February 27th, 2010 (updated May 13th, 2012) HBOS’s entrance on The Mound; Image: The We Lessons must be learnt from the short and calamitous history of HBOS, the bank which effectively went bust in September 2008, writes Ian Fraser (Note: This article was first posted under the headline “HBOS: When did the rot set in? [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: April 16th, 2012 There can be little doubt that high-frequency trading (HFT) is a malign force in the financial markets. High-speed traders use powerful computers to identify orders as they emerge and instantly trade ahead of them, hoping to earn a small crust on each trade. They use complex [...]
March 26th, 2012 Two Goldman Sachs “clients” — Sally and Helmut — wonder whether they are clients or muppets in the wake of Greg Smith’s devastating “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs” Op-Ed published in the New York Times on March 14th. In his resignation letter, South African-born Smith, who ran the investment bank’s equity derivatives [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Herald Date: March 12th, 2012 Unedited version of article published earlier today in The Herald WARNINGS of legal action will be delivered today to former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin and his ex-boardroom colleagues over allegations that they misled shareholders into investing £12 billion in the bank shortly before [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: February 8th, 2012 A commissioner at a leading US financial regulator has launched a stinging attack on his own organization, accusing it of having its priorities all wrong. Scott O’Malia accused the Washington-based Commodities Futures Trading Commission, an agency of the US Federal government, of becoming so bogged down in [...]
January 12th, 2012 By Eric Sprott and David Baker 2011 was a merry-go-round of more bailouts, more deferrals and more denial. Everyone is tired of the Eurozone. It’s not fixable. There’s too much debt. The politicians don’t know what’s going on. Nothing has structurally changed. We’re still on the wrong path. There’s more global debt than [...]
December 14th, 2011 An edited version of this blog post is available at Huffington Post UK The FSA spent an estimated £10m on its report into the failure of RBS, including £7.7m paid to ‘Big Four’ accountants PWC. But the Canary Wharf-based regulator has lived up to its name (the Fundamentally Supine Authority) and concluded [...]
November 28th, 2011 In the above clip, William D Cohan talks about how US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tipped off hedge fund managers and other Wall Street executives about Washington’s plan to put Fannie May and Freddie Mac into “conservatorship”, a move that would wipe out common shareholders in the GSEs. According to an in-depth [...]
November 19th, 2011 Ian Fraser’s introduction: This blog was written by Golem XIV, a pseudonym for filmmaker and author David Malone. David’s core argument is that banks, not governments, are to blame for the current eurozone sovereign debt crisis. While there are some serious omissions — the article does not mention the flawed nature of [...]
September 27th, 2011 There has been much speculation that the “trader” who appeared on the BBC News channel yesterday may be prankster, and perhaps even a member of the Yes Men. If true, this would be a huge embarrassment for the BBC. Self-styled “independent trader” Alessio Rastani created quite a stir with yesterday’s astonishing interview, [...]