Financial Musings

A Little History…

For those of us old enough to remember, a little history to inject into today’s collapse from Pat Pisapia… Oct 6, 1998: spot USD/JPY trades from […]

Google For $0.01?

When you look at the order books of listed stocks you’ll often see phantom bids at $0.01 and offers up at extraordinary levels like $1,000,000.00.  […]

European Versus US Bank Leverage

There’s a lot of talk about leverage so here’s a comparison of assets versus equity.  Assets are from end of financial year, and they don’t […]

Who Pays For FDIC Insurance?

Doom and gloom from Ché Garcia… FDIC insures all accounts up to $100,000 at its member banks, and it has never failed to honor a […]

Fannie Mae Eases Credit Requirements

Check out this article from the New York Times in 1999. Doesn’t this just boil your blood?! Steven A. Holmes, September 30 1999 In a […]

The Ultimate Short Squeeze

As you can imagine, a lot of people involved in the financial markets these days are very edgy.  Millions of pairs of eyes are focused […]

Why Paulson is Wrong

Luigi Zingales Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance University of Chicago When a profitable company is hit by a very large liability, as […]

Is It Over Yet?

Now and then I put posts up here not so much for other people to read (although if they do that’s why this is on […]

LIBOR Under Attack

The article below from Risk Magazine (click on the image for the whole article).  Quite an interesting read, a very good insight into the interbank […]

Oil Staircase

We headed back to sub- $100 territory?  The last five days of oil futures trading…    

Oil Takes a Tumble…

Rumors that a large hedge fund couldn’t make its margin calls and had it’s long CL positions closed out…  Who knows what’s going on with […]

The Lure of Currency ETFs

An interesting article sent to me today about some of the ETFs I’ve recently been working on.  Someone had a good idea just at the […]

Quit Hammering the Speculators

On the radio, in the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, wherever I go, mysterious “speculators” get blamed for the hike in prices of commodities.  Particularly oil.  […]

Opium for Wheat

An interesting result of the soaring cereal crop prices: the Taliban are having their heroin cash crop usurped by farmers who want to reap the […]

Inga Dam

A lot of people probably think the building of a massive hydroelectric dam in a developing African nation is a good thing.  Economic stimulation, sustainable […]

No Sex at Deutsche Bank

Looks like the executives over at Deutsche are going to be forfeiting some of the pleasantries they’ve gotten used to.  I mean, c’mon, don’t you […]