Article: Is The Federal Reserve Using Money-Laundering Techniques To Cleanse Banks’ Balance Sheets?

Article - Media

Is The Federal Reserve Using Money-Laundering Techniques To Cleanse Banks’ Balance Sheets?

Lawrence Hunter

Forbes, 29 October  2012

Drug lords, terrorists and shadow-government operators (but I repeat myself) use third party intermediaries to cool off and sanitize hot, dirty, and therefore useless money into pristine-clean and productive money that can be used in legitimate commerce. It’s called money laundering.

Characters operating in the shadows also use a form of reverse money laundering to defile clean money or redirect dirty money while masquerading its source so it can be siphoned away, re-channeled and put to use financing illicit activities such as terrorism and off-the-books, shadow-government operations (but I repeat myself, again) that Congress won’t authorize or fund. Think of it as repatriating dirty money and expatriating clean money.

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Article: EU ban on naked CDS short worries Asian investors

Article - Media, Publications

EU ban on naked CDS short worries Asian investors

Christopher Langner, Christopher Whittall, IFR, 23 October 2012

Some Asian fixed-income investors are grappling with how to hedge high-beta portfolios on the eve of the implementation of a ban on naked shorting of European sovereign CDS.

Until March this year, using European CDS bets to offset potential losses from a drop in prices of Asian high-yield bonds had become a fairly popular strategy. However, since regulators in Europe said they were banning the practice from November 1, many of those bets were unwound. Continue reading “Article: EU ban on naked CDS short worries Asian investors”

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