Methinks we’ll need a 12-step program for this

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on November 4, 2009 at 1:25 pm

Dylan Ratigan gets on the soapbox and outlines a few steps Congress should follow to overhaul ‘too big to fail’ and produce some real financial regulatory reform. Among the thoughts guiding his plan: “Fortunes should not be made in minutes, but over years.”

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Tags: banking, credit default swaps, Dylan Ratigan, financial institutions, financial regulation, legislative issues, politics  

Why AIG had to pay bonuses

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on March 23, 2009 at 7:26 am

The New York Post goes digging into AIG’s regulatory filings and finds that more than $1 trillion in credit default swaps and mortgage-based securities would have gone into default had the insurer canceled its bonus contract.

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Tags: American International Group Inc., credit default swaps, executive compensation, insurance, mortgage-backed securities  

LP compared to GE

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on March 6, 2009 at 9:26 am

But only as an example of what investors, who are frothing about the state of GE Capital, should expect to pay for credit default swaps on junk-rated companies.

Credit-default swaps on the finance arm of GE, which holds $45 billion of cash, are about as expensive as those for building materials-maker Louisiana-Pacific Corp., which posted nine straight quarterly losses.

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Tags: credit default swaps, debt ratings, financial instruments, General Electric Co., Louisiana-Pacific Corp.