A major Wall Street firm is accused of misleading clients by concealing key conflicts of interest. E-mails suggest that an employee touted its wares in public while slamming them in private. The scandal is front-page news, and observers anticipate severe damage to the firm’s reputation. We could be talking about Goldman Sachs today. But we could also be talking about Citigroup or Merrill Lynch in 2002, after the tech bubble burst. Then there was widespread anger at banks’ dodgy practices and reckless behavior, and an insistence that investors and regulators needed to be more vigilant. So why are we going through this all over again?
In the middle of the past decade, it seemed as if Americans thought that Wall Street could do no wrong. But just a couple of years earlier people thought that Wall Street could do nothing right. High-profile analysts had put “buy” ratings on the stocks of companies that they privately called “pigs.” WorldCom and Enron committed outrageous accounting fraud, the latter abetted by the venerable Arthur Andersen. There was so much bad behavior that it was hard to keep track—I.P.O. spinning, mutual-fund late trading, Adelphia, Tyco. There was shock that companies whose viability depended on reputation had so casually exploited their clients, and a sense that it would take a long time for the banks to win back trust.
Veteran regulator believes Lehman Brothers is a case of fraud and believes the Feds need to bring charges.
But, more than that, Black hones in one the mortgage fraud which underlies much of the speculative fervour in the market by citing the 60% of GSE eligible Citi loans which Citigroup executives indicated did not conform to Freddie and Fannie’s standards.
Very short interview. I would like to have heard more.
Update: Below Black goes into some detail in his later testimony before Congress. Good stuff.
This analysis from the Wall Street Journal indicates that most of the big US Banks are engaging in the same kind of repo accounting at the end of the quarter that Lehman Brothers was doing to hide their financial instability until deteriorating credit conditions and liquidity problems made them precipitously collapse, as all ponzi schemes and financial frauds do when the truth becomes known.
The basic exercise is to hold big leverage and dodgy debt, but swap it off your books with the Fed at the end of each quarter for a short period of time when you have to report your holdings.
This could easily be corrected by requiring banks to report four week averages of their holdings for example, rather than a snapshot when they can hide their true risk profiles so easily, compliments of that protector of consumers and investors, the Fed.
This is nothing new to us. Many of us have noted this sort of accounting trickery and market manipulation at key events especially at end of quarter.
It is facilitated by the Federal Reserve, and FASB, and the agencies.
"Their Fraud doth rarely falter, and is subsidized, instead, for none dare call it bank fraud, if it’s sanctioned by the Fed." (apologies to Ovid)
The US is Lehman Brothers on a scale writ large. And when it is exposed by some series of events, the implosion could be more sudden than any can imagine. But in the meantime the US is still the ‘superpower’ of the world’s financial system, through its currency, its banks, and its ratings agencies.
Quarter-End Loan Figures Sit 42% Below Peak, Then Rise as New Period Progresses; SEC Review
Major banks have masked their risk levels in the past five quarters by temporarily lowering their debt just before reporting it to the public, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
As if TheStreet.com didn’t already have enough troubles with the SEC investigating their accounting, another Street veteran Doug Kass joins the pile fools who have tried to make prophetic claims regarding the stock market. (Nouriel Roubini is still my favorite.)
On August 26, 2009, Kass authoritatively proclaimed, “Markets top during times of enthusiasm. I believe that the markets are now overshooting to the upside and that the U.S. stock market has likely peaked for the year.”
Prince Alwaleed has given Vikram Pandit one year to shape up or else.
I wonder what sharia has to say about investing like a doofus, throwing more money on a losing position, and then expecting common taxpayers to bail you out.
"Last week, Alwaleed boosted Kingdom Holding’s balance sheet by transferring $600 million worth of his own Citi shares onto its balance sheet. Shares of the investment group — of which Alwaleed is a 95% owner — have lost about half their value since 2007 and it’s had capital losses of 65% as of the end of the third quarter. The transfer of Alwaleed’s Citi shares should help secure its borrowing capacity, and it also means that the Citi shares aren’t going to be sold anytime soon." Citi and Its Princely Problem
It appears as though the Prince’s investment empire is on shaky ground.
No wonder Vikram Pandit has been noticeably absent from such recent, unimportant meetings like those with the President and the Congress.
Business Standard India Perform or perish, Saudi Prince tells Vikram Pandit Washington January 16, 2010, 14:05 IST
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is a major shareholder in the Citigroup, has told the bank’s Indian-American CEO Vikram Pandit that his two-year honeymoon is now over and 2010 is a make or break year for him.
"I don’t threaten those CEOs that I meet but I told him (Vikram Pandit) that the market gave you two years’ leeway, but I think now it’s time to deliver and 2010 for him is really the year to make it or break it and he has to deliver," Alwaleed said in an interview.
Alwaleed had recently met with Pandit and he had told him that he must deliver solid results in 2010.
"It’s very important… For the shareholders that have been very patient with Citibank that the honeymoon is over now; two years is enough and I think he will deliver in 2010," Alwaleed said.
At the interview, the Saudi Prince also acknowledged that China is an economic power and eventually, it would translate that into political power.
"China is a rising power. For sure now, China is amassing huge power economically, financially, not yet politically, but I think eventually it is
Can Citigroup survive without a government safety net? Some analysts aren’t sure.
On Monday, Citigroup said it had worked out a deal to repay $20 billion in government bailout money and terminate a loss-sharing agreement the bank had with the government for Citi’s riskiest assets. Citi CEO Vickram Pandit said the moves were signs that his company was returning to financial health. The deal would also remove much of the government’s pay restrictions on the bank. "These actions move us closer to ending a very difficult period for our company," wrote Pandit in an internal memo to Citi employees.
But analysts say Citi’s rush to repay the assistance it got through the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) will make the bank weaker, not stronger. The move will reduce Citi’s capital ratios and hurt earnings; it may also accelerate a retreat of foreign investors from the company’s shares. Worse, the government is demanding stricter terms from Citi than it did from Bank of America on the repayment deal it struck just a week ago. The different treatment shows that the government remains more concerned about Citi’s finances than those of its rivals.
Veteran analyst Richard Bove of Rochdale Securities, who had been recommending Citi’s shares since the summer, downgraded the stock on news that it was going to repay TARP from a "buy" to a "sell" rating. "What does it do for the company? Management can increase [executive] salaries," says Bove, referring to the fact that Citi will now be free of the government’s compensation rules. "What else? Nothing."
Indeed, Citi’s shares fell on the news that it was repaying TARP, down $0.27, or nearly 7%, to $3.68 a share.
Citi’s deal to pay back the government was reportedly hashed out over a week’s worth of marathon negotiations following Bank of America’s repayment last week of $45 billion in government assistance. Citi did not want to be one of the few remaining big banks still using the government’s crutch.
Citi’s effort to repay the government will remove some of the stigma surrounding the firm that has evolved since the start of the financial crisis. Treasury officials say Citi will no longer be considered one of the companies that have received "exceptional assistance" from the government. That means pay czar Kenneth Feinberg…
Bloomberg reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Street firms. Bloomberg adds that none of these aides faced Senate confirmation. Yet, they are overseeing the handout of hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to their former employers.
The gifts of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money provided the banks with an abundance of low cost capital that has boosted the banks’ profits, while the taxpayers who provided the capital are increasingly unemployed and homeless.
JPMorgan Chase announced that it has earned $3.6 billion in the third quarter of this year.
Goldman Sachs has made so much money during this year of economic crisis that enormous bonuses are in the works. The London Evening Standard reports that Goldman Sachs’ “5,500 London staff can look forward to record average payouts of around 500,000 pounds ($800,000) each. Senior executives will get bonuses of several million pounds each with the highest paid as much as 10 million pounds ($16 million).“
In the event the banksters can’t figure out how to enjoy the riches, the Financial Times is offering a new magazine--”How To Spend It.” New York City’s retailers are praying for some of it, suffering a 15.3 per cent vacancy rate on Fifth Avenue. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that retail sales adjusted for inflation have declined to the level of 10 years ago: “Virtually 10 years worth of real retail sales growth has been destroyed in the still unfolding depression.”
Meanwhile, occupants of New York City’s homeless shelters have reached the all time high of 39,000, 16,000 of whom are children.
New York City government is so overwhelmed that it is paying $90 per night per apartment to rent unsold new apartments for the homeless. Desperate, the city government is offering one-way free airline tickets to the homeless if they will leave the city. It is charging rent to shelter residents who have jobs. A single mother earning $800 per month is paying $336 in shelter rent.
Long-term unemployment has become a serious problem across the country, doubling the unemployment rate from the reported 10 per cent to 20 per cent. Now hundreds of thousands more Americans…
In a stealth partial privatization, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) farmed out its mandate of working with single family homeowners in trouble on their mortgages to the industry most responsible for separating people from their savings and creating an unprecedented wealth gap that renders millions unable to pay those mortgages.
What Pam is referring to here is…
In this case, from 2002 to 2005, HUD transferred in excess of $2.4 billion of defaulted mortgages insured by its sibling, the FHA, into the hands of Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns while providing the firms with wide latitude to foreclose, restructure or sell off in bundles to investors.
In other words, this "organization" took in the defaulted notes on property (homes) and then did with it whatever they wanted.
But wait a second – who wrote that paper in the first place? "All roads lead to Lehman", when it comes to subprime, remember? (Incidentally, that’s a big part of why they blew up!)
The ugly, however, is here:
What the program effectively did was allow the biggest retail banks in the country to get accelerated payment on their defaulted, FHA-insured, single family mortgage loans while allowing another set of the biggest investment banks to make huge profits in fees for bundling and selling off the loans as securitizations. Once the loans were securitized (sold off to investors) they were no longer the problem of HUD or the Wall Street bankers. The loans conveniently disappeared from the radar screen and the balance sheet.
Uh, except for one problem – was it disclosed to the buyers that these loans were previously defaulted? Hmmmmm…. not really sure. See, those notes have to be performing to securitize them, but Pam does raise the question as to whether the source of these notes was reasonably disclosed to buyers. Note sales can be profitable for someone, the question is whether everyone buying knows what they’re getting - in this case there’s a dubious "homeowner" who has already demonstrated inability to pay on the end of…
A federal agency tasked with expanding the American dream of home ownership and affordable housing free from discrimination to people of modest means has been quietly moving a chunk of that role to Wall Street since 2002. In a stealth partial privatization, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) farmed out its mandate of working with single family homeowners in trouble on their mortgages to the industry most responsible for separating people from their savings and creating an unprecedented wealth gap that renders millions unable to pay those mortgages. This industry also ranks as one of the most storied industries in terms of race discrimination. Rounding out its dubious housing credentials, Wall Street is now on life support courtesy of the public purse known as TARP as a result of issuing trillions of dollars in miss-rated housing bonds and housing-related derivatives, many of which were nothing more than algorithmic concepts wrapped in a high priced legal opinion. It’s difficult to imagine a more problematic resume for the new housing czars.
To what degree this surreptitious program has contributed to putting children and families out on the street during one of the worst economic slumps since the ’30s should be on a Congressional short list for investigation. HUD’s demand for confidentiality from all bidders and announcement of winning bids to parties known only as “the winning bidder” deserves its own investigation in terms of obfuscating the public’s right to know and the ability of the press to properly fulfill its function in a free society.
Despite three days of emails and phone calls to HUD officials, they have refused to provide the names of the winning bidders or the firms that teamed as co-bidders with the winning party. Obtaining this information independently has been akin to extracting a painful splinter wearing a blindfold and oven mitts.
That a taxpayer-supported Federal agency conducts a competitive bid program of over $2 billion and then refuses to announce the names of the winning bidders is beyond contempt for the American people. If the…
The FDIC is struggling mightily to stay solvent. Given that there are bank failures every Friday, it’s no easy feat for the FDIC to stay ahead of the game.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s plan to rebuild its reserves may cost Bank of America Corp. and three of the largest U.S. banks more than $10 billion.
Bank of America, the biggest U.S. lender by deposits, may owe $3.5 billion under an FDIC proposal that banks prepay three years of premiums, based on the lowest assessment rate multiplied by the bank’s $900 billion in June 30 U.S. deposits.
“This seems like a very hefty amount,” said Tim Yeager, a finance professor at the University of Arkansas and former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “The FDIC’s projections of future losses are pretty severe, and they are trying everything they can to avoid tapping the Treasury.”
U.S. bank premiums range from 12 cents per $100 in deposits for the safest lenders to 45 cents for banks the U.S. considers risky, said Chris Cole, senior regulatory counsel for the Independent Community Bankers of America. The FDIC yesterday proposed asking banks to pay premiums for the fourth quarter and next three years on Dec. 30. The fees will raise $45 billion.
Based on the current assessment and each bank’s deposits, Wells Fargo & Co.’s fee may be $3.2 billion based on its $814 billion in deposits, JPMorgan Chase & Co. may pay $2.4 billion and Citigroup Inc. $1.2 billion. The estimates exclude the FDIC’s plan to boost the assessment rate by 3 cents per $100 in deposits in 2011 or the agency’s assumption that bank deposits will increase by 5 percent annually.
Although that is a realistically correct headline (Please see You Know The Banking System Is Unsound When…. for a justification), I did overlook things FDIC did to temporarily stay in the game.
Prepaid fees is yet another attempt to keep the game going. How much longer this can last is anyone’s guess. Those prepaid fees are going to hurt bank earnings 100%
Improvement in first time unemployment claims is slowing. Actual, not seasonally manipulated data, including an adjustment for the usual weekly upward revision, shows that the year to year rate of change is on the cusp of a possible upside breakout, which would be good news for stock market bears if it happens.
Initial Unemployment Claims Chart- Click to enlarge
Here’s why it’s mind blowing. I’ve plotted it below on an inverse scale with the S&P 500 overlaid.
Unemployemt Claims and Stock Prices - Click to enlarge
Major US Markets including (NYSEARCA:DIA), (NYSEARCA:SPY), (NASDAQ:QQQ), and (NYSEARCA:IWM) dropped over 3% each on Italian bond fears and an increased worry that Europe will not be able to bail out its 4th largest economy. Furthermore, the iShares MCSI Italy Fund (NYSEARCA:EWI) wiped out over 9% today, further illustrating the dire situation in Italy and the European Union: ...
The second economic disappointment of the day comes from the Dallas Fed, which dropped from -2.0 to -11.4 on expectations of -9.0- this was the 4th consecutive negative print month. The report was, in a word, horrible, with just 2 of the 15 constituent indices posting an increase, and the bulk solidly in the red, led by Unfilled and New Orders which dropped 16.8 and 11.2, respectively: not good for economic growth. On the employment side there was nothing good either, with both employment and hours worked declining by -...
Bloomberg reports that Diana Containerships (NASDAQ: DCIX) files to offer stock up to $172.5M. Diana Containerships says that Diana shipping will also buy $20M of stock.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...
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February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.
Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011
 
Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...
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As if TheStreet.com didn’t already have enough troubles with the SEC investigating their accounting, another Street veteran Doug Kass joins the pile fools who have tried to make prophetic claims regarding the stock market. (Nouriel Roubini is still my favorite.)
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Long-term unemployment has become a serious problem across the country, doubling the unemployment rate from the reported 10 per cent to 20 per cent. Now hundreds of thousands more Americans…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(