Life In Sherman Oaks

Goldman Sachs CEO says that his job is provide product that has exposure risk for investors, so that they can make lots of money. So Goldman Sachs sold investors sub-prime securities. And then, they took out Credit Default Swaps that bet that the sub-prime securities would fail. This is a little like going to a roulette table and selling the red to one set of investors, black to another — [...]

Michael Mayo, managing director and financial services analyst at Calyon Securities. is the only banking analyst invited to speak before the congressional panel currently investigating the economic crisis. Michael Mayo said the U.S. is now paying the price for the Wall Street mistakes. Mayo cited 10 reasons for the economic mess:: 1. Excessive Loan Growth: The financial industry grew loans twice as fast as the natural rate, because banks pushed [...]

For once, a Congressional Commission has smart people on our side. As I listen to Brooksley Born (the woman who was head of the CTFT in the late 90′s when she warned Greenspan, Rubin and Congress that a de-regulated derivatives market was going to send us into an economic depression), I know that she is asking all the right questions. Phil Angelides, the Chairman, is also smart, taking on these [...]

Fannie Mae was established in 1938 as a mechanism to make mortgages more available to low-income families as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1968, the government converted Fannie Mae into a private shareholder-owned corporation in order to remove its activity from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget. Fannie Mae ceased to be the guarantor of government-issued mortgages and instead became part of the secondary mortgage market — [...]

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, headed by former California Treasurer, Phil Angelides, will begin its inquiry into the financial meltdown of 2008, on Jan 13. The FCIC is the commission created by Congress to look into causes of the financial crisis. Company names that will become familiar to you will be: Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs Group Inc , JPMorgan Chase & Co , Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, [...]

On December 12, 2009, the House of Representatives passed a “Wall Street” Reform bill. A bill which President Obama has pushed for ever since the 2008 debacle on Wall Street that nearly caused the financial ruin of the country/world’s economy. While some of the President’s most salient reforms were deleted from this bill (by the way — NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR THESE REFORMS) — it is important, particularly [...]

64 Companies, Banks and Specialty Companies took TARP funds. Here they are, according to the size of the loan that they took: 1. Wells Fargo. $25 Billion. On Dec. 23, 2009 Wells Fargo repaid the entire loan. Interest paid to the government should have been $1.3 million dollars. Purchased Wachovia since receiving TARP funds, increased their assets to be able to reduce “leverage” risk, modified some $356,000 loans in 2009, [...]

Who Was Lehman Brothers and why should you care? Lehman Brothers was an investment banking company — a company like Bear Stearns, Goldman Sacks and Morgan Stanley. Their business was investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales, research and trading, investment management, private equity, and private banking. It was a primary dealer in the U.S. Treasury securities market. Its primary subsidiaries included Lehman Brothers Inc., Neuberger Berman Inc., Aurora Loan Services, [...]

AIG — The biggest of all CEO: Martin J. Sullivan. Despite the bailout that AIG needed from us, the U.S. taxpayer, this CEO felt he was worth $17,073,478 in compensation in 2008. This represented a 22% increase over his 2007 compensation. Goldman Sachs — “The Smartest Guys on the Block” CEO: Lloyd C. Blankfein, who is famous for saying when queried about the bonuses Goldman Sachs would be paying “I’m [...]

The smartest guys in the room – a quote often used to describe Godman Sachs — one of the biggest companies to have caused the current recession. Here’s their history. Goldman Sachs has its origins in 1869 in commercial paper — that is, unsecured loans with a fixed maturity rate of less than 270 days that large banks and corporations issue in order to get temporary funds to cover cash [...]

While you pay attention to the Congressional Inquiry into how the Economic Recession happened.. Check this little feature out. Goldman did this AFTER the bailout. Before we go into exactly who Goldman Sachs is and what they do — let’s talk a little bit about the taxes they pay into the American coffers. Whether or not they pay their fair share. In 2007, Goldman Sachs paid $6 billion in taxes [...]

By now, most of you have heard of Goldman Sachs. The company that directly took $13 billion in TARP funds in November 2008, indirectly made $22 billion of the AIG bailout and raised $22 billion thru federally guaranteed debt — for a total benefit of $55 Billion last year? This is the same Goldman Sachs that was going to pay its executives $21 billion in bonuses this year after their [...]