Financial Services Authority Unhurried by Price Obviousness

FSA chief Hector Sants, to
probe lying banks...next year

NakedShorts’ Obviousness Rule rule states that, even if things are obvious, they are not officially true until some official writes for, or talks to, an official news organization to tell everybody something that everybody already knows, but doesn’t dare say.

 Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Incorrect securities pricing found at Credit Suisse Group AG (CS), Morgan Stanley (MS) and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEH) is more widespread and will be investigated, the UK’s financial regulator said today.

 The Fundamentally Supine Authority* said

it will begin the probe next year

after finding that securities valuations at a “large number” of London banks were “materially flawed or inadequate,” the agency said. The problems may worsen if banks fire compliance and risk officers, the FSA said. [Emphasis added]  

Nice of ’em to give everybody a few months to uncook the books. That scratching and scuffling and splashing noise is the sound of Canary Wharf rats dumping old P/L documents and backup tapes into the River Thames. This may also come in handy.

Or move everything to the US, where the Securities and Exchange Commission is deliberately ignoring similar activities, preferring wild-eyed jihads against alleged early fact-mongers and non-existent naked-short sellers of 19 financial services companies, in the name of preserving “confidence in the markets.”

‘Large Number’ of Banks Mis-Marked Assets
by Caroline Binham and Joyce Moullakis
Bloomberg Aug. 21 2008

Valuation & Product Control
by Hector Sants, Chief Executive Officer
Financial Services Authority
Aug. 13 2008

*  (© Private Eye)

Comments

[Jimmy Lathrop:]

Sounds like some banker has a photograph of a politician in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. At least in a dictatorship there is less hypocrisy.

2008 Aug 22 10:08 PM