Oh, the wily and unscrupulous French: They spend years arguing with the ferocity of a cockfighter for tough, nay, draconian financial regulations. And then they elect a Socialist who promises to be even less interested in the concerns of the monied classes. And then, when Europe’s two biggest economies—the ones housing the financial centers the French hope to destroy—announce that they’ll impose the aforementioned tough, if not draconian, regulations, the French say, joke’s on les Huns et les rosbifs. Read more »
France
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Hedge Funds
Someone Other Than Steve Cohen Is Facing An Insider Trading Investigation
By Jon ShazarNobody’s trying to put Paul Singer in jail—yet—but the Elliott Management chief has had to disclose an insider-trading probe to his investors. Read more »
Zee French are considering some sackings in the new year. Read more »
I guess we should talk about Europe and credit ratings. Now France isn’t AAA and Italy isn’t A and Portugal isn’t investment grade and here is something that someone at S&P actually said:
Our role is to give timely information to investors and if you give them timely information, if you give it to them in modest increments, then we think that they can make their own judgments about how they are going to allocate their portfolios.
Really! That could be S&P’s motto, “timely information, but in modest increments. Also not really that timely.”
If you’re into this sort of thing, though, the action is not in France so much as it is in the European Financial Stability Facility. The EFSF is basically, France and Germany and the other eurozone countries issue a bunch of debt*, put it into a blender, pulse until smooth, and then issue it as “EFSF debt.” The EFSF gets the money and uses it to prop up Greece, buy Italian bonds, etc. Because all the things are also all the other things, people saw this and were like:
1. Hey, that’s a CDO!
2. CDOs suck boo etc.
Here’s what the EFSF had to say about those claims:
Read more »
If It Makes You Feel Any Better, Jon Corzine Did Plenty Of Field Research Before Gorging Himself On An All-You-Can-Eat Euro Debt Buffet
By Bess Levin
…on October 15, two weeks before MF Global filed for bankruptcy, Corzine and his wife, Sharon Elghanayan, were at a birthday party in Paris talking about a château they were about to buy in the South of France. “It’s not in Cap Ferrat,” one person recalls Elghanayan saying, perhaps to mitigate the extravagance. “To buy any decent château is at least a couple of million euros,” explains another person who was at the party, “and that is before the renovation with the air-conditioning and the new kitchen. Sharon was very excited. She said she was flying down there on Monday morning.” [Vanity Fair]
Cuts going down circa now. Read more »
“Standard & Poor’s accidentally released a message to some of its subscribers on Thursday saying that it had downgraded French debt from its top AAA rating. S&P said it was investigating what had gone wrong and stressed that France still had an AAA rating.” [BBC]
The leaders of France and Germany disappointed financial markets Tuesday by ruling out issuing euro bonds to fix Europe’s debt crisis. Instead, they agreed to float proposals in September for a tax on financial transactions and push for closer joint governance of economic policy. Many experts say the only way to ensure affordable financing for the bloc’s most financially distressed countries would be for the euro area to issue joint eurobonds. But both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said they believed euro bonds were not part of the solution to Europe’s debt crisis…Sarkozy and Merkel also proposed that all 17 euro zone countries commit to balanced finances and write that goal into their constitutional law by summer 2012. Among other measures announced, he said they would also seek to ensure better cross-border economic government for the euro zone via twice-yearly meetings of leaders and the creation of a two-and-a-half-year presidency to steer this forum. [CNBC, earlier]
ironically fake john paulson buys real trees
With half of Europe having banned short-selling and anything that might loosely resemble it, if you think that French banks are undercapitalized then you may be seeking less traditional ways to monetize that view. One approach that you might have considered is writing a fictional account of a near-future Eurozone meltdown with real names of banks and individuals and selling it pseudonymously to a major French newspaper to publish in a twelve-part serial. If you live in the U.S. that may not sound like such a great idea, since we don’t consume a lot of based-loosely-on-real-events financial fiction unless it stars Shia LeBoeuf.
But in France, where after all mime is considered a form of entertainment, there seems to be a big appetite for fictionalized financial markets, as Le Monde found out when they puplished “Terminus pour l’euro” this summer. But Le Monde’s success may just have ruined it for the rest of you:
Read more »
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NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker -
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Sponsored Content
SoFi Answers the Call to Refinance Student Loans and Provides Unique Community Benefits
This is a guest post written by SoFi’s CEO, Mike Cagney.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Recently, there’s been a lot of talk amongst leaders in Washington about how to improve the painful process of repaying student loans. At SoFi, we feel your pain and work hard to offer more flexible, more affordable options for our borrowers. One idea that’s getting a lot of attention is increasing the options for refinancing debt after graduation. The only lender currently focused on refinancing private and federal student loans is SoFi.
We recognized early on that borrowers who have made timely payments on their loans, graduated from school, and have a job should be able to refinance their student loans at a lower interest rate. This may be why, after resuming lending by invitation, the media became increasingly interested in what we are doing.
In a recent article posted on MainStreet.com SoFi General Counsel Rob Lavet had this to say about SoFi’s ReFi products: Read more »
You know what they say: You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your financial planner. Or something like that. One of the great things of being in charge of your money is choosing who (if anyone) will help you manage it. The choice isn’t always an easy one. How will you know that your planner is reputable and trustworthy?
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1. She Isn’t Certified
“There are a lot of good planners out there who aren’t Certified Financial Panners™,” says Samantha Vient, CFP®, of LearnVest Planning Services. “However, CFPs® are required to adhere to the CFP® Board’s standards of professional conduct.We believe it’s always a good idea to work with someone who has the CFP® designation, which is issued after completing a CFP® Board-approved personal financial planning curriculum, passing a rigorous exam issued by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, meeting experience requirements and passing an ethics and background check.
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