Unstructured Finance

By Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan

The thing about deposition excerpts—even lengthy ones—is that some of the tantalizing material gets left on the cutting room floor. And that’s certainly the case with hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen’s two-days worth of  testimony in the long-running Fairfax Financial litigation.

Now don’t get us wrong—there is plenty of great and illuminating stuff in the 242 pages of deposition testimony Reuters obtained through a court motion to unseal documents in the civil lawsuit. As we noted in our story, Cohen is pressed at great length for his views on insider trading—he thinks the laws are “vague”. And as we highlighted in our blog, there’s even an amusing little feud between the lawyers over how the SAC Capital founder should addressed.

Still, it makes you wonder what was said by Cohen in the more than 400 pages of deposition transcript that wasn’t unsealed. And we’d love to see Cohen on videotape as sometimes body language can be revealing.

One of the more intriguing tidbits in the deposition is a very brief line of inquiry by Fairfax’s lawyer about whether Cohen had an early discussions in September 2008 about the Federal Reserve’s plan to backstop the commercial paper market. The Commercial Paper Funding Facility, or CPFF, was one of the most important steps taken by the Federal Reserve to keep liquidity following in the financial system after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Indeed, between July 2007  and the failure of Lehman Brothers, the relative use of commercial paper fell 10 percentage points, according to a research paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The Fed’s CPFF program, which was announced in October 2008, “helped prevent commercial paper from imploding by as much as it did in the 1930s,” the paper added.

By Jennifer Ablan

Steven A. Cohen, one of the world’s most successful and secretive billionaire hedge fund managers, shared some of his thinking on insider trading, something his worst critics have alleged SAC Capital knows a thing or two about.

Cohen in sworn deposition testimony earlier this year, an extended excerpt of which was obtained by my prolific colleague and partner-in-crime Matthew Goldstein, said: ”The way I understand the rules on trading on inside information, it’s very vague.”

Cohen added: “It’s my belief that the idea of material nonpublic informing could be interpreted differently, depending on which side of the transaction you’re on.” At one point, the 55-old-trader loses his cool a bit with Fairfax’s lawyer, Michael Bowe, commenting: “Well, you know, we’re having this conversation for about three hours about what’s material and whatnot. It’s pretty clear that you and I have a different view on it.” 

By Matthew Goldstein

Bad data continues to confound the U.S. government in its measurement of the economy, with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noting it too has been a victim.

In the Fed’s most recent report on outstanding consumer debt, the nation’s central bank said it recently discovered it had been underestimating the total dollar amount of student loan debt for a number of years. In the report, the NY Fed said some of the under-counting may have stemmed from the methodology used by one of its vendors.

The Fed said it has fixed the problem, which was a significant one. The Fed says it may have been under-estimating outstanding student loan debt by some $290 billion.

By Matthew Goldstein

Leave it to Phil Falcone to find a glimmer of good news to relay to the beleaguered investors in his Harbinger Capital Partners. A day after U.S. securities regulators threatened to sanction the billionaire hedge fund manger for alleged trading irregularities, Falcone told investors in his roughly $4 billion firm that not all is lost.

In a note emailed to investors the day after Falcone officially learned the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is considering charging him with a number of securities law violations, the former Harvard hockey star told them that nothing the SEC is looking at involves his beloved LightSquared.

Additionally, it is important to note that neither Harbinger Group Inc. (“HRG”) nor LightSquared were the recipient of a Wells Notice, nor was either involved in any of the events being investigated.  Moreover, the Wells Notices received by HCP and certain affiliates are not related to any of the HCP funds’ investments in HRG, LightSquared or their predecessors.

By Matthew Goldstein

There was plenty of theatrics Thursday when Jon Corzine returned to his old stomping ground–Capitol Hill–to offer an apology and a mild defense for the events that led to the collapse of MF Global. But in the end little light was shed on just what happened during those final days of October, as Corzine’s firm spiraled towards bankruptcy and hundreds of millions dollars of supposedly protected customer money went missing.

Corzine said many times he didn’t know what happened to the money and was shocked as anyone to find out the money was gone. But there is one thing Corzine said that will prove to be the most critical part of his testimony and that’s his assertion that he never intended to do anything wrong. Or more precisely, he never intended to have customer money maintained in segregated accounts transferred to the firm’s own bank accounts.

As anyone who has been following the MF Global saga now knows, the one inviolate rule of the futures industry is that a firm cannot commingle its money with its customers, or take customer money in a segregated account to pay the firm’s bills or debts.

By Matthew Goldstein

The jobs situation is still pretty bad in the U.S. and the nation has a long way to go to make up for the millions of jobs lost during the financial crisis. But today’s job’s report and recent revisions point out that maybe things aren’t as bad as everyone feared just a few months ago.

Remember this summer, when everyone was convinced the U.S. was headed into another recession. The August jobs report seemed to confirm that bleak outlook when the Department of Labor said the nation produced a big fat 0 in terms of new jobs. But now we know that 100,000 jobs were created in August. And the Labor Department says the 103,000 jobs thought to have been added in September was actually 210,000.

The October number also was revised up by 20,000 to 100,000.

So who knows, maybe November’s report, which said the nation added 120,000, will be revised upwards next year when the December jobs reported is released.

By Matthew Goldstein

If we’ve learned nothing from the financial crisis, it’s that we need smart regulators to be minding the store. And we need someone to make sure the regulators are up to that job and not shirking their responsibilities.

So it was a breath of fresh air when David Kotz assumed the role of inspector general of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2007.

Kotz attacked the job with a welcome aggressiveness and his exhaustive 477-report on the Madoff mess shed some much needed sunshine on the SEC’s fumbling and bumbling of the investigation into the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme. The report prodded regulators to speed up the creation of a new multi-million dollar database for handling tips and complaints from informants–a big failing of the SEC in Madoff.

By Matthew Goldstein

It’s been about a month since MF Global began spiraling towards bankruptcy and still there’s no clarity about what happened to the missing customer money that was supposed to be kept in untouchable, segregated accounts. It’s not even clear how much money is missing.

When the Jon Corzine-led firm filed for bankruptcy on Halloween, it was believed some $900 million in customer money couldn’t be accounted for in MF Global’s segregated accounts maintained at Harris Banks and other institutions. That sum was quickly revised downward to about $600 million. And the number remained at $600 million until the court-appointed liquidation trustee surprised everyone last week by saying more than $1.2 billion in customer money might be missing.

But now even that $1.2 billion figure is in doubt. Officials with the CME quickly questioned the much higher figure and so did other regulators. A law enforcement source tells me federal investigators also doubt the $1.2 billion figure and believe the missing money is still about $600 million.

By Matthew Goldstein

It’s been an eventful month for hip-hop promoter and commodities trader Tyrone Gilliams, the man federal authorities allege defrauded investors out of at least $5 million.

The self-styled Philadelphia philanthropist was indicted by federal prosecutors on securities fraud charges on Nov. 14 after being arrested on criminal complaint in October. The Securities and Exchange Commission this week also filed civil fraud charges against the 44-year-old former University of Pennsylvania graduate and college star basketball player.

The SEC complaint and the indictment closely mirror the allegations we first raised against Gilliams in a Special Report in May, which revealed how Gilliams worked with a network of associates across the country to raise at least $5 million from two investment funds and then diverted that money to support his extravagant lifestyle. The money was supposed to be used for trading in Treasury STRIPS and to generate sky-high returns. But federal authorities contend Gilliams and his TL Gilliam LLC trading firm never did any trading as advertised.

By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein

Whether you agree with it or not, the Occupy Wall Street protests that began two months ago in New York have ignited a debate over income inequality and the political clout of the nation’s banks.

Before the protesters began camping out in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, much of the conversation had  focused on the federal government’s debt and not the equally big debt run-up by U.S. consumers in the years before the financial crisis. Now it seems you can’t go a day without reading a story about the vast gulf between rich and poor and the shrinking middle class, or how the housing crisis won’t get fixed until something is done to alleviate the burden for millions of homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages.

Last month a group of graduate journalism students from Columbia University spent some time at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti where they did in-depth interviews with over 200 protesters. (This was before New York City moved to forbid people from sleeping out in the concrete plaza). And the students findings were surprising in that the OWS protesters weren’t just a bunch of unemployed hippies, who all vote Democratic. Rather, they found that the majority of protesters didn’t identify with either political party, 56 percent didn’t have private health insurance and just under 40 percent gave President Obame a grade of C for managing the economy.