Video: The Untouchables by Frontline
VideoArticle: UBS Risk Management Fiasco Illustrates Hidden Big Bank IT Time Bombs
Article - MediaUBS Risk Management Fiasco Illustrates Hidden Big Bank IT Time Bombs
Yves Smith
Naked Capitalism, 11 January 2013
One of the sources of risk in big and even moderately big banks that does not get the attention it deserves is information systems. Having mission critical systems function smoothly, or at least adequately, is crucial to a major trading operation. Huge volumes of transactions flow through these firms, and the various levels of reporting (customer exposures, funds flows, risk levels, transaction and reconciliation failures) need to be highly reliable or things get ugly fast. Witness MF Global, where the firm was unable to cope with the transaction volume of its final days and literally did not know where money was at various points in time during the day.
Article: Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Names Steve Cohen And Mike Milken As “Sith Lords”
Article - Media, PublicationsOverstock CEO Patrick Byrne Names Steve Cohen And Mike Milken As “Sith Lords”
Until now, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne had only alluded to the “Sith Lords” he claims are at the center of the web of hedge fund and financial journalists that are destroying companies through rumor mongering and naked short selling.
Now he’s willing to name names.
Article: Silvercorp Slapped With Lawsuits for Deception
Article - Media, PublicationsSilvercorp Slapped With Lawsuits for Deception
Investing News Network, 08 January 2013
Silvercorp describes itself as China’s largest primary silver producer and notes in a 2011 press release that its key SGX mine, located within the Ying mining district, has “some of the highest grades in the industry.” The same press release, which was circulated in response to scrutiny that surfaced in 2011, notes that the company’s most recent NI 43-101 report grades the mine’s silver at 845 g/t.
It is these statements — and others like them — that some are now calling into question. Continue reading “Article: Silvercorp Slapped With Lawsuits for Deception”
Article: Secrets and Lies of the Bailout
Article - MediaSecrets and Lies of the Bailout
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone, 4 January 2013
It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you’d think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we’ve been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?
