He’s smart, funny, accurate, revealing, insightful and makes all the right connection along with just the right amount of tongue in cheek sarcasm.

It is not hyperbole to put him in the same league at Woodward and Bernstein and you have to look long and wide to find another reporter with the skill and courage to “tell it like it is” clearly and bluntly. Howard Cosell comes to mind.

After reading the recent article by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone link – http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/new s/is-the-sec-covering-up-wall-street-cri mes-20110817

I wonder what your response will be. I can tell you this is the swan song for the Wall Street friendly congress. I fully expect you and the banking committee to disembowel these ivory tower SEC officials for the unforgivable cover up they have been so blatantly been part to. I would like to know what actions will be taken by your offices in order to protect the common man – who you are there to protect. Yes, I do think this is an indictment of a system that includes your office 100%, and I do expect action or removal of the folks that are responsible.

And yet, when it comes to reporters actually doing hard work and trying to actually do investigative reporting, it is this guy who actually shows up to do his job, of all the thousands out there.

Let’s Roll the Tape:

Felix Salmon had an interesting post on Lehman:

“According to its official balance sheet, Lehman Brothers had total stockholder equity, when it went bust, of about $26 billion: assets of about $639 billion minus liabilities of about $613 billion.
Lehman’s shareholders have, of course, been wiped out; its assets, once they’re liquidated and worked out, will go to its bondholders. Those bonds are trading at no more than about 10 cents on the dollar, which implies that the assets, far from being worth $639 billion, are in fact worth only about $60 billion.

Now I understand that things go at a discount when they’re liquidated. But a $580 billion discount? That’s beyond sense. There’s something weird going on here, which I hope someone in the blogosphere will be able to explain to me”

Read the rest and the comments which are interesting. Here’s my comment:

Posted: Nov 03 2008 10:26am ET
“Was it really worth only a tenth of that, by Lehman’s senior management?”

You and the people in comments are making great points, but I still smell fraud given the previous posts and this one about Lehman.

There is simply too much ambiguity in all these transactions for me to credit goodwill. I want to wait and see what litigation and later investigations tell us about this event.

Investments that seem reasonable when described, were compromised by lack of capital and fear of risk. I can’t help but think that many investors in Lehman must have been misled.

I actually feel that fraud will play a major role in the history of this overall crisis.
By DonthelibertarianDemocrat

Given my human agency theory, I believe that fraud is going to be a major issue in this crisis, along with the implicit and explicit government guarantees. It will not be the financial products themselves, or even regulation, because fraud was involved, not simply poor investments.