This is my translation of a Dutch-language article which appeared today in Belgian daily De Tijd. Let’s see if this news is picked up in the U.S.
Citibank Belgium never should have recommended the controversial Lehman Brothers investments to its customers. So states the writ of the Brussels public prosecutor on the case.
The collapse of Lehman [...]

Bankruptcy is a necessary part of a free market. I certainly believe this to be so. Rick Newman, who writes the blog “Flow Chart” over at U.S. News, is putting forward the provocative idea that failure is exactly what we needed more of in 2008 and what we should want in 2009.

This is the time of year when everyone tends to look back and sum up the year in one way or another. I have been doing much of the same.

In keeping with that theme, I have taken a good look through my nearly 1400 posts to get a better sense of what I got right and what I got wrong and how knowing that can help me going forward. Call it an exercise in intellectual honesty. This exercise has given me a good understanding of where things went wrong in the past year and why.

It may also give me some thoughts as to where we need to go in 2009. Let me share a little of what I learned with you. This is a long but thoughtful post, so take a few minutes. It should be worth it.

On the whole my predictive powers were working pretty well this year. But, I made a few lousy calls and some controversial ones along the way. Below is my view of how the year went, on some of those calls and links to the relevant posts. At the end, I’ll wrap it up with a few thoughts about where that leaves my thinking for 2009.

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 [...]

Just moments ago Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech in which he said the following about Lehman Brother: “there was not enough collateral to support the lending.” This was Bernanke’s response to a question about whether the Fed erred in letting Lehman fail the way it did. I am on record [...]

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers was a credit event which triggered a massive liability to participants in the large and potentially dangerous Credit Default Swaps (CDS) market. This is a market that represents the “weapons of financial mass destruction” label which Warren Buffett gave to the derivatives.
Below, I will attempt to explain, with much [...]

This comes via Credit Fixings.
The auction process to settle Credit Default Swap trades on Lehman Brothers bonds put the value of the debt at 9.75 cents on the dollar. That is much lower than one would have expected (12 cents on the dollar was the expected rate according to Market Beat). While this [...]

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. [...]

The price tag was less than one would have liked, but these are desperate times for sellers of financial assets. Lehman Brothers secured a sale of its crown jewel investment management division for $2.15 billion in a sale to private equity buyers.
When Lehman Brothers first proposed a sale weeks ago while still a solvent [...]

Whenever I wade into a new topic like digital photography, gardening or what have you, I visit the local bookstore and get a “For Dummies” book to guide me. I figure that it’s the best way to get up-to-speed quickly without actually looking like a dummy.
So, for those of you who want the 3-minute [...]