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Jim Chanos: We're Shorting Autos, China, And Commodities But Not Financials John CarneyDec. 15, 2009, 2:16 PM Kynikos Associates founder Jim Chanos stopped by the Fast Money set for an interview with CNBC's Melissa Lee this afternoon. A few highlights from the video: * He's not short the financial sector right now, although he thinks there may be another shoe to drop and more losses. He is short some select financial names but not the sector. * There are opportunities for shorting individual companies in this market but he would recommend shorting the market as a whole. * He's shorting...

Hedge Funds Target Euro Zone's Weak BY JOANNA SLATER, GREGORY ZUCKERMAN AND CASSELL BRYAN-LOW The sudden spotlight on troubled government borrowers is presenting a long-awaited payday for investors who placed early bets against countries now under pressure. Investors including Balestra Capital Ltd., Hayman Capital Partners LP, North Asset Management LLP and Pivot Capital Management Ltd. have been anticipating such flare-ups for at a year or longer, betting that some countries would emerge from the financial crisis in much worse shape than others. Those bearish positions had led to a difficult 2009, as investor confidence picked up and rivals gained by...

Republican gubernatorial candidates Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman are looking forward to a better week, the previous seven-day period featured a bothersome news-cycle highlighting a few fiscal conflicts. For Poizner it was his use of CHP for security detail while on the campaign trail, and the fact that he WILL receive a paycheck as governor. For Meg it was a $45 million Charity Foundation's gift to environmentalists, and her $3 million hedge fund in the cayman Islands. You can read more at Hogue News today.

Charges against 14 snared in insider-trading probe make for unusually entertaining reading. The insider-trading case outlined by federal prosecutors in New York Thursday has all the elements of a classic television crime drama: wiretaps, clandestine cash handoffs and people with nicknames like "the Greek" and "octopussy." Authorities say a trader known as "the octopussy" is at the center of the ring, which included other traders, a Moody's Investors Service analyst, and hedge fund managers, and two lawyers, one of whom was a young associate who allegedly passed along tips about private-equity deals being done by his big law firm's clients....

OCTOBER 17, 2009 Rajaratnam Surfaced in U.S. Terrorism Probe By EVAN PEREZ and MATTHEW ROSENBERG WASHINGTON—The hedge-fund billionaire charged as part of a vast insider-trading case surfaced in an earlier, separate probe into U.S. fundraising by a Sri Lankan terrorist group, people familiar with the probe said. As part of that investigation, federal agents said they uncovered documents showing that Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in the U.S. whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to people familiar with the probe. Raj...

Warren E. Buffett has two cardinal rules of investing. Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1. Well, a lot of old rules got trashed when the financial crisis struck — even for the Oracle of Omaha. At 79, Mr. Buffett is coming off the worst year of his long, storied career. On paper, he personally lost an estimated $25 billion in the financial panic of 2008, enough to cost him his title as the world’s richest man. (His friend and sometime bridge partner, Bill Gates, now holds that honor, according to Forbes.) And...

Companies from US, UK and Australia have the most concentrated financial power. A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world's finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system's vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic crisis. A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early...

To understand this threat, we need to look at where we stand historically. If we leave aside the war-impacted years of 1942 to 1946, the largest annual deficit the United States has incurred since 1920 was 6 percent of gross domestic product. This fiscal year, though, the deficit will rise to about 13 percent of G.D.P., more than twice the non-wartime record. In dollars, that equates to a staggering $1.8 trillion. Fiscally, we are in uncharted territory. Because of this gigantic deficit, our country’s “net debt” (that is, the amount held publicly) is mushrooming. During this fiscal year, it will...

And yet Dems block offshore oil production in the U.S. Two pieces of information here. Connect the dots: 1. The Obama Administration is offering billions in loans for oil drilling off the coast of Brazil. 2. George Soros, the Dems top money man has a huge financial stake in the offshore drilling company. Obama Underwrites Offshore DrillingToo bad it's not in U.S. watersWall Street Journal AUGUST 18, 2009 You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil. The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance...

"Maybe what we should have done was not bought it," said Steve Feinberg, co-founder of hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management, in regard to his firm's ill-fated 2007, $7 billion purchase of Chrysler.

The Ascent of Money Episode 3: Risky Business ASCENT OF MONEY In “Risky Business,” episode three of the four-part THE ASCENT OF MONEY, economist and historian Niall Ferguson examines the roots of the insurance industry in Europe; how disasters like Hurricane Katrina expose problems in risk management; how countries like Japan and Chile manage risk for their citizens; and the great rewards that can be accumulated through risk with hedge funds. http://video.pbs.org/video/1173188365

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received more than five million dollars last year from the hedge fund D.E. Shaw and collected 2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street firms benefiting from government bailout money, The New York Times reported Saturday. Citing new financial information about top officials in the administration of Barack Obama, the newspaper said Summers had made 40 paid appearances, including a speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, for which he was paid 135,000 dollars. Summers, a former president of Harvard University and treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, leads...

SHANGHAI--China Investment Corp (CIC), the country's $200 billion sovereign wealth fund, said it will start a new round of global hiring to support an expansion of its operations as it seeks new overseas investments. CIC, which currently employs about 200 people, will seek professional staff in 33 categories, including risk management, real estate, infrastructure, commodities and hedge fund investment, according to its Web site. (www.china-inv.cn) "We are a new company, so it's natural for us to hire more people to grow," a CIC spokeswoman said. She declined to indicate the exact number of people CIC plans to hire. CIC, which...

Hey, ever heard of Fannie and Freddie? Read » If we were Barney Frank and we were asked what we might've done differently in retrospect, a few obvious things would come to mind. Like, maybe, we'd regret standing athwart the regulation of Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE). You know, stuff like that. Alas, the powerful Congressman was asked about this in a recent interview with GQ. Here's what he said: When you look back at decisions you made regarding banking and regulation, what would you do differently? I would have pressed harder for regulation of hedge funds and...

Two prominent Boston money managers are winding down their biggest funds, another sign of the relentless shakeout in the hedge-fund industry. James Pallotta, who runs the $800 million Raptor fund, has decided to return money to outside clients, people familiar with the matter said. George Noble, a former mutual-fund manager who controls some $550 million across two funds named Gyrfalcon, intends to refund clients this month. He described his 2009 performance in a letter to investors Tuesday as "the most professionally disappointing and personally frustrating of my entire career."

As the stake holders in the Chrysler Company convened to negotiate a compromise that would allow Chrysler to avoid bankruptcy, it became clear that the hedge funds would stand in the way. They have been widely criticized all the way up to the President for acting in their own self interest. Were they the only ones?

As Steve Rattner races to jumpstart the ailing automotive sector, the car czar's connection to a hedge fund heavily invested in the car business is raising eyebrows as a potential conflict of interest. According to sources familiar with the matter, Rattner has financial ties to Monarch Alternative Capital, a hedge fund that has made distressed investments in the auto industry, including car-parts manufacturer Delphi. A person familiar with the matter told The Post that Rattner made "a good-faith effort" to resolve his ties to Monarch before joining President Barack Obama's auto task force in February, but that he has not...

Remember the Chrysler "hedge fund investors" that President Obama berated on national TV? Among these people labeled as "no goodniks" by the President were organizations such as the the Indiana State Teachers’ Retirement Fund, and the Police retirement fund. The President of the United States was trying to intimidate retired teaches from exercising their rights as primary investors. That's the politics of change, screw a bunch of retired teachers to reward the UAW for helping you get elected. Now that GM is nearing its bankruptcy a new group of investors are about to get the Presidential screw. Unlike the Chrysler...

No except allowed, story here .

The rumor that all the Chrysler hedge fund investors have thrown in the towel is not true. Three of those hedge funds have filed a law suit to halt the bankruptcy deal because it violated their rights and because the govt. over-stepped their authority. You may remember this is the group of which the President of the United States said: In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none. Some demanded...

GM May 12 2009, 01:00 PM EDT 1.12 Change % Change -0.32 -22.22% There's one small hitch in GM's plan to avoid bankruptcy by swapping debt for equity: Why should bondholders take pennies on the dollar when they can get 100 cents if the company goes bust? Answer? They shouldn't. Of course, the government's involved now, which means contract law could be thrown out the window. So if we owned GM CDSs, we might consider taking, say, 90 cents. The FT: Hedge funds and other investors stand to make billions of dollars on credit insurance contracts if GM de clares...

Credit insurance hampers GM restructuring By Henny Sender in New York Published: May 11 2009 23:33 | Last updated: May 11 2009 23:33 Hedge funds and other investors stand to make billions of dollars on credit insurance contracts if GM de­clares bankruptcy, a prospect that is complicating efforts to persuade creditors to agree to a restructuring plan for the automaker, analysts say. Holders of $27bn in GM bonds have until June 1 to decide whether to swap their debt for a 10 per cent equity stake in the company as part of an offer that would give the US government...

Around a quarter of the City of London’s hedge funds could relocate overseas because of the new tax regime, a consultancy has predicted. David Butler, founding member of Kinetic Partners, the asset management consultancy, said that the new 50 per cent top rate of income tax was tipping many hedge fund managers over the edge. “My expectation is that about 25 per cent of hedge fund managers in the UK will move overseas,” he said. The prediction came amid reports that high-profile City bosses are set to move overseas to avoid the higher rate of income tax. Private equity boss...

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) may have had the wind behind its back from its annual shareholder meeting, but that wind now may breaking wind. This was Warren Buffett’s first loss for a quarter since 2001. On a net loss basis, Berkshire Hathaway lost roughly $1.5 billion. While some charges and operations were lower, it was the big oil investment in ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) which Buffett went on and on about. The huge gains seen inWells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) and other financial stocks were hardly a footnote throughout the earnings. The company’s operating earnings were down...

The reports started to leak last week with Tom Lauria appearance on the Frank Beckman show where he claimed that the White House threatened to sic the WH Press Corps on the non tarp investors if they didn't go along with the plan to give primary investors much less than their share, and the UAW much more than their share of whats left of Chrysler. Earlier this week a different participant in negotiations said that the administration's tactic was to present what one described as a "madman theory of the presidency" in which the President is someone to be feared...

Clifford Asness, the brains behind the $9 Billion Dollar hedge fund, AQR Capital Management, isn't involved in the Chrysler mess, but he was appalled by Obama's treatment of his colleagues, so he had to make a stand. He wrote this letter which appears below to President Obama, defending the non-Tarp Chrysler investors and his industry in general. A copy of the letter has been making the "rounds" within the investment community, and finally landed in New York Mag. The letter is a well-reasoned, strongly worded "F**K You to the President. Something tells me that Mr. Asness is going to have...

Cliff Asness, whose firm manages some $20 billion of assets, has written an open letter blasting President Obama for his attack on the hedge fund industry in the wake of the Chrysler bankruptcy. As you'll recall, hedge funds, which hold approximately $1 billion in Chrysler bonds, refused the government's offer to take approximately thirty cents on the dollar. Obama accused hedge funds of holding out "for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout." These comments have enraged many in the industry but few have spoken out publicly. Asness, whose firm doesn't hold Chrysler bonds, says the industry is genuinely afraid...

Clifford S. Asness Managing and Founding Principal AQR Capital Management, LLC The President has just harshly castigated hedge fund managers for being unwilling to take his administration’s bid for their Chrysler bonds. He called them “speculators” who were “refusing to sacrifice like everyone else” and who wanted “to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.” The responses of hedge fund managers have been, appropriately, outrage, but generally have been anonymous for fear of going on the record against a powerful President (an exception, though still in the form of a “group letter”, was the superb note from...

The President has just harshly castigated hedge fund managers for being unwilling to take his administration’s bid for their Chrysler bonds. He called them “speculators” who were “refusing to sacrifice like everyone else” and who wanted “to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.” The responses of hedge fund managers have been, appropriately, outrage, but generally have been anonymous for fear of going on the record against a powerful President (an exception, though still in the form of a “group letter”, was the superb note from “The Committee of Chrysler Non-TARP Lenders” some of the points of...

Cliff Asness, managing partner at AQR Capital Management, distributed the following letter after listening to Obama blast the Chrysler hedge-fund holdouts.

It is dangerous in this day and age to use the word "fascism" lightly. Liberals sling around the term "fascism" without regard to its meeting -- for the left, "fascism" applies to everything from religious social perspectives to conservative tax cut prescriptions. But economic fascism has a precise, defined meaning. And Barack Obama's economic policy fulfills that meaning in every conceivable way. Economic fascism can be defined as government control over the four P's: Product, Price, Profit Margin, and People. When the government controls the product created by the market, when it controls the price structure for product and company...

Berkshire's stock has fallen 39 percent since December 2007, but Buffett said no stock buybacks are planned because Berkshire's share price is not "demonstrably below" the company's intrinsic value. Profit fell 62 percent last year. Buffett offered a gloomy forecast for parts of the economy and Berkshire itself, saying some units are laying off workers as managers "look at the reality of the current situation." Warren Buffett told a record crowd at a somber annual meeting of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc that first-quarter operating profit fell and the company's book value declined 6 percent, as the recession hurt many of...

President Barack Obama’s harsh attack on hedge funds he blamed for forcing Chrysler into bankruptcy this week sparked cries of protest from the secretive financial firms that hold about $1 billion of the automaker’s debt. Hedge funds and investment managers were irate at Obama’s description of them as “speculators” who were “refusing to sacrifice like everyone else” and who wanted “to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.” “Some of the characterizations that were used … to refer to us as speculators or to say we’re looking for a bailout is really unfair,” said one executive who...

President Obama, in laying out the plan for Chrysler's Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday, showed no love for the hedge funds that, he said, tried to hold out for a bigger payoff in the government's rescue of the ailing automaker. The hedge funds, which hold some of the company's debt, had refused to accept the government's offer of about 29 cents on the dollar for about $6.9 billion that Chrysler owed, and this reluctance forced the White House to push Chrysler toward bankruptcy in the hopes that a judge will allow Chrysler to shed this debt at prices even lower...

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm lashed out at three of the nation’s leading hedge fund companies saying their holding out for more in negotiations with Chrysler were leading the car company down the road towards bankruptcy. “I m strongly urging those who are hedge fund managers to ensure that Chrysler is not forced into bankruptcy because they are holding out,” she said. “The hedge funds, those are the ones that have been previously charged with having made a lot of money by flipping paper, they are holding out as we speak–right now. The future of Chrysler is in the hands of...

Moody’s downgrades Berkshire Hathaway By Justin Baer in New York Published: April 9 2009 00:41 | Last updated: April 9 2009 00:41 Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway lost its triple-A grade from Moody’s Investors Service, the very ratings firm in which the billionaire holds a 20 per cent stake. The downgrade, which follows Fitch Ratings’ one-notch cut last month, comes as Berkshire seeks to rebound from its worst year since the “Sage of Omaha” took control of the former textiles maker in 1965. Moody’s dropped Berkshire two notches, to double-A2. “Today’s rating actions reflect the impact on Berkshire’s key businesses of...

The chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on Tuesday called for new standards on how Wall Street executives are compensated and new regulation of large hedge funds and private equity funds.

Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received about $5.2 million over the past year in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major financial institutions. A financial disclosure form released by the White House Friday afternoon shows that Mr. Summers made frequent appearances before Wall Street firms including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. He also received significant income from Harvard University and from investments, the form shows. Financial Disclosures In total, Mr. Summers made a total of about 40 speaking appearances to financial sector firms...

(04-04) 13:50 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawrence Summers, President Barack Obama's top economic adviser, earned millions over the past year as managing director of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group and through speaking fees, some from financial institutions now at the center of the government's rescue program. Financial disclosure reports released by the White House show that Summers received $5.2 million from D.E. Shaw. He also reported payments for appearances before institutions such as J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. Overall, Summers was paid $2.7 million for more than 40 appearances before different organizations and companies, including financial...

Summers Paid Millions as Hedge Fund Director By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS April 4, 2009 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawrence Summers, President Barack Obama's top economic adviser, earned millions over the past year as managing director of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group and through speaking fees, some from financial institutions now at the center of the government's rescue program. Financial disclosure reports released by the White House show that Summers received $5.2 million from D.E. Shaw. He also reported payments for appearances before institutions such as J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. Overall, Summers was paid $2.7 million for...

If you were upset by the AIG executives, what is your reaction to George Soros? While Barack Obama was talking down the economy and investors saw their portfolios cut in half, Soros and three other hedge fund managers made literally billions buy selling stocks short and driving the price of shares down. Four hedge fund managers made over $1 billion by wiping out trillions of dollars of people's net worth. Together the top four fund managers made between $7 and $8 billion dollars personally. Meanwhile the Democrats in Congress are busy stirring up public ire about a few million that...

In a bid to quash Wall Street excesses that nearly caused the collapse of the U.S. financial system, the Obama administration will propose tough restrictions on financial firms, hedge funds and derivatives markets. The U.S. Treasury will work with Congress to form a powerful systemic risk regulator with the authority to look deep into financial firms other than banks, such as hedge funds and private equity companies, administration officials said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will outline the plans in testimony before Congress on Thursday, and the proposals will form the basis for...

'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession By Mail Foreign Service 25th March 2009 George Soros said the current economic crisis has been the culmination of his life's work A hedge fund manager who predicted the global credit crunch has said the financial crisis has been 'stimulating' and the culmination of his life's work. George Soros, who predicted the global financial crisis twice before, was one of the few people to anticipate and prepare for the current economic collapse. Mr Soros said his prediction meant he was better able to brace...

Top Hedge Fund Managers Do Well in a Down Year By LOUISE STORY Published: March 24, 2009 The financial crisis may have turned much of Wall Street’s wealth into dross, but a select group of hedge fund managers has managed to maintain a golden touch that might make King Midas blush. As major markets and economies careened downward last year, 25 top managers reaped a total of $11.6 billion in pay by trading above the pain in the markets, according to an annual ranking of top hedge fund earners by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, which comes out Wednesday. James H....

I currently manage a medium sized hedge fund (long/short equity). The current populist uproar is absolute insanity. I don't know how else to say it. You are never going to legislate away greed. Period. It is part of the human psyche. That's all there is to it. You can either fight it, or use it. Incentives work. This is why. Let's step back a minute and think about why and how this happened: 1. Starting back in the 1970s Congress addressed discrimination in mortgage lending (which was really a serious problem) with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975. This...

Some of the billions of dollars the U.S. government paid to bail out American International Group Inc stand to benefit hedge funds that bet on a falling housing market, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter and reviewed documents. The documents showed how Wall Street banks were middlemen in trades with hedge funds and AIG that left the insurer holding the bag on billions of dollars of assets tied to souring mortgages, the paper said. AIG has put in escrow some money for at least one major bank, Deutsche Bank AG, whose hedge fund clients bet...

An excerpt from the second paragraph: "The IMF . . . is suggesting governments adopt a 'binding code of conduct across nations' to coordinate how and when they would intercede in troubled firms, and how to share losses from major financial institutions that operate across borders." From further down in the article: ". . .the IMF is endorsing a G-20 idea to have financial firms overseen by 'colleges of supervisors'--essentially regulators from a financial firm's home country and other countries where it does business." more at the link.

DE Shaw, one of the largest US hedge funds, plans to appoint independent administrators to provide third-party checks that its investments exist, in an effort to reassure investors panicked in the wake of the alleged $50bn Madoff fraud. The move by DE Shaw comes amid a growing clamour from hedge fund investors for more use of independent administrators, already standard in Europe but rare among US funds. Since Bernard Madoff was arrested and charged with fraud in New York in December, US hedge funds have been under unprecedented scrutiny from investors concerned about possible repeats of the problem. Earlier this...

Warren E. Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway investment fund and holding company and possibly still the world's richest person, released his annual shareholders letter moments ago, in which he says, "during 2008 I did some dumb things in investments." "I made at least one major mistake of commission and several lesser ones that also hurt," he said. "Furthermore, I made some errors of omission, sucking my thumb when new facts came in that should have caused me to re-examine my thinking and promptly take action." That "major mistake," Buffett writes, was the purchase of millions of shares of ConocoPhillips oil...

Madoff's $50B fraud set off a run on investment companies, sending dominos falling one by one......James Nicholson's Westgate Capital fund tried to reassure investors, sending out $5M in checks - which bounced....$900M may be missing and more than 350 victims. Former Islanders co-owners Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, ran "an egregious fraud of immense proportions," said the SEC.....clients included charitable and university foundations and pension funds...... Records showed that of $812M in assets, $794M were in promissory notes from Greenwood and Walsh.