Wisconsin Schools and Wall Street

a must read, we covered this story last month, here is an update...........from the nytimes.........

Here’s an interesting find. The Securities and Exchange Commission has sued Stifel Financial, a regional brokerage firm in St. Louis, accusing it of fraud in connection with complex debt securities it recommended to five Wisconsin school districts in 2006. Rather than settle with the commission, as many firms do, Stifel is defending the matter.


..............Once again, we see the same toxic ingredients that have appeared repeatedly in the aftermath of the crisis: collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, ruinous leverage, an overreliance on credit ratings, greed and extreme naïveté.


This much, however, is clear: Lawsuits filed against institutions involved in the credit mania continue to reveal much about practices that led to titanic losses in this crisis. Because we still don’t know the whole story of this mess, even four years after it erupted, how these lawsuits play out will help determine whether such an episode ever happens again"...........READ MORE