April 26th, 2010 It may be no more than a coincidence but Lloyds Banking Group has chosen to hold its annual general meeting on the same day as the UK general election — Thursday May 6th. Few people I speak to about this can believe it. Maybe the “superbank”, formed from the merger between Lloyds [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: April 25th, 2010 Strathclyde Pension Fund and Highland Council Pension Fund –- two of Scotland’s largest public-sector pension schemes -– are in the vanguard of efforts by UK pension funds to claw back some €1 billion of tax that was illegally imposed by European governments. The pension funds [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: April 25th, 2010 You may remember the classic scene in Casablanca in which the police captain Renault raids Rick’s Cafe claiming to be “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here”. While he expresses his outrage and shuts down the casino, a croupier slips him [...]
April 24th, 2010 The Goldman Sachs case is likely to turn into a final referendum on the unsustainable, Ayn-Randian, greed-is-good ethos that has infected America since the 1980s, according to Matt Taibbi. The Rolling Stone writer here suggests that a Goldman Sachs victory in the Abacus 2007-AC1 fraud case… “would be a rebuke to the [...]
April 23rd, 2010 One consequence of the Abacus 2007-AC1 fraud, which could yet be the undoing of investment bank Goldman Sachs, is that bond traders are going to have to learn to distinguish between right and wrong, writes Michael Lewis Michael Lewis says: “Just as there was a time when people could smoke on airplanes, [...]
April 22nd, 2010 Larry McDonald, author of A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, talks us through the true purpose of synthetic CDOs like the one that Goldman Sachs missold to unsuspecting European banks as the US subprime bubble burst, and the real reasons for Lehman Brothers’ collapse on Bloomberg TV. Now managing director of Pangea [...]
April 21st, 2010 By Tyler Durden Richard Koo’s latest observations on the US economy are as always, a must read. The critical observation from the Nomura economist explains why the realists and the naive idealists are at greater odds than ever before: the US government continues to perpetuate, endorse and legalize accounting fraud in the [...]
April 21st, 2010 Gordon Brown has condemned Goldman Sachs for defrauding buyers of a toxic CDO yet has condoned similar activities by British banks for years Gordon Brown’s response to the US civil action against Goldman Sachs / Abacus 2007-ac1 reminded me of the actions of Capitaine Renault in Casablanca (see clip above). The whistle-blowing [...]
April 21st, 2010 I’m Still Here …. I’m the Rhyme Minister …. My Touch was Feather Light Son of the manse Brown displays his true colours in this video clip. He appears as an ostentatious gold-bedecked rapper luxuriating in an LA-style mansion complete with pool and surrounded by sexy chicks — yet G’ Brown continues [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: April 18th, 2010 The entire eurozone is at risk unless the European Central Bank softens its stance towards the value of the euro and indulges Greece and other troubled member states, a leading Edinburgh-based financial expert has warned. Speaking at a conference in Edinburgh, Russell Napier, strategist with [...]