THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:
While it’s the latest new thing to vilify public employees and their pensions, this little known and understood threat is doing just as much damage:
In 2002 a little-known but powerful state agency in California and Wall Street titans Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Ambac consummated one of the biggest deals to date involving … an “interest rate swap.” A year later the executive director of the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Steve Heminger, proudly described these historic deals to a visiting contingent of Atlanta policymakers as a model to be emulated.
Because of the economic collapse, and the decline of interest rates in 2008 to virtually zero, the MTA has been forced to pay the amazing sum of $658 million in net swap payments so far.
Lowering interest rates to zero isn’t Fed policy, it’s Wall Street policy – Ed.
THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:
In other words, 107% of all Overstock shares available for trade were short – a physical impossibility, unless someone was somehow creating artificial supply in the stock.
You can read the actual motion here. Pay attention to pages 14 – 18.
You can see an amazingly accessible discussion about the practice of ‘naked short selling’ and why you should be pissed by the CEO of Overstock.com, here.
JPMorgan Chase & Co said on Thursday that it suffered a $2 billion trading loss from a failed hedging strategy, a disclosure that hit financial stocks and the reputation of the bank and its prominent CEO, Jamie Dimon.
Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.”
The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation.
THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:
Dispatches From The Front 