S&P Blunders Again, Downgraded France By "Mistake"

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hal2kilo

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Feb 24, 2009
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Brought to you by the same people that rated junk CDO's as AAA. Who'd a thunk it.
 
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mshan

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Nov 16, 2004
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There was some talking head on tv that said France and Germany had put up their gold to back up their banks (soveriegn debt, too?), so they ultimately will be ok. http://www.cnbc.com/id/33242464/The_World_s_Biggest_Gold_Reserves

French and German banks apparently have a lot of exposure to sovereign debt in Italy and Spain, and sounds like Societe Generale might be a tangled web of murky derivatives exposure that no one can accurately quantify (ultimate risk exposure).

And remember that the only bond futures markets in Europe are in Germany and Italy, so Italian 10 year yields may reflect overall Euro-angst (maybe speculators pressing their bets and trying to foment acute crisis also), rather than actual underlying Italian debt and fiscal fundamentals, at least right now...



Gordon Gekko: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l95dIwOJOm0&feature=player_embedded#! ("but I'll tell you what they are WMDs, weapons of mass destruction...")
"When I was away, it seemed that greed, got greedier. With a little bit of envy mixed in.

Hedge fund managers came home with 50 to 100 million bucks a year.

So Mr. Banker, he looks around and says.

My life looks pretty boring.

So he starts leveraging his interest up to 40%, 50% to 100% (I believe this is supposed to say 40 to 1, 50 to 1).

With your money not his.

Yours. Because he could.

You are supposed to be borrowing not them.

And the beauty of the deal is no one is responsible.

Because everyone is drinking the same cool-aid."

http://political-economy.com/wall-street-money-never-sleeps/ (Stone's father worked on Wall Street, so Oliver Stone is probably more plugged into what really happened than what one would initially assume)




Timeline of the Financial Crisis in U. S.:
"Derivatives had become a uniquely unregulated financial instrument. They are exempt from all oversight, counter-party disclosure, exchange listing requirements, state insurance supervision and, most important, reserve requirements. This allowed AIG to write $3 trillion in derivatives while reserving precisely zero dollars against future claims." http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...goes-viral/2011/10/31/gIQAXlSOqM_story_1.html


(don't know if this is referring to AIG's London office, which found some sort of loop-hole in regulations, and exploited it for tremendous profit for AIG, at least until the house of cards collapsed in 2008)
 
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