Free Republic

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...