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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brian Sullivan who wrote (87584)	2/28/2012 7:42:36 PM
From: Paxb2u	Respond to of 219834

I don't know. Who bought GM bonds ?

To: Brian Sullivan who wrote (87584)	2/28/2012 7:44:20 PM
From: carranza2	Respond to of 219834

You get what you pay for, if lucky. It's insurance without reserves or regulation, the best example of caveat emptor I can dream up.

To: Brian Sullivan who wrote (87584)	2/28/2012 9:07:04 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Respond to of 219834

It has always seemed odd that government debt is considered "risk free". Now people are learning that governments are highly risky and do actually default, dilute and destroy. My preference has always been productive assets [and people] which are privately owned in competitive markets. The mistake people are making now is to think that gold will be the replacement for diluted money. It won't. It will be perhaps, in part, a way station en route to monetary methods of the future. Mqurice

To: Brian Sullivan who wrote (87584)	2/28/2012 10:31:14 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 219834

Right on cue, posted a couple of hours ago: businessweek.com Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth- biggest U.S. bank by assets, disclosed for the first time the gross value of credit-default swaps the firm purchased and sold relating to Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain. At the end of 2011, Goldman Sachs had sold $142.4 billion of single-name swaps, contracts that pay out in the event of a default, on the five countries, the firm said yesterday in an annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also had purchased contracts with a gross notional value of $147.3 billion on the nations’ debt, the filing shows. Regulators and investors have encouraged Wall Street banks to improve disclosure of potential losses from the five countries at the center of Europe’s debt crisis. New York-based Goldman Sachs previously had reported only its so-called funded exposure to the debt of those nations, excluding commitments or contingent payments such as credit-default swaps. Goldman Sachs also said that “legally enforceable netting agreements” would reduce the amount of credit-default swaps purchased on the five countries to $21.1 billion and the amount sold to $16.2 billion. Those so-called notional amounts exclude collateral as well as derivatives from outside those nations that could mitigate the risk, according to the filing. The bank’s total credit exposure to the five countries was $2.93 billion as of Dec. 31, according to the filing. The firm’s “market exposure,” which includes positions in bonds, stocks, credit derivatives and other securities, was $580 million.