Monetary System

He as remanded to prison immediately. Now he awaits sentencing.

Read it at Alphaville: Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services today lowered its long-term ratings on General Electric Co. (GE) and units, including General Electric Capital Corp. (GECC), by one notch to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’. We affirmed the…

From Justin Fox of Time Magazine:   FDIC chairman Sheila Bair doesn't think a full government takeover of Citigroup and other multinational financial institutions is practical or even possible. Here are her reasons, as summarized by…

Don Kohn's testimony before the Senate Banking committee was so outrageous that I feel compelled to re-post the first paragraphs of this article from Willem Buiter about the moral hazard it represents. Basically, the U.S. government…

Since Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in September, the capital markets have been all but shut to large banks globally. Investors were spooked by the evisceration at Lehman, Washington Mutual and Wachovia to name but a few cases of near…

Beim was a Professor back when I was at Columbia, although I don't remember being in any of classes. Before he was a Professor, he worked as an Investment Banker at First Boston and Dillon Read, two white shoe firms that are now defunct,…

Oppenheimer has a research note out today that calls Tim Geithner an "evil genius." The genius moniker comes from the steady creep up the capital structure, giving Geithner access to huge pools of money as the Treasury dials for dollars.…

Banks do not have enough tangible common equity to make the grade on Tim Geithner's stress tests. That means the government will have to step in and bail them out. I will call this creeping nationalization. Paul Miller of FBR Capital…

A massive $61.7 billion loss for AIG - that is the quarterly loss for the insurance giant, a record for the world. That comes to a loss of $465 $465,000 every minute of every day in that quarter. The full-year loss comes in over $100…

This is in via Reuters: American International Group Inc is close to a deal with the U.S. government that would ease the terms of its bailout, provide a further equity commitment and help it pay down debt, a person familiar with the matter…