Tonight on PBS, Frontline airs a new investigative report entitled The Warning (sneak peaks 1 & 2), which profiles Brooksley Born, who (as head of the CFTC from '96-'99) was almost alone among regulators in warning of the potential dangers of derivatives.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 on Oct 20, 2009 - 34 comments

Last week the House Committee on Financial Services approved legislation to regulate derivatives. Some critics contend that the legislation does not go far enough, and there is fear that there are too many exemptions to the rules: reforming the $42 trillion market for credit swaps is crucial if taxpayers are to be protected from future rescues of institutions deemed not only too big but also too interconnected to fail. [more inside]
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 on Oct 18, 2009 - 25 comments

Wall Street's Version of Flip This House. How private-equity ran Simmons to the ground.
posted by reformedjerk on Oct 5, 2009 - 40 comments

Madness is doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (SLBP)
posted by vivelame on Jul 9, 2009 - 29 comments

“One of the traditional notions of punishment is that an offender should be punished in proportion to his blameworthiness. Here, the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil.”

The 71-year-old man behind the biggest Wall Street fraud in history is sentenced to a maximum of 150 years in prison. [more inside]
posted by up in the old hotel on Jun 29, 2009 - 158 comments

Meet financial advisor Mike Morgan. He started an anti-Goldman Sachs website to examine "what part Goldman Sachs and their executives played in the current Global Economic Crisis." The investment bank and its lawyers told him to cease and desist. So Morgan sued Goldman (pdf). The response has been overwhelming. Morgan is now organizing volunteers to go after the other banksters. Want to help? There's a webinar scheduled tonight.
posted by up in the old hotel on Apr 15, 2009 - 40 comments

Obama administration seeks to avoid restrictions, including limits on pay "They are basically trying to launder the money to avoid complying with the plain language of the law," said David Zaring, a former Justice Department attorney who defended the government from lawsuits involving related legal issues. "They are trying to create a loophole to ignore Congress, and I think the courts will think that it's ridiculous." [more inside]
posted by Kirth Gerson on Apr 4, 2009 - 77 comments

My Manhattan Project: How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street. [print version]
posted by blasdelf on Mar 30, 2009 - 34 comments

Matt Taibbifilter: Among other things, the GAO report noted that the entire OTS had only one insurance specialist on staff — and this despite the fact that it was the primary regulator for the world's largest insurer! This week's MeFi stories have generally failed to explain the reasoning that caused the recession, even though Jon Stewart was basically on the mark. Now, Rolling Stone's only reporter lays it all out The Big Takeover, a typical combination of zealous snark and the overlooked, damning facts needed to clear up a ridiculously complicated story.
posted by shii on Mar 20, 2009 - 111 comments

Washington Post reports that the American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year. The payments to A.I.G.’s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses.
posted by dejah420 on Mar 14, 2009 - 93 comments

They are known as “quants” because they do quantitative finance. Seduced by a vision of mathematical elegance underlying some of the messiest of human activities, they apply skills they once hoped to use to untangle string theory or the nervous system to making money. "They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street." [spoiler inside] [more inside]
posted by dersins on Mar 10, 2009 - 38 comments

Newsweek discusses Obama's "War on the Rich," a timely story, considering Bloomberg's recent christening of the "Obama Bear Market." And on a tangential note, TPM points out that those bankruptcy law reforms enacted under the Bush administration specifically included new provisions aggressively lobbied for by the "International Swaps and Derivatives Association," which were designed to protect the derivatives and swap industries. Yet another example of good timing. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman on Mar 6, 2009 - 58 comments

The wall street brain drain defense. Executive pay has been capped at 500k a year for companies bailed out by the government. Some argue it will lead to a brain drain on wall street. Some say it won't matter. In any event, can the bankers even live on 500k a year?.
posted by jourman2 on Feb 22, 2009 - 120 comments

Frontline: Inside The Meltdown. Synopsis here. [more inside]
posted by gman on Feb 20, 2009 - 47 comments

Why Wall Street Always Blows It, and why we're always to blame, as told by banished securities analyst Henry Blodget.
posted by SeizeTheDay on Dec 30, 2008 - 37 comments

Credit Suisse is the first bank to use commercial debt to pay employee bonuses this year. Another take on bonuses this year
posted by jourman2 on Dec 18, 2008 - 26 comments

Short selling is basically the practice of selling borrowed shares, with the intention of purchasing them back later at a lower price. It amounts to a placing a bet on the share value dropping, is a favoured move of hedge funds, and has been recently blamed for much of the current economic mayhem. However, when last Sunday Porsche tersely announced that, in addition to its 44% of Volkswagen's shares, it had secured 31% through cash-settled call options, the invisible hand of the market gave those short-sellers an atomic wedgie: Since the German state of Lower Saxony holds just over 20% of VW, Porsche's disclosure meant that, in fact, there were only 5% of VW's shares left on the market, whereas traders were shorting for about 13% of those shares. This set off the "Mother of All Short Squeezes". [more inside]
posted by Skeptic on Oct 29, 2008 - 98 comments

Sad Guys on Trading Floors. (via)
posted by longdaysjourney on Oct 8, 2008 - 54 comments

Jonathan Koppell and William Goetzmann on why Congress should let Wall Street hang for a bit and use the $700 billion to directly refinance homowners' bad mortgages. Fire away, mefites! [more inside]
posted by puckish on Oct 1, 2008 - 84 comments

LOLFed. Doan cry, emo banker! If you hate the latest financial crisis news, but love image macros, then this is the site for you. It's like I Can Has Cheezburger meets the Wall Street Journal.
posted by Asparagirl on Sep 22, 2008 - 61 comments

The Wall Street bailout proposal has prompted Bill Kristol and Paul Krugman to write identically-minded columns opposing the plan.
posted by pjenks on Sep 22, 2008 - 194 comments

With its totemic population (pigmen and gente, riskloves and Old Maid Cards), and idiosyncratic lingo ("Q que aconteceu?") Russ Winter's blog could sometimes be mistaken for a work of speculative fiction, but in fact it's the most compulsive readable financial commentary out there... whether you agree with his massively bleak outlook or not.
posted by unSane on Jul 16, 2008 - 12 comments

The simple phrase "it's different this time" are the four most expensive words in the English language. Sir John Templeton, 1912-2008, we thank you for this lesson and countless others. [more inside]
posted by Mutant on Jul 9, 2008 - 67 comments

The rapid growth of electronic trading since 1976 has benefited equity market participants by improving competition, reducing cost and increasing liquidity while insuring better pricing.

One unexpected side effect has been the recent emergence of "dark pools of liquidity", or the secret stock market. [more inside]
posted by Mutant on May 20, 2008 - 21 comments

Academic discussions of stock markets frequently reference The Efficient Markets Hypothesis; an idea that share prices are fairly valued, their prices reflecting all available information. However folklore such as "Sell in May and go away", which proved prudent in 2007, clashes with this theory. [more inside]
posted by Mutant on May 15, 2008 - 11 comments

Who said anything about a recession? Sometime between the government bailout of Bear Stearns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that America lost 80,000 jobs in March, Lee Tachman, a Wall Street banker, spent roughly $50,000 last month on a four-day jaunt to Miami for himself and three close friends.

“It was just all out — it was insane,” said Mr. Tachman. “I’m not afraid to spend money like that.”
posted by The Jesse Helms on Apr 14, 2008 - 259 comments

Credit Suisse will take a $2.65 billion hit to earnings and post it's first quarterly loss since 2003 due, to no small part, to deliberate mispricing of asset backed securities by several traders operating at all levels of seniority across the 143 year old institution. [more inside]
posted by Mutant on Mar 21, 2008 - 33 comments

While the US equities markets were closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day, stock markets around the world took a nosedive, losing billions in equity; the markets in Australia, South Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Germany, France, the UK, and more countries have dropped at least 5% each (Canada only fell 4.75%), even though most of those markets had already been seriously down for several days prior. India has been hit particularly hard, at one point down a whopping 11%, tripping their markets' automatic "circuit breakers" for a mandatory time-out period, before scraping back up to close at 8% down. US futures markets are currently predicting a 650+ point drop just at the open Tuesday morning, before even a single trade goes through. [more inside]
posted by Asparagirl on Jan 22, 2008 - 306 comments

MeFi's celebration of the Ivy League continues with "The Facebook of Wall Street's Future," a New York Times map of social and professional connections in the tradition of They Rule (previously on Metafilter here, here , here and here). [more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses on Jan 14, 2008 - 25 comments

Bank Intern Busted by Facebook -- Kevin Colvin e-mailed his boss to say that he'd miss work due to what colleagues took to be a 'family emergency.' His boss turned to Facebook and found a photo of Colvin, dressed as a fairy at a Halloween party -- one which he apparently missed work to attend. The boss attached the image to his reply, copying the rest of the office as he did it. An Internet star/meme is born in this 'Age of Global Viral Embarrassment.'
posted by ericb on Nov 13, 2007 - 89 comments

It was twenty years ago today... [more inside]
posted by Mutant on Oct 19, 2007 - 27 comments

At a time when fed-up American citizens are petitioning Congress to end the imprudent financial practices that caused the housing bubble sub-prime mortgage crisis liquidity crisis impending recession -- including the banning of SIV's and refusing any bailouts for Wall Street, banks, or mortgage companies -- the United States Treasury Department has just announced the creation of a giant-mega-ultra SIV called "M-LEC" made up of assets from several of the largest American banks. Already unofficially nicknamed "Sivie Mae" (or worse, "the Frankenstein Fund"), it would be an off-balance-sheet way for these banks to pool and price the ABCP's that they've lately been having trouble pricing and thus selling -- i.e. the liquidity crisis. [more inside]
posted by Asparagirl on Oct 16, 2007 - 82 comments

"I had no idea how my open-handedness could be made to look, after the fact. At the time I bought the subprime portfolio I thought: This is sort of like my way of giving something back. I didn't expect a profile in Philanthropy Today or anything like that. I mean, I bought at a discount. But I thought people would admire the Wall Street big shot who found a way to help the little guy. Sort of like a money doctor helping a sick person. Then the little guy wheels around and gives me this financial enema. And I'm the one who gets crap in the papers!" -- Michael Lewis on the subprime meltdown
posted by GrammarMoses on Sep 8, 2007 - 42 comments

Minsky Meltdown ahead? Named after Hyman Minsky, an economist who was known for his research concerning financial crises, specifically asset bubbles based on credit cycles. [much more inside]
posted by umop-apisdn on Aug 29, 2007 - 75 comments

There are 65,000 contracts @ $750.00 for the SPX 700 calls for open interest. That controls 6.5 million shares at $750 = $4.5 Billion. Not a single trade . But quite a bit of $$ on a contract that is 700 points away from current value. No one would buy that deep in the money calls. No reason to. So if they were sold looks like someone betting on massive dislocation. Lots of very strange option activity that I haven't seen before. I've been doing this about 25 years. The entity or individual offering these sales can only make money if the market drops 30%-50% within the next four weeks. If the market does not drop, the entity or invidual involved stands to lose over $1 billion just for engaging in these contracts! Clearly, someone knows something big is going to happen BEFORE the options expire on Sept. 21.via
posted by Huplescat on Aug 25, 2007 - 119 comments

What's the link between:
1) the quickly-growing number of American homeowners becoming unable to pay their mortgages after their ARM's reset (a trend nicknamed "ARMageddon" -- applicable in the UK too), which is translating into soaring foreclosure rates, and in turn forcing at least 60 US semi-shady mortgage brokers to go belly-up in the past year (i.e. the "subprime meltdown"), and...
2) the recent implosion and impending financial bailout -- which may become the biggest since the Long Term Capital Management fiasco of 1998 -- of two Bear Stearns hedge funds which dealt in mortgage securities? [more inside]
posted by Asparagirl on Jul 11, 2007 - 123 comments

"The great thing about the market is that it has nothing to do with the actual stocks." Jim Cramer--probably most famous for his CNBC show "Mad Money"--comes clean in a TheStreet.com interview about the tactics he used while managing his hedge fund and how he, you know, might influence Apple's stock if he were in the game today. Feathers get ruffled.
posted by quite unimportant on Mar 21, 2007 - 53 comments

It's Wall Street bonus season. And, as Henry Blodget writes, the folks who have "the good fortune of working in a hot industry in a favorable market environment" are doing extremely well this year. Notably, Goldman Sachs is breaking records with a $16.5 billion bonus pool. That is roughly $622,000 per employee but some employees do better than others: "[Goldman CEO] Lloyd Blankfein, for one, will probably earn a measly $50 million (loser), whereas Morgan Sze (big man on campus), head of GS's principal strategies group in Hong Kong will go home with a check around twice that." Anyway, whether you're a $120K secretary or a $100M trader, author Michael Lewis has some some tongue-in-cheek advice for dealing with poorer relations.
posted by blue mustard on Dec 20, 2006 - 46 comments

Elizabeth Spiers, of Gawker fame, has a new site, Dealbreaker, which bills itself as "an online business tabloid and Wall Street gossip blog." Content-free snark, with links to articles of interest to Wall Street fanboys? Oh, Elizabeth, you steal my heart. But, perhaps just mine.
posted by rush on Mar 31, 2006 - 17 comments

Why Skype-eBay was the Worst Kept Secret On Wall Street. The traders on Wall Street knew way before the “tech crowd” that the acquisition was a foregone conclusion by Thursday closing. The leak might have come from a cabbie in New York who overheard the eBay Executives. And you thought they didn’t understand english….
posted by snark9 on Oct 3, 2005 - 14 comments

An unexpected side effect of iTunes. Remember Bowie Bonds? Introduced in 1997, bonds tied to future profits of music artists (besides Bowie, James Brown and the Isley Brothers offered them) tanked with the advent of online filesharing. Thanks to iTunes, some on Wall Street are betting that the Bowie Bond is a concept with a future.
posted by me3dia on Aug 23, 2005 - 16 comments

Big Business As Usual. "In announcing their record settlement with 10 Wall Street firms accused of misleading investors with bogus recommendations, [the Securities and Exchange Commission] also released new e-mail records showing stock experts chortling about how they were making out like bandits at the expense of the average investor", and revealed troubling insights into the way Wall Street really works: "Merrill Lynch initiated coverage of LFMN on September 28, 2000 with a 2-1 [10-20% appreciation forecast short term, 20% appreciation forecast long term], when LFMN traded at $22.69. At that time, Merrill Lynch was pursuing an investment banking relationship with LFMN. After Merrill Lynch initiated research coverage, LFMN's price declined to the....$3-5 range in December. On December 4, 2000, Blodget e-mailed a fellow analyst,'LFMN at $4. I can't believe what a POS [piece of shit] that thing is. Shame on me/us for giving them any benefit of doubt.' Merrill Lynch's research report on LFMN dated December 21, 2000, [reiterates] a 2-1 rating..."
And the "record settlement" with these common swindlers in three piece business suits from our brave SEC? For Wall Street, Fines Are A Day's Pay.
posted by fold_and_mutilate on May 7, 2003 - 23 comments

Space-time continuum abused for financial gain Federal investigators have arrested a Wall Street whizz who made $350 million from an initial investment of just $800 in two weeks. The man has confessed to insider dealing, explaining that he travelled back from the year 2256 in his 'time craft' specifically to make a killing on recorded past stock plunges. The kicker? There's no record of the man's existence prior to December 2002.
posted by skylar on Mar 28, 2003 - 41 comments

"We have a dysfunctional global currency and economic system, in which the whole world is set up to sell to the American consumer." As stocks collapse and banks take hits for their Enron complicity, market skeptics like Prudent Bear's David Tice are getting attention. Bears love ripping into herd euphoria and shady Wall Street practices, but deny any joy when businesses fail. Try the Credit Bubble Bulletin, which points out Enron-style vulnerabilities at institutions like J.P. Morgan, then move to the great 401(k) hoax, the myth of accounting reform and Thailand's so-far successful anti-IMF economic strategy. Things will soon get much worse, promise the investors who sneer at "a fascinating intellectual environment where weak analysis continues to dominate discourse."
posted by mediareport on Jul 30, 2002 - 27 comments

Good! It's "Let's Make Fun Of Wall Street" Day At The Miami Herald! Can it be a coincidence that the two funniest columnists in Miami, Carl Hiaasen [Imagine if the entire board of Arthur Andersen were rounded up, blindfolded and flown to Guantánamo Bay for interrogation.] and Dave Barry [Wall Street is in trouble, and things are not going to get better until you, the small investor, stop selfishly thinking about yourself all the time.] have chosen this Sunday to raise a few laughs at the expense of poor, old beleaguered Wall Street? Let's hope not.
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jul 28, 2002 - 10 comments

Someone we trust says something reassuring. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, arguably the most powerful man in the world, blames "infectious greed" for the recent panic-like tail-spins on Wall Street, but says that the economy is on the way to recovery. One comment held that Greenspan was finally able to let out how he feels about what's going on, without shrouding his opinion in economic jibber-jabber.

"For once he really spoke his mind. He usually tends to obfuscate things quite a bit."

But really, how many of you expected Greenspan to say anything other than "the fundamentals are in place for a return to sustained healthy growth"? Does Greenspan actually feel this way? Could it be that he is actually majorly pessimistic, but is using his soothing sweet-song voice and obvious clout and earned respect to somehow buck recent trends? Bush's speech didn't do much for our faltering economy, but will Greenspan's? Can one man's mere words possibly change the course of history? Well?
posted by Hammerikaner on Jul 16, 2002 - 27 comments

Great article on Paul O'Neill on yesterday's NYT Magazine (requires registration) O'Neill has been taking a hammering in the media and on Wall Street. There has been O' Neill Death Watches too. But I have always admired what he achieved in Alcoa. And now finally an article that does justice to him .....
posted by justlooking on Jan 14, 2002 - 8 comments

The CIA's Wall Street connections A week old (MeFi search timed out, sorry if a repeat), but good stuff in here. U.S. gov't's oil interests/stock manipulation/foreknowledge of the attacks -- Ruppert covers a lot of interesting ground in this long interview.
posted by fotzepolitic on Oct 17, 2001 - 11 comments

Re-opened American stock markets tumble 5%, stabilize. As of 11:06 AM, Dow down 481, NASDAQ down 75.
posted by tranquileye on Sep 17, 2001 - 16 comments

Financial/NY people add your name If you were expected to be downtown in the area. Also, the FISD has set up this site to post questions about missing people and anything else.. that you're ok, if you need help.. if you can help... (one thing.. some places had decided to use the UBB to tout their wares.. how screwed in the head are you?.. I can understand people with a skill.. but a company trying to sell something...).. But use the sites responsibly, please.
posted by rich on Sep 13, 2001 - 0 comments