CreditSlips

Freep, froop, frop . . . No, It's Pottow!

05/25/12

Credit Slips alumni John Pottow sent me an op-ed from Freep.com. Being an idiot, it took me a while to figure out that this was the Detroit Free Press. John takes on the huge trading loss at J.P. Morgan and the continued need to regulate financial hedging at U.S. banks (no matter what Jamie Dimon says).

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What Is Private Equity?

05/23/12

The Presidential campaign's focus on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital suffers from a confusion about what private equity is. Steven Rattner starts to lay this out in a NYT column, but I th

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Madoff and Trustee Incentives

05/22/12

We've been pretty quiet about Madoff on this blog, so I think it's time for a few words on the matter. I want to quickly recap two critical decisions in the case and then raise the issue of the alignment of incentives between the trustee and the Madoff victims.

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Save the American Community Survey

05/21/12

The Credit Slips blog always has tried to offer perspectives from many different social sciences. That is why many readers may be distressed to learn of the attack on the American Community Survey (ACS). If you do not do a lot of social science work, you may not be familiar with the ACS. It is an arm of the Census Bureau that provides all sorts of information about what is happening in the United States.

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Thou All-destroying But Unconquering Whale

05/21/12

A few quick thoughts and suggested readings on Chase's ever expanding losses from the Whale Trade.

First, if you have not been reading Lisa Pollack's Alphaville posts on this topic you really must.

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Bankruptcy Court Calls

05/16/12

In connection with some ongoing research, I have noticed that U.S. bankruptcy courts have different approaches to informing the public about matters being taken up in open court. Many provide PDFs of court calls on their websites up to several weeks in advance (recognizing that matters settle, are postponed, or can change for other reasons). But on other bankruptcy court websites, it is difficult to find out what's happening on any given day. Might the informed readership of this blog offer reasons that courts refrain from making that information available on their websites?

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Article 9 and Bankruptcy Judges

05/15/12

A prior post addressed a proposed amendment to Article 9's official comments stating that the date of an Article 9 filing relates back to the initial filing date even if the debtor did NOT authorize the filing at that time. This post returns to that topic for two reasons. First, although it is risky to generalize, I sense that bankruptcy judges may still be unaware of this proposed am

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Storage Wars and the Credit Practices Rule

05/15/12

A few times I have caught Storage Wars, a television show on A&E. When storage units customers do not pay their fees, the contents are auctioned off by the storage unit company. The show follows professional treasure hunters who bid at these auctions. The catch is that the treasure hunters are purchasing the unit without full knowledge of the unit's contents.

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Doggie DNA Tests: Waste of Money or Legitimate Tool?

05/08/12

Do mutt-lovers (with admittedly too much time and money on their hands) get anything in exchange for the $75-100 they pay to find out what kind of dog they have? It depends. My advice: before ordering a doggie DNA test over the net, do lots of research. Perhaps just have the vet do it.  If you do order a test over the internet, make sure you pick one that tests for the maximum number of breeds and that gets very high marks from consumers, and carefully read the fine print.

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