Posts tagged as:

credit crunch

Credit crunch villains

by Jolyon on 26 January, 2009

A quick round-up from the Guardian on 25 people who lead us down the road to ruin.
First up, no surprises — Alan Greenspan. His ideological heroine was the dubious Ayn Rand whose book, Atlas Shrugged, was influential on a range of businessmen such as Greenspan and which was condemned when first published over 50 [...]

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Madoff investors may have to repay cash

by Jolyon on 15 December, 2008

From the WSJ via Clusterstock, it seems that even investors who cashed out of Madoff’s schemes ahead of time may have to divvy up.
[B]ecause Madoff is thought to have run a Ponzi scheme, investors could get money back from other Madoff investors who already took money out,” said Brad Alford, who runs Atlanta-based investment adviser [...]

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A wave of…D&O

by Jolyon on 14 November, 2008

This article from the NYT does not make happy reading for D&O carriers.
It’s about a mortgage underwriter at WaMu, and is a telling, salutory tale (like so many that are emerging) of corporate greed and, more to the point, stupidity.

“If a loan came from a top loan officer, they didn’t care what the
situation was, you [...]

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Mierda de caballo

by Jolyon on 9 November, 2008

From the always wonderful PJ O’Rourke comes this simple person’s take on how we got into this mess:
Brokerages were saying, “We’re going to sell you a room full of horse s–. And with that much horse s–, you just know there’s a pony in there somewhere.”

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Soros on sub-prime

by Jolyon on 25 September, 2008

I subscribe to a daily e-mail of interesting factual snippets from delanceyplace.com.
Today’s entry is from George Soros’ book, the The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (Public Affairs, Copyright 2008 by George Soros) and contains an interesting account of the roots of the sub-prime crisis, worth quoting in full:
>”The [real estate] crisis was slow in coming, [...]

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