repo 105 - Max Keiser

On the Pages of Huffington Post, Max Keiser Warned Investors July 2008 About Lehman’s Peek-A-Boo Accounting

Stacy Summary: I wonder how much Valukas was paid to come up with the same information that Keiser provided to Huffington Post for free? First, here is Max’s article from July 2008:

JULY 9, 2008: Peek-a-boo accounting and the crash of Wall St financial stocks (Max Keiser / Huffington Post)

It’s peek-a-boo accounting where debts are removed from the balance sheet during the period when disclosure is needed (for quarterly earnings reports) and than the debt is temporarily parked back onto the company’s balance sheet, or parked on another bank’s balance sheet with an implied reciprocal agreement. (Enron had hundreds of shell companies that served as ‘debt parking lots’ to avoid having to include any liabilities on their quarterly earnings statement).

Lehman Brothers looks like they are trying to out-Enron Enron in the peek-a-boo accounting department.

And these are the findings on Lehman’s accounting ‘gimmicks’ in March 2010:

MARCH 12, 2010: Lehman bosses used accountancy gimmick to cover up debt (Times)

[Anton Valukas] was scathing, however, about the bank’s “inherently improper” use of an accounting practice known as Repo 105, designed to remove temporarily $50 billion of debt from its balance sheet, without telling investors or regulators.