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It was sickening enough when British oil giant BP set new standards for corporate scumbaggery in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, turning the Gulf of Mexico into its own personal toilet and imperiling entire species of wildlife in an attempt to save a few nickels. But with the Gulf geyser finally capped, there's still a way for BP to cause an even more unthinkable disaster: an AIG-style, derivative-fueled financial shitstorm. If the company decides to declare bankruptcy — a very real possibility with these bastards — it could trigger chaos in our casino system of finance, underscoring the insane levels...

Michael Snyder writes: Today there is a horrific derivatives bubble that threatens to destroy not only the U.S. economy but the entire world financial system as well, but unfortunately the vast majority of people do not understand it. When you say the word "derivatives" to most Americans, they have no idea what you are talking about. In fact, even most members of the U.S. Congress don't really seem to understand them. But you don't have to get into all the technicalities to understand the bigger picture. Basically, derivatives are financial instruments whose value depends upon or is derived from the...

"America cannot afford a Trillion Dollar disaster. That’s what this will cost, count in Trillions not Billions. The cost in lives, displaced people and destruction to the Eco System is on a scale Humanity has never encountered in its recorded history."

The financial reform that is about to be passed is a farce. Like so much in Washington, it is strictly for the tourists. The following article from Sox First provides commentary on the legislation: "You think the Obama administration's legislation to fix US financial regulation is going to change Wall Street? You're dreaming! Nothing has changed, investment banks are a protected species in the US. Hailed by some sections of the media as something that will put banks on a bigger leash, the reality it does nothing of the sort. It's just a massive con because of the way the...

President Obama was quick to claim victory at week’s end, after congressional negotiators hammered out a final bill regulating the financial sector, saying it provides “90% of what I proposed.” But just how the nearly 2,000-page bill will affect New York — which relies upon financial institutions for a major share of its tax base — remains unclear. After all, as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd admitted: “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.” Which is why Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) warns of “three unintended consequences on every page of this bill.” Not...

Washington in the Obama era seems bent on imposing "solutions" that not only fail to solve Americans' problems, but make us poorer in the bargain. In a direct attack on Wall Street, the president and his ally, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), are bent on imposing the "Volcker rule," which would prohibit banks from making speculative investments with their own funds, and on requiring banks to divest their derivatives trading desks, or at least put them in a separate subsidiary owned by a parent holding company. Five major banks -- Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley...

Blanche Lincoln may represent Arkansas in the US Senate -- but given the pain she's trying to inflict on New York's financial sector, she might as well hail from London or Hong Kong. With talks under way to reconcile House and Senate financial-reform bills, the powerful Agriculture Committee chairwoman is reportedly working overtime to resurrect a plan that would force banks to part ways with their lucrative derivatives-trading operations. Which, in turn, would separate New York from a healthy chunk of its tax base -- and a whole lot of jobs. Few would dispute, of course, that the market for...

Soros: The Crisis Is Far From Over, And Derivatives Are A "License To Kill" Vince Veneziani Jun. 10, 2010, 4:14 PM George Soros is sounding a lot like Warren Buffett these days. In a conference in Vienna, the famous investor said that Europe's worsening debt situation is just "Act II" of the crisis, according to Bloomberg. Bloomberg: “The collapse of the financial system as we know it is real, and the crisis is far from over,” Soros said today at a conference in Vienna. “Indeed, we have just entered Act II of the drama.” Soros, 79, said the current situation...

One of the biggest risks to the world's financial health is the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. It's complex, it's unregulated, and it ought to be of concern to world leaders that its notional value is 20 times the size of the world economy. But traders rule the roost -- and as much as risk managers and regulators might want to limit that risk, they lack the power or knowledge to do so. A quadrillion is a big number: 1,000 times a trillion. Yet according to one of the world's leading derivatives experts, Paul Wilmott, who holds a doctorate in applied...

From Greece to Britain and the USA – trillions in bailouts disappear into the black holes of the overspending government bureaucracies and irresponsible corporations. It is amazing that the stock markets are still functioning. May be it is because the Wall Street stopped reflecting the reality long time ago. Instead the market invented the new dimension of reality – the derivatives of all kind. Wall Street is trading crap – the derivative markets are like trading shares for vacations on asteroids, because Obama said he has a plan to go there, when the economy recovers and he gets revenues from...

"-- The notional value of derivatives held by U.S. commercial banks increased $8.5 trillion in the fourth quarter, or 4.2 percent, to $212.8 trillion." "-- Derivative contracts remain concentrated in interest rate products, which comprise 84 percent of total derivative notional values. The notional value of credit derivative contracts, at $14 trillion, represents 7 percent of total notionals. Credit derivatives notional totals increased by 8 percent during the quarter." Imagine: an increase of $8.5 trillion in notional value of derivatives in just three months."

As the Senate moves forward with debate over financial reforms this week, New Yorkers should remember one thing: Weak rules may let Wall Street rake in big profits in the short term, but they will erode confidence in US markets, hurting the financial institutions -- and the city -- in the long run. What's vital is to preserve the global perception that American markets treat everyone fairly. At issue are unrestrained derivatives. These are financial instruments whose value goes up and down if the value of something else goes up or down -- so if you think pork-belly prices are...

BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) - Financial services executives are apprehensively watching regulation reform make its way through Washington, worried measures such as a bailout fund and restrictions on derivatives would hurt business. But executives, investors and advisers at the Milken Institute'sGlobal Conference agreed on the need for reform of financial regulation to prevent crises in the future. "We need a bipartisan bill here because we need both sides to contribute their best ideas to this reform. And we need reform," said Kenneth Griffin, the chief executive of hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. "It will hurt business if we end up...

Tucked away on the 10th floor of South Beretania apartments in Honolulu, Hawaii is quite a woman, the one engineered profile online suggests for Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham, the grandmother who raised Barack Hussein Obama when he was abandoned by his mother, but for the wonder woman profile which was created online, the one question jumps out that no one has noticed: If Madelyn Dunham was thee woman as her profile states who paved the way for all women in banking, thee woman who raised Barack Obama, then why is Barack Obama running away from this woman, why is she...

Lobbying by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway on proposed financial reform as it impacts the treatment of derivatives has helped the famed investor avoid a financial hit, the WSJ claimed. Derivatives reform has been folded into broader legislative measures, senior Democrats told the paper.

<p>As interest rates begin to rise worldwide, losses in derivatives may end up bankrupting a wide range of institutions, including municipalities, state governments, major insurance companies, top investment houses, commercial banks and universities.</p> <p>Defaults now beginning to occur in a number of European cities prefigure what may end up being the largest financial bubble ever to burst – a bubble that today amounts to more than $600 trillion.</p>

"At today’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing, Brooksley Born, the former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, declared Alan Greenspan’s tenure at the Federal Reserve an unmitigated failure – to his face. Greenspan accords a certain degree of respect on Capitol Hill, despite Born’s accurate take on his many failures, and so this outburst was highly unusual – and gratifying. Born, who pushed to strictly regulate derivatives under the Clinton Administration, but lost the battle to, among other people, Alan Greenspan, told the former Federal Reserve chair that his agency “failed to prevent housing bubble, failed to prevent the...

Two new futures exchanges will let studios spread the financial risk of creating films. Welcome to Hollywood's newest version of risky business: movie derivatives. Two trading firms, one of them an established Wall Street player and the other a Midwest upstart, are each about to premiere a sophisticated new financial tool: a box-office futures exchange that would allow Hollywood studios and others to hedge against the box-office performance of movies, similar to the way farmers swap corn or wheat futures to protect themselves from crop failures. The Cantor Exchange, formed by New York firm Cantor Fitzgerald and set to launch...

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managed $15 billion of bond sales for Greece after arranging a currency swap that allowed the government to hide the extent of its deficit. more at link.

Behind each great historical phenomenon," Niall Ferguson has written, "lies a financial secret." So it is with Europe's latest identity crisis. Greece's euro troubles have a lot to do with its fiscal irresponsibility and the instability at the heart of European Monetary Union—a group of countries that sometimes behave like "the United States of Europe" and at other times revert to nationalistic petulance (witness German resistance to a Greek rescue). But the Greek panic—and fears of a euro collapse and another financial contagion—also have a great deal to do with secret derivatives deals orchestrated by big American banks. As a...