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Category Archives: bailouts
The Lehman Debacle
The WSJ has a 4,800-word tick-tock on the weekend of Lehman’s demise. The main takeaways, for me, are (a) that if John Thain really thought he deserved a $10 million bonus for his decision to sell to Bank of America … Continue reading
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GMAC: Who’s in Charge?
To me, the most interesting part of the Fed’s decision to allow GMAC to become a bank is the fact that it will be broken up to the point at which its owners will effectively have no control over it … Continue reading
Bailouts: The Darling Approach
Robert Peston talks to UK finance minister Alistair Darling about the fateful week in October when the UK took the lead in terms of injecting massive amounts of capital into its banking system, in the process effectively nationalizing a large … Continue reading
The Commercial Real Estate Bailout
I can see the case for extending Fed loans to hedge funds, when those hedge funds invest in consumer loans. The credit-card business has been built on securitization, and now that market has dried up, there’s a serious risk that … Continue reading
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TARP’s Intended Beneficiaries
Tom Brown has launched another broadside against Elizabeth Warren and her questions for Treasury; it’s worth reading if only to understand just how weak the arguments against her really are. Here’s how he gets started: Take, for example, her Question … Continue reading
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Paulson Grasps the Automaker Nettle
Last night, I asked Hank Paulson, in a submitted question for his appearance at the 92nd St Y, why he was dilly-dallying over an automaker bailout and whether or not to ask for the second tranche of TARP funds, after … Continue reading
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Did Geithner Bail Out Goldman Sachs?
Add the NYT editorial board to the Goldman Sachs conspiracy theorists. It asks some good questions about Lehman revisionism, but then ends up with this: The revised version of the story sidesteps questions about whether the bailout of A.I.G. — … Continue reading
Lehman Revisionism Watch, Unexpected Loan Edition
Andrew Ross Sorkin seems to have caught Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke out in a bit of a fib. They couldn’t bailout Lehman, said first Paulson and then Bernanke, because Lehman didn’t have the collateral needed to put up against … Continue reading
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Further Adventures in GM Debt
GMAC’s brinkmanship would seem to have worked: Late Friday, the company received a reprieve from lenders, who agreed to amended terms of a $38 billion restructuring of debt obligations that were threatening to overwhelm the company. But the 10% (ish) … Continue reading
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Detroit Bailout: No News is Bad News
Shorter WSJ: Will the government use TARP funds to bail out the automakers? Maybe. Will it ask Congress to release the second tranche of TARP funds? Don’t know. If it did, would there be ugly scenes in Congress? Don’t know. … Continue reading
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Will the White House Bail Out Detroit?
The ball’s in the White House’s court; there’s no chance of Congress passing a Detroit bailout bill before it reconvenes next year. The White House has TARP funds, but only $15 billion remains from the first $350 billion tranche; that’s … Continue reading
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Warren vs Treasury
Many thanks to Andrew Leonard, a more adept web surfer than I, for tracking down Elizabeth Warren’s incendiary report to Congress on the disbursement to date of TARP funds. Unfortunately, it’s not only a PDF, but it’s also one which … Continue reading
AIG’s Speculative CDS Bets
Did you know that AIG has a Blog Relations department? For real. They sent out a big email earlier today, which wound up in places as varied as Dealbreaker and Welt Online, taking issue with the WSJ’s story about them … Continue reading
How to Deal With GM’s Bondholders?
If the comments on my GMAC bond entry earlier this morning are any indication, it’s going to be harder than I think a lot of people anticipate to bail in GM’s bondholders as part of any government bailout. Here’s three: … Continue reading
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Finding Holes in the TARP
Elizabeth Warren is on the warpath. As chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with making sure TARP expenditures make sense, she’s going to be scathing, according to the WSJ, when she presents her first findings to the House today. … Continue reading
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GMAC’s Recalcitrant Bondholders
Can someone explain what’s going on with this GMAC tender offer? The basics of the situation are clear: back on November 20, GMAC (which is 51% owned by Cerberus and 49% owned by GM) offered to swap existing bonds for … Continue reading
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The Auto Bailout, in a Nutshell
What is that fugly minivan, anyway? And why do I get carsick just looking at it?
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Nationalizing Detroit
David Sanger has an insightful and sober piece in today’s NYT which first calls a spade a spade — yes, we are in the process of nationalizing the Big Three — and then looks at the implications. If the government … Continue reading
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Why Elizabeth Warren is an Inspired Choice to Oversee TARP
Tom Brown has a peculiar column today taking issue with the inspired choice of Elizabeth Warren to chair the panel overseeing the TARP program. The problem, in his eyes, is that Warren is a fighter for consumers, rather than banks. … Continue reading
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The Case for Making Bigger Cars
I just watched the webcast of Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize lecture (slides here). In it, he laid out his theories of economic geography, which help explain why industries tend to cluster in certain geographical locations. He ended on a topical … Continue reading
GM’s Bond Restructuring Plan
After reading through GM’s restructuring plan, it strikes me that the $18 billion loan from the government is only the beginning of the money that GM is asking for. Take a look at page 11: GM’s Plan includes, and is … Continue reading
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The Tyranny of the Shareholders
What does AIG have in common with the auto industry? Beyond bailouts, of course. One answer is that public shareholders are really part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. In a publicly-listed company, management works, first and … Continue reading
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Citi: Will the Bailout be Enough?
The WSJ has details of how the Citi bailout was structured: If the U.S. were to take another equity stake, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wanted it to be small, since otherwise the government would end up owning Citigroup. The officials … Continue reading
Citi’s Underwhelming Bailout
If you want an idea of just how bad Citigroup’s position was on Friday, just take a look at the term sheet of the deal announced on Sunday night. After the $309 billion of toxic assets have been ring-fenced, Citigroup … Continue reading
This is Not Financial Meltdown
Is this the low point of the crisis so far? From the stock market’s point of view, yes, it is. And the numbers coming out of the Treasury market would certainly seem to imply a flight to quality of unprecedented … Continue reading