Updates: These short positions GS took are the AIG CDS’ we lost billions on?! Golden Slacks getting hammered by SEC fraud charges…
Update: Oh shxt! I didnt realize the short positions they are talking about are the damn AIG CDS!!! Oh snap! These are the frakkin CDS we lost BILLIONS on via AIG! h/t doc holiday:
Skeptical CPA: December 2008Re: “Some of AIG’s speculative bets were tied to a group of [CDOs] named ‘Abacus,’ created by [GSG]. … In what amounted to a side bet on the value of these holdings, AIG agreed to pay [GSG] if the mortgage debt declined in value and would receive money is it rose. … The plan has resulted in banks in North America and Europe emerging as winners: They have kept the collateral they previously received from AIG and received the rest of the securities’ value in the form of cash from Maiden Lane III. … It also has been a double boon to banks and financial institutions that specifically bought protection on now shaky mortgage securities and are effectively being made whole on those positions by AIG and the [Fed]”, my emphasis, Serena Ng, Carrick Mollenkamp & Michael Siconolfi at the WSJ, 10 December 2008.”
Update: Cramer is all over CNBC saying his confidential high sources say GS had a position , long, in the CDO, really laying it on shilling for Golden, really sad. Saying its caveat emptor the German bank who took losses is responsible, while he is saying GS was long the position. Shill Jim shill. wow some guy(silvan raines, sp?) says Cramer takes money from GS to his face on the air just now, heh.
Update: Here is Boehner stmt, he calls GS Pres Obamas top Wall St Ally, oohhh, nice:
“These are very serious charges against a key supporter of President Obama’s bill to create a permanent Wall Street bailout fund. Despite President Obama’s rhetoric, his permanent bailout bill gives Goldman Sachs and other big Wall Street banks a permanent, taxpayer-funded safety net by designating them ‘too big to fail.’ Just whose side is President Obama on?
“Instead of permanent bailouts for President Obama’s Wall Street allies, Republicans believe the best way to protect taxpayers is by reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that sparked the meltdown by giving high-risk loans to people who couldn’t afford it.”
NOTE: Goldman Sachs was President Obama’s top Wall Street contributor during the 2008 election cycle, donating nearly $1 million to his campaign.
Update: John Boehner GOP minority leader House, just put a wicked spin on that ball, his statement said these charges against GS a partner in Pres Obamas Fin Reg Plan are very concerning, that the FIn Reg Reform Bill will protect GS as too big to fail, Boehner said, whose side is President Obama on? oooooohhhh!! ^5 to Boehner
Update: So I was thinking the Volcker Rule is gonna make a BIG comeback off this, ya know? I mean WSJ was just declaring it dead, again, this week and I do not see how the banks are gonna fight Volcker Rule and the Consumer Protection Thingy in the face of the headlines the lamestream put together off this. And it is things like this that kill the markets for everyone, thanks GS you frakkers.
12:51pm EST: DOW down 153 now, back under 11k, like Spinal Tap, it goes to eleven..that’s about all that number was worth…S&P back under the big 1200 the traders were so excited about…GLD, OIL, all down…
Update: Steve Liesman – Paulson’s right hand man, Pelligrini, was source of confirmation for the fraud charges in re his selection of the ‘lousy’ subprime securities that went into the CDO. He left Paulson in 2009. Steve says what Paulson did is likely not illegal, the issue is disclosure and that is all on GS…
Paging Andrew Cuomo, will Andrew Cuomo please file an indictment on the white courtesy phone….
Update: WSJ has the SEC complaint up in pdf here
Update Q/A Adam Schapiro of FoxBiz asks other fin firms did this, on synthetic CDOs like Deutsche Bank, are they facing charges?
ongoing investigation is the answer
DOW is tanking, down 75 now, GS down 20 (12%)
Q- Why Paulson not charged?
A- Paulson didnt make the representation to the long investors, GS did.
Update:11:11 am est: SEC conf call LIVE on CNBC now!
they chose which MBS would make up this CDO, J Paulson had significant role in building product, had incentive to choose worst rated MBS to put in the CDO and then they took a short position against it
the prospectus for the long investors in the CDO revealed none of this including Paulsons role..
long investors lost $1b, paulson made $1b
Sing with me!
Karma chameleon baby
CNBC Chyron: SEC charges GS with FRAUD ON SUBPRIME SECURITIES
Muhhuuuuhaaaaa!!!!!
SEC: GS misstated, omitted key facts related to subprime products
SEC: (John) Paulson & Co had hand in structuring CDO in question
SEC grew a pair, hoocodanode!
Updates: Bernie Sanders I-VT seeks to put hold on Bens renomination; Black Swan says he will shun public life if Ben reconfirmed; Mark Zandi agrees double dip for housing ahead; Flashback: Bernanke in Denial 2005-2007
Update 2: Breaking on CNBC via Politico Bernie Sanders I-VT trying to put hold on Bens renomination hearing tomorrow. But they seem to have the 60 votes they need. Also today Taleb, of the Black Swan said if Ben is reconfirmed he will leave public life, seriously:
Nassim Taleb, the author of “The Black Swan”, said he would retreat from public life if Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gains a second term at the helm of the central bank.”What I am seeing and hearing on the news — the reappointment of Bernanke — is too hard for me to bear,” Taleb wrote on his blog on The Huffington Post.
“I am not blaming Bernanke (he doesn’t even know he doesn’t understand how things work or that the tools he uses are not empirical); it is the Senators appointing him who are totally irresponsible — as if we promoted every doctor who committed malpractice,” he wrote.Taleb wrote he will not take part in interviews in the press and will not go to the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.
“I need to withdraw as immediately as possible into the Platonic tranquility of my library, work on my next book, find solace in science and philosophy, and mull the next step,” he wrote, adding that “I will only (briefly) emerge from my hiatus when the publishers force me to do so upon the publication of the paperback edition of The Black Swan.”…
Update: Boy it is exhausting having these fancy pants academics and/or advisers to MAC and Obama come along and agree with MiM months after we take a position, like being Cassandra, it sucketh big time. Now I just heard Marty Feldstein agreeing on Kudlow too, lol. To be fair Feldstein came out on this in October...sure now that it’s COOL to say there is a double dip ALL the kids wanna do it!
Soon Orszag and Krugman will be the cheese, and we all know the cheese stands alone.
Mark Zandi of Moodys (who will be at the big job summit this week, and who is at every Nancy Pelosi jobs bill panel as well), the man who advised MAC and later the Congress on the stimulus, is now forecasting a second leg down in housing, a big one, the one we and others have been yammering on about for months.
Maybe now that one of the chosen few who get listened to (despite often being quite wrong) and whose ideas are often quite unsuccessful (see WSJ on Orszag and Stiglitz’ EPIC FAIL on the risk posed by FAN FRED that somehow gets them promoted and invited to all the summits and now they help design all our economic policy and even our healthcare system!!) is on board with the fact that housing is in imminent danger of collapsing under the continuing deterioration of employment and the failure of the mo mods. Well maybe now they will do the damned HOLC and get it done.
FDR did it, in out boom,. Buy the home loans from the banks,w e already own them in FAN FRED anyway, write down 20% everyone underwater, boom, done. Let homeowners pay it off via their taxes to the government. Give a payroll tax holiday. Stop the uber spending in areas that don’t help the underlying economy. The entire 78 billion directed to housing is still sitting there waiting to be paid out on permanent mods that aren’t happening.
The meltdown of the U.S. housing market is not over yet, and home prices will soon start trekking downward again as a flood of foreclosures looms, a well-known economist said Wednesday.
Home prices, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, will trough in the third quarter of 2010 after declining 38 percent, Zandi said. The index peaked in the second quarter of 2006 and hit a trough in the first quarter of 2009, a drop of about 32 percent. Home prices in many regions have been rising.That is because foreclosure sales fell over the summer and fall as mortgage servicers have tried to put stressed homeowners into the Home Affordable Modification Program and other modification plans, he said. “This lull in foreclosures sales has resulted in the price gains in the past few months,” he said.
“Foreclosure sales will increase, and home prices will resume their decline by early 2010 as mortgage servicers figure out who will not qualify for a modification,” he said.
Zandi said 7.5 million foreclosure sales will have taken place between 2006 and 2011. The majority of these sales, however, have not emerged yet, with 4.8 million foreclosure sales expected between 2009 and 2011….
Moderate in the Middle 