Accounting
The Bailout Is Bigger Than You Think
The other day I asked why people weren’t reading The Big Picture, which has been all over the bailout mess. Barry Ritholz, the person behind the site, is more on the pessimistic side but it has been amusing watching him squirm as some of his predictions come true.
Today’s installment of “OMG youhavetoreadthis” compares the current [...]
Kinder-Morgan Gold Star
Michelle Leder of Footnoted gave out a rare gold star, not for the actual filing of compensation in the footnotes but for what the footnote said. Kinder-Morgan was more than happy to comply with the SEC’s new rules that force companies to further spell out exactly what executives are getting paid for perks like free [...]
How Toxic is your Mortgage? (Part 2)
The first, as I discussed above, is because they get more interest on an option ARM. Look at the couple from Wisconsin. They ended up with a higher mortgage balance at a higher rate. Both of those items mean more money for the bank in interest. Take that and multiply by the millions of option [...]
How Toxic is your Mortgage? (Part 1)
That was the question on the cover of the September 11th edition of BusinessWeek (no link). Some of the stories of the people and how they were duped by banks and mortgage brokers astounds me. We always assume that most of the people that buy bizarre (the industry prefers “exotic”) mortgage products are people that [...]
The Stock Option Scandal: A Primer
I was chatting with a friend over the weekend and realized that the major media is doing a terrible job of covering why the stock option scandal is important and what exactly is going on. So, I hope to rectify that.
Basically, there are two different “scandals” going on with different implications. The first one has [...]
