derivatives

by John Mauldin They Knew What They Were Selling It's hard to know where to start. There is just so much here. So let's begin with testimony from Mr. Richard Bowen, former senior vice-president and business chief underwriter with…

Last June I wrote a post on the topic of corporate governance that pointed to one of only two outcomes as the likely result of the bank bailouts. Outcome number one was bank prudence and low credit growth in the face of uncertainty. Outcome…

This is a cross-post from the new economic blog Global Economic Intersection. Ratings agencies have been criticized for inadequately determining risk in the massive collection of debt securities created in the credit bubble.  A second…

Felix Salmon is right.  This is going to be a big, big problem for the financial institutions. A group of investors holding $16.5 billion of mortgage bonds took a step toward a possible suit against a Bank of America Corp unit for…

In the wake of Felix Salmon's investigative reporting on how mortgage backed securities were put together with problematic loans, an increasing amount of focus has turned to the banks' liability to investors. In the video below, Josh Rosner…

by L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Research Director with the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability and Senior Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute. We have long known…

I haven't been writing about the foreclosure documentation crisis because I have been more focused on the 'currency war'. But I want to flag  three posts I wrote about this time last year on the mortgage and securitization market…

by Annaly Capital Management Today Mike Farrell appeared as a panel participant at a House Financial Services Committee entitled The Future of Housing Finance – A Review of Proposals to Address Market Structure and Transition.  The…

Michael Burry, the former head of Scion Capital LLC, made a big name predicting the housing market’s decline by taking short positions against it as lionized in Michael Lewis’ book "The Big Short."

No wonder Goldman has resisted derivatives regulation so fiercely. A huge percentage of the firm's revenue comes from these activities (hat tip R.W.). The Wall Street Journal is reporting that as much as a third of the firm's revenue came…