Matt Taibbi: Let the Apes Have Wall Street

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Let the Apes Have Wall Street
Matt Taibbi, 10 June 2021
The much-publicized war over “meme stocks” drags a longstanding Wall Street ripoff out of the shadows, to hilarious results

On CNBC’s Fast Money last week, anchor Melissa Lee appeared to mention the unmentionable. She was talking with Tim Seymour, CEO of Seymour Asset Management, who made offhand mention of the hedge funds shorting now-infamous stocks like AMC and GameStop. “Look, there are a lot of short sellers out there who have been borrowing stock they didn’t have,” Seymour said.

“Naked shorts, yeah,” said Lee.

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Article: Global holdings of US Treasury Debt

Article - Media, Publications

Global holdings of US Treasury Debt

Mark Lundeen , 26 April 2021

During 2007-09 credit crisis the global banking system suffered from a grand-mal seizure. Trillions in their reserves becoming insolvent. The global payment system broke down. There was no way the big Wall Street banks and the financial markets would be spared from his slaughter unless Dr Bernanke and his FOMC began “stabilizing” the financial markets with a brilliant new contrivance; a QE.

As always, we begin with a Bear Eye’s View (BEV) of the Dow Jones, with this BEV chart beginning in January 1982. What’s a BEV chart? It’s a view of a market’s price series where each new all-time high registers as a 0.00%, or a “BEV Zero.” All other data points NOT a new all-time high are converted into a negative percentage claw back from its previous BEV Zero. Continue reading “Article: Global holdings of US Treasury Debt”

Article: “A Gigantic Clusterf**k”: How Morgan Stanley Avoided $10BN In Archegos Losses By Selling First

Article - Media, Publications

“A Gigantic Clusterf**k”: How Morgan Stanley Avoided $10BN In Archegos Losses By Selling First

TYLER DURDEN, 07 April 2021

One week ago, in our initial take on the biggest hedge fund collapse since LTCM, we explained that – in our view – the catalyst for the failure of the Archegos hedge fund, which had as much as 10x leverage allowing it to hold some $100BN in positions, was Morgan Stanley and Goldman breaking ranks with their fellow prime brokers, and sparking the biggest margin call since Lehman and AIG.

Turns out we were right. Continue reading “Article: “A Gigantic Clusterf**k”: How Morgan Stanley Avoided $10BN In Archegos Losses By Selling First”

Article: People moves: facing the funds fallout music, CS changes chairs, and more

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People moves: facing the funds fallout music, CS changes chairs, and more

Natasha Rega-Jones, 07 April 2021

Credit Suisse faces some tough choices as it absorbs the extraordinary losses inflicted by the Greensill and Archegos fund fiascos and subsequent ratings hit. On April 6, the firm announced an estimated pre-tax loss of approximately Sfr900 million ($963 million) for the first quarter, including a charge of Sfr4.4 billion ($4.7 billion) in respect of Archegos. At the same time, the firm announced that investment bank CEO Brian Chin and chief risk and compliance officer Lara Warner were stepping down from their roles with immediate effect.

Christian Meissner, co-head of wealth management banking advisory and vice-chair of investment banking, will replace Chin in May. Meissner was previously head of global corporate and investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and earlier co-CEO for EMEA at Lehman Brothers. Continue reading “Article: People moves: facing the funds fallout music, CS changes chairs, and more”

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

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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: Crown Resorts: US private equity group Blackstone offers James Packer exit strategy

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Crown Resorts: US private equity group Blackstone offers James Packer exit strategy

Anne Davies, 22 March 2021

Billionaire James Packer has been offered a new exit strategy from Crown Resorts after the company received an unsolicited bid from private equity company Blackstone Group.

Blackstone, which already has a 10% holding in the casino giant, has offered to acquire all of the shares in Crown through a scheme of arrangement.

It is offering $11.85 a share, representing a 19% premium to the volume-weighted average price of Crown shares since the release of its first half results for the financial year 2021. Continue reading “Article: Crown Resorts: US private equity group Blackstone offers James Packer exit strategy”

CEO: Richard S. Fuld Jr.

CEO, People

Richard Severin Fuld Jr  born April 26, 1946) is an American banker best known as the final Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of major investment Bank Lehman Brothers.

Fuld held this position from the firm’s 1994 spinoff from American Express until 2008. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 on September 15, 2008, and subsequently announced the sale of major operations to parties including Barclays Bank and Nomura Securities. Continue reading “CEO: Richard S. Fuld Jr.”

Article: Meet Patrick Byrne: Bitcoin Messiah, CEO of Overstock, Scourge of Wall Street

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Meet Patrick Byrne: Bitcoin Messiah, CEO of Overstock, Scourge of Wall Street

Cade Metz, WIRED, 18 February 2021

The problem with the modern economy, Byrne says, is that it rests on the whims of our government and our big banks, that each has the power to create money that’s backed by nothing but themselves. Thanks to what’s called fractional reserve banking, a bank can take in $10 in deposits, but then loan out $100. The government can make more dollars at any time, instantly reducing the currency’s value. Eventually, he says, laying down a classic libertarian metaphor, this “magic money tree” will come crashing down.

Continue reading “Article: Meet Patrick Byrne: Bitcoin Messiah, CEO of Overstock, Scourge of Wall Street”

Video: Inside Lehman Brothers

Video

Inside Lehman Brothers is the autopsy of a crime by those who tried to prevent it from within. As mortgage brokers for Lehman’s subsidiary BNC, Linda Weekes and her Californian colleagues were at the forefront of the subprime crisis. Matthew Lee, then headquartered in New York, was the first leader to have refused to validate the accounts tainted by fraudulent transactions. At the time nobody listened to these whistleblowers. In 2007 and 2008 other banks lost by the same greed and were saved by the Fed. On Wall Street they say Lehman Brothers was “sacrificed”. It was necessary to make them an example, to promise that this would not happen again. Today banks have recovered their health, and with it, their bad habits. The labels have changed but the mechanisms remain, unlocked by Donald Trump whose cabinet of advisors are the ones who drove the system into bankruptcy back in 2008. Inside Lehman Brothers is the result of an investigative survey conducted by the team for over two years.

https://www.watchonline.guide//movies/inside-lehman-brothers

Subject: Timothy Geithner

Subject of Interest

Timothy Franz Geithner is a former American central banker who served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2013. He was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2009, following service in the Clinton administration. Since March 2014, he has served as president and managing director of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm headquartered in New York City.  At the New York Fed, Geithner helped manage crises involving Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the American International Group. Geithner graduated from Dartmouth College (BA) and Johns Hopkins University (MA).

Biography

Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Article: Researchers say market manipulation is destroying traditional safe havens

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Researchers say market manipulation is destroying traditional safe havens

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud

Mining.com, 17 May 2020

The University of Sussex Business School released an analysis stating that widespread market turmoil caused by the covid-19 pandemic means regulators have so much on their plates right now that large-scale manipulation of the markets remains below their radar.

In the view of the researchers behind the study, this is the reason why prices of safe-haven assets such as gold and bitcoin are not surging.

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Subject: Pascal Bandelier

Subject of Interest

Pascal Bandelier is the Senior Managing Director, Head of Equities. He joined the Cantor Fitzgerald based in New York. Bandelier was the Head of Equity Execution Trading at Barclays, where he was responsible for the trading, sales trading, desk analyst and low-touch electronic businesses during his tenure at Barclays since 2013. Prior to Barclays, Bandelier was Head of TMT Cash Equity Trading, at Morgan Stanley, and Head of Cash Equity Trading & Risk at Nomura. From 2001 to 2010, Mr. Bandelier worked at Barclays/Lehman Brothers. Bandelier graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor’s degree in economics.

Continue reading “Subject: Pascal Bandelier”

Web: Wikipedia – Naked Short Selling

Web

Naked Short Selling

Naked short selling, or naked shorting, is the practice of short-selling a tradable asset of any kind without first borrowing the security or ensuring that the security can be borrowed, as is conventionally done in a short sale. When the seller does not obtain the shares within the required time frame, the result is known as a “failure to deliver” (“FTD”). The transaction generally remains open until the shares are acquired by the seller, or the seller’s broker settles the trade.

Continue reading “Web: Wikipedia – Naked Short Selling”

Article: How phantom shares on Wall Street threaten U.S. companies and investors

Article - Media

How phantom shares on Wall Street threaten U.S. companies and investors

Lucy Komisar

The Komisar Scoop, 26 March 2020

As stocks are in free fall, a scam run by the big banks/broker-dealers for the benefit of themselves and their hedge fund clients threatens to worsen the situation of large and small American companies and investors.

It’s when the bank/broker-dealers buy stocks, pocket the money and fail to deliver to clients the shares they are supposed to settle through the national stock clearing house. In another industry that might be called embezzling.

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Article: The Truth About Naked Short Selling Commentary

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The Truth About Naked Short Selling: Commentary

John Olagues

Investopedia, 25 June 2019

The basic form of short selling is selling stock that you borrow from an owner and do not own yourself. In essence, you deliver the borrowed shares. Another form is to sell stock that you do not own and are not borrowing from someone. Here you owe the shorted shares to the buyer but “fail to deliver.” This form is called naked short selling.

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THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?