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lehman brothers

There Is An Absolutely Solid Collateral Case For What’s Driving Curve Inversion(s) [Part 2]

By |2022-03-16T12:59:00-04:00March 16th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Securities lending as standard practice is incredibly complicated, and for many the process can be counterintuitive. With numerous different players contributing various pieces across a wide array of financial possibilities, not to mention the whole expanse of global geography, collateral for collateral swaps have gone largely unnoticed by even mainstream Economics and central banking.This despite the fact, yes, fact, securities [...]

The Great Eurodollar Famine: The Pendulum of Money Creation Combined With Intermediation

By |2021-10-11T19:37:50-04:00October 11th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It was one of those signals which mattered more than the seemingly trivial details surrounding the affair. The name MF Global doesn’t mean very much these days, but for a time in late 2011 it came to represent outright fear. Some were even declaring it the next “Lehman.” While the “bank” did eventually fail, and the implications of it came [...]

Going Back Inside Lehman One More Time: An Important and Relevant Follow-up

By |2020-12-22T17:50:39-05:00December 22nd, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Lehman Brothers was a cultural marker, the kind of thing that sticks for generations because of all the wrong reasons. Hardly anyone had heard of the investment bank throughout its unbelievably long history stretching back to the middle of the 1840’s (yes, eighteen forties). But being near the center of a multi-generational breakdown causing as yet-untold damage and misery extending [...]

Survivor’s Euphoria

By |2020-06-03T13:16:31-04:00June 3rd, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It’s called survivor’s or survival euphoria. Having just gone through a traumatically dangerous experience, and lived, a person might naturally become euphoric for it. Not uncommon in combat situations, your body marshals all its resources including many physiological responses and counteractions. When it’s all over, there’s evolution working overtime in your brain rewarding these survival instincts.And it can be a [...]

Banks Or (euro)Dollars? That Is The (only) Question

By |2020-04-01T17:02:26-04:00April 1st, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It used to be that at each quarter’s end the repo rate would rise often quite far. You may recall the end of 2018, following a wave of global liquidations and curve collapsing when the GC rate (UST) skyrocketed to 5.149%, nearly 300 bps above the RRP “floor.” Chalked up to nothing more than 2a7 or “too many” Treasuries, it [...]

Further Trying To Define Liquidity

By |2017-05-22T18:10:46-04:00May 22nd, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

On December 3, 1999, Enron Communications announced that the company had begun operations selling bandwidth as an energy commodity. After publicizing the venture in May that year, it seemed natural given that they had been selling similar products in the energy sector, pioneering all sorts of products along the way. As the internet matured there was no way Enron would [...]

Trying To Define Liquidity

By |2017-05-19T12:43:07-04:00May 19th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

What is about math that makes us feel comforted? Numbers are objective, of course, but the using of numbers is not. Even in the hard sciences calculations are not strictly calculations for their own sake, they are interpreted and therefore given subjective meaning. I don’t intend to detour this argument into a teleological one, but in some ways that just [...]

Searching For 2a7 Comfort In CP And Finding Instead More Confirmation Of The Same ‘Something’

By |2016-09-28T17:10:07-04:00September 28th, 2016|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

With 2a7 money market reform only a few weeks from its full implementation, there should be by now visible shifts in all the places where such reform will directly impact. Prominent among these money spaces is commercial paper, where the ranks of prime MMF’s that once lent in this market have been reduced in the shift toward government funds. As [...]

Unresolved: Nine Years Later Still No ‘Dollars’

By |2016-08-09T19:18:17-04:00August 9th, 2016|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The fact that we are still discussing illiquidity in “dollar” markets everywhere shows just how little has changed despite so much time and effort. It is August 9 again, the ninth anniversary of the day that changed everything. Even though it has been almost a decade, it’s as if “we” learned nothing from the experience. There are indications in 2016 [...]

Free The Monetary System, Free The Recovery

By |2015-05-15T11:04:49-04:00May 15th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Despite the fact that the FDIC is largely charged with regulating small, community banks, it’s mixed-in deposit guarantee “insurance” brings the agency into contact with all manner of banks. This includes, of course, the largest firms that dominate in financial areas that have very little to do with banking in its most monetary form. The FDIC’s area of responsibility, in [...]

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