law

Via CNBC: Bernie Madoff, the man who orchestrated the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, is heard on tape in 2005 talking to executives at Fairfield Greenwich about how to get around the SEC. Ron Geffner, a former SEC enforcement…

Below is a copy of the actual judgment in the Bloomberg News vs. Fed FOIA case.  The case is: Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan), No.…

Thank goodness someone has some sense. Manhattan Federal District Court Judge Jed Rakoff refused to approve Monday’s Bank of America’s deal with the SEC be cause it may be unfair to the public to accept the settlement. Bank of America was…

Bank of America’s story in the BofA-Merrill saga has always sounded dubious at best.  Ken Lewis has always claimed he was doing what was right by shareholders and America, that Gentle Ben and Hammering Hank coerced him into the Merrill…

Back in the 1970s, a Japanese car would be laughed off the road in America as a cheap poor man’s vehicle. But thins changed. Remember the Datsun 240Z? That was a car that showed us the Japanese were for real.  Datsun became Nissan and…

Reuters is reporting that the ratings agencies are about to get into some serious legal problems.  You see,during the bubble years, the ratings agencies gave a gold-standard AAA rating to what now seems to be dubious investment…

I listened to the first day of the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings for a spot as a US Supreme Court justice. I was very impressed.  The three who impressed me the most were Al Franken (D-MN), Arlen Specter (D-PA), and Sotomayor…

It is refreshing to read the foreign press because they have decidedly different takes on issues.Whether you agree or not, it is important to hear those views. The Swiss are very negative on the U.S. and their tax fight against UBS. This…

The video linked below is a must-see piece of journalistic skepticism. The duo at Bloomberg News are discussing the recent alleged theft of trading code by a former Goldman employee Sergey Aleynikov who moved to a hedge fund called Citadel…

This comes via the Sydney Morning Herald: A year ago, after Stern Hu had survived 20-odd rounds of negotiations and won Rio Tinto and Australia an extraordinary 87 per cent price increase for its iron ore contracts, I asked him if he…