Interesting Insight into Bear Stearns and the CDS market

So Bloomberg had a really interesting background piece that related the Bear Stears bailout to the CDS market in Bear's debt. Check out the article here.

The article has some interesting revelations from people privy to the CDS space, but the basic takeaways are that the thought of counterparties having to pay Bear CDS holders if the company went belly-up was of paramount concern to the Fed (and may have been the reason for the JPM (with the Fed's blessing) bailout). The ripple effect could have been huge and many other financial institutions likely could have seen their own liquidity issues result in a bankruptcy. Other insights: pricing transparency is horrible in the CDS space, the banks often hedge their CDS exposure and enjoy having the dealer status where they can be the gatekeeper to all of the CDS paper while minimizing their own risk, while hard the measure, the CDS market is actually predicted to be bigger than the NYSE.

Inside One Man's Attempt to Fund a Movie's Budget Through Hedge Funds and Private Equity

The NY Times had an interesting article in Monday's paper about a man named Sanjay Sanghoee's pursuit of making a movie based on his Wall Street-related book called "Merger."

More from the Einhorn - Ackman CNBC Day

Barry Ritholtz has provided more clips from the CNBC session with Bill Ackman and David Einhorn. Great stuff.

Ackman Talks Investing

Renowned hedge fund manager Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management talks investing on CNBC.

Detailed Notes from Annual Berkshire Conference

The Reflections on Value Investing Blog has very detailed notes on what was said/discussed at the Berkshire Hathaway Conference. See the summary/notes here.

Tomorrow's Buzz: Xobni - Fast Searching on Outlook

For those of us that use Outlook as our primary email program, we may have found the greatest thing to hit computing since Firefox's browser. The NYTimes covered the program - Xobni - in it's paper for Monday (tomorrow) and I started using the program tonight. It's amazing. The program's purpose: allow you to search your inbox very quickly. We all know that Outlook's email search is, for lack of a better word, "a disaster." It's just way too slow. Google Desktop did solve some of the problems, but Xobni (which is free) is just so much better (and quicker at indexing). Be sure to download it when you get a chance. Here is the Xobni website.

Great Overview of the Real Estate Market from T2 Partners

Whitney Tilson's Fund, T2 Partners, has put together a very compelling report on what caused the collapse in the housing market. The numbers are astounding and T2 has done a great job of laying out its thesis with a myriad of facts/figures and logical analysis that make the crisis easier to understand.

WSJ Goes Inside the Yahoo-Microsoft Saga's Latest Developments

Nice reporting from the WSJ on Microsoft's decision to back down on the Yahoo! deal.

A Behind the Scenes Look at the Rating Agencies

The NYTimes has an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the rating agencies, and specifically, Moody's.

Live Blogging from Berkshire Conference

CNBC's live blog from the Berkshire conference.

There is also a link to the afternoon session live blog as well.

Einhorn's Speech that Started it All: The Allied Short Saga

The Street had a review of Einhorn's book on his Allied Capital saga and the review also provided readers to a link to Einhorn's speech on Allied Capital that became the basis for David's book. Here is a link to the video.

More from Sir Warren

More from Warren Buffett to help you get ready for tomorrow's shareholder meeting in Omaha.

This is an excerpt from his recent meeting with Wharton students.

See the article here.

Great quotes in here:

"[I get offered all] kinds of deals from LBO operators. I would just love to bet against the projections of every one that they give me. They hand me these books, which I don't even want to look at, but they hand me the books, and of course they always just project like that [points upward like a graph that only increases]. I would just love to make a career out of betting against the figures presented in those books, but I don't get a chance to do that. If you ever get a chance to short investment banker books, that would be a great activity."

Lessons from the Trading War Trenches

The Kirk Report had a nice post yesterday on lessons learned from renowned trader Nicolas Darvas. Check out the post here.

Full CNBC interview with Warren on the Mars/Wrigley Deal

A few posts today to get you ready for the Berkshire annual meeting, which is slated to have 30,000 attendees this year (the most ever).

CNBC has posted the transcript of its Wrigley/Mars related interview with Warren. See the link here.

John Gapper of FT: Rise of High Risk Optimism?

With all the hoopla regarding this week's Milken Global Institute Conference, it's natural that the media is covering anything and everything regarding the former junk bond king, Michael Milken. It seems that the talk of the financial community is a 10-page paper that Milken put out just last week that lays out why once again his thesis that the risk-reward trade-off with junk bonds outweighs that of investment grade debt. His evidence? The slew of write-offs of so-called investment grade securitizations.

John Gapper of the Financial Times discusses the Milken paper today in his column. This is a follow-up to Sorkin's column for the NYT. I am trying to get a copy of this Milken paper, but I can't seem to find it online. If anyone has it, please send it to me at nshah3@chicagogsb.edu.