Bravo

Go back to sleep over there @ S&P

Perhaps investors will extract more money from mbs exposure that BAC is responsible for after their purchase of Country Wide financial.

Full article

Prosecutors filed a motion on Monday to dismiss all charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, stating that the Manhattan maid who accused him of sexual assault had told so many lies that her story could no longer be considered reliable.
Strauss-Kahn was believed to be a top French presidential contender until he was accused of attacking the maid when she entered his room to clean it.
The development comes more than three months after the former head of the International Monetary Fund was arrested, and more than seven weeks after a judge released him from house arrest as investigators admitted they had discovered significant problems with her credibility.
“The physical, scientific and other evidence establishes that the defendant engaged in a hurried sexual encounter with the complainant, but it does not independently establish her claim of a forcible, nonconsensual encounter,” the motion says.

FULL STORY HERE

“Hey Peter, watch your corn hole!” -Lawrence, Office Space

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Former Duane Reade Chief Executive Officer Anthony Cuti was sentenced Monday to three years in prison after a jury convicted him last year in connection to an accounting fraud at the drug store chain.In sentencing Cuti, U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts in Manhattan called him a “gifted, arrogant, driven, and entitled individual” who “bullied people into committing fraudulent acts to make the company look better than it actually was.”

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/08/22/ex-duane-reade-ceo-sentenced-to-3-years-in-prison/#ixzz1VoAJcqJu

The Nikkei average rose on Tuesday on broad-based bargain hunting after ending at a five-month low Monday, though lingering fears about the U.S. economy and the strong yen still weighed.
The benchmark Nikkei .N225 was up 0.9 percent at 8,706.93. The broader Topix index .TOPX rose 0.8 percent to 748.71.

REUTERS

Exclusive from REUTERS

Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein has hired Reid Weingarten, a high-profile Washington defense attorney whose past clients include a former Enron accounting officer, according to a government source familiar with the matter.
Blankfein, 56, is in his sixth year at the helm of the largest U.S. investment bank, which has spent two years dodging accusations of conflicts of interest and fraud.
The move to retain Weingarten comes as investigations of Goldman and its role in the 2007-2009 financial crisis continue.
The Securities and Exchange Commission scored a $550 million settlement against the bank in a fraud lawsuit in July 2010, but other investigations continue.
“Why do you bring in someone like that?” said the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “It says one thing: that they’re taking it seriously.”
Blankfein has not been charged in any civil or criminal case, and it was not immediately clear why he hired Weingarten.
David Wells, a spokesman for Goldman, declined to comment.
Weingarten did not respond to requests for comment.
A partner with Steptoe & Johnson LLP, Weingarten has represented a wide array of clients in criminal cases. They include former WorldCom Inc chief Bernard Ebbers, who was later convicted, and former Enron accounting officer Richard Causey, who pleaded guilty in exchange for a 5 to 7-year prison term.
In May, Weingarten won the acquittal of former GlaxoSmithKline lawyer Lauren Stevens on charges of lying and obstructing a probe into the company’s marketing practices.
“I’m used to these monstrously difficult cases where everybody hates my clients,” Weingarten told AmericanLawyer.com in May, although he described Stevens as a “beloved figure.”
Controversy has continued to swirl around Goldman Sachs and Blankfein in the aftermath of the credit crisis in which Goldman was accused of favoring some clients over other investors and of sometimes trading against the interest of clients.
The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in April released a scathing report that criticized Goldman for “exploiting” clients by unloading subprime exposure onto unsuspecting clients in 2006 and 2007, and concluded that its top executives misled Congress during testimony in 2010.
The company said it disagreed with many of the report’s conclusions, but took seriously the issues addressed.
In June, New York prosecutors subpoenaed the bank to explain some of its actions in the run-up to the financial crisis. It is also the target of probes by the Justice Department, the New York Attorney General and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
It was not immediately clear what charges, if any, Blankfein could face personally.
One former federal prosecutor, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Blankfein may have hired outside counsel after receiving a request from investigators for documents or other information.
The Senate report raised questions about inconsistencies between testimony from Blankfein and other Goldman executives to Congress and emails unearthed in the Senate investigation. The subcommittee’s chairman, Senator Carl Levin, has said the question of whether Blankfein and others committed perjury is up to the relevant federal agencies.
The former prosecutor cautioned that perjury cases were difficult to prove, adding that prosecutors would not bring charges unless they had a “rock solid case.”
Goldman earlier in August lowered its estimate for future legal costs to $2 billion from its $2.7 billion estimate three months earlier. It said it expects such costs to remain high for the foreseeable future.
Goldman shares have lost a quarter of their value this year, underperforming the broader stock market and other bank shares.

A really “effective” way to balance the budget.

Census Bureau to kill “Statistical Abstract of  the United States”.

This does compute

Fun times for sure

Hopefully this is not the case

Really

Well at least $4 IMO

Nice to pick up $2 bn huh. I think i would quit.

Fun times ahead

Any surprise ?

No doubt advice from investment bankers to boost earnings…

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank spent euro14.3 billion ($20.6 billion) last week buying government bonds to keep the region’s government debt crisis at bay until the eurozone’s newly-strengthened bailout fund can step into the role.

The amount of bond purchases disclosed on Monday was short of the previous week’s figure of euro22 billion but close to market expectations.

Buying Italian and Spanish bonds on financial markets has driven down borrowing rates that were threatening those two countries with financial ruin. European officials want the eurozone’s bailout fund to take over the purchases, but national parliaments will not give their approval for that until this fall.

That has left the central bank with the main burden of fighting off market turmoil. Last week’s purchases ran the bank’s total spent in supporting shaky eurozone government bonds to euro110.5 billion since the program was launched in May, 2010.

Eurozone leaders agreed on July 21 to expand the powers of their euro440 billion bailout fund to let it purchase government bonds on the secondary market — that is, from other bond investors, not directly loaning money to the governments. They also gave it the power to loan money quickly to countries in trouble and to help recapitalize banks. Those powers can be used to support financially troubled governments and prevent bond market turmoil while governments use the respite to clean up their finances.

However, the changes have not yet gone through national parliaments. During the delay, market fears about potential defaults spread increasingly to Italy and Spain, which are too large to be bailed out.

The ECB decided to re-start bond purchases at an emergency meeting Aug. 7 and began them the next day, driving bond yields down to under 5 percent for both countries.

Those yields reflect the costs the countries would face if they turned to the bond market for new borrowing. Their yields had previously been over 6 percent, heading toward the level that forced the eurozone to rescue Greece, Portugal and Ireland, which together are only 6 percent of the 17-country eurozone.

Read here:

In another hit to the beleaguered housing market, a report out Monday found that the number of delinquent mortgage borrowers — those who have missed at least one payment — rose during the three months ended June 30.

The delinquency rate grew to 8.44%, adjusted for seasonal effects, up 0.12 percentage points compared with three months earlier. The non-seasonally adjusted increase was up 0.32 points to 8.11%.

The increase, as reported by the Mortgage Delinquency Survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), may not sound like much, but it reverses a steady improvement in delinquencies that prevailed through most of the past two years.

“While overall mortgage delinquencies increased only slightly between the first and second quarters of this year, it is clear that the downward trend we saw through most of 2010 has stopped.” said Jay Brinkmann, MBA’s Chief Economist. “Mortgage delinquencies are now showing some signs of worsening.”