Monday, November 7, 2011

You Can't Make This Stuff Up


They Certainly Will. How Many, Of Course, Is Up To The DOJ.

This advertisement ran in a number of American east coast print publications this past Saturday (courtesy of Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture).

A bit like posting an ad to book passage on the return leg of the Titanic. I'm guessing this was already scheduled and paid for by MF Global through whomever handles their public relations -- and, given the recent Brouhaha (you know; bankruptcy, federal investigations; that missing $600 million in client funds), their attention was, uh, 'elsewhere' and they probably just overlooked cancelling them.

I'm also surprised just how 'Seventies' this ad appears. If you look at graphics design journals or Adweek during that period, they were using the same manner of layout, typefaces; even the African-American business professional -- holding a standard pushbutton telephone handset, please note, not even a cell phone -- could have stepped out of 1978.

(Oddly, the man's shirtcollar and knot of his tie (usually on a center line with the Adam's apple of the throat and the middle of a man's face) doesn't match the position of his head, unless he has a ridiculously long neck. They skimped when they hired the graphic artist -- and how did an art director ever let this slip by?)

Still, if this popped up in a film or a novel, it would strike a tinny, off-kilter note: Hey; c'mon! Stuff like this never happens!

Of course not. And Europe's austerity measures will be proven to stimulate economic growth, and winged monkeys will fly out of Herman Cain's -- oh, wait; that already happened.




MEHR: William D. Cohan (no, not that Cohan) writes about a key element in MF Global's collapse in Bloomberg-o-vision:
How could Wall Street powerhouses such as Bear Stearns Cos., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. disappear virtually overnight? How could MF Global Holdings Ltd. be here one day and gone the next?...

...Before the recent financial crisis reached its most acute stages, beginning in March 2008, the dirty secret of securities firms was that without the ongoing financial support of their short-term lenders they couldn’t stay in business. In effect, the short-term lenders to firms such as Bear Stearns and Lehman had a free option -- every night -- about whether to continue doing business with them...

... Bear Stearns borrowed about $70 billion a day in the short-term -- so-called repo -- secured financing market. The cost was low, and the risks seemingly negligible. Who wouldn’t keep lending to Bear Stearns, especially with a secured interest in the financial assets -- such as Treasuries or mortgage-backed debt -- on the borrower’s balance sheet?

Or so the logic went before March 2008, when we discovered that without the $70 billion from the overnight lenders -- which was suddenly withheld -- Bear Stearns couldn’t continue as a going concern, even though it had $18 billion in cash on hand.

Admittedly, before Bear Stearns collapsed over the Ides of March more than three years ago, very few financial executives had any appreciation for this subtle funding dynamic. Yet nothing is more fundamental to most banks’ operational strategies than the ability to borrow short and lend long. Such backroom plumbing was thought best left to the firm’s repo desk and its treasurer, all blessed with a little oversight from the chief financial officer and other top executives.

Basically, the Masters Of The Universe can do anything they want with money. Absolutely anything. Screw the SEC, to hell with the regulators; It's The Freeee Market, Baby!!! Yeah!!!

Do you see any proof to the contrary?


No comments:

Post a Comment