The Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering, a conference bringing together global regulators and bankers to discuss and debate new ideas and develop a new set of guidelines moving forward, has just taken place in New York. Michael Panzer, writer of the Financial Armageddon blog and author of “Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse”, was in attendance and has kindly shared some of the more interesting quotes on his blog, as reported below.

Secretary Tim Geithner, United States Department of the Treasury:

“Generally, we did not do enough.” (Referring to the failure to address growing concerns over excessive risk-taking in the period leading up to the financial crisis.) [Editor's note: understatement of the year?]

Stephen Roach, Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia:

Those who are looking for a “V”-shaped recovery are in for “a rude awakening.”

“The imbalances going into the crisis were large to begin with.

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The holiday-shortened week saw investors pondering the depth of the economic rabbit-hole. As investors vacillated, most financial markets were characterized by a roller-coaster ride. Friday’s worse-than-expected jobs data left no doubt that the economy was in recession.

The highlights of the week’s discussions were captured on video and are included in this video-o-rama compilation. Strutting their stuff was a star-studded cast including the likes of George Soros, Hugh Hendry, Dan Greenhaus, Paul Krugman, Bill Gross, Nassim Taleb, Jeff Immelt, Stephen Roach, Bob Prechter and Marc Faber.

As an aside, the weather in Europe - where I am spending two weeks with my family in Slovenia and Switzerland - has been characterized of late by endless thunderstorms. Strikingly, the economic mood is no less despondent than that of the holiday-makers trying to escape the ominous dark clouds. But wait, is that a forecast for better days ahead?

Elsewhere, the jail

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The fund filings are out. If you're wondering, these are the funds I like to track, and sometimes follow by buying the same stocks:br /br /-George Soros (Soros Fund Management)br /-Seth Klarman (Baupost Group)br /-John Paulson (Paulson amp; CO.)br /-Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway)br /-David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital)br /-Bill Ackman (Pershing Square Capital Management)br /-Steve Cohen (SAC Capital Advisors)br /br /Today, I'm going toa href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchiveamp;sid=a_RT.rEuHt4M" take a quick look at Soros' holdings/a.br /br /blockquoteSoros Fund Management LLC, the investor’s hedge-fund firm, sold 5 million U.S. shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York-based firm’s remaining 32 million shares of the state-controlled oil company were valued at $963 million at the end of the quarter.br /br /The hedge fund also held 5.6 million shares of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Potash at the end of the quarter, compared ...

The holiday-shortened week witnessed relatively few news and economic reports, but the major US stock indices nevertheless scored their first five-week stretch of gains since October 2007.

A mixed bag of video clips was produced. First up is Pimco’s Mohamed El-Erian, saying, “Fundamentally we are in a volatile journey to what we call the new normal, the new destination. The world is changing.” Also featuring prominently are a series of must-see interviews by Aaron Task (Yahoo Finance, Tech Ticker) with George Soros about a wide-ranging number of issues.

Spicing up the week’s video footage was a fairly lively debate between UBS’s George Magnus and the G7’s Len Komileva, with another interesting discussion coming from Nouriel Roubini and Goldman’s Jim O’Neill.

Also make sure to watch Argentinean economist Adrian Salbuchi’s video clips, putting the financial collapse in context by referring to historical examples from Argentina.

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Monday January 5, 2009 Navivest

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has announced that it has signed a letter of intent to sell failed mortgage lender IndyMac, which was the seventh largest savings and loan and the second largest independent mortgage lender in the country when it failed and was seized by the FDIC on July 11, 2008, to a private equity consortium.

The transaction is being structured as a sale of New IndyMac to IMB HoldCo, which is controlled by IMB Management Holdings. IMB Management Holdings LP formed IMB Holdco LLC as a thrift holding company, which will be the parent of the purchased New IndyMac.

Steven Mnuchin, a former executive at Goldman Sachs, who is currently the Chairman of Dune Capital Management, leads the consortium. The new CEO of the new IndyMac will be Terry Laughlin, who was most recently, the Chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch Bank

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“The financial crisis has shown that markets are bubble-prone and that laissez-faire regulation doesn’t work. The authorities need to get a grip if we are to avoid a mega-bubble. But we may need an even deeper crisis for that to happen.” That is the conclusion of a fascinating round-table discussion just published by Prospect magazine.

The participants (from top left to bottom right) were: Mark Hannam who spent 12 years working in the City for the Bank of England, Citibank and Barclays; Jonathan Ford (chair), deputy editor of Prospect; John Gieve, deputy governor for financial stability of the Bank of England; Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times; Anatole Kaletsky, an economic commentator and associate editor of the Times;

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