tagged w/ Lehman Brothers
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As an American journalist in Japan, Jake Adelstein uncovered a world unknown to many of the Japanese public, let alone to foreigners: the world of organized crime. For 12 years, he investigated for Japan's largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shinbun.
In his final story, Adelstein went toe-to-toe with one of the country's most notorious crime bosses, a discovery that led to death threats for him and his family — death threats that have yet to be lifted. His new memoir about his experiences is called Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan.
After leaving the paper in 2005, Adelstein was chief investigator for a U.S. State Department-sponsored study of human trafficking in Japan. Today he is considered one of the foremost experts on organized crime in Japan, and works as a writer and consultant in Japan and the United States.
Adelstein is also the public relations director for the Washington, D.C.-based Polaris Project Japan, which combats human trafficking and the exploitation of women and children in the sex trade. He joins Terry Gross to talk about that work, his book and the organized-crime landscape in Japan.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120237244As an American journalist in Japan, Jake Adelstein uncovered a world unknown to many... more
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Commissions are often created to defer tough decisions; to forge a consensus around a hard solution to a genuine problem; and, rarely, actually to delve into underlying facts. The Angelides commission (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/business/16inquiry.html?_r=1), officially chartered by Congress this summer as the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, has the chance to be that third kind of commission, gathering the missing empirical data on fundamental questions that can guide future decision-making.
We already know an awful lot more about what happened last year than we did in 1932, when the legendary Pecora commission(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecora_Commission) was created to investigate the Wall Street crash. We know the fundamental violations of sound banking practice and regulatory failures that brought us to the precipice. Yet there are still critical areas that would benefit from the commission's detailed analysis: four structural issues that have not yet received adequate attention and one particular transaction that is still highly ambiguous.Commissions are often created to defer tough decisions; to forge a consensus around a... more
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A senior administration official said on Sunday that after extensive consultations with Treasury Department officials, Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would introduce legislation as early as this week. The measure would make it easier for the government to seize control of troubled financial institutions, throw out management, wipe out the shareholders and change the terms of existing loans held by the institution.A senior administration official said on Sunday that after extensive consultations... more
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On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.
But what's even crazier is that the bet paid.
At the close of business that afternoon, Bear Stearns was trading at $62.97. At that point, whoever made the gamble owned the right to sell huge bundles of Bear stock, at $30 and $25, on or before March 20th. In order for the bet to pay, Bear would have to fall harder and faster than any Wall Street brokerage in history.
The very next day, March 12th, Bear went into free fall. By the end of the week, the firm had lost virtually all of its cash and was clinging to promises of state aid; by the weekend, it was being knocked to its knees by the Fed and the Treasury, and forced at the barrel of a shotgun to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase (which had been given $29 billion in public money to marry its hunchbacked new bride) at the humiliating price of … $2 a share. Whoever bought those options on March 11th woke up on the morning of March 17th having made 159 times his money, or roughly $270 million. This trader was either the luckiest guy in the world, the smartest son of a bitch ever or…
Or what? That this was a brazen case of insider manipulation was so obvious that even Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the pillow-soft-touch Senate Banking Committee, couldn't help but remark on it a few weeks later, when questioning Christopher Cox, the then-chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission. "I would hope that you're looking at this," Dodd said. "This kind of spike must have triggered some sort of bells and whistles at the SEC. This goes beyond rumors."
Cox nodded sternly and promised, yes, he would look into it. What actually happened is another matter. Although the SEC issued more than 50 subpoenas to Wall Street firms, it has yet to identify the mysterious trader who somehow seemed to know in advance that one of the five largest investment banks in America was going to completely tank in a matter of days. "I've seen the SEC send agents overseas in a simple insider-trading case to investigate profits of maybe $2,000," says Brent Baker, a former senior counsel for the commission. "But they did nothing to stop this."
much more at link....On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the... more
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Discusssing what happened to displaced Lehman employees, with Avi Yashchin, Cleanedison president and CNBC's Erin Burnett.Discusssing what happened to displaced Lehman employees, with Avi Yashchin,... more
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jmsrmy
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added this
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2 months ago
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It was one year ago that the financial world found out Lehman Brothers wasn't going to survive...
(Coombs, B., 2009, September 14)It was one year ago that the financial world found out Lehman Brothers wasn't going to... more
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jmsrmy
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added this
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2 months ago
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"President Barack Obama is going to Wall Street on the first anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse to outline financial changes to avert a future crisis like the one that sent the global economy into a tailspin.
Obama has called on Congress to pass a sweeping overhaul of how financial institutions behave but has seen slower-than-sought action. Administration officials said the president will use Lehman Brothers as a starting point to again decry a hands-off approach from Washington that enabled irresponsible lending that sent the nation's largest financial institutions to the brink of collapse and the larger economy to the edge.""President Barack Obama is going to Wall Street on the first anniversary of the Lehman... more
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BY BOB ANDELMAN
CNBC anchor and reporter David Faber is my guest today. He’s the author of a new book, And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees.
I’m very excited for David and his new book, but first we have some old business to cover.
He won’t remember this, but we met at the business channel’s Fort Lee, New Jersey, headquarters back in 2001 when I started writing a book called CNBC Profit Drivers. David was supposed to write the introduction.
AUDIO EXCERPT: "September 14, 2008--it was clear to me we were in the midst of something I'd never seen. You could take the three stories that occurred on that evening: AIG about to go bankrupt; Lehman Brothers going bankrupt; and Merrill Lynch being sold to Bank of America—each of those would have represented one of the bigger stories of a decade in terms of business news and they were all happening on the same night! There was nothing ever like it and there never will be anything like it."
The book was finished but never published—it was cancelled the week after 9-11—but you can read it in its entirety at profitdrivers.net. But it’s still missing an official CNBC introduction.
Now that I got that off my chest, let’s talk about And Then the Roof Caved In.BY BOB ANDELMAN
CNBC anchor and reporter David Faber is my guest today. He’s the... more
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We should fly the flags half mast on the anniversary of the day Lehman Brothers died ...
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You think it's the right time to cash out some old Yellow Cake Uranium.....?
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jgallo
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added this
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7 months ago
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Short selling hedge funds lit the spark that led to the global economic meltdown. Now they want to help craft the laws Congress will pass to fix our broken regulatory system. That's insane.Short selling hedge funds lit the spark that led to the global economic meltdown. Now... more
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Housing prices are falling around the country, but this one sounds hard to believe: A seaside mansion on Jupiter Island in Florida, bought for more than $13 million five years ago, was just sold for $10.
His name is Dick. That about sums it up.Housing prices are falling around the country, but this one sounds hard to believe: A... more
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Fallen Lehman Brothers' chief executive Richard Fuld sold his $US13.3 million ($20.3 million) mansion to his wife for just $100 ($152) last November, Florida real-estate records show.
It is thought he has begun transfering his assets to family in an effort to protect them from any forthcoming civil suits!
Greedy? Should this be allowed?Fallen Lehman Brothers' chief executive Richard Fuld sold his $US13.3 million ($20.3... more
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"JP Morgan generally credited with forcing the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and helping to manufacture the 1929 Stock Market Crash that ultimately led to the Great Depression. Now it seems there are ever more stories of impropriety by Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Chase, especially regarding the suspicious and all too rapid demise of financial pillar Lehman Brothers..."
Up to their old tricks!"JP Morgan generally credited with forcing the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of... more
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An online Nostradamus, and the search for his identity
BACK in September a message appeared on an online bulletin board owned by Daum, the most popular web host in a country, South Korea, with a huge internet culture. Written by someone called “Minerva”, it predicted the imminent collapse of Lehman Brothers, a now-defunct investment bank.An online Nostradamus, and the search for his identity
BACK in September a message... more
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j4ydh
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added this
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11 months ago
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"Prosecutors have stepped up the investigation into the collapse of Lehman Brothers, with at least a dozen subpoenas being issued including one to the investment bank's chief executive, Richard Fuld, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Citing people close to the probe who requested anonymity, the Times said federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, Manhattan and New Jersey were examining events leading to Lehman's collapse and bankruptcy filing.
One person said New Jersey prosecutors were looking into whether Lehman executives including Fuld misled investors involved in the $6 billion infusion of capital announced by Lehman in June about the bank's condition, the Times said. That infusion came as Lehman disclosed a $2.8 billion third-quarter loss, which caused its shares to plunge."
Read the rest at link ..."Prosecutors have stepped up the investigation into the collapse of Lehman Brothers,... more
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It seems like just three weeks ago that Paulson told us the world was going to end unless we did exactly what he wanted. Way back in late September, Paulson rejected an equity injection plan, which was basically a plan to partially nationalize banks. Many, many economists believed it was the best way to loosen up the credit market. But Hank no likey. Why?
Well, he's part of the Bush Administration, so you can be certain he will do the wrong thing first. In this case, everything private is awesome and anything public is bad. The market knows what is best and they will sort itself out, blah, blah, blah...Can we have 700 billion dollars? The private enterprise is God slogan is what got us into the mess in the first place, but they wanted to keep on keeping on, which didn't allow for many bailout options.
And of course, if we are talking about the Bush Administration, cronyism and protecting your pals comes first. The Paulson bailout was no different. Paulson began working for a little outfit called Goldman Sachs in 1974. In 1982 he became a partner, followed by Chief Operating Officer in 1994 and finally, CEO in 1998. In 2006, he became Secretary of the Treasury. Since the beginning of this crisis he has done everything possible to make sure his old company, Goldman Sachs, was protected and even made some dough.
First up, he allowed one of Goldman Sachs main competitors to fail. Lehman Brothers was allowed to collapse, because, well, the market has to correct itself and, uh, um, it just was. Deal with it. One week later, the government, in exchange for equity, saved AIG. Please don't pay attention to the fact that AIG owed Goldman Sachs around $20 billion. And ignore the fact that a Goldman Sachs man was in the room when the AIG bailout was being negotiated.
Click on link above for the full sad and sorry tale of this treasury rape and the pillage of our tax dollars.It seems like just three weeks ago that Paulson told us the world was going to end... more
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Like I have said in the past : Repeat the government's mantra over and over again until you believe it : Strong Dollar, Sound Economy, All is Well, Jobs will not be Lost, Economic Fundamentals are Good.Like I have said in the past : Repeat the government's mantra over and over again... more
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Derivatives at the heart of the crisis, catastrophic losses are inevitable, financial system headed for oblivion, the new world disorder, EU doomed, Credit Default Swaps at the heart of the problem, Plunge Protection Team history, coverups for globalization failures, Bloodbath for the Yen...Derivatives at the heart of the crisis, catastrophic losses are inevitable, financial... more
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The Senate passed the Wall Street bailout bill, by a 3:1 majority. Some sweeteners like tax cuts and raising the limit to $250k on individual accounts for bank depositors helped. Some people might think that finally the banking system can at last receive some meaningful fixes.The Senate passed the Wall Street bailout bill, by a 3:1 majority. Some sweeteners... more
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