Tavakoli Structured Finance, Inc.
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How Rich is the Catholic Church?
Shawn Tully of Fortune wrote a current analysis on the finances of the Catholic Church: "This Pope Means Business." From the article:
The Vatican is often assumed to possess great wealth, but if it were a company, its revenue wouldn’t come close to making Fortune 500. Its total operating budget is about $700 million. in 2013 it posted a small overall surplus of $11.5 million. The Vatican’s most valuable assets—some of the world’s great art treasures—are virtually priceless and not for sale. A breakdown of major holdings:
Investments: Portfolio of stocks, bonds, and gold worth $920 million.
Real estate: Holdings have an estimated value of $1.35 billion, including some 2,000 apartments, mostly in Rome.
Vatican Bank: Book value of $972 million.
Art collection: Worth untold billions. The Vatican’s museum brings in $130 million a year in revenue. Treasures include the Sistine Chapel frescoes by Michelangelo (above); “Saint Jerome in the Wilderness,” a painting by Leonardo da Vinci; “Deposition From the Cross,” a painting by Caravaggio; a letter from Marie Antoinette en route to the guillotine; and the papal bull excommunicating Martin Luther."
Reporters Disagree on the Vatican Bank Scandal
Yesterday, Shawn Tully informed me that he interviewed Archbishop Marcinkus in 1987 as did John Cornwell, Vatican reporter and author of A Thief in the Night. Cornwell wrote Marcinkus told him he raided the Vatican pension fund in 1984 to make the $250 million settlement for the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. Tully says the pension fund didn't exist in 1984, and the Vatican sold $60 million in gold in the 1990's to raise money for a pension fund.
They can't both be correct, and it seems odd that Cornwell would get it wrong, since he added the detail that Marcinkus didn't have a moral problem with it.
This much is certain. If the Vatican had a pension fund in 1984, it didn't after the payoff. The money came from Vatican coffers, either the bank or the pension fund (if it existed) or both.
Today only - I'm sending you a copy of the newsletter for Portal a Ciberlibros, in case you have friends who like to get deals on Spanish eBooks and Audio books. It will arrive separately in your inbox.
Are you a member of Kindle Unlimited, or do you know a member? For members of Kindle Unlimited, the eBook version of Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits is free.
Late fall 2014: Listen to the audio version of Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits read by Paul Heitsch of Push Play Audio.
El Ascenso de los Jesuitas, the Spanish edition, is due out by Christmas 2014. If the Spanish audio edition isn't ready for Christmas, it will follow soon thereafter.
Janet Tavakoli
President, Tavakoli Structured Finance, Inc.
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Tavakoli gives real-time coverage of “the big short,” the shorting of the ABX index, and the fraud-riddled reference obligations that made this trade the windfall it was.
State-of-the-art look at the CDO and structured credit products market.
Tackles key issues in valuing structured financial products: fraud, phony ratings, misleading structures, poor underwriting standards, and more.
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Anthology
of Tavakoli’s web articles from the September 2008 financial crisis
through February 2012. Commentaries are unrevised so that readers
experience the real-time thought process. Some background is repeated in
commentaries so that they could read as stand-alone web articles as
events unfolded.
Example after stunning example of
no-strings-attached socialization of losses and privatization of gains
and exposes the criminogenic environment that enabled international
oligarchs to solidify power. |
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