Monday, November 09, 2009

Quick morning comment

---Now that the tentacles of the Galleon investigation have reached SAC Capital, the giant short term trading hedge fund run by Steve Cohen, things could really get interesting.
---Tim Geithner's criticism of banks for not making commercial loans(he said they should take a bet on the U.S. economy like Warren Buffett) is disingenuous. Banks are conduits and have been since the late 1980's. They can't possibly hold massive amounts of loans on their balance sheets and meet capital standards. Banks' ability to lend reflects investor demand for those loans. The banks would love to lend more, that's how they make money, but they need more liquid credit markets to do so in a responsible way. Geithner's smart and he obviously knows this, so this politically motivated posturing to shove blame on an easy mark is pretty pathetic.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home