Blog Posts by Aaron Task

It's been a big week in Bailout Nation: On Tuesday, AIG and the U.S. Treasury sold $8.7 billion of stock, reducing the government's stake, while Chrysler repaid $7.6 billion of loans to the U.S. and Canadian governments -- six years ahead of its deadline.

Less than a month after President Obama set up a task force to "root out" fraud in the oil market, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has accused two individuals of manipulating the market — back in 2008.

The WSJ reports: "The CFTC accuses the traders, Nicholas J. Wildgoose and James T. Dyer, who worked for Arcadia Petroleum Ltd., a Swiss commodity-trading firm, and its affiliates, of buying millions of barrels of oil, creating the illusion that supplies were critically low at the nation's central oil hub, Cushing, Okla."

The CFTC alleges the two traders also pocketed $50 million in ill-gotten gains from the scheme, which is a pittance compared to the billions of dollar the 2008 price spike costs consumers, and the global economy. Indeed, many market players believe Wildgoose and Dyer are being made scapegoats for the crimes of the big players in the energy pits, which very much includes big banks like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley -- similar to the "mom and pop"

First there was Renren, the "Facebook of China." Then came the LinkedIn offering last week. Today, Yandex, "the Google of Russia" went public in a deal that was wildly oversubscribed and saw the stock surge on its first day of trading.

These and other echoes of the 1990s tech boom are causing investors and pundits to wonder: Is this bubble 2.0?

Financial markets shuddered Monday as fears over Europe's sovereign debt crisis resurfaced yet again. Still, the Dow closed off its worst levels of the session amid the conventional view that Greece's debt crisis can be managed.

But Endgame author John Mauldin says Greece won't be any more "contained" than subprime mortgages were in 2008.

"It's not something that stops at the European waters," Mauldin says. "Just like the subprime crisis didn't stop in California…I'm worried this one has a lot of contagion and it'll affect the world."

As for the mechanism for that contagion, Mauldin lays out the following scenario in the event of a Greek default:

• - Greece has to nationalize its banks.
• - Greek citizens are forced to take deposits in drachmas, rather than euros.
• - Greek consumers and businesses then default on all debts because of the resulting haircut, which he estimates at 50%.
• - French and German banks are forced to take write-downs on their Greek exposure.
• - The ECB is forced to

The Republican primary field narrowed further this weekend as Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels announced he won't run. Daniels was considered to be a "serious" candidate who could appeal to independents, so his bowing out appears to be another blow to the GOP's hopes of unseating President Obama in 2012. (See: GOP Shakeup Good For Obama, So Why Is Matt Taibbi So Disappointed? )

The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result. Speaking of which, concerns about Europe's debt spurred a global selloff Monday morning after S&P cut Italy's debt rating to negative and Spain's ruling Socialist Party suffered heavy losses in regional elections.

Overnight, China's Shanghai Index fell 2.9% and Japan's Nikkei shed 1.52%, kick-starting a global selloff. In recent trading, major European bourses were down between 1.7% and 2.1% while the Dow was down more-than 1%.

The acute issue in Europe right now is Greece, where a debt restructuring (aka default) seems inevitable. Last week, EU officials agreed to a $110 billion bailout package for Portugal. Backed by the IMF, the package looks strikingly similar to the deal engineered for Greece about a year ago — and we all know how well that worked out! Over the weekend, Fitch cut Greece's debt rating by three notches and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said Greece should

The film version of Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail" debuts on HBO Monday night. I saw an advanced screening of the film and had a chance to catch up with its stars at the New York premiere this week. (See: 'Too Big to Fail', the Movie: Why Andrew Ross Sorkin Is Worried About a Sequel)

In the accompanying video, James Woods, William Hurt, Bill Pullman, Cynthia Nixon, Ed Asner and other members of the stellar cast answer questions about "Too Big to Fail", including: What did you learn while making this film and why is it still relevant today?

James Woods ("Richard Fuld"): "I was like a lot of people — and I don't mean stupid — but ignorant of the complexities of this disaster. I didn't understand until I read the book and did the movie, how close we came to a massive cataclysm."

William Hurt ("Hank Paulson"): "A lot of people do not understand anything about [the crisis] at all, and they need to. Most of feel marginalized [and] outside of any understanding of how the big

Earlier this week, China's top general sought to downplay China's military capabilities and its threat to the U.S. Gen. Chen Bingde said China's recent efforts to upgrade its military have "aroused unfounded suspicions."

But make no mistake, the U.S. is "under attack" from China, according to John Brown, VP at Fusion Analytics. The attack is not coming in the form of bombs and bullets — or even poison toothpaste — but via the financial markets.

"Let's not get distracted here, we should simply focus on the accounting chicanery and falsified filings with which Chinese companies are daily relieving US investors of their capital," Brown writes at his blog The Reformed Broker. "Working with American law firms and shameless stock promoters, these companies have found a financial engineering solution that lets them steal on our shores."

Specifically, Brown cites the trend of Chinese companies going public via so-called reverse mergers, whereby a publicly traded American-based shell company,