Derives financières
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Who came up with the model for excessive pay? No, it wasn't the bankers – it was academics | Aditya Chakrabortty | Comment is free
Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street – the 1987 film that saw through the greed culture. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive Take a big step back. Ignore those sterile debates about how Dave screwed up over Stephen Hester 's pay and where this leaves Ed.
How banks get away with inventing profits | Gordon Kerr | Comment is free
Concerns over the total core capital RBS claimed to have were flagged up by Steve Baker MP last year. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters Both sides of the political divide are in agreement that bailing out the UK's failed banks in 2008 (and Northern Rock in 2007) was the right decision. Taxpayers were told that the worst of all possible worlds would have occurred had banks been allowed to fail. By bailing them out, and by encouraging them to continue to reward executives on pre-crisis pay scales and incentives, politicians prophesied that things would be fine, and management were incentivised to hope that things were fine. The cream of banking talent would remain at the helm of each bank, steadying the ship, ensuring that liquidity would flow through the national economy, which would soon be back on its feet.
Two weeks ago, yet another case of rogue trading shocked the financial world when UBS trader Kweku Adoboli was arrested for allegedly squandering some $2.3 billion with a risky and unauthorized investment scheme. The 31-year-old, who had been based in London for the Swiss bank, remains in jail. The bank's chief executive Oswald Grübel, meanwhile, has resigned over the scandal -- the third major embarrassment to rattle the institution in just a few years. The situation mirrors a similar scandal at French bank Société Générale, where another young "rogue trader," Jérôme Kerviel , gambled away billions in 2007 and 2008. But why do these situations keep arising in the financial world?
Going Rogue: Share Traders More Reckless Than Psychopaths, Study Shows - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International
ETFs
Contrairement à la perception outre-Atlantique, les banques américaines sont en train de traverser une longue suite de poursuites judiciaires. Celles-ci visent quatre comportements qui ont, collectivement, été à l’origine de la crise financière de 2008 mais continuent encore à se produire. L’absence de transparence dans les conditions de crédit : il s’agit d’une série d’offres qui ont appâté les emprunteurs hypothécaires en leur proposant deux années de taux d’intérêt alléchants, qui allaient, à partir de 2007, hausser en fonction de conditions de marché sur lesquelles l’emprunteur n’avait aucun éclairage ou visibilité.
Banques américaines : l’étau se resserre sur les fraudes
City's influence over Conservatives laid bare by research into donations | Politics
The influence of the City over the Conservatives has been laid bare by new research showing that more than half of the Tory party's donations since the general election have come from individuals and businesses working in finance. Hedge funds, financiers and private equity firms contributed more than a quarter of all the Tories' private donations – which this year poured in at a rate equal to £1m a month – the study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found. The figures show an increase in the proportion of party funds coming from the financial sector, raising fears that the City's financial influence over the Tories is on the rise as key pieces of legislation are discussed by the coalition government.
Un cauchemar et le mot est faible : absorbés à fignoler leurs accusations en Appel contre Kerviel pour le mois prochain tout en assaisonnant leurs salades grecques pour les rendre plus digestes, Frédéric Oudéa et ses chics types de la Société Générale , pensaient avoir tourné la page des sub-primes américains. Mauvaise pioche. Le 2 septembre, la FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency – voir encadré - ) vient de déposer plainte contre 17 banques dont plusieurs filiales US de la Société Générale.
Les détails de la plainte des Etats Unis contre 17 banques dont la Société Générale
Here It Is: Presenting Goldman's "The World Is Ending So Let's All Profit" Report
A few days ago the WSJ made waves by disclosing that Goldman was in the process of recreating another "Abacus", by pitching to clients a global "pain trade" presentation created by Goldman's Alan Brazil, which, among others, speculated that funding needs for European banks would be far, far greater than the IMF-proposed $200 billion, and would in fact be closer to $1 trillion. This emphasis is actually odd, because Goldman focuses as much if not more attention on the end of the Chinese bubble as it does on the end of the European ponzi. It of course also did the usual Goldman thing, which is to allow select clients to piggyback with its prop, pardon flow, desk, in recreating the same fiasco for which it already had to pay a half a billion settlement to the SEC last year. Yet to date, nobody had actually seen a public version of this report....That is, nobody, until now - presenting Goldman's top secret "State of the Markets - Long and Short Risk Strategies"
Bonnet d’âne pour le FMI, par Pierre Rimbert
« Recherche institutionnellement orientée », « biais idéologiques », « autocensure », « conclusions préconçues », « faible diversité d’approches théoriques et, plus encore, empiriques », « étroitesse de vues », « cadre analytique inapproprié aux réalités des pays étudiés », « incapacité répétée à citer des travaux de chercheurs locaux »… A tout prendre, il valait mieux pour les têtes pensantes du Fonds monétaire international (FMI) que les feux de l’actualité fussent braqués sur leur directeur général, arrêté à New York le 14 mai 2011, plutôt que sur le dernier rapport de son Bureau indépendant d’évaluation, publié la semaine suivante dans l’indifférence générale.
Warren Buffet investit 5 milliards dans Bank of America
Bank of America, actuellement confrontée à une crise de confiance à Wall Street, a reçu jeudi le soutien du milliardaire américain et icône des marchés boursiers Warren Buffett , qui va investir cinq milliards de dollars dans l'établissement. "Bank of America est une entreprise solide, bien gérée", a justifié l'homme d'affaires. Selon les termes de l'accord, sa holding Bershire Hathaway va acquérir 50.000 actions préférentielles émises pour l'occasion, à 100.000 dollars chacune, portant un intérêt annuel de 6%. M.
Nicholas "Nick" Leeson (born 25 February 1967) is a former derivatives broker whose fraudulent, unauthorized speculative trading caused the collapse of Barings Bank , the United Kingdom 's oldest investment bank , for which he was sent to prison. [ 2 ] Since leaving prison in 1999 he became, and subsequently resigned as, the CEO of Irish football club Galway United and is active on the keynote / after-dinner speaking circuit where he advises companies about risk and corporate responsibility. [ 3 ] [ edit ] Early life Leeson was born in Watford , where he attended Parmiter's School .
Nick Leeson
Ten years ago this week, the rogue trader Nick Leeson fled Singapore after realising he could no longer hide his trading losses of more than $1bn. Leeson had already been racking up huge losses for over a year, but by the morning of 23 February 1995 the pressure had reached boiling point. In a final effort to recover the losses, the Barings trader had bet on the Nikkei index of leading Japanese shares to rise. But his gamble didn't pay off.
Business | Leeson's legacy lives on in Singapore
High-Frequency Firms Triple Trades in Rout
The stock market’s fastest electronic firms boosted trading threefold during the rout that erased $2.2 trillion from U.S. equity values, stepping up strategies that profit from volatility, according to one of their biggest brokers. The increase from Aug. 1 to Aug. 10 over their 2011 average surpassed the 80 percent rise in U.S. equity volume, showing that high-frequency traders made up more of the market during the plunge, Gary Wedbush, executive vice president and head of capital markets at Wedbush Securities, said in a telephone interview. Wedbush is the largest broker supplying bids and offers on the Nasdaq Stock Market, according to exchange data .The World's Biggest Central Bank Has Private Shareholders
By Washington’s Blog As I've pointed out for years, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is owned by the world's central banks, which are in turn owned by the big banks. See this and this . It turns out there may be a very interesting wrinkle to private ownership issue.Le mot clef est : crédibilité. Un État fort et crédible déterminerait efficacement le rapport d’échange de sa monnaie aux biens à valeur consensuelle: il contrôlerait l’inflation. Nous n’avons pas dit “supprimerait” ou “réduirait” l’inflation – une décision politique qui peut être opportune ou malvenue!
11 La double arnaque
Les banques détournent l’argent du livret A
Dessin: Louison Du même auteurBank of America leaks
spéculation
Regulation & taxation