Matt Taibbi

this is hilarious http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-evidence-he-was-stoned-but-bank-of-america-ceo-brian-moynihan-apparently-doesn-t-remember-much-of-the-last-four-years-20121127

"a Being There-esque cipher who was placed in charge of a Too-Big-To-Fail global banking giant by some kind of historical accident beyond his control, and appears to know little to nothing at all about the business he is running." <-- A+

So I guess Matt Taibbi has never read a deposition transcript before?

Because in my experience, it's generally true that if you remember the financial crisis, you weren't there.

"attorney Peter Calamari"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213

for some reason every time this thread gets revived i expect it to be a report that taibbi died, possibly by his own hand or "death by misfortune."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104#ixzz2HQDiw8gU

Haven't read this yet. Am guessing it's standard Taibbi.

another narrative about how everything has been utterly fucked up by ugly shitbrain poopyheads, yes

More grist for the mill: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-again-the-mega-banks-most-devious-scam-yet-20140212?print=true

Choice bits:

The JPMorgan deal seemed to be in direct violation of an order sent to the bank by the Fed in 2005, which declared the bank was not authorized to "own, operate, or invest in facilities for the extraction, transportation, storage, or distribution of commodities." The way the Fed later explained this to the Senate was that the purchase of Henry Bath was OK because it considered the acquisition of this commodities company kosher within the context of a larger sale that the Fed was cool with – "If the bulk of the acquisition is a permissible activity, they're allowed to include a small amount of impermissible activities."

...

Meanwhile, Chase's own head of commodities operations, Blythe Masters – an even more famed Wall Street figure, sometimes described as the inventor of the credit default swap – admitted that her company's warehouse interests weren't just a casual thing. "Just being able to trade financial commodities is a serious limitation because financial commodities represent only a tiny fraction of the reality of the real commodity exposure picture," she said in 2010.

Loosely translated, Masters was saying that there was a limited amount of money to be made simply trading commodities in the traditional legal manner. The solution? "We need to be active in the underlying physical commodity markets," she said, "in order to understand and make prices."

We need to make prices. The head of Chase's commodities division actually said this, out loud, and it speaks to both the general unlikelihood of God's existence and the consistently low level of competence of America's regulators that she was not immediately zapped between the eyebrows with a thunderbolt upon doing so. Instead, the government sat by and watched as a curious phenomenon developed at all of these new bank-owned warehouses, in the aluminum markets in particular.

So fucking maddening...

blythe masters is such a great romance novel name

i had to stop reading that article, it was too depressing

I know. And now the banks can just argue that the cat's out of the bag, and trying to unwind them from these businesses would pop the bubble, etc. Wow, that was Friedman-level mixed metaphoring. But you know what I mean.

yeah this was hard to read

I kind of want to read something on the subject that isn't by Matt Taibbi.

There was a big thing on alphaville re: it

link?

the thing discussing the taibbi article is on the main page, but you need to register. It was kind of stupid I thought. "Blah blah free markets blah"

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2014/02/14/1771522/information-asymmetry-bad-incentives-and-taibbi/

Yeah, chock full of free markets happy-talk, while conveniently ignoring the amount of governmental bailouts, etc. that Goldman has received.

It reads like some kind of pro forma response that could be about any corporate or financial scandal. It barely even addresses the actual issues here other than to say "Well it's not ILLEGAL." Duh shit.

I also find it weird how free market dogma harps so much on "information" -- everything is based on this concept that the markets themselves should be "free" but everyone should have enough "information" to make rational choices. I never understood why there's this splitting off of "information" from the rest of the market -- if they really believe in free markets, why have the government even intervene in the information side of the equation? Why not let dominant players use their competitive edges in information too?

the Informed Rational Actor is so fundamental to the whole idea, it's the faith in homo economicus that makes the whole beautiful machine possible, etc.; information has to be a sacrament cuz otherwise it looks like people trying to dominate each other; the free market's most natural mode of communication is advertising, an attempt at control (openly) disguised as a source of information; you know it's a mask but you can't take it off; whatever sorry idk

yeah you're absolutely right about the Informed Rational Actor theory, but it just strikes me that there's this weird fiction/mental contortion free marketers go through where it's ok to intervene in "information" as though "information" were somehow separate from "markets."

Like if you really believe in free markets, why even require SEC filings?

zizek says the keystone of an ideology is whatever its irreconcilable self-contradiction is; where's treeship

"weird fiction/mental contortion" otm

plus the free market is deistic! It doesn't judge the rich and poor -- it allows both to operate on equal terms. If you screw up, it's your fault!

the paradox is like the tension where capitalism colonized enlightenment values

lool at alphaville attributing taibbi's success to the "vampire squid" joke, when that just became a shorthand for the whopper of an article it happened to be the lede for.

otoh even though it makes my head spin, alphaville is one of the only blogs that covers the oddities of the commodity markets in any detail (commodities are fuckin weird) and i think they have a good case that it wasn't actually banks delaying shipments to drive up prices. instead, the problem was that people were willing to pay more for goods delivered later than goods delivered now (contango). in general, the reason for this was the vast influx of speculative cash into commodities funds.

so roughly put, you have people (not banks typically, in fact, though banks might assemble these funds as they do mutual funds, etc) investing in silver or corn or whatever as they would stocks -- you have a fund of futures, and when the futures come to term you roll that over into more futures. that creates contango, because the demand isn't driven for taking delivery on the good, its driven by holding the future for the good. this speculative cash fucks up the commodities market for people who actually want silver or corn or whatever now, at this moment, for some use.

so its the insane market prices driving the warehousing, not manipulating warehousing to create insane market prices.

i sort of buy this explanation.

but on the other other hand i don't think anyone really understands the commodities markets lately, they're just continually weird.

Like if you really believe in free markets, why even require SEC filings?

― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Friday, February 14, 2014 4:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh believe me, well over a dedade later there are lots of players who would like to see RegFD repealed.

so roughly put, you have people (not banks typically, in fact, though banks might assemble these funds as they do mutual funds, etc) investing in silver or corn or whatever as they would stocks -- you have a fund of futures, and when the futures come to term you roll that over into more futures. that creates contango, because the demand isn't driven for taking delivery on the good, its driven by holding the future for the good. this speculative cash fucks up the commodities market for people who actually want silver or corn or whatever now, at this moment, for some use.

chapter describing this phenomenon was the most interesting part to me of that taibbi book griftopia and yeah i was expecting a lil more of a recap of it here.

yeah that part of the book was eye opening for me too

Oh believe me, well over a dedade later there are lots of players who would like to see RegFD repealed.

― Ian from Etobicoke (Phil D.), Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:52 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

You mean the 33/34 acts?

The arguments for getting rid of mandatory disclosure are pretty lol

"Investors will simply choose not to invest in companies that don't disclose key information"

Yeah buddy

idgi, i think rs will always be a perfect + the best venue for him but whatever. good get for greenwald.

Context: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/20/matt-taibbi-quits-rolling-stone-joins-glenn-greenwald/

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/matt-taibbi-disappears-from-omidyars-first-look.html

Hmm.

has he been publishing anything lately? i haven't been sent (or found) anything by him for a long while...

He was poached to start Racket but it looks like he has either been fired or quit before it launched. There has been a growing level of unease around Omidyar's influence in some circles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XEmsLlgrZY

Boo.

Although it falls fairly squarely in the 'who cares?' box, this has sparked another fairly ugly spat between Intercept and Pando - with Paul Carr publishing his half of an off-the-record e-mail conversation with Taibbi.

The underlying concern is that left-leaning outlets like Vice, Intercept and the hypothetical Racket are being used as a libertarian trojan horse by oligarchs like Omidyar and Murdoch to hold governments to account but stifle coverage of corporate wrongdoing.

yikes!

the whole exiled/pando vs intercept/greenwald thing is so tedious

yeah i have a hard time keeping any of that shit straight even

can someone explain it all via a math equation?

internet old/hard left types really hate molly crabapple too

https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/527456203224649729

i mean, i'm not the biggest fan of her art but you know hmmmmmmm

since when is vice left leaning? Also this CIA conspiracy theory is psychotic

it's really not