| Tavakoli Structured Finance, Inc.
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| | | | The FT is Destroying Itself
The front page story in the FT is the fake Russian hacker story. (See below for the vanguard of ideological subversion from Democratic National Committee Treasurer Andrew Tobias, whose long-term site disappeared on December 6. Apparently he was testing the waters for the fake story that appeared the next day.)
Julian Assange debunked that the idea that Russia was behind the hack of John Podesta's emails. USA Today, among other sources, reported:
“'The original sources of the Podesta emails are Hillary
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and his correspondents,' Assange
said in a statement."
CIA Director Clapper (who lied when he said the CIA did not collect information on US citizens, before the CIA's extensive spying on US citizens was revealed by Snowden) said this about alleged hacks: “The emails released on sites like WikiLeaks are consistent
with methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts...We wouldn’t have made [the statement] unless we
were very confident."
Well, it was also consistent with North Korea, China, and hackers in a basement. Except, Assange said the source of the Podesta emails was not a hacker at all. It was Hillary's Campaign. See below. It seems the Democratic Party is working overtime to push the fake story that Russian hackers tried to swing the election to President Elect Donald Trump, and the FT took dictation. I haven't yet cancelled my subscription, but I am annoyed with the FT for making me pay for propaganda.
I wrote the chief editor: Lionel Barber (lionel.barber@ft.com) and the Washington Correspondent, Demetri Sevastopulo (dimi@ft.com), to express my point of view on the FT's reportage.
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| | Fake News
Julian Assange publicly denied that Wikileaks obtained the Podesta emails from Russians, yet Democrats are still trying to make that claim. It's ideological subversion at its finest. The lies are quite desperate, since the truth is that they do not know who (and how many actors) hacked the Podesta.
Tucker
Carlson interviewed Congressman Adam Schiff (D, CA) yesterday. Carlson asked Schiff--several times--to
clearly state that he knows for a fact that Russia hacked John Podesta’s
emails. Schiff
obfuscated and blew smoke. Carlson told Schiff he could stop
blathering and make the statement, but Schiff wouldn't, because Schiff doesn’t
know that to be true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm_YTOqix0E
On December 5, Andrew Tobias, the Democratic National Committee Treasurer made a similar unsupported claim on his blog. Since the election, his blog has become increasingly bizarre. His blog is now down, and I wonder if that is temporary (a redesign?), or if cooler heads told him to kill the blog he has authored for many years, and seek professional help. Or perhaps he's warming up to make a hyperventilating claim that Russians hacked his site. Nothing would surprise me at this point. This is the cached version of his last (Dec 5) post. Be sure to read the last section. Democrats are unmoored. (The original was not italicized, but appears italicized here to be clear that it is a direct quote):
By A.T.
On December 5, 2016
When the “Hamilton” cast made its
respectful plea to
Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, it was huge news. (Whatever you think of
their having done so, hats off to Pence for the gracious way he brushed it off
and made a point of praising the show.)
When the FBI notified Congress it
planned to sift through yet more emails — having found nothing in the first
45,000 — it was a “bombshell.”
But when Russia was revealed to
have massively meddled in our election through acts of espionage and
disinformation, it was ho-hum.
Yet Senate Intelligence Committee
member Angus King calls it
“the biggest story of the decade.”
. . . I
happened to be in Eastern Europe last spring with a group from the Intelligence
Committee in Ukraine and Poland. The officials there took us aside, and
warned us of this. They said this is what Russia does. They mess around with
your elections. They put in fake information. They hack into your systems, and
they’re trying to sow discord and influence elections.
And we talked about it. We
understood it. We didn’t think it was going to happen here. It has happened
here.
.
. . On Wednesday, King was among seven senators – all of whom receive
top-secret briefings as part of the Senate Intelligence Committee – who urged
President Obama to authorize the public release of additional details on the
alleged Russian involvement in the recent elections. The request comes amid growing evidence compiled by independent researchers and
cybersecurity experts about the extent of Russia’s alleged use of hackers,
social media and fake news stories in a bid to influence the race between
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. .
. .
The tragedy, of course, is that
these revelations will have come too late to do much good.
Russia won.
They helped install their
preferred candidate to lead our country.
Even though, through the quirks
of our system, he got 2.5 million fewer votes.
(And even though, according to
one pollster, 25% of his votes came from people who — knowing for certain he
had no path to 270 electoral votes, because that’s what the media assured them
— voted for him to make a statement, but would not have if they had thought he
might actually win. If that’s true, and had they voted for Hillary
instead, the vote would have been something like 47 million for Trump, 80
million for Clinton. Even more if some Jill Stein and Gary Johnson
voters would have voted Clinton if they’d thought Trump could win.) |
| | Martenson Interviews Tavakoli
This is an October 31 podcast interview on Wall Street, economics and the market (towards the end), the media, society and politics.
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| | | | USA Economy in One Image
The dark blue areas in electoral map were won by Democrats. The severe crime rate circles match that perfectly. The map is via Infowars.
What about the rest of the country won by Republicans? It's more than 90% of the land mass of the USA, and it is where the people live who produce 95% of the food and energy the USA produces and consumes.
Protesters paid for and organized by Democrat machine operators are disrupting major cities. It's annoying, but it means Democrats will lose by a much wider margin in the next midterm election in two years.
President Obama, Enabler in Chief, shows his ongoing lack of character by doing and saying nothing about the protests. I look forward to his official retirement.
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| | | We're In An Asset Bubble With Good Chances Of Popping
Financial journalist Harlan Levy interviewed me about my view on the current state of global finance and our current asset bubble. Read more at Seeking Alpha. |
| | Jamie Dimon Says the U.S. Economy is Okay!
Good news! Jamie Dimon, who has never lied to us about the London Whale Bear Stearns the global bailout accounting losses risk on JPMorgan's books anything, says the U.S. economy is doing okay!
Jobs numbers were loaded with part time jobs and the all important jobless number that soared. Why is this important?
Setting a Precedent: Growth has not exceeded 3% in any year under Obama
Because President Obama is the only president in U.S. history to never have a single year when annual growth exceeded 3%. That did not happen during the USA's many presidential terms that included recessions and depressions, but it happened under Obama's term..
Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.,
spoke with Economic Club president
David M. Rubenstein on Monday, September 12, 2016
“The U.S. economy is actually doing okay, it’s been chugging
along at 2% [Note: Q3 2015 was 1.4%, 2016 Q1
was 0.8, and 2016 Q2 was 1.4%,, 2016 3Q was 3.2%]; unemployment’s down at 4.9%; inflation is
ticking up a little bit, household formation is going up; the markets are
completely wide open; asset prices are up.” Then “25 bps is a drop in the
bucket…let’s just raise rates.”
We need growth that tops 4%. Six percent would be better. Have you seen our debt? Did anyone at the Economic Club challenge Dimon? Of course not! We should raise rates, much more than 25 bps, but our current Great Distortion has painted the Fed into a corner.
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| | Amazon chose DECISIONS for
Prime Reading!
If you are a member of Amazon Prime you can read Decisions: Life and Death on Wall Street for free through Amazon's exclusive Prime Reading program. Tell your friends and family!
Janet Tavakoli’s Wall Street
memoir of personal and professional decisions that reshaped financiers’ lives,
drove some to despair, and changed the landscape of global finance.
Praise for Decisions: Life and Death on Wall Street
“Tavakoli takes us on a
scenic tour of the recent lowlights of Wall Street and the industry’s
handmaidens in Washington from the perspective of an insider…demystified and
rendered tragically human. It’s a compelling tale.”
Jake Bernstein, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting
“Janet Tavakoli is a born
storyteller with an incredible tale to tell. In her captivating memoir, Decisions:
Life and Death on Wall Street, she takes us on a brisk journey from the
depravity of 1980s Wall Street to the ramifications of the systemic
recklessness that crushed the global economy. Her compelling narrative sweeps
through her warnings about the dangers of certain bank products in her
path-breaking books, speeches before the Federal Reserve, and in talks with
Jaime Dimon.”
Nomi Prins, author of All the President’s Bankers
“Good things sometimes happen
in life. Janet Tavakoli’s latest book. Recommend it to all financial
professionals.”
Global Association of Risk Professionals
“Merrill Debauchery Only Begins This Woman’s Tale…
‘Neither Bill nor I believed Calvi committed suicide,’ Tavakoli writes. ‘Bill
joked that he’d never hang himself. It was too gruesome.’”
Bloomberg News
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| | Financial Analysts Journal Gave RISK a Rave Review!
The CFA Institute's Financial Analysts Journal gave RISK a rave review!
“This high-level perspective allows the reader to see the big picture and understand how fraud at the highest levels of finance and government affect ordinary citizens. It can serve as a timeless reference. It should be required reading for CEOs of financial institutions and their risk officers, compliance personnel, traders, and portfolio management teams.”
“Rare is the book that is instructive and entertaining, that appeals to a diverse readership, and that accomplishes these feats within 200 pages. RISK: Your Global Guide is such a book.”
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| RISK
Risk is the first book in finance expert Janet Tavakoli’s Qualitative Finance series. Her reader-friendly commentaries on complex financial topics break new ground in global finance.
Tavakoli’s Unique Insights on Risk and Reward
"Higher math produces the wrong answer to nine decimal places, and computers spit out the wrong answer faster. Technology churns out numbers that are astonishingly precise even when they are terrifyingly inaccurate."
- Identify a bank's biggest risks
- Manage the risk of short positions
- A new big short
- How to find the next big short
- The most important analysis to reduce portfolio risk
- Red flags for Fraud
- The paramount concept omitted from texts on risk
- The major myth propagated by Modern Portfolio Theory
- A “fixed income” analysis that is as important for stocks as it is for bonds
- The leverage paradox
- How to fix the global banking system
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WAR AND PEACE, WASHINGTON AND WALL STREET
THE WALL STREET POINT OF VIEW is Henry Clews’ unique and controversial account of the political and financial decisions that shaped the United States in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. Clews was one of the most successful and influential financiers of his time. His wide-ranging narrative touches on key global events including the Civil War, the Spanish American War, currency wars, immigration, trade wars, tariffs, booms and busts.
Clews shares his wisdom on human nature, value investing, the ties between Wall Street and Washington, financial panics, society’s upheavals, wars, politics, corruption, and political policies. Clews published his correspondence with Presidents Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley. He includes his prescient opinion pieces for the major newspapers of the day as well as contemporary critical speeches and letters by other luminaries, along with the surprising results of the policy decisions.
Written at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, Clews’ observations are as relevant today as they were when he wrote them. From Wall Street to Congress, the Supreme Court, the Treasury Department, the major banks, and a parade of presidents, only the names have changed. The fundamental truths remain the same. |
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Conspiracies
and Corners, Greenbacks and Gold, War and Peace, Bubbles and Bear
Raids, Riches and Ruin, Margin Calls and Crashes, the Great Panic and
the Great Depression
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This is the annotated Kindle edition of William Worthington Fowler's, Twenty Years of Inside Life in Wall Street or Revelations of the Personal Experience of a Speculator, his classic chronicle of the New York traded markets from 1860-1880, a period that spanned the Civil War, the post war bubble, worthless paper money, the Black Friday Gold Panic of 1869, the Great Panic of 1873, and the consequent first and worst seven year Great Depression. Fowler witnessed how U.S. government paper money replaced specie leading to bubbles, panics, and crashes.
Print edition is now available.
He met the most influential financiers of the day including Jay Gould, James "Diamond Jim" Fisk, Jr., Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jacob Little, Daniel Drew, Leonard Jerome, Addison Jerome, David Groesbeck, and Henry Keep. Their fortunes rose and fell on margin, carry, and derivatives including puts, calls, and futures.
They risked everything speculating in equities and a wide range of commodities including gold, silver, cotton, and more. Fowler’s tale entertains as he exposes the great corners, trading rings, conspiracies, bear twists, manipulations, and frauds.
Wall Street ran red with the blood of suicides and murder. A lucky few survived and thrived, and of those, a tiny fraction had lasting influence.
About the annotated edition
The foreword by Janet M. Tavakoli draws parallels between the Panic of 1873 and Great Depression of 1873-1880 with the financial crisis of 2008 and the ongoing Great Recession. Edited to correct errors and inconsistencies in the original edition. Includes annotations with additional biographical and background material.
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Michael Burry told Congress he read the first edition of this book along with Tavakoli’s Credit Derivatives, before he put on “the big short” mentioned in Michael Lewis’ post-crisis book about the trade.
Tavakoli’s second edition explains those trades and the financial meltdown caused by derivatives combined with phony securitizations and fake ratings.
State-of-the-art look at the CDO and structured credit products market.(Wiley, 2008)
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Straight talk about documentation risk and information arbitrage.
Tavakoli covers total return swaps, advanced balance sheet management, credit default swaps, exotic structures, first-to-default options, credit linked notes, synthetic structures, sovereign risk, convertibility options, collateralized loan obligations, BISTROs, principal protected notes, leveraged exposure to credit spreads, conditional probability of default, callable step-ups, secured loan trusts, securitizing first loss risk, basis risk and delivery options, credit arbitrage funds, credit event definitions, notice of credit events, first to default options, firm-wide credit risk management and strengths and weaknesses of models. |
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