Archive for April, 2010
Potty Mouths: Senators Talk Shit To Tourre
Throwing Goldman Sachs’ execs own words back at them, Senators repeatedly perked up everyone’s ears Tuesday as they pointedly tossed around the obscenity the execs had so liberally used to describe one of their failing investment deals, known as Timberland. Funnily enough, it was Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chair of the Senate investigative panel looking [...]
SEC Was Busy Watching Porn While The Economy Went to Shit
So it turns out over the past five years the SEC has conducted 33 separate probes into “employees looking at explicit images” according to the Associated Press. And apparently 31 of them have occurred since the financial system went down in flames. Nice. Where was Mary Schapiro on that one? Jeez.
More Bad News for Rajaratnam, Goldman
When it rains, it pours. Just weeks after prosecutors told Galleon Group founder Rajaratnam’s defense team that it was now looking into Galleon’s trading of Goldman shares in 2008, it was announced that they are now also looking into the possibility that Rajat Gupta, a longtime friend and associate of Rajaratnam’s and Goldman Sachs current [...]
Teamwork! Rep. Helps Dems Get Derivatives Regulation Package Out of Committee
In a kind of shocking move, a Republican actually did the Democrats a solid by voting “yea” on its Derivatives Regulation Package to move it out of the Senate Agriculture Committee (apparently the derivatives that aggravated the financial crisis were tied to certain farm commodities, which is why the proposal ended up in the Agricultural [...]
Carried Interest Tax Faces Threats From Congress
With a massive deficit on their hands and a recently passed $140 billion bill to extend jobless benefits through the end of the year and renew a series of popular tax breaks, the government is looking to scrounge up money anywhere it can– and the couch cushions aren’t exactly turning out to be a cash [...]
“Chinese Warren Buffett” Gets ROR for $150k
On April 20, after having been incarcerated beginning in mid-January on charges of running a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme, Weizhen Tang won his freedom (temporarily) by posting $150,000 bail. According to the Toronto Sun, Tang said, “I want a chance to prove my innocence— that’s why I came back from China.”
Ridiculous Fraudsters Charged By SEC
The SEC is really on it’s game so far this year. I mean, granted, catching the idiots in the case I’m about to write about wasn’t exactly rocket science, but still… mad props (yes, I’m stuck in the early 1990s. It’s cool).
Former Goldman Employee Testimony May Weaken Govt. Case
Paolo Pellegrini, a former Paulson executive who worked on the Abacus deal, has come forward with information contradicting the government’s contention that Goldman misled investors by marketing complex synthetic financial securities to them that were tied to subprime mortgages chosen by John Paulson and which Paulson later bet against. According to the LA Times, Pellegrini [...]
Loopholes in Dodd’s Legislation
Lobbyists on K Street have been going through Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd’s nearly 1,400 page Wall Street reform bill with a fine tooth comb looking for loopholes. Not exactly light reading, but a necessary task for people whose very livelihoods (well, extra zeros on their pay checks) depend upon finding ways around the [...]
Strong Year for Hedge Funds Means Returning Investors and More Funds
Last year was a very good year for hedge funds. According to the New York Times Dealbook, BarclayHedge, which tracks the flow through hedge funds, reported that 2009 was the best year in the industry’s history (since BarclayHedge began tracking the data in 2000) in terms of performance when compared to the S&P 500. The [...]
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