EWK

A Conversation On: Matt Taibbi vs Wall St

Goldman Sachs really pisses Matt Taibbi off. 7 longreads published in Rolling Stone in chronological order. Go.

WALL STREET’S BAILOUT HUSTLE
by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone | February 2010

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy — they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash

LOOTING MAIN STREET
by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone | March 2010

How the nation’s biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece

WALL STREET’S NAKED SWINDLE
by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone | April 2010

A scheme to flood the market with counterfiet stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers – and the feds have yet to bust the culprits

THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE
by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone | April 2010

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression – and they’re about to do it again

WHY ISN’T WALL STREET IN JAIL?
by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone | February 2011

Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy – but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them

THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF WALL STREET
by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone | April 2011

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

THE PEOPLE VS. GOLDMAN SACHS
by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone | May 2011

A Senate Committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

Did I miss any?

Update: Algorithmic Trading

An update to the Algorithmic Trading conversation.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY IN MICROSECONDS
by Donald MacKenzie | London Review of Books | May 2011

What goes on in stock markets appears quite different when viewed on different timescales. Look at a whole day’s trading, and market participants can usually tell you a plausible story about how the arrival of news has changed traders’ perceptions of the prospects for a company or the entire economy and pushed share prices up or down. Look at trading activity on a scale of milliseconds, however, and things seem quite different.

A Conversation On: Lynn Tilton

Lynn Tilton is nothing if not interesting. First, a short piece from WSJ, then a profile from NYMag. Then, a series of critical blog posts from Forbes, which, published so close together (within minutes) really should have been one longer piece.

TILTON FLAUNTS HER STYLE AT PATRIARCH
by Robert Frank | Wall Street Journal | January 2011

Last year, private-equity chief Lynn Tilton flew to Detroit to try to improve sales at one of her auto-parts companies. She got a cool reception from Ford Motor Co.’s purchasing chief, Tony Brown, who asked if she was like other private-equity chiefs that “strip and flip” their companies.

“You must be mistaken,” she shot back. “It’s only men that I strip and flip. My companies I hold long and close to my heart.”

WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR A FEMALE TYCOON TO GET NOTICED AROUND HERE?
by Jessica Pressler | New York Magazine | April 2011

Lynn Tilton is one of the wealthiest financiers on Wall Street. She’s also on a spiritual journey to save America’s manufacturing base. But she’s having trouble getting the respect she believes she deserves.

Six Forbes blogs, by Matt Shifrin, Tom Post and Jenna Goudreau. Red highlighting for emphasis.

LYNN TILTON: DIVA IN DISTRESS? 4/6/11, 10:46am
LYNN TILTON: KEEPING HER LAWYERS ON SPEED DIAL 4/6/11, 2:00pm
LYNN TILTON: COURT DOCS REVEAL ACCUSATIONS OF FRAUD 4/6/11, 2:06pm
LYNN TILTON: IN HER OWN WORDS 4/6/11, 2:08pm
FIVE THINGS INVESTORS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LYNN TILTON’S CLO DEALS 4/6/11, 2:26pm
LYNN TILDONT: THE WILD WOMAN OF WALL STREET 4/7/11, 4:57pm

A Conversation On: Ireland’s Finances

This one’s a bit of a before and after.

Before.

THREADBARE
The Economist | November 2010

Fears about Ireland’s public finances and banks have made a European bail-out look imminent. How deep is the country’s economic mire?

After – from the always interesting, Michael Lewis.

WHEN IRISH EYES ARE CRYING
by Michael Lewis | Vanity Fair | March 2011

First Iceland. Then Greece. Now Ireland, which headed for bankruptcy with its own mysterious logic. In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country—from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. So where’s the rage?

A Conversation On: Algorithmic Trading

RECIPE FOR DISASTER: THE FORMULA THAT KILLED WALL ST
Felix Salmon | Wired | February 2009

Then the model fell apart. Cracks started appearing early on, when financial markets began behaving in ways that users of Li’s formula hadn’t expected. The cracks became full-fledged canyons in 2008—when ruptures in the financial system’s foundation swallowed up trillions of dollars and put the survival of the global banking system in serious peril.

ALGORITHMS TAKE CONTROL OF WALL ST
by Felix Salmon and Jon Stokes | Wired | January 2011

Algorithms have become so ingrained in our financial system that the markets could not operate without them. At the most basic level, computers help prospective buyers and sellers of stocks find one another—without the bother of screaming middlemen or their commissions. High-frequency traders, sometimes called flash traders, buy and sell thousands of shares every second, executing deals so quickly, and on such a massive scale, that they can win or lose a fortune if the price of a stock fluctuates by even a few cents. Other algorithms are slower but more sophisticated, analyzing earning statements, stock performance, and newsfeeds to find attractive investments that others may have missed. The result is a system that is more efficient, faster, and smarter than any human.

MAN vs MACHINE ON WALL ST: HOW COMPUTERS BEAT THE MARKET
William D Cohan | The Atlantic | March 2011

Wall Street, meet your post-human future. Uber-”quant” Cliff Asness bets that his high-speed computers and trading models can churn billions of dollars in profits in booms and busts alike. But can artificial intelligence really out-smart the market? 

5/12/11 – Update:

HOW TO MAKE MONEY IN MICROSECONDS
by Donald MacKenzie | London Review of Books | May 2011

What goes on in stock markets appears quite different when viewed on different timescales. Look at a whole day’s trading, and market participants can usually tell you a plausible story about how the arrival of news has changed traders’ perceptions of the prospects for a company or the entire economy and pushed share prices up or down. Look at trading activity on a scale of milliseconds, however, and things seem quite different.

Any must read books on this topic?