Simon Johnson: Jamie Dimon Has Found The Massive Loophole In Financial Reform
by ilene - November 8th, 2010 8:03 pm
Simon Johnson: Jamie Dimon Has Found The Massive Loophole In Financial Reform
Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal of The Business Insider
There’s definitely something to Simon Johnson’s new theory that it’s no longer about "Too Big To Fail" but rather "Too Global
In a big piece at The New Republic, the former IMF economist and professor argues that the key to escaping the Dodd-Frank resolution authority is to become so big internationally that governments around the world see the need to ensure your survival.
This June, Dimon returned from a two-week visit to China, India, and Russia, and announced an even more aggressive expansion. Senior executives were ordered to look beyond Western Europe—where most of JP Morgan’s foreign investment banking is focused—and seek opportunities in emerging markets. In addition to Brazil, Russia, India, and China—the emerging powerhouses known as the BRIC countries—JP Morgan is looking at Southeast Asian nations, such as Vietnam and Indonesia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. The bank plans to triple its private banking assets in Asia over the next five years and hopes to make Asia the source of half its non-domestic business. “We are going to get the whole company behind [the international strategy],” Dimon told The New York Times.
If Dimon is successful, he will create a bank that is not just too big to fail, but too global to fail. There is no conspiracy here: JP Morgan is simply responding to the available incentives. This international push is terrific corporate strategy and completely legal under our reformed financial system. But it also happens to be very dangerous for the rest of us.
It’s not just JPMorgan, he reckons. All the big banks will begin pursuing the strategy of getting so global that a US-only wind-down isn’t a reasonable end, come a crisis.
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Non Farm Payrolls: The Devil Is In the Adjustments
by ilene - September 6th, 2010 5:15 am
Non Farm Payrolls: The Devil Is In the Adjustments
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
When the US government announced a ‘better than expected’ headline growth number in its non farm payrolls report for August, a loss of ‘only’ 54,000 jobs versus a forecasted loss of 120,000 jobs, people had to wonder, ‘How do they do it? We do not see any of this growth and recovery in our day to day activity.’
Here’s one way that those reporting the numbers can ‘tinker’ with them to produce the desired results.
As you may recall, there is often a very large difference between the raw, unadjusted payroll number and the adjusted number. Seasonality plays the largest role, although there can occasionally be special circumstances. Since this is designed to be a simple example I am going to lump all the various adjustments that could be and call them the ‘seasonality factor’ since it is most usual and signficant.
Here is a chart showing the unadjusted and the adjusted numbers. As you can see, a seasonal adjustment can legitimately normalize the numbers for the use of planners and forecasters. This is a common function in businesses affected by seasonal changes. Year over year growth rates, rather than linear, comparisons, can also serve a similar function.
Quite a variance in numbers that are very large.
Since it probably is in the back of your mind, let’s address the infamous "Birth Deal Model" now, which I have advised may not be such a significant factor as you might imagine. This is an ‘estimate’ of new jobs created by small businesses. A comparison of the last few years demonstrates rather easily that this number is what is called ‘a plug.’
How can the growth of jobs from small business not been significantly impacted by one of the greatest financial collapses in modern economic history?
Certainly the Birth Death model offers room for statistical mischief. It is important to remember that it is added to the RAW number before seasonal adjustment, and that number has huge variances. So the effect of Birth Death is mitigated by the adjustment for seasonality. If it were added to the Seasonal number from which ‘headline growth’ is derived it would be a huge factor. But it is not the case, although the timing of the significant annual adjustments and additions is highly cynical, and supportive of number inflation.…
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Bye Bye Blythe: JPM Shutting Down Their Proprietary Commodity Trading Operation
by ilene - September 1st, 2010 1:58 am
Bye Bye Blythe: JPM Shutting Down Their Proprietary Commodity Trading Operation
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
Breaking news from Bloomberg…
J. P. Morgan said today that they will be shutting down their proprietary commodity trading operations in reponse to the Volcker Rule in the Financial Reform legislation.
The JPM proprietary commodity trading group is headquartered in London with a few traders located in New York.
Within the past month trading head Blythe Masters had reassured her traders that things in the unit would continue on as they had been despite losses and layoffs.
Employees are being told that they may apply for other positions now.
Speculation is that this is also in response to position limits and other reforms in the Commodity Markets spearheaded by Commissioner Bart Chilton which will make it more difficult for large players to dominate the short term markets through sheer position size.
It is not clear if JPM will be exiting all markets at the same time including gold and silver in addition to other commodities.
We will look for clarification from their official statement which has not yet been issued.
According to a person who has been briefed, JPM will eventually be shutting down ALL proprietary trading in all markets in response to financial reform. This will include fixed income and equities which are much larger departments at the bank.
JPM recently suffered heavy losses in their proprietary commodity trading provoking a high level review by top executives.
JPM may continue to deal in these markets for commercial and private customers. They will cease trading for their own book.
It will be interesting to see what JPM does with RBS Sempra, a commodities company which they acquired earlier this year.
Bloomberg
JPMorgan Said to End Proprietary Trading to Meet Volcker Rule
By Dawn Kopecki and Chanyaporn Chanjaroen
Aug 31, 2010 4:45 PM ETJPMorgan Chase & Co., the second- largest U.S. lender by assets, told traders who bet on commodities for the firm’s account that their unit will be closed as the company begins to shut down all of its proprietary trading, according to a person briefed on the matter.
The bank eventually will end all proprietary trading to comply with new U.S. curbs on investment banks, said the person, who asked not to be identified because
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Goldman: New Reform Law Can Kiss Our Ass
by ilene - August 12th, 2010 2:20 pm
Here’s an article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi about Goldman Sachs and Financial Reform. Not surprisingly, it’s questionable whether the new financial reform bill will harm GS’s reign of financial terror in any significant way. – Ilene
Goldman: New Reform Law Can Kiss Our Ass
Just a quick note about a very interesting story that appeared in the LA Times.
More recently, however, top Goldman executives privately advised analysts that the bank did not expect the reform measure to cost it any revenue."The statement was perhaps surprising in its level of conviction," Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Guy Moszkowski wrote in a note to clients, "but we’ve learned to take such judgments from GS very seriously."
The other part of the new law that was supposedly going to hurt the banks was a new requirement that all derivatives be traded and cleared on open exchanges. Up until now banks like Goldman had a massive advantage in the derivatives market because they…
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Why The Bankers, The Fed, and Their Allies In Washington Are Afraid of Elizabeth Warren
by ilene - August 11th, 2010 4:15 am
Why The Bankers, The Fed, and Their Allies In Washington Are Afraid of Elizabeth Warren
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
“Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders."
Dr. Lawrence Britt
The Nation
The AIG Bailout Scandal
William Greider
August 6, 2010
The government’s $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG’s collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand—moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public.
Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts—the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year’s end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June.
The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear—why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel’s critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The report concludes that the Federal Reserve Board’s intimate relations with the leading powers of Wall Street—the same banks that benefited most from the government’s massive bailout—influenced its strategic decisions on AIG. The panel accuses the Fed and the Treasury Department of brushing aside alternative approaches that would have saved tens of billions in public funds by making these same banks “share the pain.”
Bailing out AIG effectively meant rescuing Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America…
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Chris Whalen: Nothing Has Changed Because It’s The Fraud and Corruption, Stupid
by ilene - August 9th, 2010 3:06 am
Chris Whalen: Nothing Has Changed Because It’s The Fraud and Corruption, Stupid
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
Institutional Risk Analyst
Is Fed Supervision of Big Banks Really Changing?
By Chris Whalen
With the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation, many financial analysts and members of the press believe that investment banking revenues and resulting earnings are in danger, but nothing is further from the truth. The Volcker Rule and other limitations on the principal trading and investment activities of the largest universal banks.
It is not own account trading but the derivatives sales desks of the largest BHCs whence the trouble lies. Even as the big banks make a public show for the media of implementing the new Dodd-Frank law with respect to limits on own account trading and spinning off private equity investments, these same firms are busily creating the next investment bubble on Wall Street — this time focused on structured assets based upon corporate debt, Treasury bonds or nothing at all — that is, pure derivatives. Like the subprime deals where residential mortgages provided the basis, these transactions are being sold to all manner of investors, both institutional and retail. It is the perverse structure of the OTC markets and not the particular collateral used to define these transactions that creates systemic and institution specific risk.
One risk manager close to the action describes how the securities affiliates of some of the most prominent and well-respected U.S. BHCs are selling five-year structured transactions to retail investors. These deals promise enhanced yields that go well into double digits, but like the subprime debt and auction rate securities which have already caused hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to bank shareholders, the FDIC and the U.S. taxpayer, these securities are completely illiquid and often come with only minimal disclosure.
The dirty little secret of the Dodd-Frank legislation is that by failing to curtail the worst abuses of the OTC market in structured assets and derivatives, a financial ghetto that even today remains virtually unregulated, the Congress and the Fed are effectively even encouraging securities firms to act as de facto exchanges and thereby commit financial fraud. Allowing securities firms to originate complex structured securities without requiring SEC registration is a vast loophole that Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) deliberately left open for their campaign contributors on Wall Street. But it…
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Wall Street’s Big Win
by ilene - August 6th, 2010 11:46 pm
Excellent article. I recommend reading the whole thing… Matt tells the story behind the sabotage of real financial reform as reflected in the final bill. – Ilene
Wall Street’s Big Win
Finance reform won’t stop the high-risk gambling that wrecked the economy – and Republicans aren’t the only ones to blame
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By Excerpts:
But Dodd-Frank was neither an FDR-style, paradigm-shifting reform, nor a historic assault on free enterprise. What it was, ultimately, was a cop-out, a Band-Aid on a severed artery. If it marks the end of anything at all, it represents the end of the best opportunity we had to do something real about the criminal hijacking of America’s financial-services industry. During the yearlong legislative battle that forged this bill, Congress took a long, hard look at the shape of the modern American economy – and then decided that it didn’t have the stones to wipe out our country’s one dependably thriving profit center: theft.
[...]
All of this is great, but taken together, these reforms fail to address even a tenth of the real problem. Worse: They fail to even define what the real problem is. Over a long year of feverish lobbying and brutally intense backroom negotiations, a group of D.C. insiders fought over a single question: Just how much of the truth about the financial crisis should we share with the public? Do we admit that control over the economy in the past decade was ceded to a small group of rapacious criminals who to this day are engaged in a mind-numbing campaign of theft on a global scale? Or do we pretend that, minus a few bumps in the road that have mostly been smoothed out, the clean-hands capitalism of Adam Smith still rules the day in America? In other words, do people need to know the real version, in all its majestic whorebotchery, or can we get away with some bullshit cover story?
In passing Dodd-Frank, they went with the cover story.
[...]
Both of these takes were engineered to avoid an uncomfortable political truth: The huge profits that Wall Street earned in the past decade were driven in large part by a single, far-reaching scheme, one in which bankers, home lenders and other players exploited loopholes in the system to magically transform subprime home borrowers into AAA investments, sell them off to unsuspecting pension funds and foreign trade unions…
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CFTC’s Bart Chilton On Financial Reform, Position Limits, and Curbing ‘Disruptive Practices’
by ilene - July 25th, 2010 1:13 pm
CFTC’s Bart Chilton On Financial Reform, Position Limits, and Curbing ‘Disruptive Practices’
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
Actions will speak much louder than words, especially given the many disappointments in the past from the SEC and CFTC. Position limits are a good idea. Let’s see how long banks like JPM and HSBC have to implement them if they are covered at all. And as for ‘disruptive practices’ in the market, I will be impressed if Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are ever called out for their abusive market practices in the US as they have been in Europe and Asia.
I like Bart Chilton, quite a bit actually. If he delivers on these promises, I will work for him to be elected or appointed to higher office. But after the great disappointment of Obama, it will take actions first to gain my enthusiasm.
I am all for you Bart, but now you must deliver.
Here is an introduction to this presentation by Bart Chilton from another good guy, GATA’s Chris Powell:
"The member of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission who has been advocating imposing position limits on traders in the precious metals markets, Bart Chilton, has made a video explaining why he thinks the financial regulation law just enacted by Congress and President Obama promises great progress, particularly in making the commodity markets freer and more transparent. The law, Chilton explains, requires the CFTC to establish position limits and authorizes the commission to prosecute "disruptive trading practices." Chilton says he is especially pleased with that, because the commission’s market manipulation standards have failed almost completely for many years.
Chilton has been amazingly conscientious on the precious metals manipulation issue and has been amazingly responsive to gold and silver investors who have complained to the CFTC about market manipulation. He’ll need their support as the CFTC writes the position limits regulations required by the new law. The big commercial shorts are sure to be heard as the commission continues to take public comment, so gold and silver investors can’t let up yet."
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Congratulations, You Idiots, You Broke the Bond Market
by ilene - July 21st, 2010 5:10 pm
Congratulations, You Idiots, You Broke the Bond Market
Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
h/t WC Varones who beat me to it
It smells like Sarbanes-Oxley: a poorly thought-out, bureaucracy-heavy piece of garbage that inconveniences everyone but the legislators who want to get reelected by making it appear as though they are effectively doing their jobs. I’m waiting patiently for someone to say there is a PCAOB of rating agencies buried in this financial reform beast (I still have yet to read the entire thing but hey, I’m probably through more of it than the asshats who voted for it ever got) and not at all surprised to hear that it’s already creating unintended drama.
WSJ:
The nation’s three dominant credit-ratings providers have made an urgent new request of their clients: Please don’t use our credit ratings.
The odd plea is emerging as the first consequence of the financial overhaul that is to be signed into law by President Obama on Wednesday. And it already is creating havoc in the bond markets, parts of which are shutting down in response to the request.
Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings are all refusing to allow their ratings to be used in documentation for new bond sales, each said in statements in recent days. Each says it fears being exposed to new legal liability created by the landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
The new law will make ratings firms liable for the quality of their ratings decisions, effective immediately. The companies say that, until they get a better understanding of their legal exposure, they are refusing to let bond issuers use their ratings.
I remind dear reader that Congress may appear absolutely clueless but actually knows more than we give them credit for. I’m fairly certain the jackasses who wrote the thing knew exactly what can of worms they were opening at the time.
WSJ continues:
That is important because some bonds, notably those that are made up of consumer loans, are required by law to include ratings in their official documentation. That means new bond sales in the $1.4 trillion market for mortgages, autos, student loans and credit cards could effectively shut down.
There have been no new asset-backed bonds put on sale this week, in stark contrast to last week, when
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The Real Reason Geithner Is Afraid of Elizabeth Warren
by ilene - July 19th, 2010 1:18 pm
The Real Reason Geithner Is Afraid of Elizabeth Warren
By John R. Talbott writing at Huffington Post
As reported on HuffPost last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has expressed opposition to the possible nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a source with knowledge of Geithner’s views.
One can assume that Geithner, being very close to the nation’s biggest banks, is concerned that Warren, if chosen, will exercise her new policing and enforcement powers to restrict those abusive practices at our commercial banks that have been harmful to consumers and depositors.
Certainly, Warren is not the commercial banking industry’s first pick to serve in this new role. And unlike other legislation in which an industry’s lobbying effort would naturally slow or cease once the legislation is passed, the new financial reform bill is continuing to attract enormous lobbying action from the banks. The reason is simple. The bill has been written to put a great deal of power as to how strongly it is implemented in the hands of its regulators, some of which remain to be chosen. The bank lobby will work incredibly hard to see that Warren, the person most responsible for initiating and fighting for the idea of a consumer financial protection group, is denied the opportunity to head it.
But this is not the only reason that Geithner is opposed to Warren’s nomination. I believe Geithner sees the appointment of Elizabeth Warren as a threat to the very scheme he has utilized to date to hide bank losses, thus keeping the banks solvent and out of bankruptcy court and their existing management teams employed and well-paid.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site