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“Baseline Scenario“: One Goldman Sachs derivatives trader, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak about company strategy, said that the firm is planning to create a market for derivatives that airlines can use to hedge against the risk of having to return planes to the terminal or having to pay [...]

Sighting: “This isn’t a default or foreclosure situation,” [Morgan Stanley spokesmodel Melody] Barnes said. “We are going to give them the properties to get out of the loan obligation.” Next up: Dubai sends Dubai World to debtor’s prison. (felix salmon)

Xe: The joint audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and the United State Department of State Inspector General released yesterday does not, as some press reports have suggested, allege that Blackwater was ever complicit in overbilling the United States government for work it performed in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. The audit [...]

One can only hope.

NYTeims on the (game of chicken | prisoner’s dilemma | etc) faced by the *ffluent with undeclared offshore money: The whole issue has become a minefield for some wealthy families. Many offshore accounts are held in the names of several family members, who do not always agree on what they should do. Bruce Zagaris, a [...]

Cryptome catalogs it.

The particolored interactive lady runs this pic of a bathroom in Madoff’s beach house: A better man than I would write a windy meditation, but I’ll settle for a quiz question: how many artworks were confiscated?

Note the insect that crawls across the screen right on cue @5:07: Spitzer @5:30: The Federal Reserve has benefited for decades from the notion that it is quasi-autonomous, it’s supposed to be independent. Let me tell you a dirty secret: the Fed has done an absolutely disastrous job since Paul Volcker left [11 Aug ’87]. [...]

Global economy = MMPORG, ratings = Facebook: Reuters: Berkshire cuts Moody’s stake to 16.98 pct First reported reduction since 2000 Moody’s shares sink 10.6 pct after-hours[...] Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) (BRKb.N) this week lowered its stake in credit ratings provider Moody’s Corp (MCO.N) [no friends! :( ] to 16.98 percent from 20.4 percent, [...]

Software (someonewithoverlyrestrictiverightssettings@flickr): Hardware (alicegop@flickr):

Bullitt County, KY, scammed by very detail-oriented Ukrainians. One small and surprisingly “human” part of a much more laborious process, documented by Brian Krebs: [T]wo of the 25 so-called “money mules” who were hired to act as intermediaries in this scam [...] were females under the age of 35 who initially were contacted after placing [...]

Rasmus Fleischer writes: “‘The Pirate Bay’ must be defined as an assemblage.” He prexplains: We are used to imagine The Pirate Bay as a legendary entity fighting an epic battle, on behalf of the millions of file-sharers. However, it is not exactly a legendary entity that is being sold. It is something different. So what [...]

Six Flags ‘goes tits up,’ as the Brits say. One way to tell the story of how that story unfolded could involve the rigid application of Tufte’s parsimonious hectoring, sermonizing, and hucksterizing; but something like speculativebubble.com’s dramatization could be so much better. Meanwhile… Twitter-coupon blue-light special flash-mob permanent-floating-bailout-club just-add-water MMFery. In a press release issued [...]

A klein bottle: “From the archives: how to fix a liquidity crisis (13 Dec ‘07)”—that is, in 2007—quoted the FT as saying: The latest Fed flow of funds data shows that FHLBs [Federal Home Loan Banks, "a little-known network of government-sponsored bank co-operatives founded during the Great Depression"] issued new loans at an unprecedented annualised [...]

Deny pensions to former execs of too-big-but-failed companies. See also: “Troubled asse(t)s,” wherein Credit Suisse Group compensated bankers “with an illiquid group of junk bonds, mortgage-backed securities and corporate loans.” Cf. malus, n., “The return of performance-related compensation originally payed by an employer to an employee as a result of the discovery of a defect [...]

Phrase of the day: see-through buildings. Washington Business Journal: Anyone who follows the commercial real estate market knows there are buildings in trouble throughout Washington, but as one drives along the Dulles Toll Road or Route 28, it’s hard to miss the signs of distress. “See-through buildings” dot the corridor, bereft of the interior office [...]

Denver Business Journal on the yellow pages going bust: R. H. Donnelley CEO Dave Swanson says that no one could have foreseen the series of events that led to the tattered Yellow Pages publisher filing Friday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. [...] “We just could not have anticipated the severity of the economic downturn,” Swanson [...]

Dean Baker: This raises the obvious question, if the banks are in such good shape, why not take away the training wheels and let them fend for themselves in the market? Training wheels.

An email from a car dealership: SATURDAY, [MONTH] [DAY], 9:00am–3:00pm Use our lot to Spring Clean your Attic, Garage, Barn or House! SELLERS Spaces & Tables available for $10/unit fee with all fees donated to [CAUSE] PRE-REGISTER FOR YOUR SPACE & TABLE Call [DEALERSHIP] at ###-###-#### and ask for [NAME], [NAME] or [NAME]. Setup Starts [...]

Douglas Leech, founder and CEO of Centra Bank, a WV bank that took money from the gubmint then returned it when the gubmint imposed new conditions: “What they did is wrong and fundamentally un-American,” he said. “Even though the government told us to take this money to increase our lending, the extra charge meant we [...]

Audio: [Rev. ed. 09-05-21: Seeqpod went bust; you can manually reconstruct this post yourself by finding a recording of David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs.”] Video: The Top 25 Fortune 500 Companies in New York City rank in: corporation Headquarters (New York, NY) Fortune 500 industry group 2007 Revenues ($ million) Stock price 2008 NYC NYS US [...]

First the good news: Sallie Mae gave some hope to the unemployed Monday, announcing it will bring 2,000 jobs to the U.S. within the next 18 months as it shifts call center and other operations from overseas. The move marks somewhat of a turnaround for the nation’s largest private student lender, which two years ago [...]

Alas: See also: “McCain’s modest proposal.” (salmon)

The NYT unfurled a new banner: “Welcome to the new Global Edition of NYTimes.com. Learn More | Switch to U.S. Edition”—and, in the process, broke countless links accumulated over the last many years. The IHT’s publisher, Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, noted without a hint of irony: “I do hope you will enjoy exploring all that the new [...]