Courtesy of snarling bank critics Chris Whalen & Josh Rosner, have a look at 1994′s GAO/GGD-94-133 — its in the Think Tank doc FINANCIAL DERIVATIVES: Actions Needed to Protect the Financial System. Reining in bank recklessness seems to be a never ending task. Unless and until we either go full blown Canadian, or alternatively ringfe

This morning, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) filed its most extensive disclosure yet about questions of corruption and bribery in its Mexico operations, but sadly, that isn’t saying much. What’s most striking about the new disclosure is that it was buried at the bottom of the 8-K that put Wal-Mart’

Source: US Government Accountability Office

Toyota Motor Corporation (TM - 77.57) saw a rise in put activity on Wednesday, as more than 7,400 of these options crossed the tape, reflecting nine times the equity's average daily volume...(Read More)

My early morning reads: •  Josh’s Notes from the Ira Sohn Conference 2012 (TRB) see also Hedge-Fund Stars Come Out (WSJ) • Indians’ affinity for gold pushing country into debt (Washington Post) • Clive Crook: If Greece Quits Euro, Its Ruin Will Be Pointless (Bloomberg) • Why China’s RMB exodus IS the story (FT.com) see also China

In stark contrast to a near tripling in the NY mfr’g survey, the May Philly mfr’g report went from +8.5 to -5.8, well below expectations of +10 and the weakest since Sept ’11. The components confirm the headline weakness (headline not a sum of its parts) as New Orders fell to -1.2 from +2.7, Backlogs fell to -9.4 from +3.2 and imp

Yi: +7, +6.6, +6.35Trying to bottom out: $CRBExtremely oversold: $DJGSP, $SILVER, $XAU, $XOI, AGQAverage oversold: $CRB, $GOLD, $OEX, ACHModerately oversold: $DJX, AAPL, AEMTrying to hold falling trendline support: $GOLD-weekly.Moderately overbought: $VIXAnything posted here may be off base, and there may be some more opinions later today.

Smart Money Selling Facebook Shares.  With all the hype surrounding the highly anticipated Facebook (FB) IPO scheduled for Friday, the average person thinking about purchasing shares may not be aware of what the smart money plans on doing with their shares.  Just a week ago Facebook was looking at a valuation of $77-$96 billion and early