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Here’s my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 am. (My apologies for lateness Wally. Had to take my daughter to the doctor) I welcome your additions in the comments below or please send any links for tomorrow to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz I hope I’m not an idiot with an anger management issue.

1. No one can say I’m unbalanced. Here is an attack on Nassim ‘Black Swan’ Taleb, who I’ve featured several times on Top 10 at 10. The attack from Scott Locklin is both high falutin and down and dirty at the same time. HT Felix Salmon

Taleb thinks all of quantitative finance is nonsense and we should do away with quants. I am guessing the former’s delusions had something to do with drinking the same Berkeley tapwater in the 1960s which made everyone else believe in crazy things, but Taleb was a trader, and it’s a common prejudice of traders to dislike quants for cutting into their P/L.

2. Here is some grand theatre in a CSpan video on Youtube from Ben Bernanke’s Congressional hearing overnight where Congressman Alan Grayson grills Bernanke over currency swaps with various central banks, including “New Zealand, who got US$9 billion or US$3,000 per person” (2mins 31). It’s a fascinating watch and all part of the growing momentum to audit the Fed. This will go viral.

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Here’s my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10am. I welcome your additions and comments in the comments below. Please send any suggestions for tomorrow’s Top 10 at 10 to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz We don’t use dead or live squirrels to help us drink coffee.

1. Lloyds Banking Group, which controls Bank of Scotland International, is set to post 13 billion pounds of losses on commercial property, business loans and housing loans, The Times reported.

First-half results due to be posted in three weeks will show that its losses are accelerating, in spite of recent suggestions that the worst of the recession is over.

UBS analysts expect Lloyds to announce a bottom line half-year loss of £6.3 billion as a result of the soaring provisions.

The writeoffs for the first six months of the year would match the losses recorded by Lloyds TSB and HBOS in 2008, as they consummated their disastrous merger. The expected bad debt charge is almost twice what Lloyds paid for HBOS when they came together under the government’s watch last autumn. Total writeoffs for this year at Lloyds could exceed £20 billion.

2. This video after the jump from the American News Project on the drive to audit the Fed is well worth watching. HT Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

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Here’s my top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 am. I welcome your additions in the comments below or send any links to me at bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz for possible inclusion in Monday’s Top 10 at 10. Our website does not have any military applications.

1. The Chinese push for new global reserve currency just won’t go away. Reuters reported China’s Vice Minsiter He Yafei saying the issue could be raised at next week’s G8 summit, although he subsequently said it was not on the agenda.

However, Bloomberg also reported the same minister saying that he hoped the US dollar would remain stable. This is the problem for China. It can’t afford to rush out of the room otherwise it is sure to spark a stampede through the shop. So instead it now has to delicately tip-toe out of the room and leave the porcelain intact.

2. It’s boom time again on Wall St. Seriously. Goldman is likely to pay out US$20 billion in bonuses and average salaries of US$700,000 this year as profits surge back to the investment banks, Heidi Moore at The Big Money says. Felix Salmon summarises the strategy nicely below.

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Here’s my Top 10 links from around the Internet in the last day or so at 10 am. I welcome your additions in the comments below. I cannot embed my dismissive scoffing sound.

1. Adam Bennett at the NZHerald has picked up on this NZX announcement on Friday that Allan Hawkins, the convicted fraudster of Equitycorp infamy, is raising NZ$10 million from small investors (NZ$500 minimum investment) through an issue of capital securities offering 9.25%.

Hawkins was sentenced to six years jail in 1993 on seven fraud and conspiracy charges on transactions totalling $520 million after one of the longest and most expensive trials in New Zealand history. However, Hawkins’ convictions are not disclosed in Cynotech’s prospectus for the issue.

This is amazing. How on earth are we supposed to take any prospectus approved by the Securities Commission seriously when a fraud conviction is not included? How much credibility can we give to the NZX when it allows the likes of Hawkins to raise money from Mums and Dads through its market?

2. Oh the humiliation. GM is selling its most All-American brand of stupid SUVs to the Chinese. Sichuan Tengzhong is buying Hummer for less than US$500 million, the WSJ.com reported.

3. The Chinese are not happy with America’s spend, borrow and print strategy to dealing with the financial crisis. Bloomberg reports Yu Yongding, a former Chinese central bank adviser, as saying he doesn’t believe America’s plan to reduce its budget deficit from 12.9% of GDP now to 3% at some stage. He also described the US Federal Reserve as the world’s biggest junk investor.

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Here’s my top 10 links from around the Internet over the last couple of days at 10 am.

1. Now we’re seeing what went on behind the scenes with the stress tests for US banks. WSJ.com reports that the Federal Reserve initial results showed the biggest banks had massive capital black holes, but the Federal Reserve scaled their figures down dramatically after complaints by the banks. Here’s a taste.

When the Fed last month informed banks of its preliminary stress-test findings, executives at corporations including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. were furious with what they viewed as the Fed’s exaggerated capital holes. A senior executive at one bank fumed that the Fed’s initial estimate was “mind-numbingly” large. Bank of America was “shocked” when it saw its initial figure, which was more than $50 billion, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

At least half of the banks pushed back, according to people with direct knowledge of the process. Some argued the Fed was underestimating the banks’ ability to cover anticipated losses with revenue growth and aggressive cost-cutting. Others urged regulators to give them more credit for pending transactions that would thicken their capital cushions.

Yet somehow the markets rallied on this news. Who do the Americans think they are kidding? Their banks are still insolvent zombies and the credit crunch will not be over until they are sorted.

2. Paul Krugman at the New York Times is similarly sceptical about the results.

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