Dan Holland has just interviewed Wall Street chronicler Charlie Gasparino’s. The first few paragraphs of the interview that appeared on RealClearMarkets are published below.

There’s good reason to believe that Gasparino’s latest book, The Sellout, will become the definitive book on the current financial crisis and the events that led up to “The Great Recession.” Spanning three decades, The Sellout pulls no punches in chronicling the rise and fall of excessive Wall Street leverage and risk taking, as well as the cast of colorful characters that ultimately brought the US financial system to its knees. It will hit bookshelves tomorrow [Tuesday].

RealClearMarkets: You sat down recently with Wall Street legend Teddy Forstmann to discuss your new book and the genesis of the mess we now find ourselves in. Forstmann said it all began as a “cold” back in the 1970s and 1980s, and that since

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Wednesday November 4, 2009

DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

PWRM, INTC, PSFT, JPM, AQNM, MSFT, CVAT, STEC, CSRH

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PSFT, Powersafe Technology Corp., PSFT.PK

PSFT subsidiary Amplification Technologies Inc. (www.amplificationtechnologies.com) (ATI), is offering higher performance thermoelectrically cooled discrete amplification single photon counting solid state photodetectors. These photodetectors are mounted on a two stage thermoelectric cooler inside a hermetically sealed TO8 package and can be operated down to a temperature of -30oC.

The devices are available in both Si and InGaAs/InP technologies. As compared to TO5 devices, these TO8 packaged detectors have 10-30X lower dark current depending on operating temperature. The Si devices offer flat and

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Early today, Kenneth Lewis, CEO of Bank of America (BAC) was testifying before a government oversight committee with respect to his company's January 1, 2009 acquisition of Merrill Lynch.Considering recent announcements by the company, we would suspect there will be several more inquiries in the future for Mr. Lewis.Members of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hammered for a rationale as it appeared to them that Mr. Lewis failed to file the appropriate information prior to the December 2009 shareholder vote with respect its then-acquisition target Merrill Lynch, and known widening losses as of November 2009 -- thereby demonstrating that B of A neglected to meet the government's disclosure rules.The House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee's brought to light that Mr. Lewis was aware of the acceleration of the substantial losses at Merrill Lynch, but did ...

Reportedly, Bill O’Reilly referred to a recent story out of our nation’s capital as “bigger than Watergate.” Whether the story is bigger than Watergate or not, it is definitely a scandal of huge proportions.

To sum it up, on April 23, 2009, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sent a letter to Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chris Dodd; Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank; SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro; and Chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel Elizabeth Warren. The letter outlined how former Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke forced Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch – even though Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis and the board of directors tried to pull the plug on the deal after it turned out that Merrill Lynch was far deeper in debt than it had admitted. In the words of

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Notes from the Investment Underground Monday, April 27, 2009 Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Welcome to Sopranos USA… Can the “junk-stock” rally last? Credit to get worse before it gets better… Feds’ “hair of the dog” recovery plan… Shockwave coming… Jim Rogers on why he’s not buying stocks… Introducing your new Notes tax expert, Raife Neuman… And more!

*** What kind of men have we entrusted to manage our economy? And whose interests do they serve? Get the answer to either of these questions wrong and you’re in for a rough ride as an investor.

*** Consider the facts surrounding the Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch.

Thanks to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, we know that former Treasury secretary Hank “The Hammer” Paulson and Fed chief Benny “Two Fingers” Bernanke violated U.S. securities law by keeping the huge losses sustained by

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Both gold and silver were comatose all night long in the Far East…and all through European trading once again. However, the moment that the London p.m. fix was in, both metals’ prices went vertical. Silver got capped before it hit $13…but gold managed to close above $900, and is now above $910 as I write this. As I said yesterday…Friday is options expiry…so be ready for anything. But even I wasn’t expecting that. Today’s New York price action should be enlightening.

Needless to say, Ted Butler and I had a discussion about yesterday’s goings-on. His guess [and it's only a guess] is that the ‘four or less’ traders in the Commercial category of the Commitment of Traders…all bullion banks…have covered all the shorts they can by rigging the price to the downside…and now they’re forced to cover their shorts in silver and gold by buying in the open market. This action

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“We do not want a disclosable event.” Thus spoke former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Bank of America CEO, Ken Lewis, last December.

Paulson’s remark came in response to Lewis’ request for a letter from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, acknowledging the government’s insistence that Bank of America acquire Merrill Lynch, despite the brokerage firm’s mounting mega-billion-dollar losses.

This one little phrase probably tells you everything you need to know about Henry Paulson, the man who put the “secret” in Secretary. And this one little phrase certainly tells you everything you need to know about the structure and actual objectives of the bailout campaigns Paulson orchestrated.

Specifically, the Paulson bailouts sought to divert hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars toward Wall Street finance companies, and to do so as secretly as possible. In the name of “systemic risk,” the former Treasury Secretary dispensed hundreds of billions of dollars to

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Tuesday March 24, 2009 Navivest

Fifteen out of 20 AIG (AIG) employees, who received $30 million of the $165 million in bonus that has raised the nation’s ire, have agreed to pay back those bonuses in full, according to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

The Attorney General is also hoping to get the rest of the $165 million back as anger continues to mount over the bonuses, which was paid on March 15 to employees in AIG’s financial products division.

This was the same department, which financially engineered or underwrote the derivates that brought the company to its knees, forcing it to turn to the government for a bailout. So far about $50 million of the bonus has been returned or promised to be returned.

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New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (hat tip: LA Times) asserted that on Friday insurance company AIG, recipient so far of perhaps $170 billion in bailout assistance, distributed over $160 million in "retention payments to members of its Financial Products Subsidiary." These payments apparently included "retention" payments of over $1 million each to eleven individuals who are no longer working at AIG.

One of the reasons this is so outrageous is that the promise of such bonuses was in fact one of the very factors that caused our current problems, creating incentives for managers of AIG to get out of solid insurance underwriting and into hedge fund gambling. If anyone had supposed that AIG had "learned its lesson", this report seemed to dash that hope against the wall like a plate of china.

Some may argue that AIG's hands were tied by

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Shares of American International Group [AIG: 0.901, +0.071 (+8.55%)] rose 66% on Monday, after the company released the names of the financial institutions that directly benefited from the Fed’s rescue loan last year.  AIG is facing a lot of pressure from the government and the public after the company almost single-handedly brought down the U.S. banking industry.  Since the loan was made, policymakers have been pressuring AIG to disclose more on its operations and more specifically where all of the money has gone.

Almost 80 companies (domestic and international) as well as some U.S. states have received multibillion-dollar payments from AIG, thanks to the Fed.  According to a statement from AIG, banks received $22.4 billion in collateral, $27.1 billion in payments to retire credit default swaps and $43.7 billion tied to the securities-lending program.  Some of the

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