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US Treasury 10-yr CDS hits record high Mon, Dec 1 2008, 11:34 GMT http://www.afxnews.com LONDON, Dec 1 (Reuters) - The spread or risk premium on 10-year U.S. Treasury credit default swaps hit a record high on Monday, extending a recent trend as market participants continued to fret about the scale of the government's financial rescue programmes. Ten-year U.S. Treasury CDS widened to 68.4 basis points from Friday's close of 60 basis points, according to credit data company CMA DataVision. Five-year Treasury CDS widened to 52.5 basis points from 46 basis points at Friday's close, it said. (Reporting by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Insight: Annihilation on Main Street By Mark Sunshine Published: November 27 2008 15:54 | Last updated: November 27 2008 15:54 Warren Buffett called credit default swaps “financial weapons of mass destruction” and they are about to annihilate Main Street. In a disturbing new trend, international banks are creating syndicated credit facilities that “weaponise” credit default swaps (CDS) by using the trading price of a borrower’s CDS to set the interest rate paid by the borrower. Unfortunately, banks don’t understand that they are arming speculators to ambush and kill unsuspecting and otherwise healthy companies. Regulators are oblivious to this danger as...

UPDATE 1-U.S. Treasury CDS hit record wides-CMA DataVision Mon Nov 24, 2008 11:21am EST (Adds background) NEW YORK, Nov 24 (Reuters) - The spread or risk premium on 10-year U.S. Treasury credit default swaps hit record wide levels on Monday, prompted by worries about how the cost of rescuing banks and carmakers would affect U.S. creditworthiness, CMA DataVision said. As the global financial crisis worsened in recent weeks, traders increased their bets on the bigger toll of the U.S. government's array of programs to help these ailing industries. Ten-year U.S. Treasury CDS edged out to 49.8 basis points from 49.3...

Citi shares in record slump, CDS spreads widen Bank takes on $17 billion of SIV assets, shuts another hedge fund By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch Last update: 4:41 p.m. EST Nov. 19, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Citigroup Inc. shares slumped a record 23% Wednesday and credit-default swap spreads on its debt widened after the bank took on more than $17 billion in assets from structured investment vehicles and shut another hedge fund. Citi shares slumped 23% to close at $6.40. The previous biggest one-day drop was 21.7% during the market collapse on Oct 19, 1987. CDS spreads on Citi were...

Uncle Sam's Credit Line Running Out? By RANDALL W. FORSYTH The yield curve and credit-default swaps tell the same story: The U.S. can't borrow trillions without paying a price. WHAT ONCE WAS UNTHINKABLE has come to pass this year: massive bailouts by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, with the extension of billions of the taxpayers' and the central bank's credit in so many new and untested schemes that you can't tell your acronyms or abbreviations without a scorecard. Even more unbelievable is that some of the recipients of staggering sums are coming back for a second round. Or that...

INSIGHTSCredit Default Swaps: 'Financial WMDs' By Theodore F. di StefanoE-Commerce Times 10/31/08 5:30 AM PT We are all painfully aware of what is happening on Wall Street. In fact, I think that it might take several years for the stock market to regain the value that it has lost in the past year (approximately 35 percent).No doubt, there is plenty of blame to go around as to who is primarily responsible for this financial debacle. However, most experts agree that a prime candidate for blame is the credit default swap. Credit Default Swaps Explained Michael Greenberger, a former staff member...

AIG's crucial role in the banking collapse Oct 09, 2008 Something very strange is happening in the financial markets. And I can show you what it is and what it means... If September didn't give you enough to worry about, consider what will happen to real estate prices as unemployment grows steadily over the next several months. As bad as things are now, they'll get much worse. They'll get worse for the obvious reason: because more people will default on their mortgages. But they'll also remain depressed for far longer than anyone expects, for a reason most people will never...

October 11, 2008 Lehman Brothers demise triggers huge default Tom Bawden in New York and Suzy Jagger in Washington Lehman Brothers, the bust investment bank, triggered one of the biggest corporate debt defaults in history yesterday as it emerged that the US Federal Reserve is harbouring grave concerns about whether Washington’s $700 billion (£413 billion) bailout fund will avert a financial meltdown. An auction of Lehman’s bonds yesterday determined that the bank’s borrowings were worth only 8.625 cents on the dollar. The valuation leaves the insurers of the debt a bill of about $365 billion. It is not clear whether...

Financial crisis: Lehman Brothers liabilities sale fails to pacify market A fresh wave of fear hit banks yesterday as traders tried to settle hundreds of billions of pounds of complex products in a move that could leave some with heavy losses. By Katherine Griffiths, Financial Services Editor Last Updated: 11:24PM BST 10 Oct 2008 An auction to settle insurance liabilities over the collapse of Lehman Brothers has caused fresh anxiety A sale of complex products relating to Lehman Brothers caused new anxiety Photo: REUTERS The cause of the anxiety was an auction to settle insurance liabilities over the collapse of...

While some blame the greed of Wall Street investment bankers and the dangers of a totally unregulated system for the current financial crisis, what can’t be denied is that lives, and lifestyles, have been suddenly changed across the social spectrum and careers built up over a lifetime have vanished in an instant. Apart from the revised $700 billion bailout plan, can the U.S. government do enough to restore confidence and assuage the trauma? The real question is: Who is going to compensate the common investors across the world who have lost their wealth in the resultant market meltdown? The...

How AIG's Collapse Began a Global Run on the Banks By Porter Stansberry Something very strange is happening in the financial markets. And I can show you what it is and what it means... If September didn't give you enough to worry about, consider what will happen to real estate prices as unemployment grows steadily over the next several months. As bad as things are now, they'll get much worse. They'll get worse for the obvious reason: because more people will default on their mortgages. But they'll also remain depressed for far longer than anyone expects, for a reason most...

Short-selling on U.S. states can pay off By Mary Williams Walsh Friday, October 3, 2008 While regulators were sprinting to save the financial system last month, someone was making a lot of money — by betting against the State of New Jersey. It is not clear who. But trading records suggest that in the panicked days when exotic derivatives were bringing the American International Group to its knees, traders were using the same kinds of derivatives, called credit-default swaps, to profit from New Jersey's rising tide of red ink. Speculators have long been able to short-sell stocks, making money when...

Is Credit Default Swap Litigation the Next Big Thing? Robin Sparkman 10-03-2008 It seems that hardly a day goes by anymore without someone predicting with utmost confidence that boom times for litigators are just over the horizon. Thursday's prognostication, courtesy of a media lunch hosted Wednesday by Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker: It's going to be all about the credit swaps. Robert Claassen, chair of the firm's derivatives group, and Keith Miller, chair of the credit crisis group, told reporters that the banking industry's implosion means that banks with a piece of the $43 trillion market in these unregulated instruments...

Excerpt... 1. Counter-party risk has risen dramatically and is the most significant. ISDAs have to be renegotiated (especially in light of the market disruptions like short-selling). Credit lines have to be reviewed with almost every client. Risk officers are preventing larger trades from being completed and demanding higher collateral levels from clients. Most important are the huge risks of counter-parties blowing up and not being able to pay their obligations. ...

Derivatives Pose New Wrinkle in Lehman Case 'A Huge Amount of Uncertainty' By JULIE SATOW, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 25, 2008 http://www.nysun.com/business/derivatives-pose-new-wrinkle-in-lehman-case/86595/ Bankruptcy lawyers and law professors are preparing for a journey into uncharted territory as the credit default swaps market gets dragged into the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy proceeding. "The courts have dealt with credit default swaps very infrequently, and certainly not at the scale they are now out there," a lawyer at Washington, D.C.-based Caplin & Drysdale, James Wehner, said. "We have a new law and a new financial phenomenon, so there is a lot of...

NYS TO REGULATE SWAPS Last updated: 10:03 am September 23, 2008 Posted: 3:49 am September 23, 2008 New York State will start regulating a part of the $62 trillion market for credit-default swaps, calling it a culprit in the global financial crisis. Credit-default swaps are contracts that act as insurance policies to protect against debt default and should therefore be treated as insurance, Governor David Paterson said in a statement yesterday. State insurance regulators would require sellers of the swaps to show they can actually pay the claims if there is a default.

A nuclear winter? Sep 18th 2008 From The Economist print edition The fallout from the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers WHEN Warren Buffett said that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction”, this was just the kind of crisis the investment seer had in mind. Part of the reason investors are so nervous about the health of financial companies is that they do not know how exposed they are to the derivatives market. It is doubly troubling that the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of American International Group (AIG) came before such useful reforms as a central clearing house...

. What is counterparty risk, and why is it suddenly an issue? In the simplest terms, counterparty risk is the chance that the person on the other side of a deal - the counterparty - won't be there when it's time to pay up. Take an example most people can relate to: Selling a home. There's always the chance that when it comes time to close the deal a month or so down the road, the buyer won't show up or won't have the money. In financial markets, traders and banks are constantly thinking about counterparty risk. When they make...

AIG shares slump, says 'everything on the table' Insurer may sell Transatlantic stake, other businesses to raise capital By Alistair Barr & John Spence, MarketWatch Last update: 5:42 p.m. EDT Sept. 12, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Insurance giant American International Group, beset by a record stock slump and a possible cut from ratings agency Standard & Poor's, said Friday it was reviewing its businesses and that "everything was on the table," suggesting it might sell assets to raise capital and avoid a crippling downgrade. The company had been preparing for a major reorganization announcement on Sept. 25, but on...

Fannie and Freddie's New Derivatives Cliffhanger The bailout triggers settlement of $1.4 trillion in unregulated credit-default swaps. Do the hedge funds have the money? by Ben Levisohn In taking over Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the U.S. Treasury Dept. cleared up uncertainty surrounding the companies' common stock, preferred shares, and senior and subordinated debt. But Uncle Sam's intervention also triggered a default event, according to the International Swaps & Derivatives Assn., and now roughly $1.4 trillion in outstanding credit-default swaps, a type of derivative contract, must be settled. You remember the credit-default swap...

Fannie, Freddie bailout triggers credit default swaps More than $1 trillion of derivative contracts will need to be settled By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch Last update: 1:30 p.m. EDT Sept. 8, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - The U.S. government's seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has triggered more than $1 trillion of credit default swaps tied to the mortgage giants. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association said in a memo on Monday that 13 major credit default swap dealers unanimously agreed that a credit event had occurred.

Old school Freeper needs tech help in downloading music. I've searched the net and can't find my answers.

DENVER - A judge denied a request to subpoena Dick Cheney in a lawsuit filed by a man who claims he was wrongfully arrested for comments he made to the vice president about the Iraq war. Steve Howards' attorney, David Lane, had argued that Secret Service agents involved in Howards' arrest in Beaver Creek in June 2006 told different versions of the incident and that only Cheney could clear up what happened. In denying Lane's motion Tuesday to have U.S. marshals serve Cheney with a subpoena, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer said Lane had "not made a sufficient showing to...

I need help with this problem. If I had 10,000 and put it into a cd for one year at 4.5 percent then how do I figure how much money I'll make on it? I already know how dumb I am when it comes to money so help me out. Show me how to get an answer. Thanks in advance!

David Bendeth, a producer who works with rock bands like Hawthorne Heights and Paramore, knows that the albums he makes are often played through tiny computer speakers by fans who are busy surfing the Internet. So he's not surprised when record labels ask the mastering engineers who work on his CDs to crank up the sound levels so high that even the soft parts sound loud. Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. "They make it loud to get...

Last year was terrible for the recorded-music majors. The next few years are likely to be even worse. IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,”...

George W. Bush is a heartbeat away from having to become president of the United States, a heartbeat that is becoming more and more tenuous.The heartbeat I am referring to of course is that of Dick Cheney, who has been shouldering the duties of the presidency since its current inception, and whose ticker needed a jump-start early this week in order to resume normal heart rhythm after displaying atrial fibrillation. I would have provided him with my home remedy that involves a motorcycle battery, a pair of alligator clips and two vice-presidential nipples but I wasn’t asked.

Investigators used a ruse to question a man later charged with aiding terrorists, an FBI agent testified Tuesday at a hearing over admissibility of the conversation and a search of the defendant's luggage. FBI agent Michael Scherck said he and another law enforcement officer approached Ehsanul Sadequee as he got off a flight from Atlanta to New York on Aug. 18, 2005, and told him they wanted to talk to him about passenger complaints that he had acted suspiciously on the plane. Scherck said that in fact there were no complaints, but investigators wanted biographical information from Sadequee as part...

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles album often cited as the greatest pop recording in music history, received a thoroughly modern 40th-anniversary salute last week... But off stage, in a sign of the recording industry’s declining fortunes, shareholders of EMI, the music conglomerate that markets “Sgt. Pepper” and a vast trove of other recordings, were weighing a plan to sell the company as its financial performance was weakening. ... Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital...

In an indication of what the Wall Street Journal calls a "seismic shift" in the way people now acquire music, CD sales for Q1 2007 are 20% below what they were last year. Digital song sales, which were expected to salvage the industry, have risen 54% in 2007 from last year to 173.4 million, but that is not nearly enough to compensate for the 20% drop in CD sales to 81.5 million units. Overall music sales, both digital and physical, are down 10% this year. Adding insult to injury, one billion songs a month are traded on pirate networks....

Even as the leadership of the Democrats sets timetables for withdrawal from Iraq, the sands have shifted and leaders of the Global Islamic Jihad Movement are displaying signs that their own alliance has fractured. Some pundits have described the Democrat leadership's position over the war on terror as "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory"; a cynicism that perhaps never sounded as plausible as it does this week. But to understand how this Islamic jihad movement has splintered, we must understand how it fits together. Reports from Southwest Asia tell us that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has distanced himself from the Taliban...

Worshipers were interrupted during an Ash Wednesday service at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis by a trio of hidden CD players spewing "pornographic" messages from beneath pews. Three CD players had been duct-taped beneath the pews and rigged to go off at 12:20 p.m., Santa Fe Police Capt. Gary Johnson said. An Ash Wednesday service was being conducted at the time, and Johnson said responding officers described the messages to him as pornographic, although he wouldn't go into detail about their content. The cathedral staff found and removed the three CD players, then called police while church-goers evacuated the...

Dear FReepers, I would like to burn some music compilation CDs that can be played in an ordinary CD player. I have Windows Media Player and an HP PC with a CD/DVD RW drive. Most of my music files are in mp3 format. Will mp3s play on a CD player? If not, what format do I need to convert them to and how do I do that? Thanks in advance for your help. Huntress

The days of ever-rising certificate of deposit yields might be waning. But CDs offering 6 percent have surfaced, and this may be the time to lock in, what is by most standards, a very good return. Usually, you'll need to look locally for institutions offering 6 percent. As of this writing, Bankrate's list of highest-yielding CDs doesn't have any topping the 6-percent level. That may be due to, among other things, Bankrate's requirement that CDs on the highest-yield list must be available nationwide. Many of the institutions we spoke with only offer their CDs locally. Consumers are hunting down these...

WASHINGTON, July 13, 2006 – The Armed Services YMCA is sending servicemembers free CDs with new and old popular country music hits that express pride in America. Under the "Send a CD to a Soldier" program, the Armed Services YMCA is sending the CDs to units supporting the global war on terrorism. "Since we can't send them to 'any soldier,' we send the CDs to units that were identified by the different branches of the services. The unit distributes the CDs to servicemembers," said retired Navy Rear Adm. S. Frank Gallo, national executive director of the ASYMCA. Gallo said...

The country-rock band Dixie Chicks have announced it is releasing their new CD in May, and if the lead single is any indication, the band isn't shying away from controversy. [. . .] Given that their airplay on country radio has dropped 30 oercent since then, and that the country music audience is generally more conservative than the country as a whole, you might expect to see the new Dixie Chicks project to take on a more subdued tone. But the new single, "Not Ready To Make Nice," takes aim at the band's critics, and the people who wrote threatening...

THREE of Australia's leading music stores will shift away from CDs towards digital retailing, in plans forged by Australia's most powerful music retailing boss. Brett Blundy, the director of Brazin - the company that runs HMV, Sanity and Virgin record stores in Australia - has indicated digital technology unveiled for his Sanity stores will eventually be available in all his other major retail chains. "That's the plan," said Mr Blundy. "It's very exciting." [snip] Mr Milne said while the CD was not dead yet, customer awareness of digital music is growing, and in a few years the CD may be...

Sony BMG has struck a deal with the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit over copy-restriction software it used in music CDs, according to a settlement document filed at a New York court Wednesday. The record label has agreed to compensate buyers of CDs that contained the XCP and MediaMax DRM programs and to provide software utilities to allow consumers to uninstall both types of software from their computer. The furor over Sony's DRM software began at the end of October when a U.S. programmer discovered that XCP software on a Sony music CD had installed copy-restriction software on his...

I am giving up CDs. Within the next several months, I expect most of my family's CDs will be converted for playing on our iPods and personal computers. The actual CDs will either be sold or given away. As more people connect their digital music players to their home stereos and car stereos, they realize they have no use for the racks of CDs taking up space in their homes. If you no longer play CDs, why keep them? That is the conclusion my wife and I reached, and that is why I am completing the arduous process of moving...

WASHINGTON, July 20, 2005 – World Wrestling Entertainment will offer its July 24 Pay-Per-View special, "SmackDown! The Great American Bash," free for broadcast on American Forces Network as a way of thanking servicemembers and their families for their service to America. "While our men and women of the Armed Forces are serving throughout the world, we know they are away from their homes and their families, so we are pleased to provide them with a little piece of home as a token of our thanks for all they are doing during this challenging time," said Kevin Dunn, WWE executive vice...

Friends and colleagues of mine, knowing that I’m keen on these kinds of puzzles, recently peppered me with messages that read along these lines: “Hey, I hear the new Dave Matthews CD can’t be copied! Know of a workaround?” And so, I dutifully purchased yet another copy of Stand Up (I’d already grabbed the album from the iTunes Music Store to check out iTunes’ new video feature) and took a look. For those new to the story, Sony BMG Music is in the early stages of releasing audio discs (they’re not official audio CDs as they don’t conform to the...

Technology is changing the huge global market for record collectors. As music dealers like those immortalised in the book High Fidelity disappear, will vinyl and CD rarities survive the download revolution? Second-hand record shops are becoming almost as rare a sighting in the UK as a first edition Beatles EP. The days of shuffling into grubby backstreet stores in search of that obscure Pink Fairies seven-inch are on their way out as dealers succumb to the march of online auction sites and MP3s. CURRENT RARITIES U2's Trabant car: £6,000 Queen 12" single: £10,000 Withdrawn Nirvana CD: £500 Led Zeppelin seven-inch:...

JOHANESSBURG, South Africa (AP) -- Members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and other militants are turning increasingly to crime - from dealing drugs to selling knockoff shampoos and pirated CDs - to pay for attacks amid a crackdown on the movement of terrorist funds through world banks, security officials told The Associated Press. As terrorist cells become more self-reliant, they are calling into question the notion they need an international financial support network to stage attacks, according to the independent commission that investigated al-Qaida's deadliest assault yet on Sept. 11, 2001. U.S. Treasury officials, who have driven the global campaign...

The recording industry is testing technology that would prevent consumers from making copies of CD "burns," a piracy defense that could put some significant new restrictions on legally purchased music. Tools under review by the major labels would limit the number of backups that could be made from ordinary compact discs and prevent copied, or "burned," versions from being used to create further copies, according to Macrovision and SunnComm International, rivals that are developing competing versions of the digital rights management (DRM) software. SunnComm said a version of its new "secure burning" technology is already being tested by BMG Music...

The way the music dies Tanyia Johnson and Steven Neuman Illustrators CD rot renders compact discs unreadable, causing users to lose data permanently By Steven Neuman News Reporter May 21, 2004 They were supposed to last for 100 years. They were supposed to become family heirlooms, allowing home movies and pictures to literally defy time and keep memories as fresh as the day they were made. But the compact disc, as it turns out, may not exactly last forever. In fact, some CDs undergo "CD rot," the slow, gradual destruction of the data they contain. In manufactured CDs, the...

Millions of holidaymakers going to Greece this summer have been warned they could be jailed for buying pirated CDs after a buyer was imprisoned. A man was jailed for three months by an Athens court for buying illegal CDs in the country's first case of its kind. He had been arrested as he bought two CDs from a vendor in Athens last week, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI). The group gave a clear warning it would target buyers of counterfeit CDs. IFPI spokesman Ion Stamboulis said: "This is not a symbolic measure. We are determined to...

Brent Bozell has penned a letter to network sponsors. There is a petition too.

Saddam's torture CDs go on sale By Patrick Bishop in Baghdad (Filed: 24/09/2003) The home movies of the family of Saddam Hussein, including grisly scenes of torture, are proving a best-seller on the streets of Baghdad. Some of the images show the dictator in a paternal role, smiling fondly at his brood and dandling their offspring on his knee. But the kitsch sequences are interspersed with dark recordings of torture sessions and executions. In one, Saddam's son Uday is seen lashing the soles of the feet of a soldier with a rubber pipe as his victim screams with pain and...

LONDON (Reuters) - The music industry's latest legal crusade to sue online song swappers is copyright holders' clearest message yet to Internet users: not only is the Net's "free ride" over, but it can be expensive. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on Monday said it sued 261 music fans in the U.S. as much as $150,000 per song distributed online.The film and software industry are biding their time, arming themselves to jump in with similar legal maneuvers to protect their copyright-protected movies, video games and operating systems from the massive black market that's emerged on Internet file-sharing services...

UMG Institutes a $12.98 Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price on Virtually all Top Line CDs NEW YORK and SANTA MONICA, Calif., Sept. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Universal Music Group (UMG) announced today an aggressive plan to significantly reduce the cost consumers pay for CDs by decreasing its wholesale prices and by instituting a $12.98 Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) on virtually all top line CDs in the U.S. UMG will introduce a new pricing policy with the aim of bringing music fans back into retail stores and driving music sales. The program, which will begin in the fourth quarter of 2003, will...