Opening Bell: 04.26.10
Treasury to Sell "Up To" 1.5 Billion Shares of Citigroup Stock (BW)
The Treasury will give its agent, Morgan Stanley, “discretionary authority” to sell the amount, and expects to give clearance to sell additional shares thereafter, the department said in an e-mailed statement today. “We’re putting TARP out of its misery,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in an interview with CNN television aired yesterday. “This is going to cost us much less in fiscal terms than even the S&L crisis,” he said, referring to the collapse of savings and loan banks in the 1980s and 1990s.
Goldman Sachs And the Financial Crisis (NYT)
Emails from Goldman Sachs execs released Saturday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In a message dated July 25, 2007, David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, reacted to figures that said the company had made a $51 million profit from bets that housing securities would drop in value. “Tells you what might be happening to people who don’t have the big short,” he wrote to Gary Cohn.
Goldman Trader's Email Slur (Times Online)
In a series of emails released yesterday, Fabrice Tourre dismissed the complex debt products he created for the bank as “pure intellectual masturbation." He also compared the products to a “Frankenstein” monster that had “turned against his own inventor."
Larry Summers: Goldman Emails Show Need For Transparency (Reuters)
Summers, on CBS's "Face the Nation," said he would not comment on specifics of a fraud suit against Goldman brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. "But I will say this," Summers said. "This underscores what is at the center of the president's vision here: the importance of transparency, the importance of things being in the open, the importance of it being known who is in a position to benefit from what."
Greece Confident of EU-IMF Bailout Package (WSJ)
"We're all confident that this will be done in time and that we will be able to finance Greek public debt without any problem," Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told a news briefing. "Early May is a good ballpark figure."
C.D.O. Days, S&M Nights at Derivatives Conference (NYT)
Financiers, lawyers, traders and accountants gathered last week at the annual International Swaps and Derivatives Association conference here to discuss “Collateralization and Netting — the Impact” and “Systemic Risk: Advances and Challenges in the Wake of the Crisis.” By Thursday night they needed to put out of their minds the specter of sweeping legislation to regulate the derivatives. They escaped to Supperclub, a bar and restaurant, where some plopped on the beds that covered the floor while a waiter in denim short shorts, suspenders and a scarf delivered drinks. The truly relaxed turned over on their tummies and received back massages from a dreadlocked member of the Supperclub staff. By midnight, others ended up in the S & M chamber with a bed-to-ceiling stripper pole and videos of dominatrixes playing in the background.
Deal Near On Derivatives (WSJ)
Among the considerations still in the balance: A big provision being sought by Warren Buffett in recent weeks. A key Senate committee had changed its proposed overhaul of derivatives regulation after lobbying by Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., potentially helping the famed investor avoid a financial hit, congressional aides say.
Bankers To Bikers Fights To Maintain Fed Oversight (Bloomberg)
“It would be a shame for the Federal Reserve to lose the community-bank perspective,” says Ralph Larry Lyons, 61, whose bank is in Powhatan County, about 30 miles from Richmond. The county is home to 28,000 people, 27 Baptist churches and the Sons of the South motorcycle club -- whose president, Joe Svedics, is a customer of the bank.
