NakedShorts will be on hiatus for the next several weeks (all the while reserving the right to resurface intermittently). Play nice.
NakedShorts will be on hiatus for the next several weeks (all the while reserving the right to resurface intermittently). Play nice.
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - A California short line shut down last week owing to an unusual problem: Three feet of cow manure had drifted across its main line. Wind gusts of 40 to 60 mph blew the excrement from an adjacent dairy farm across the San Joaquin Valley Railroad’s main line to a depth of three feet.
It was “like a snowdrift, but it was cow manure,” SJV assistant general manager Patrick Kerr told TRAINS News Wire. “In all my years of railroading, I’ve had snowdrifts, I’ve had sand drifts, I’ve had rockslides, but I’ve never had a line shut down by poo.”
Kerr said the manure was dry, so it didn't smell as bad as one might imagine. The owner of the dairy farm, who had the proper equipment for removing the drift, helped clean it up.
A strong, resilient financial system is necessary to facilitate a broad and sustainable economic recovery. The US government stands firmly behind the banking system during this period of financial strain to ensure it will be able to perform its key function of providing credit to households and businesses. The government will ensure that banks have the capital and liquidMonity they need to provide the credit necessary to restore economic growth. Moreover, we reiterate our determination to preserve the viability of systemically important financial institutions so that they are able to meet their commitments.
Joint Statement by the Treasury, FDIC, OCC, OTS and the Federal Reserve
Feb 23 2008
“The Commission has benefited from Andy's commitment to investor protection, rigorous legal analysis, and concern for fairness,” said SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro. “The nation's investors and markets are fortunate to have had his sound advice and judgment.”
NEW YORK (AP) — The trustee in charge of untangling the mess left behind by Bernard Madoff told a packed auditorium Friday there was no indication the disgraced money manager had bought securities for his clients for over a decade.
“We have no evidence to indicate securities were purchased for customer accounts” in the past 13 years, said Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
In the sublime structure Ezra Merkin had built for himself, money was the mother of beauty and refinement. The actual business of making it amounted to a kind of plumbing, a slightly unseemly necessity, about which it was best not to go into details. Men like Teicher, or Bernie Madoff, could roll up their sleeves and make it flow, and you could take your cut, without getting your fingernails dirty. The details mattered less as long as the money kept flowing. The fact that Ezra had a blind spot for the way his money was actually being made—and in this he was not so different from many others during the boom years, even his own clients—functioned as a kind of soft corruption, which could enable the hard corruption of Bernie Madoff.
Doing the rounds...
Thank you for that kind introduction, [SEC enforcement director] Linda [Thomsen]. It is great to be with you today...
Newly installed SEC boss Mary Schapiro is quietly searching to replace Linda Thomsen, the agency's embattled enforcement chief, with a prosecutor's Street cred, according to people familiar with the situation...
...As the head of the unit responsible for ferreting out securities fraud, Thomsen has been at the center of a public flogging over allegations the agency was asleep at the switch while Bernie Madoff allegedly perpetrated his $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
While so much has changed in our markets and at the commission over the past decade and a half [most of which I’ve spent getting
bribedover-compensated by FINRA for looking the other way], some things at the SEC have thankfully remained constant.
On this note, I’d like to take a moment to recognize the many members of the SEC staff who are in attendance today, and thank each and every one of you for your tremendous contributions to public service and investor protection, during extraordinary times. If you’re a part of the SEC staff, will you please stand so we can thank you for all that you do.
Hours of harmless fun
A searchable index of the 10,000 individuals and accounts identified in court documents as victims of the $50 Billion Hedge Fund swindle perpetrated by Bernie Madoff. The database consists of names and addresses which are linked here to satellite images of the identified property locations.
Dear Chairman Kanjorski and Ranking Member Garrett:
Today’s hearing before your Subcommittee cannot have been satisfactory for you. The Commission’s staff and I understand that you must have adequate information to fulfill your oversight responsibilities. There needs to be a full accounting, both of Mr. Madoff’s activities and why we did not detect the fraud, which we truly regret.
The Commission’s staff and I believe that it is possible to serve those interests while not impeding the integrity of ongoing civil and criminal investigations. For that reason, I hope that I can set up a prompt meeting with you so that we can determine a course forward that will meet all of our interests.
We at the SEC are committed to looking at all aspects of our examinations and investigations of Mr. Madoff and his firm and making changes that will enhance our ability to detect similar frauds.
I am available to meet with you at your earliest convenience.
Goldman Sachs called off its big Miami hedge-fund conference scheduled for the first week of March, telling clients that going ahead with the normally posh event there could cause image problems for the firm at a time of intense scrutiny over banks' spending habits...
...The Goldman conference, which was to be held March 2-4 at the Fairmont Turnberry Isle Resort & Club in Miami, typically draws a who’s who of hedge-fund managers and rich investors. It’s usually one of the two highest-profile U.S. prime-brokerage conferences of the year, along with Morgan Stanley’s, which was held as planned last week in Florida. Both conferences bring together bank executives with many of their most-valued hedge-fund clients for panel discussions and business-strategy talks, cocktail parties and rounds of golf, according to people who’ve attended.
Goldman’s upcoming US Hedge Fund Symposium was titled “Industry Leaders Discuss the Lessons of 2008 and the Opportunities of 2009.”
Just. Spectacular. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) lays into the US Securities and Exchange Commission staffers at the House Financial Services Committee meeting yesterday.
Fund of funds are a cancer on the institutional-investor world. They facilitate the flow of ignorant capital. If an investor can't make an intelligent decision about picking managers, how can he make an intelligent decision about picking a fund-of-funds manager who will be selecting hedge funds?
David Swenson, Chief Investment Officer
Yale University
Austin’s promise to visit its underlying hedge fund managers at least once a year was part of a risk regime that had convinced PRIM to award the firm $170 million in September, but PRIM subsequently learned that Austin hadn’t visited Madoff’s firm since 2005, CIO Stan Mavromates told fund trustees.
Eventually, that money will be distributed to the two other managers PRIM hired along with Austin in August: Blackstone Alternative Asset Management and EIM.
Bernard Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme, which might have cost investors $50 billion, couldn’t have been carried out alone, said Arpad ‘Arki’ Busson, chairman and founder of Swiss investment firm EIM SA...
...EIM, which manages accounts for mostly institutional clients, invested with funds that had managed accounts overseen by Madoff. EIM will likely write down its stake [reported elsewhere to exceed $200 million] to zero, Busson said.
And that is one of the more flattering comments on both individuals and the institution. (Not that the assignment editors at The Wall Street Journal come out of this smelling like roses either.)
UPDATE:
From: Sandra L. Manzke
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 13:27
To: Greg Newton
Subject: RE: Sleazeball of the Month: Bernie Madoff
My son came up with this idea and has rented space from my office to pursue. He is working on tennis balls, racquet balls, baseballs etc. I do think it is a good idea to shame a lot of sleazeballs. S.
Mark-to-market. Mark-to-mystery. Now, Mark-to-Madoff.
The Obama administration is close to deciding on a plan to purchase bad — or non-performing and illiquid — assets from banks, according to industy (sic) sources. The plan could be announced early next week.
The so-called “bad bank” plan, would address the key problem of how to price the assets by using a model-pricing mechanism. The model would take account of the government's ability to hold onto assets, even to maturity, and pay for the (sic) them with cheap funding.
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