Entry: What Happened To The ARS Market Anyway?
A Primer On How The Latest Credit Freeze Got All Frozen

posted by Ben_H

Feb 21, 2008 12:01PM

Definitely hedge funds getting involved, we actually missed by a wide margin on a couple of auctions. Funny aside: at the height of the turmoil our Goldman coverage helpfully makes us offer of failede paper we were considering bidding on in reset auction... above par. Love the stones on those GS guys!

Entry: Angelo Mozilo Deeply Offended That You're Offended

posted by Ben_H

May 21, 2008 2:47PM

"hear him, hear him!"

Entry: Bigger Than Bear

posted by Ben_H

May 29, 2008 5:46PM

The vending challenge looks like a bigger challenge than matching the Oyster Boy. Half-dozen oysters = 57 calories (according to calorie-count.com), so 244 oysters is around 2300 calories. A day's worth of calories for an average-sized guy. Granted, it has to be done in one hour, but still seems a lot more clearly within human capacity than taking down 9,000 calories in a workday!

Entry: Hundreds Arrested In Mortgage Sting

posted by Ben_H

Jun 19, 2008 2:02PM

So what does this indictment mean, exactly? If I suffer a moment of doubt about my investment strategy and write or speak to a colleageue about it, I am forever barred from marketing? I guess that we should leave investing to the overconfident, who never entertain the possibility that they could have taken a bad position!

Entry: Morgan Stanley Rogue Trader Lost $120 Million

posted by Ben_H

Jun 20, 2008 11:02AM

I'm told he traded options on CDX. I didn't realize that enough options on CDX traded that one guy's book could be plausibly mismarked to the extent of $120mio!

Entry: Are Taxpayers On The Hook In Fed's Bear Bailout?

posted by Ben_H

Jul 11, 2008 12:15PM

The results of the monetary authority are generally consider "quasi-fiscal" gains or losses under standard (read: IMF) fiscal accounting. While the monetary authority's results are off-budget, they do matter for overall public sector solvency (equity position of the monetary authority is a public sector asset; negative equity of the monetary authority will ultimately need to be corrected by fiscal injection), and are considered as part of the deficit or surplus of fiscal accounts.

For an interesting example of this, look at recent fiscal results of the Dominican Republic, where the CB ran huge quasi-fiscal deficits and the recapitalization of the CB caused government debt to GDP to roughly double.

Entry: Are Taxpayers On The Hook In Fed's Bear Bailout?

posted by Ben_H

Jul 11, 2008 12:18PM

The results of the monetary authority are generally consider "quasi-fiscal" gains or losses under standard (read: IMF) fiscal accounting. While the monetary authority's results are off-budget, they do matter for overall public sector solvency (equity position of the monetary authority is a public sector asset; negative equity of the monetary authority will ultimately need to be corrected by fiscal injection), and are considered as part of the deficit or surplus of fiscal accounts.

For an interesting example of this, look at recent fiscal results of the Dominican Republic, where the CB ran huge quasi-fiscal deficits and the recapitalization of the CB caused government debt to GDP to roughly double.

Entry: Are Taxpayers On The Hook In Fed's Bear Bailout?

posted by Ben_H

Jul 11, 2008 1:05PM

If we want to talk analogies, I think the right one here is how a subsidiary's gains or losses flow through the parent's income statement. The public fisc in a sense "owns" the Fed, inasmuch as the Fed's profits ultimately flow to the fisc. Much as there is a lot of debate about when it is proper to consolidate and when it is not, governments try to count the quasi-fiscal activities of the monetary authority when it suits them and to treat them as separate when it doesn't. What's hard for me to understand, though, is how the fisc would not be worse off if the Fed sustains a big loss.

From the IMF Manual on Fiscal Transparency:

Sec 196:
The quasi-fiscal activities of the central bank may also be difficult to identify and
quantify. Only where the financial effects are fully reflected in the profit and loss account in
the financial year in which they occur will the impact of such quasi-fiscal activities be
captured in the budget, through central bank profits transferred to the government. Even
then, the implications of individual activities for resource allocation in the economy, fiscal
risks, or the government’s prioritization of policies are not transparent."

Sec 201: "The OECD best practice guidelines do not cover reporting on quasi-fiscal activities.
However, best practice is to report quantified estimates of the fiscal significance of quasifiscal
activities, and to provide information on the basis for quantification."

Entry: Looking At International Solutions To Falling Stock Prices

posted by Ben_H

Jul 17, 2008 12:17PM

The Nigerian Stock Exchange beat the Pakistanis to it. A few weeks back they instituted (temporarily -- turned out to be for about 10 days) a rule that no stock could trade below its closing price on the prior day.

Entry: I Think We All Know What This Means: One Bloomberg Terminal For All Citi Employees

posted by Ben_H

Aug 13, 2008 5:00PM

For the extra $90, will Nanny Bloomberg let me at long last again use the word "fuck" in my bbrg messages? I've started writing "fukk" and "sh1t" and "asss" in my email messages out of sheer habit. I'm a big enough ninny as it is without the taboo deformations...

Entry: Opening Bell: 8.20.08

posted by Ben_H

Aug 20, 2008 9:39AM

I travel a lot and was intrigued enough to give Clear a try. I attempted to enroll at JFK maybe 18 months ago. It took the cretins at the Clear both almost an hour to get their stupid system to even take my biometric information and I nearly missed my flight. Then, I heard nothing for months, followed by a torrent of emails explaining that they had run into some system problems and need me to redo the enrollment. Glutton for punishment that I am, I gave it another shot my next time through the terminal where they had an enrollment both at JFK. This time, the cretins had the routine down to about 30 minutes. A few weeks later, I got a card, which has proven entirely useless. Clear doesn't have a ton of "Clear" lanes open yet; moreover, if you travel business class, you generally get a line preference equivalent to that of Clear anyway. The main impact I've noticed is an enormous about of spam from Steven Brill. The latest: a string of a half-dozen relating to a security breach. Somebody stole a laptop with unencrypted Clear customer data... and then it was recovered... and then Clear changed its policies... DELETE, DELETE, DELETE!