]

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This is big news from Clive Crook at the Financial Times.

The response in the U.S. to startling new allegations that the White House directed the forgery of evidence to support its case for the war in Iraq has been surprisingly muted so far. The charges may be false, of course, but if they [...]

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When we have a major economic dislocation, there is always some aspect of criminal behavior involved. As a result, the governmental authorities look for specific companies and individuals to use as scapegoats for all of the ills of the economy. After the tech bubble crashed in 2000, Enron and Ken Lay quickly became [...]

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The auction rate securities lawsuit bonanza is the gift that keeps giving for litigation attorneys. Bank Of America is the latest bank to be caught up in this dance.
Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. commercial bank, said Thursday that it has received subpoenas and requests for information from federal and state government agencies [...]

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Remember how the impartial accountancies lost their way during the tech bubble? The most egregious case was Arthur Andersen’s wrongdoings at Enron, which eventually bankrupted both Enron and Arthur Anderson.
Well in this particular crisis it looks like the rating agencies are getting ready to take it on the chin. The state of [...]

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The lawsuits are piling up. America is a very litigious country and when things go wrong people sue. That’s one reason one should realistically expect the courts to be clogged with all manner of suits on bond insurance, auction rate securities, CDOs, predatory lending, and on and on. The latest in this [...]

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America’s security concerns due to terrorism are having unwanted side effects in relations with the EU. Handelsblatt, the German newspaper is reporting that visa requirements for some EU citizens is causing the EU to retaliate with visa requirements of its own for U.S. diplomats.
The U.S. has definitely become more stringent since 9/11 regarding foreigners. [...]

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As the downturn gathers steam, lawsuits against financial firms are going to rise. Below is the latest in lawsuits. The associated WSJ article is available only to subscribers.

New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is preparing to file civil securities-fraud charges against UBS The Wall Street Journal reported.
The suit, which reportedly may [...]