Readings: ABCPMMMFLF, Naked Short-Selling Loans, No-Tie Taleb
A Fed program to buy as much as $1.8 trillion of short-term debt from U.S. companies means they don’t have to tap backup credit lines provided by banks, which would have forced JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and other financial institutions to record the loans on their balance sheets and raise more capital.
Another Fed program, Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (ABCPMMMFLF), aims to shore up the $1 trillion market for asset-backed commercial paper issued by off-the-books financing vehicles guaranteed by banks.
What an acronym!
Investors in the $591 billion high- yield, high-risk loan market are accusing Goldman Sachs Group Inc. of naked short selling to profit from record price declines.
New York- based Goldman is acting against its clients by trying to profit at their expense, the investors said.
“No one ever shorted loans,” Ganz said. “Prices never went down.”
Trading against clients? How horrible. I can’t even imagine such things being done - by say brokers - in India. 
- Newsweek: Don’t Trust Anyone In A Tie
Are M.B.A.s the problem?
The New York Times is the problem. High-frequency data is the problem, because we can’t interpret it correctly. Our environment is increasingly complicated, and the data that we choose to single out and interpret isn’t always relevant [to the problem we are trying to understand]. You can always find correlations if you look.How would you fix the system?
Take risks away from bankers. Let hedge funds—and the high-net-worth people—take it. At least they aren’t threatening society. Also, don’t use an economist as Treasury secretary. The world needs fewer economists in general. I believe in psychology, not economics.
The Black Swan / Taleb juggernaut continues. 2008 markets have been very kind to NNT, as they have been to Roubini.
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