Mbuna

MBIA's GIC Exposure Could Trigger a Liquidity Crisis

It's nice to see a little dose of reality here but I wonder what it will take for someone with a larger platform start to speak out on the culture of lies and denial that is now so prevalent in the financial sector. There are so many white elephants in the room it is practically a frickin stampede! One example- it has been clear for around 6 months that Citibank was insolvent. Where was (is) the press coverage of that fact? The facts are there if you wade through the BS but there is some kind of taboo about telling the truth. Everyone knows all these quarterly reports are anything but truthful. It has reached the point of absurdity in my opinion. Just look at this person trying to defend MBIA. Does anyone actually believe he is sincere? Was he put up to it by someone else? All that anger indicates someone has a lot at stake here. His point number 2 is classic- suffering the heartbreak of "alleged corporate fraud". How much more cartoon like will this all get? What will it take for everyone to get over their denial?

MBIA vs. Smith and Jones

The most telling thing about this article is what it fails to address- anything remotely resembling responsibility for how this mess came to be in the first place. This article exemplifies a lot of what is wrong with todays financial world- a complete lack of morals and total unwillingness to assume responsibility. Everyone is so willing to
put a band aid on it so the gravy train keeps running. Let's take for example the subtle dig at Yves Smith for attempting to bring some moral outrage to the situation. Sam Jones is "more balanced". Therefore Yves Smith must be unbalanced. Yeah someone that shows some moral fiber must be unbalanced. What is unbalanced is the suggestion that creating a new subsidiary with that $900 million is an elegant solution. Well lets see here, take this company which has lost billions of dollars as a result of simple corporate greed, let them create a new subsidiary and leave all that old mess behind and even though they still have that same greed, and will likely do more funny business so they can make more money and will likely be fleecing those investors from all that capital they raised, they are really good boy scouts so therefore we should just trust them. And that is in fact what you are suggesting Mr. Salmon. No new regulations, no government oversight, nothing. Until people like you start to speak up about actually changing the current mess nothing is really going to change and I suspect that is how you really want it be anyway.

My final point here is that just as political reporters these days have shown to be far too entwined with their government sources to be trustworthy I wonder if the same isn't true of business reporters (and bloggers) as well. No one really wants to upset the apple cart because its too mutually beneficial. So Mr. Salmon who is buttering your bread?