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Author Archives: Felix
How Coventry First Threatens Life Insurance’s Tax Exemption
Today’s WSJ has a very good article on the fast-growing secondary market in life insurance policies, centering on the asset class’s undisputed leader, Coventry. It mentions that this market is objected to by the life insurance industry: Life settlements also … Continue reading
Posted in insurance
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Welcome Colin Barr
As part of the relaunched Fortune.com, Colin Barr has now joined the ranks of MSM finance bloggers. His blog is called Daily Briefing, and it looks to be a useful resource. I’ve already added him to the blogroll.
Meme of the Day: Liquidity Puts and CDOs
Are you sick of the liquidity put yet? You shouldn’t be, because it’s only getting more and more interesting. There are three articles worth reading on the subject today, starting with David Reilly’s WSJ column on whether Citigroup should move … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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More Questions Than Answers in CPDO Default
Now that financial reporters are back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday, I’m hoping that somebody will write a story about the CPDO which defaulted last week. The Reuters story raises more questions than it answers, foremost among them the … Continue reading
Posted in derivatives
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Dubious Statistics Watch: Thanksgiving Retail Sales
Bloomberg News seems to be running two stories – on the same subject, and by the same authors – at the same time. The first has quite an apocalyptic headline: "U.S. Consumers Spent Average of 3.5% Less on Shopping". Which … Continue reading
Posted in statistics
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WSJ Admits its Merrill Story was False
Do you remember those heady days at the beginning of November when the WSJ went on the warpath? First there was the failed take-down of Jimmy Cayne (he plays golf!), and then, the next day, came a front-page article by … Continue reading
Andrew Lahde: The Hedge Fund Manager With a 1000% Return
To the pantheon including subprime shorter John Paulson and Amaranth vanquisher John Arnold we should probably now add Santa Monica hedge fund manager Andrew Lahde. Lahde almost certainly hasn’t reached the billion-dollar-a-year club, but he does now officially oversee a … Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds
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Ben Stein Watch: November 25, 2007
Ben Stein’s NYT column is called "Everybody’s Business". Today he uses all of its 1,150 words to eulogize a Hollywood restaurant about which Citysearch says that "larger-than-life prices make it a ticket few can afford". He also manages to drop … Continue reading
Posted in ben stein watch
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Extra Credit, Weekend Edition
UBS debt deal loses 90 percent on financials-Moody’s: A CPDO blows up. Oil: Key players and movements Megachurches Add Local Economy to Their Mission: "The Evangelical Christian Credit Union in Brea, Calif., a pioneer in lending to churches and a … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Hedge Funds and the “Buy Stuff That Has Gone Up a Lot And Cross Fingers” Strategy
Did you really think I was going to leave you for the weekend to plough through a thousand words on LSS-backed ABCP backstops? I’m nicer than that. Instead, enjoy my man Baruch: If scurrilous gossip is true, and it normally … Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds, investing
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Leveraged Super Senior Trades and the Liquidity Put
On Wednesday I said that the notorious "liquidity put", which was allegedly responsible for tens of billions of dollars in Citigroup losses, was "really nothing more than a CP backstop". Today we’re learning a lot about something known as leveraged … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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Why The Safest Banks Saw the Biggest Losses
Jenny Anderson today runs down the list of winners and losers in terms of subprime losses. Winners (or at least banks with relatively small losses): Goldman Sachs; Credit Suisse; Lehman Brothers; JP Morgan. Losers: UBS; Merrill Lynch; Citigroup. Anderson concludes: … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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What Happens if Freddie Mac Becomes Insolvent?
While most of us were filling our bellies on Thanksgiving, James Hamilton took a dive into the balance sheets of Fannie and Freddie. And he’s found some pretty scary figures: The total "book of business" held by Fannie and Freddie … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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Chart of the Day: Oil Prices
From Stephen Gordon comes this chart: Gordon notes that the Canadian dollar/yen exchange rate today is pretty much the same as it was back on September 4, which means that the price of oil has risen about the same amount … Continue reading
Posted in charts, foreign exchange
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Extra Credit, Thursday Edition
Attention Target Management: Pay No Attention To Analysts Begging for Buybacks On Sub-primeitis (or the sub-prime ate my homework)! Europe Suspends Mortgage Bond Trading Between Banks All about Flowers: ‘He just wants to win’ Overcoming Bias After One Year: Robin … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Countrywide Datapoint of the Day
Countrywide is now trading at a price/book ratio of 0.39. The collapsing share price now looks increasingly like a self-fulfilling prophecy: the number of entities willing to lend Countrywide a few billion more, when its entire market cap is now … Continue reading
Will Traders Ever Get News From Websites?
When was the last time you saw a trader using a web browser? I ask because there seems to be some worry that if WSJ.com goes free, that might mean fewer people subscribing to Dow Jones Newswires. I also believe … Continue reading
Posted in Media, publishing
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The Entity Quote of the Day
From an anonymous fund manager, via John Carney: "B of A is the Stupid Bank. Citi is the Incompetent Bank. JP Morgan is Villainous. The super SIV is Stupid, Incompetent and Villainous."
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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More Crisis Blogging
You thought Roubini was extreme? Check this guy out: RHINEBECK, N.Y., Nov. 19 (UPI) — A financial crisis will likely send the U.S. dollar into a free fall of as much as 90 percent and gold soaring to $2,000 an … Continue reading
Posted in economics
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How Much Can Fannie and Freddie Help the Mortgage Market?
Yesterday I took aim at OFHEO, and I stand by what I wrote: the capital constraints on Fannie and Freddie are counterproductive and they’re damaging the entire mortgage market. But it is also true that the capital that OFHEO requires … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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Sam Jones Explains the Liquidity Put
The FT’s Sam Jones puts two and two together today and finally explains what the notorious liquidity put is. You might recall that a couple of weeks ago he told us about CDOs which issued commercial paper. I noted at … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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Inflation Targeting and Accountability
When is an inflation target not an inflation target? When there’s no accountability, says Clive Crook. There is no real pressure on the Fed to hit its supposed "target". When the Bank of England overshoots its inflation target, it has … Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy
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Extra Credit, Wednesday Edition
Shotgun Wedding: The Epicurean Dealmaker on Cerberus vs United Rentals. Options Narrowing as Britain Tries to Stabilize Bank: Northern Rock really doesn’t look very attractive, despite having quite a few suitors. Mortgages in Bankruptcy 101 Ambulance carrying heart-attack patient delayed … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Crisis Blogging
Why blog about something as banal as a US recession when you can blog about a fully-blown financial crisis? Barry Eichengreen stays solidly in the realm of the hypothetical when he explains why any country’s attempt to leave the euro … Continue reading
Posted in economics
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The Fed’s Inflation Target: 1.6% to 1.9%
How’s my formula doing, now that the latest FOMC minutes have been released? If you recall, I said that when it comes to the Fed’s inflation target, I=C=H=c=h Where I is the Fed’s de facto inflation target, C is the … Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy
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