Archive for October, 2008
Lehman Swap Auction Initial Results Show Payout of 90.25 Cents
October 10th, 2008What antics await us over the weekend?! Via: Bloomberg: Sellers of credit-default protection on bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. would be forced to pay holders 90.25 cents on the dollar under initial results of an auction today, setting up the biggest-ever payout in the $55 trillion market. Preliminary results of the auction to determine the […]
Lehman Credit Default Swap Auction Bomb Drops This Afternoon
October 10th, 2008Holy crap. Somehow, I hadn’t heard about this until just now. This could get very interesting over the next several hours. Via: Guardian: A major factor behind today’s plunging stock markets is anxiety before a settlement pricing tonight for an estimated $440bn of credit derivatives linked to failed US investment bank Lehman Brothers. Analysts have […]
The Mystery of the Missing Opium
October 10th, 2008Ask MI6 where it is. Via: BBC: It’s a mystery that has got British law enforcement officials and others across the planet scratching their heads. Put bluntly, enough heroin to supply the world’s demand for years has simply disappeared. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) describes the situation as “a time bomb […]
The Gold Disconnect
October 10th, 2008Via: Minyanville: Professor Lewis, How do you explain the open interest drop at the Comex? The open interest is at a 2 year low? Why don’t people understand the disconnect? Are all the central banks working to silence the canary? How else do you explain the explosion of tons on the Gold ETF (GLD), the […]
Perth Mint Doubles Gold Output on Haven Buying
October 10th, 2008Via: Bloomberg: The Perth Mint, producer of 10 percent of the world’s bullion, doubled output in the past six months, joining a global push to boost production as investors seek protection from the credit crisis. Perth Mint sold so-called Kangaroo and Nugget coins weighing a total of 62,630 ounces in the three months to Sept. […]
Orwellian U.K. Angers People With Tree Cameras, Snooping Kids
October 10th, 2008Via: Bloomberg: Hidden in foliage next to a path in the southeast England seaside town of Hastings are digital cameras. Their target: litterbugs and dog walkers. The electronic eyes feed images to a monitoring unit, where they’re scanned and stored as evidence to prosecute people who discard garbage or fail to clean up after pets, […]
U.S. Allegedly Listened In on Calls of Americans Abroad—I Know, You’re Shocked
October 10th, 2008This is probably the biggest not-news-to-you-or-me post ever to appear on Cryptogon. What is described below has been standard operating procedure for NSA for decades. What seems strange, though, is the amount of mundane traffic that is winding up in the queues of the human analysts. This could mean a few things: 1. The ECHELON […]
What Would it Take to Halt Trading of the Dow Jones Industrials?
October 10th, 2008Via: AP: As harrowing as the stock market’s plunges have been in recent days, they still haven’t been enough to trigger the “circuit breaker” mechanisms that result in an automatic timeout in trading. The Big Board implemented the automatic halts after the stock market crashed in the late 1980s to force traders to take a […]
PANIC SELLING CONTINUES ACROSS EUROPE
October 10th, 2008Austria is halted. Germany, UK and France are all sharply lower. I’ll post some other updates and then come back to economic info as we head into the open in New York—which will be sharply lower according to the futures.
I’m Out the Door
October 10th, 2008I’m going to go buy a few truck loads of building materials before the retailers here figure out what has happened. We’ve got a big garden/chicken system to build and, well, there’s no time like the present! Especially since the New Zealand dollar is crashing. Sorry for sparse updates. My satellite connection has been down […]
