Article: Is repo madness predicting a crack-up?

Article - Media

Is repo madness predicting a crack-up?

Rick Ackerman, 21 June 2021

[The following was written by a San Francisco friend from the hedge fund world, Shawn Brown. It buttresses the suspicion that while there seems to be plenty of credit money available for speculation, the collateral behind it is getting thinner and shakier by the week. The Fed, with $8 trillion of Treasury paper and other top-shelf collateral on its balance sheet, has monopolized the supply, leaving lending banks to scramble for collateral for their own that hasn’t already been hocked twentyfold. As a result, central bank interventions are becoming more frequent, more complex and bigger, to the point where even the experts are having trouble determining whether the banking system is headed for a crack-up far larger than the one that took down Archegos a few months ago. RA] Continue reading “Article: Is repo madness predicting a crack-up?”

Article: Cryptocurrencies: A bubble or harbinger of a cashless world?

Article - Media, Publications

Cryptocurrencies: A bubble or harbinger of a cashless world?

ATANU BISWAS, 04 April 2021

The US Treasury described Bitcoin a “decentralised virtual currency”. For every transaction through Bitcoin, for example, some personal information from the user is used to create a kind of password. A ‘hash’ is given for every Bitcoin transaction, with a ‘public key’ and a ‘private key’. Each of these keys is inverse to each other, but it’s not easy to derive one from the other. The ‘public keys’ are available on public domain. Details of each transaction report are available in the database called ‘blockchain’. It is distributed across and maintained by nodes (computers). From this open source, anybody can tell how many Bitcoins are traded at a public key. But, nobody knows who the owner of those Bitcoins is as the security of the ledger cannot be broken. Anonymity and privacy are the characteristics and also the potential danger of cryptocurrencies. Continue reading “Article: Cryptocurrencies: A bubble or harbinger of a cashless world?”

Article: SEC is investigating Japanese investment giant SoftBank for market manipulation

Article - Media, Publications

SEC is investigating Japanese investment giant SoftBank for market manipulation

DUNCAN RILEY, 25 March 2021

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Japanese telecommunications company and investment giant SoftBank Group Corp. for alleged market manipulation.

Founded in 1981, SoftBank holds a significant share — 21.2% as of 2020 of Japan’s mobile phone subscription market — but is best known in the W est for its prolific investment portfolio. The list of companies SoftBank has invested in is too long to list but notable names include Uber Technologies Inc., Didi Chuxing Co. Ltd., Grab Holdings Inc., Nvidia Corp., TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. and DoorDash Inc.

Along with operating the world’s largest technology-focused venture capital fund, Softbank has a particular interest in ride-hailing companies. Except for Lyft Inc., SoftBank owns significant minority stakes in just about every other company in the market. When Grab purchased Uber’s Southeast Asian arm in 2018, it was a deal between two SoftBank-funded companies. Continue reading “Article: SEC is investigating Japanese investment giant SoftBank for market manipulation”

Article: SEC Confirms Probe of SoftBank

Article - Media, Publications

SEC Confirms Probe of SoftBank

Michelle Celarier, 24 March 2021

SoftBank is the subject of an active investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to PlainSite, a legal transparency initiative.

The research provider on Wednesday shared the SEC’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Aaron Greenspan, the founder of PlainSite, a joint venture of Think Computer Corporation and Think Computer Foundation.

Greenspan said the SEC probe appears to be related to SoftBank’s trading unit, SB Northstar. He told Institutional Investor that news last year about SoftBank’s options trading triggered his initial FOIA request, which was dated December 2, 2020. Continue reading “Article: SEC Confirms Probe of SoftBank”

Subject: Alan Greenspan

Subject of Interest

Alan Greenspan served five terms as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. His last term ended on January 31, 2006. He was appointed chairman by four different presidents. From 1954 to 1974 and from 1977 to 1987, Greenspan was chairman and president of Townsend-Greenspan & Co., Inc. From 1974 to 1977, he served as chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under President Gerald Ford, and from 1981 to 1983, as chairman of the National Commission on Social Security Reform. In addition, he served as a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board and was a consultant to the Congressional Budget Office. After leaving the Board of Governors, Greenspan began his own Washington DC-based consulting firm, Greenspan Associates, LLC.  Over the years, Greenspan also held many roles in the public and private sectors. In addition, he served as a corporate director for a number of firms, including Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa); Automatic Data Processing, Inc.; Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.; General Foods, Inc.; J.P. Morgan & Co., Inc.; Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York; Mobil Corporation; and The Pittston Company. He received his bachelor’s (summa cum laude), master’s, and doctoral degrees in economics, all from New York University.

Biography

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Article: Calling Out the Culprits Who Caused the Crisis

Article - Media

Calling Out the Culprits Who Caused the Crisis

Eric D. Hovde

Washington Post via Wayback, 21 September 2008

Looking for someone to blame for the shambles in U.S. financial markets? As someone who owns both an investment bank and commercial banks, and also runs a hedge fund, I have sat front and center and watched as this mess unfolded. And in my view, there’s no need to look beyond Wall Street — and the halls of power in Washington. The former has created the nightmare by chasing obscene profits, and the latter have allowed it to spread by not practicing the oversight that is the federal government’s responsibility.

Access archived page.

Article: Overgrown Hedges

Article - Media

Overgrown Hedges

Christopher Byron

New York Post cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 26 September 2005

One of the first things any new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission does after getting the job is to clear his throat, put on his best “I mean business” scowl, and announce to the world just how tough he intends to be on the miscreants of Wall Street.

Normally, this harmless ritual lets the man taking on Washington’s most thankless job preen a bit in public before getting smacked to the canvas by a system that basically doesn’t want him to be tough at all.

But these are not normal times — and the one thing this country needs more than anything is a government that knows what it is doing and that deserves to be taken seriously by its citizens.

Access archived page.

THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?