fuller version of this article of mine appeard in retuers under this heading: The Meltdown’ What to do? As a colleague in the office told me, if you want to fail and you are expecting a storm, fail first! So some of the “early birds” got protection, and then the protection vanished! The […]
This is the headline that Jonathan Weil used in his article in Bloomberg. You must read the full article. Here is a summary: Freddie had accumulated $ 34.3 billion (yes Billion) of paper losses, but excluded them from calculation of regulatory capital. All Freddie had to do was say the losses were “temporary” and they […]
Regulators around the world like to use words like “bailout” in order to help failing institutions. Which kind of institutions get a helping hand? The honest ones? The fair ones? You got to be joking. It is friends and relatives who get bailed out! Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae kept telling the whole world that […]