Erin Burnett Is Vapid, Occupy Wall Street Matters

Erin Burnett condescension at Occupy Wall Street is embarrassing for her.  This group's feelings and motives come from a real place of pain which should be addressed.

Read the full Forbes post

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AIG's Resuscitation Quite a Surprise

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor01/19/11 - 06:00 AM EST

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- AIG(AIG_) used to be a four-letter word.

No one liked American International Group as little as a year ago. It was the poster child for everything that went wrong before the financial crisis. Politicians and pundits assumed that the Federal Reserve's hasty rescue of the company --- to prevent a terrible crisis from spilling over into a catastrophic one -- would be a financial burden all taxpayers would carry for years, if not decades, to come.

The idea that AIG might one day be actually able to pay back the government was laughable.

Consider these facts:

• The Federal Reserve, with the help of the Treasury Department, had to step in to orchestrate a $182.3 billion bailout to keep AIG going;
• For this loan, AIG has been paying 14% interest to U.S. taxpayers;
• In exchange for the bailout, the government took preferred shares which give it effectively 92% control of the company.

Robert Benmosche was appointed the CEO of AIG on Aug. 3, 2009. He was immediately self-confident.

"The government might even make a little bit of money when we're done," he said at the time of his hiring.

Such a notion at the time seemed preposterous to many.

Financial blogger Barry Ritholz appeared on Yahoo! Finance's popular Tech Ticker on Aug 20, 2009, and called Benmosche's claims that AIG could one day repay all its loans to the government "totally absurd."

Benmosche has been a colorful CEO. He remained at his Croatian vacation home for the first few weeks on the job, even inviting reporters into his home and holding impromptu press conferences. Stories were written about the fact that his home had 12 bathrooms that were gold-plated. He talked about his vineyard. The image Benmosche projected wasn't one of a government bureaucrat living at below-market salary rates.

He immediately started holding internal town hall meetings with AIG employees, promising that the government wasn't going to bully them around anymore or get in the way of them running a great company. He promised to fight for employees to get the compensation they deserved. Stories also circulated about him pressing his own board for a better pay package for himself. Finally, AIG's board -- made up of people selected by the government -- told Benmosche to cool it. He stopped being so public, except for when he had to admit a few months ago that he was being treated for cancer and would leave the company when a proper successor could be chosen.

.......

[** This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.**]

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Bruce Berkowitz' Big Week

Eric Jackson tips his cap to Bruce Berkowitz on his concentrated bets in the financials that are working so well.

Thu 12/16/10 12:30 PM EST -- Eric Jackson

Stocks in this video: C | AIG

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Wall and Main Streets -- The Pensioners' Perspective

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor09/22/10 - 07:46 AM EDT

I attended the annual fall meeting of the Council of Institutional Investors over the past couple of days in San Diego. The council is a non-profit organization that exists to represent the interests of American pension funds with combined assets of more than $3 trillion (that's trillion with a "t"). The council's views on how our largest companies are run matter because, unlike many large institutional or mutual fund companies, these pension funds aren't afraid to rock the boat and speak up to corporate management.

The pension fund world sits at an interesting crossroads between Wall Street and Main Street. The people who oversee these substantial assets in their plans have to be sophisticated enough to understand how Wall Street works and the games that Wall Street plays to benefit itself (and not always the shareholders). However, these investors also live in the same world as their pensioners. They are keenly aware of their responsibilities to their members and the real-world challenges that their members face each day.

The keynote speaker for the conference was Neel Kashkari, the former Goldman Sachs banker, who worked in the Treasury Department under Hank Paulson and later oversaw the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program. Now Kashkari works for Pimcocreating a new active equities program for the global asset manager.

Kashkari's talk was the standard Pimco "new normal" pitch, but it was enhanced with his views from three years spent on Capitol Hill. He said that he was amazed that both parties had come together to pass TARP. He confessed he didn't think that they would beforehand. He had believed -- based on his time in Washington -- that politicians could only respond after a crisis, not in anticipation of one.

Although most of the pension fund audience told me they thought very highly of Kashkari's talk later, there was no shortage of people lined up to challenge him during the Q&A session of his talk. He gamely tried to answer the questions of why Treasury couldn't save Lehman Brothers but just two days later saved AIG(AIG) . (His answer, which is a variation of Paulson's revisionist explanation, is that Lehman didn't have the collateral to pledge against a bailout while AIG did, giving Treasury the authority to act in one situation while not in the other).

However, the big questions posed by this audience to Kashkari were: "How can Wall Street, so quickly, start repaying itself huge bonuses when the rest of America is hurting?" and "When and how are things going to start to get better for the rest of America?"

........

[** This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.**]

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Latest Ideas From Some Heavy Hitters

By Eric Jackson
RealMoney Contributor
5/27/2010 5:00 PM EDT
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson

Yesterday was the 15th annual Ira Sohn Research Conference in New York. The event brings together the best hedge-fund managers in the world to present their top ideas for the coming year. All proceeds from the event go to charity, supporting pediatric cancer and other childhood diseases.

The event has a stellar reputation, partly because of its track record of managers presenting ideas here for the first time publicly that go on to pan out exactly as they argue. In 2008, David Einhorn made a splash at this conference by pointing out some of the problems with Lehman Brothers -- four months prior to that firm's bankruptcy. At the 2007 conference, Bill Ackman called for the demise of Ambac (ABK - commentary - Trade Now) and MBIA (MBI - commentary - Trade Now), and last year he touted General Growth Properties (GGP - commentary - Trade Now) when the stock was under $4 -- it's now over $13. Some have called this conference the Learning Annex for hedge-fund managers.

Just an idea for the event organizers: There's such interest in the ideas from the event that they should consider live streaming the event on the Web. They could charge for it and likely still get a large audience that would further support their worthy cause.

Yesterday's roster of speakers was stellar as usual, including Ackman of Pershing Square, Einhorn from Greenlight, Sam Zell, David Tepper of Appaloosa and Seth Klarman of Baupost.

Many speakers, including Einhorn and Ackman, reiterated arguments they've made publicly, for example shorting the ratings agencies likeMoody's (MCO - commentary - Trade Now) andMcGraw-Hill (MHP - commentary - Trade Now) and going long General Growth. Other speakers, such as Niall Ferguson of Harvard and former auto-czar Steve Rattner, chose to stick to macroeconomic predictions.

David Tepper, who was bullish in 2008 and lost money, then stayed bullish in 2009 and made $4 billion, was still bullish yesterday. He pointed to the bleachers, a la Babe Ruth, and said that Bank of America (BAC -commentary - Trade Now) is going to $27. Tepper also likes AIG (AIG - commentary - Trade Now) and the beaten-down Spanish bank Banco Santander (STD - commentary - Trade Now).

....

[This post is an excerpt of the full article, available by clicking here to go to RealMoney.com. Note: subscription required.]

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More Interconnectedness, More Volatility

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor

05/12/10 - 06:07 AM EDT

Stock quotes in this article: C , GS , AIG

Mark Cuban, entrepreneur and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team, recently complained that the Wall Street game had changed. It's not enough any more to do fundamental research on individual companies, he said. Individual investors today have got to be a global macro hedge fund. It's too complicated, Cuban says.

There are changes. Last Thursday's "flash crash" -- when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1,000 points in a few minutes -- was the latest evidence of the "new normal" the stock market is operating under these days. There's no question that volatility has increased sharply compared with, say, 10 years ago.

When events like last Thursday or the near collapse of the credit markets in September 2008 take place, government officials or market commentators have a knee-jerk first instinct to blame a discrete market actor like a rogue trader or rogue hedge fund. They blamed the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management for sparking the Asian currency crisis of 10 years ago. They said it was a "fat finger" on some Citigroup(C)trading desk which caused last week's mayhem. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story laying the blame of last week on one trade by one hedge fund who pays Nicholas Taleb, the market watcher and proponent of "black swan" events in markets, as an adviser.

The trouble with these single actor or "it-was-out-of-our-hands" explanations for these crashes is that it suggests no major changes need to occur. As long as we prosecute the bad apples or make a tweak here or there to the existing system, we can continue on our way.

But, I've got news for you. Cuban is right that something systemic has changed on Wall Street, in our economy, and in our society. These changes have introduced greater interconnectedness, greater speed, and greater complexity to our markets and decision systems than we've ever had before.

These changes are mostly good and beneficial to the markets, but they do introduce much greater risk and volatility than we've ever seen before. At the same time, the system and rules by which the markets operate haven't changed. What this means is that it is highly likely that we will see large market swings again -- both intraday and over a period of many months. In fact, if anything, volatility is likely to increase in the years ahead, not decrease.

........

[This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.]

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Citi Ex-CEO Prince: Blinded by Hubris

By Eric Jackson

04/28/10 - 06:00 AM EDT

Stock quotes in this article: C

A few weeks ago, the day after he testified in Washington before the Financial Crisis Commission, I heard former Citigroup (C) CEO, Chuck Prince, speak to a friendly business audience at a closed-to-the-business-press luncheon. I went into the meeting thinking Chuck Prince was a fool; one of the poster boys for the out-of-touch Wall Street CEOs whose actions helped bring the world economy to the brink of collapse two years ago. I left the luncheon with a much more nuanced view of the man.

Prince raised some interesting questions that I -- and I suspect many -- would have a hard time answering, making me concerned about how much we've really learned.

Prince was criticized by author Michael Lewis and others for his quote, "When the music is playing, you have to get up and dance and we're still dancing." That was his explanation, in early 2007, for why Citigroup was so heavily invested in the subprime mortgage space.

It would be easy to write off Prince as a buffoon; someone in over his head. He was a lawyer, after all. He should have know better. People who make big mistakes in business are either idiots (like Prince), unethical (like Skilling or Kozlowski), or evil (like Madoff). We write them off, and move on.

So the obvious question for Chuck Prince is, what the hell happened to almost kill what was once thought of as the world's leading bank?

According to Prince, they held $40 billion in super-senior tranches on housing assets. Alan Greenspan had referred to these assets as "as safe as U.S. Treasuries." Overnight, they went from AAA to junk, according to the ratings agencies. At first, Prince (and his CFO Gary Crittenden) thought it was a $200 million problem. Then, it became an $8 billion problem, then an $11 billion problem, and later back to an $8 billion problem. By the time it was settled, however, Prince was long gone.

It's clear that Prince seethes at the ratings agencies' role. Since his world changed overnight -- with AAA assets becoming junk -- Prince obviously believes he deserves some understanding. At one point in the luncheon, he said:

"I guess what you should take from my story is, don't trust conventional wisdom. Even if theFederal Reserve chairman says some asset is rock solid, don't take his word for it. I guess in 2006, I could have gone down to our trading desk at the tip of Manhattan and told the traders, 'You know guys, I just don't think Greenspan or anyone else knows what they're talking about in reference to these super-senior tranches. I know we're at the top of the pyramid to always get the cash flow from these products, but I just think the world is going to change. Sell them all.' They would have looked at me like I'd lost my mind. They would have wondered, what does this lawyer think he's talking about?"

........

[This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.]

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Lessons From Lehman's Fall

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor

03/17/10 - 06:01 AM EDT

Stock quotes in this article: FNM , FRE , AIG , MCO , MHP , C , WFC , BAC , JPM , GS , MS

The conclusions from last week's report have surprised many about what went on leading to the downfall of Lehman Brothers.

How could management have been allowed to manipulate the investment banks' results so materially, even as they painted a different story to investors in their public filings? Why does it appear that the auditors, Ernst & Young, were so complicit with what management was doing in the months leading up to Lehman's bankruptcy filing? How was the board of directors not informed that this was going on? And most importantly, what should be learned from all of this going forward?

Some have opined that this "black eye" for E&Y will be their Enron. It will suffer the same negative publicity that Arthur Andersen did after it became clear that the energy company was cooking its books under the watch of the auditor. This bad publicity eventually led to the collapse of the accounting firm.

We're still in the early days of discovering what E&Y knew and didn't know about what happened at Lehman, so it's a little premature to suggest that E&Y is headed for the same fate as Andersen.

Even if it is discovered that E&Y was just as "guilty" as Andersen, there are many reasons to think that E&Y will continue. The world is in a much more fragile place today than it was in 2002 -- at least according to the Obama administration and government officials in many other large countries. Real reform of the financial system has been put on the back-burner. Saving the existing system is the priority.

What's the different between E&Y and Andersen? Andersen/Enron was a discrete failure, with culpable and easy scapegoat actors. What we're living through is the aftermath of a systemic failure where even the government was to blame. Where do you start with reform?

When you're living through a four-alarm fire, the thinking on the part of the government seems to go, you don't repaint the trim on the house. They're trying to put the fire out, and that means keeping the status quo.

........

[This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.]

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Brooksley Born Should Be In, Geithner Should Be Out

By Eric Jackson02/03/10 - 06:00 AM EST

Stock quotes in this article: JPM , AIG , BAC

When Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's senate seat a few weeks ago, it was a shot across the bow of President Obama from independent voters. Two days later, the president responded by announcing the "Volcker Rule" which will put more restrictions on commercial banks to get out of investing activities and focus more on lending money to their customers.

The president's response showed that he's done a poor job in his first year in office of keeping the support of "independents" -- so-called because they don't permanently define themselves as Republicans or Democrats.

The president understands that, unless he starts winning back these independents and fast, he will face a 1994-style rebuke from voters at this fall's mid-term elections. From a financial reform perspective, he must show voters that he's not a toady to Wall Street -- and I expect he will replace secretary Geithner with Brooksley Born, the former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who sounded the alarm on credit default swaps long before the housing crisis swallowed the economy.

Brooksley Born, former chairwoman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission

Why replace Geithner? Although it's now common to Monday morning quarterback the dark days of September 2008, questioning how government officials forced a shotgun marriage of Bear Stearns withJPMorgan Chase(JPM Quote), let Lehman Brothers go under, swooped in to rescue AIG(AIG Quote), and then forced through Bank of America's(BAC Quote) purchase of Merrill Lynch, the fact is -- at that time -- the financial world was careening out of control. I don't fault Geithner's crisis decisions (although they certainly were not all perfect).

[This post is an excerpt of the full article, which available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.]

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Benmosche Bests Pandit

08/26/09 - 09:07 AM EDT

C , AIG , MET , WFC

By Eric Jackson

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The federal government is running some of America's largest and formerly most influential companies, including Citigroup, AIG(AIG Quote), Bank of America(BAC Quote) and GM.

The track record of government managing -- let alone turning companies around -- businesses is poor. Still, it's calling the tune at the moment, sitting in on internal meetings, pushing out CEOs (like GM's Rick Wagoner), CFOs (like Citigroup's Ned Kelly) and directors (see the reconstitution of the Bank of America board since its April shareholders meeting), and determining whether prearranged pay packages should still be treated as valid contracts.

Yet, the government, with all the best intentions, will never turn around these companies. It's the companies themselves and their employees who must turn things around. AIG and its new CEO Robert Benmosche get that, while Citigroup and its CEO Vikram Pandit don't. Both companies are extreme corporate basket-cases now controlled by the government on behalf of taxpayers. Yet, the styles of Benmosche and Pandit couldn't be more different.

Pandit's been the quintessential invisible CEO: quiet, passive, and immediately forgettable when he does speak. Benmosche is on the other end of the spectrum: straight-talking, aggressive, asking challenging questions, and lots of slaps on the back. Benmosche doesn't suffer fools gladly; Pandit appears to suffer fools for years without saying boo.

As horrible as AIG has been as an investment since last fall, Citigroup has been worse. AIG's stock price is 15% higher than Citigroup's since the government took over the company. When the market learned of Benmosche's hiring and digested some of his positive comments on the company, it responded positively, sending up AIG's stock by 35% last week (and still higher this week).

Although I've yet to meet with a Pandit apologist (maybe the only ones are Citigroup's directors who hired him), if I did, they'd likely say he is just one man and certainly didn't cause Citigroup to be the unmitigated disaster it is today. They'd also say one person -- even the CEO -- isn't responsible for a company's stock price.

Certainly there are many people who also deserve blame for Citigroup's current state of affairs: John Reed, Sandy Weill, the entire board, including Dick Parsons and Bob Rubin and Chuck Prince. Yet, Pandit's been in the corner office for almost two years during the crisis. Citigroup's stock price fell in lockstep with Bank of America's from the fall through the March lows. Yet, since then, Bank of America is up 90% more than Citigroup. Yes, assets and past underperforming loans matter, but so does leadership. Pandit's been a dud as CEO, and that affects investors' interest in the company.

Recall that back in early October last year Citigroup was trading at $23.50 after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. backed it to buy Wachovia over a competing offer from Wells Fargo(WFC Quote). Five months later, Citigroup's shares touched 97 cents. It's been a breathtaking evisceration of the former king of the American financial world. Pandit has done little to inspire investor confidence.

Pandit's response to being owned by the government since taking TARP money has been to shrink back even further from public scrutiny and contact with staff. The introverted, bookish professor has become even more bookish.

When he has spoken up, it's irked regulators and peers alike. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase(JPM Quote) called Pandit a "jerk" under his breath on a conference call with Treasury last fall. Lloyd Blankfein has joked that Citigroup was crazy. One business journalist summed it up to me this way: "I've never seen a Wall Street CEO who gets punked that often."

Where is the leadership going to come from? Sheila Bair is not going to turn this company around. Neither is Tim Geithner or Ben Bernanke. Did Citigroup also sign an addendum to receiving its TARP funding that it had to manage its affairs as if no one were really in charge?

Contrast Pandit's style with Benmosche's, the former head of MetLife(MET Quote) and new head of AIG. If any company is a ward of the state more than Citigroup, it's AIG -- it's actually a $182.5 billion ward.

Yet, here was Benmosche coming out swinging last week. He said in an internal town hall meeting that he sees the government as only one of several critical stakeholders -- the others being clients in the U.S., Asia, and Europe; employees, and then "the people we owe money to" (otherwise known as the government).

Benmosche said undoubtedly AIG would have to sell some of its businesses to pay back the government but ruled out an imminent sale for its investment advisory business and said other asset sales could wait until the company received full value. "I don't liquidate things; I build things," he said. "If the government wanted this money back quick, they shouldn't have come in in the first place."

Benmosche even had the nerve to suggest his management team should have the flexibility to pay its employees more if they've just "shot the lights out" in a given year.

Financial blogger Barry Ritholtz called him "totally absurd" to think he's going to pay back the government "in our lifetime." Maybe. But, if you worked for AIG (or were a stockholder), you cheered last week. It's clear who's in charge at this company. It's not the regulators but actually the AIG and its employees. This is quite a contrast in styles from his caretaker predecessor, Ed Liddy, and of course Pandit.

Benmosche finished an employee town hall meeting recently, warning: "My fear is that you'll say, 'I don't know if Treasury wants it, I don't know if the Fed wants it, I don't know if the lawyers want it, I don't know whatever.' If you sit there every day not making the right decisions to take us to the next level, we'll miss an opportunity."

And, he's exactly right. I'm for leaders who see the facts clearly and don't lead their organizations off a cliff. Both Citigroup and AIG went over the cliff a long time ago. They're down in the valley -- but they're still going concerns and they still need leaders. They're not going to be shut down and shouldn't be led by CEOs who would be suited for winding down companies -- like Pandit.

Ask yourself, if you were working in the bowels of one of these companies, who would your dig deeper for: Benmosche or Pandit? That hidden effort will start to show itself in the operating results and stock price in the coming quarters.

The government would be wise to get out of the way of these companies as quick as it can -- assuming there are competent management and directors. The government and taxpayers deserve the best long-term return on their investment, but they aren't suited to micromanage the businesses. They should get the right managers, get the right risk management and get out of the way.

The CEOs of Citigroup and AIG should push back on government requests when they are unreasonable or at odds with the long-term interests of the business. Benmosche appears well-suited to do that; Pandit doesn't.

We got into the current mess by too many people at AIG, Citigroup, and other firms playing fast and loose with other people's money with poor or no risk management. To fix that, we've needed government intervention.

We've got to get back to a true free market system. To heal these firms and our economy, leaders and employees at AIG and Citigroup need to treat assets they oversee as if it's their own money and -- with proper risk oversight -- start making free choices again on how to grow those assets.

-- Written by Eric Jackson in Naples, Fla.

At the time of publication, Jackson had no positions in stocks mentioned.

Eric Jackson is founder and president of Ironfire Capital and the general partner and investment manager of Ironfire Capital US Fund LP and Ironfire Capital International Fund, Ltd.

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TheStreet.com: Activist Investor: Stale Ideas Killed AIG, Lehman

TheStreet.com
By Eric Jackson
09/17/08 - 09:43 AM EDT

As we all try to digest the unprecedented volatility that has besieged the stock market this week, with Lehman Brothers (LEH Quote - Cramer on LEH - Stock Picks) and Merrill Lynch (MER Quote - Cramer on MER - Stock Picks) now washed away, there is one question that is often repeated: How could so many smart people get things so wrong? It wasn't hubris or laziness. It was the inability of the board members and CEOs to look at the problems facing their companies with fresh eyes.

Newcomers like John Thain at Merrill took decisive actions to create the maximum shareholder value under the circumstances. Old-time CEOs like Dick Fuld at Lehman and Robert Willumstad at AIG(AIG Quote - Cramer on AIG - Stock Picks), who is a new CEO but has been on AIG's board since 2006, dawdled, and their companies are now paying the price -- one with bankruptcy and the other agreeing to a government bailout last night.

Management theorists Don Hambrick and Danny Miller conducted a study on the seasons of a CEO's tenure 20 years ago. They found that CEOs had the freshest eyes early in their tenure. They revisited old decisions made by their predecessors and charted a course for the organization under their leadership. After only a few years though, the CEOs began running their companies from within the prism of their past decisions. If their strategy didn't work out, they would defend it, stating that it simply needed more time.

This tendency for defensively believing in past decisions is not a CEO condition -- it's a human condition. It's not a trait that gets noticed when times are good, but it can be a deadly trait in so-called "perfect storm" times like the one we're currently living in.

It's up to the boards to hold CEOs responsible for their decisions by questioning them when warranted. Sadly, that didn't happen in the case of Lehman and AIG. In the case of both, it cost them the companies.

In this environment, even the most gilded companies' CEOs -- such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs (GS Quote - Cramer on GS - Stock Picks) and John Mack of Morgan Stanley (MS Quote - Cramer on MS - Stock Picks) -- need to be questioned by their boards. Worst-case scenarios must be discussed and preparations made.

Just because a CEO has a long tenure at a company and holds the title of chief executive doesn't mean he or she will fail; it simply means he or she needs to be on guard against "conventional wisdom." Conventional wisdom a few months ago was that Lehman was no Bear Stearns.

Wachovia's (WB Quote - Cramer on WB - Stock Picks) new CEO, Robert Steel, appears to be using his financial industry experience (he formerly served as head of equities at Goldman and undersecretary of the Treasury), as well as his lack of Wachovia tenure, to make quick moves in downsizing and separating the good and bad aspects of the bank in his first couple of months on the job. It warrants watching if he can be successful in doing what's needed at that bank in comparison to Thain's moves at Merrill.

Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup (C Quote - Cramer on C - Stock Picks), deserves a lot of scrutiny. He came to Citi after his Old Lane hedge fund was acquired. So far, he has done little to separate himself from the model that Sandy Weill built and for which Chuck Prince acted as caretaker. Will Pandit be just another caretaker? How will Citigroup be defined under his tenure? We have yet to find out. In the meantime, the company's stock drifts lower with the industry, and Citigroup continues to pay a dividend it can't afford. There is no urgent capital-raising needed yet, but Pandit needs to have the pressure kept on him.

In these difficult times, all CEOs and directors must come to work each day with fresh eyes to confront the problems they face. No matter how much past success they've achieved, no matter how esteemed these CEOs are, Lehman and AIG have taught us how easily everything that it took generations to build can be lost.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

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