Man of the Meltdown – 4 Milliarden $ Bonus für John Paulson

Das wird er wohl wert sein!

Business Week Books November 25, 2009, 5:00PM EST text size: TT

How hedge fund manager John Paulson made billions in the crisis

By Spencer E. Ante

The Greatest Trade Ever
By Gregory Zuckerman
Broadway; 293 pp.; $26

The Great Recession of 2009 destroyed trillions in wealth. But a few lucky or shrewd souls profited from this catastrophe. Perhaps the single largest beneficiary was John Paulson, a hedge fund manager who engineered the greatest trade in history, earning his firm $20 billion by betting against the housing market. In 2007, Paulson took home a staggering $4 billion for himself, the largest one-year payout in the annals of finance. That’s more than $10 million a day, if you’re counting.

US-Gewerbeimmobilien: Crash heftiger als Subprime?

 Drohender Kollaps könnte weltweites Finanzbeben auslösen. Gewerbeimmobilien vor möglichem Kollaps

 New York (pte/01.12.2009/06:10) – originally published by forbes.com

In der Finanzwelt sind die Ängste vor einem möglichen Kollaps des US-Gewerbeimmobilienmarktes gestiegen. Ein Crash könnte sogar härter ausfallen als das Subprime-Debakel 2007, das als Ursprung der weltweiten Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise gilt. Experten zufolge sei eine Kettenreaktion möglich, die weltweit ihre Spuren hinterlassen würde. Die Sorgen sind nicht unbegründet, wie Stuart Saft, Partner bei der internationalen Anwaltskanzlei Dewey & LeBoeuf, aufzeigt. Refinanzierungsprobleme könnten das drohende Finanzbeben auslösen.

1,3 Billionen Dollar fällig

 

Brad DeLong’s Erroneous Defense of Greenspan

From „Mises Daily“.

Mises Daily by Robert P. Murphy | Posted on 8/3/2009 12:00:00 AM

Even as the Austrian critique of Greenspan’s housing bubble gains more adherents, some economists have tried to exonerate the former Maestro. Previously on these pages, I have responded to Henderson and Hummel’s defense of the former Fed chairman, and I also took on Greenspan’s own list of excuses.

Nouriel Roubini warns China could cause commodity price slide

From „The Telegraph“.

Nouriel Roubini, the respected US economist, has warned that commodity prices could sag in the coming months as a consequence of a likely slowdown in China’s aggressive stockpiling programme.

 By Peter Taylor
Published: 4:50PM BST 03 Aug 2009

Nouriel Roubini said that China’s short-term ‘massive stockpiling of commodities’ had potential ramifications for prices Photo: Getty Images

Recovery Signs in Housing Market Stir Some Hope

aus der heutigen NYT:

By DAVID STREITFELD

After a plunge lasting three years, houses have finally become cheap enough to lure buyers. That, in turn, is stabilizing prices, generating hope that the real estate market is beginning to recover.

CIT Is Said to Obtain Urgent Loan to Prevent Bankruptcy

Aus der heutigen NYT:

Directors of the CIT Group, one of the nation’s leading lenders to small and midsize businesses, approved a deal Sunday evening with some of the bank’s major bondholders to help it avert a bankruptcy filing through a $3 billion emergency loan, according to people briefed on the matter.

The deal will buy CIT some time to restructure its business model and reduce its voluminous debt load, after the company failed to win crucial concessions from Washington regulators. The company had planned to file for bankruptcy protection as soon as Monday afternoon if it could not attract enough capital from private investors, including big bondholders and its banks.

Financial Invention vs. Consumer Protection

By ROBERT J. SHILLER

Published: July 18, 2009. New York Times

JAMES WATT, who invented the first practical steam engine in 1765, worried that high-pressure steam could lead to major explosions. So he avoided high pressure and ended up with an inefficient engine.

It wasn’t until 1799 that Richard Trevithick, who apprenticed with an associate of Watt, created a high-pressure engine that opened a new age of steam-powered factories, railways and ships.

That is how innovation often proceeds — by learning from errors and hazards and gradually conquering problems through devices of increasing complexity and sophistication.

Our financial system has essentially exploded, with financial innovations like collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and subprime mortgages giving rise in the past few years to abuses that culminated in disasters in many sectors of the economy.

Ist es Aufgabe der öffentlichen Hand, mit meinen Steuergeldern zu spekulieren?

Aus dem Rechnungshofbericht vom 15/07/09: Und bei solchem Dilettantismus sind „keine Konsequenzen fällig“ ? Was würde wohl ein Gericht zum Vorwurf der „Untreue“ sagen? Aber da wird wohl keine Staatsanwaltschaft tätig werden!

16.1 (1) Um zusätzliche Einnahmen zu erwirtschaften, nahm die ÖBFA Mittel am Geldmarkt auf und versuchte, diese zu günstigeren Konditionen weiter zu veranlagen. Dadurch erhöhte sich auch der Kassastand des Bundes, der gemäß § 40 Abs. 1 Bundeshaushaltsgesetz, BGBl. Nr. 213/1986, der Vorsorge für die Aufrechterhaltung der jederzeitigen Zahlungsfähigkeit des Bundes dienen sollte (so genannte Kassenstärker). So betrug der durchschnittliche Kassastand 2002 4,841 Mrd. EUR und stieg bis 2006 auf rd. 9,608 Mrd. EUR. Im Jahr 2007 erreichte er bereits einen Wert von 16,668 Mrd. EUR; der Höchstwert lag im Oktober 2007 bei 26,839 Mrd. EUR.

Was sind das eigentlich – SIV’s?

Anlässlich der intelligenten Anlage des Cash-Bestandes der Republik Österreich in Toxic Papers (Finanzminister Pröll: „Aber alle hatten beste Ratings!“) sind wieder ein paar Spezialbegriffe aufgetaucht:

SIV, SPV, CDO, CDS, ABS. Anbei eine kurze Beschreibung (aus Wikipedia):

SIVs

How Did We Get It So Wrong?

John Mauldin’s Newsletter 25 April 09. Tough stuff:

„When we first started out with TALF and everything, it was a couple hundred billion, and now we just throw the word trillions around and it just drips off of our tongues and we don’t even think about it. A trillion is a lot. It’s a big number. And the total guarantees and backups and all this stuff we are into — I saw an estimate of $10-12 trillion. That’s a lot of money.“