DISQUS

helzphar · 1 year ago

The dirty little secret of hedge funds is that a lot of that liquidity is dirty money. Drug and arms trafficking and other criminal enteerprises. Because of the lack of reporting requirements, the economy is now in the hands of thugs.

sukabi1 · 1 year ago

Credits swaps and derivatives sound like they'd be perfect vehicles for money laundering as well.

helzphar · 1 year ago

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Nigel Elliott · 1 year ago

Anyone else have problems accessing this site? I was redirected to Google's homepage. I guess it's fixed now. :-)

sukabi1 · 1 year ago

was getting the same thing about an hour ago... Eschaton and Group New Blog were also pulling up google...

sukabi1 · 1 year ago

McCain Repeating Keating Era Mistakes, Regulator Warns

William Black -- a deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation during the "Keating Five" scandal that nearly ended McCain's political career -- says the Arizona Republican's chief errors at the time were underestimating the importance of regulation and relying too heavily on slanted advice from captains of industry.

"In the S&L crisis, he took his advice from the worst [kind of] criminal. Charles Keating is the person he went to for his policy advice," Black said. "Now, he certainly is getting advice from Phil Gramm, Carly Fiorina, Rick Davis -- the whole group of economic and top political advisers are lobbyist types. He just doesn't seem to get it, ever, that the advice is going to favor their clients. Even if they just stop being lobbyists, you can't just turn that off instantly. It's their mind state that develops. ... The biggest lesson is that, when you deregulate and de-supervise, you create an environment where control fraud emerges. You hyper-inflate bubbles; you get criminalization."

And this blast from the past is also fun: McCain: The Most Reprehensible of the Keating Five

Bubbles · 1 year ago

As I recall, Chelsea Clinton is a hedge fund manager.

Likely that she makes more money than her parents, and she's just out of school. Wish I could find work like that.

Anyway, you can imagine the conflict of interest out there if Hillary was our nominee right now. Personally, I'd like to see her out on her keester, facing the wall of problems we all face, but I suppose that's hoping too much.

Indigo · 1 year ago

The billions that hedge funds brought into the market are the same billions that hyperinflated the market . The quick pull out from the market triggered the market's collapse back to its natural shape and size. That is what is being misread as a financial disaster. Hedge funds were the disaster, the taming of hedge funds is a good first step towards sanity and solvency.

Think of it this way: Hedge funds are steroids. Withdrawal from steroids triggers anxiety.

Smarmy · 1 year ago

Chelsea Clinton is a hedge fund manager. Just in case you missed it.

ThingsComeUndone · 1 year ago

Every kid makes mistakes growing up although I would rather that she was going out and doing something more honest for a living....like stealing cars.

ThingsComeUndone · 1 year ago

What happens if the Hedges have to sell more than they have cash on hand today? Will we have to bailout the hedgefunds too?

GollyGee · 1 year ago

And yet, knowing what you do about hedge funds Chris, you nonetheless support the $700-billion gift to the folks who cooked up the scam?

(A few post back John named you as his econ expert, so I guess John's support of the bailout is based on your advice.) In other words, you're a couple of chumps.

Comments on other posts have tried to point this out to you guys, but you still don't get it. If you got burned — if you didn't see this crash coming — well then, you've certainly got the gullibilty Wall Street depends on.

But how will giving Paulson, a former executive of Goldman-Sachs, $700 billion to spend as he wants, in secret, immune to oversight or legal action forever, solve the problem?

Paulson himself, in front of Congress last week, said he didn't know how he came up with the $700 billion figure, and he admitted he couldn't guarantee it would do any good at all. He'd just like that much money, not strings attached. Once the money's gone, and it hasn't done anything to solve the problem, Paulson will never have to say what he did with $700-billion. No one can ask. No one. And you like that deal?

If so, that puts you in the lower 25th percentile, because 75% of Americans don't.

In 2006, as you remember, the government suddenly quit providing M3 figures — that is, how much money it is printing monthly. As an econ expert, you probably realized at the time that didn't indicate they were going to start printing less money.

And as you know, the government has been operating in the red since 2001 and living on credit.

If it has to raise $700 billion for Paulson and his pals, besides the $700 billion for next year's military commitments... well, maybe a good investment would be paper-and-ink futures, because the government will need to buy lots of both and the presses will be running day and night.

If John thinks buying Euros at $1.45 is painful...or gas at $4...well, just wait.

Sorry to be harsh, but you guys have got to do some homework on this one. Right now you're on the Bush side of this issue. Doesn't that make you at all uneasy?

TheRealJR · 1 year ago

Actually, Chris, you're not altogether correct in regards to the supposed flood of withdrawals from hedge funds. I work at a hedge and in the subscription documents, you often times have language in there in which you have to give 60 to 90 day notice before w/d with partial w/ds at quarter end and full redemptions at year end. So most likely if there is a death of the hedge funds, it would be at the end of this year.