Financial Forensics: Autopsy Files

Every real estate credit model has a line for pre-sale receivables. In China's property sector, pre-sale cash was not ring-fenced — it was working capital. The developer collected full payment from the buyer, used the cash to service existing debt and acquire new land, and depended on the next wave of pre-sales to fund the construction of the apartments already sold. Evergrande had three hundred and thirty-eight billion in liabilities. Recovery for offshore bondholders: less than one percent. This episode dissects the three red flags visible in developer accounts before September 2021 — pre-sale cash flow versus construction completion rate, geographic concentration risk in a velocity-dependent model, and wealth management product distribution through internal channels — and the local government fiscal transmission mechanism that extended the contagion beyond the property sector. For GPs and LPs with emerging market real estate or quasi-sovereign credit exposure.

In 2021, Evergrande was the most indebted real estate company in the world. Three hundred billion dollars in liabilities. One point two million apartments sold to buyers who had paid in full. Construction stopped on hundreds of sites across China. The buyers had the receipts. The apartments did not exist. This is the financial autopsy of Evergrande: the pre-sale Ponzi mechanism that turned China's largest property developer into the largest real estate collapse in history — by selling homes that hadn't been built to finance the construction of homes that hadn't been sold, for twenty years, until the math stopped working. The mechanism was visible in the accounts for years. Nobody stopped the cycle while the market was rising.

Ernst & Young audited Wirecard for ten years. One point nine billion euros in cash appeared on the balance sheet — held at Philippine banks. EY accepted confirmations through a trustee Wirecard influenced. It never sent a letter directly to the banks. When it did, the accounts didn't exist. The fraud wasn't sophisticated. The cash either existed or it didn't. This episode dissects the three red flags that were in the public record before June 2020 — auditor size relative to assets under management, absence of a prime broker or independent custodian, and the BaFin regulatory inversion as a signal — and the three operational verification steps that would have detected the fraud in any year they were performed. For GPs and LPs evaluating equity positions where material revenue or assets run through third-party partner networks.11:51 a. m.Claude respondió: EP23 T2

In June 2020, Ernst & Young told Wirecard it could not confirm one point nine billion euros in cash held at Philippine banks. EY had audited Wirecard for ten years. It had never sent a confirmation letter directly to the banks. When it finally did, the banks said the accounts did not exist. Twenty-four billion euros in market cap disappeared in three weeks. The CEO was arrested. The COO disappeared and is believed to be in Russia. The regulator had spent four years investigating the journalists who found the fraud — not the fraud itself. This is the financial autopsy of Wirecard: the phantom revenue mechanism that survived a decade inside a DAX company with a Big Four auditor and a functioning financial regulator.

Every sovereign credit model has a line for fiscal deficit. The number comes from the sovereign's own reporting. Greece's reported deficit in 2001 was three point two percent. The actual deficit — including the two point eight billion euros Goldman had structured off the balance sheet — was materially higher. The market priced Greek debt at near-German spreads for nine years on the reported number. This episode dissects the three signals that were in the public data before 2009 — the Eurostat methodology gap, the spread compression without fundamental convergence, and the investment bank structuring fee as a compliance trigger — and the portfolio construction implications of correlated repricing risk in a monetary union without fiscal union. For GPs and LPs with sovereign fixed income exposure.

In 2001, Goldman Sachs structured a currency swap for the Greek government that moved two point eight billion euros of sovereign debt off the balance sheet. Greece entered the eurozone. Its deficit looked compliant. Goldman collected six hundred million euros in fees. Nine years later, the new finance minister opened the books. The deficit was not three point seven percent. It was fifteen point four. Greek sovereign yields went from five percent to thirty-seven. The PSI imposed a fifty-three percent haircut on private bondholders. This is the financial autopsy of the Greek debt crisis: the reporting framework arbitrage that allowed a eurozone founding member to misrepresent its fiscal position for nine years with the assistance of one of the world's largest investment banks.

Theranos had a board that included George Shultz, James Mattis, and Henry Kissinger. It had no one with clinical laboratory science expertise, no one with medical device regulatory experience, and no scientific advisory committee with access to real performance data. The board was not designed to govern the technology. It was designed to signal legitimacy to investors who would not look past the names. This episode dissects the governance architecture that made the fraud possible — the three structural conditions that convert a board from an oversight mechanism into a validation tool, and the three due diligence questions that would have ended the Theranos valuation in any year they were asked. For GPs and LPs evaluating early-stage deep tech with proprietary technology claims.

Elizabeth Holmes told investors, patients, and regulators that Theranos had built a device that could run two hundred and forty blood tests from a single drop. The device didn't work. It never worked. For twelve years, the company ran real patient tests on third-party machines while telling everyone the results came from its own technology. The board included two former secretaries of state and a former secretary of defense. None of them had scientific or medical expertise. None of them had access to the data that would have shown the technology didn't work. This is the financial autopsy of Theranos: the governance theater mechanism that kept nine and a half billion dollars of valuation alive on a product that failed every independent clinical test it was ever subjected to.

Every sovereign bond issuance has a use of proceeds section. 1MDB's described joint ventures with Abu Dhabi sovereign entities and Malaysian energy infrastructure. The proceeds went to a yacht, a private jet, and a Hollywood film. Goldman charged six hundred million dollars — nine percent of total raised against a market standard below one percent. The excess fee was not a pricing anomaly. It was the price of not asking where the money was going. This episode dissects the three red flags visible in the public record before the collapse — counterparty jurisdiction mismatch, governance concentration in a single signatory, and fee structure as a compliance trigger — and the three verification steps that would have detected the diversion at any point in the transaction chain. For GPs and LPs with sovereign-linked counterparty exposure.

In 2009, Malaysia created a sovereign development fund to build infrastructure and reduce inequality. By 2015, four and a half billion dollars had been stolen. The money bought a two hundred and fifty million dollar yacht, Picasso paintings, Manhattan real estate, and financed a Hollywood film about financial excess. Goldman Sachs processed every bond issuance and collected six hundred million dollars in fees — nine times the market rate. This is the financial autopsy of 1MDB: the sovereign extraction mechanism that turned a government fund into a private account, and how the same banks and intermediaries that process legitimate sovereign transactions processed illegitimate ones using the exact same infrastructure. The fee was in the documents. Nobody asked what it was paying for.

Fairfield Greenwich had seven and a half billion dollars with Madoff. It earned three hundred million in fees. It never called the Options Clearing Corporation to confirm the positions existed. That call takes twenty minutes. This episode is the institutional autopsy of the Madoff case — the specific due diligence gaps that kept the fraud alive, the three verification steps that would have ended it in any year they were performed, and what the feeder fund incentive structure reveals about any current manager relationship where the strategy depends on market activity that hasn't been independently confirmed. For GPs and LPs.

The largest Ponzi scheme in history didn't survive for seventeen years because it was sophisticated. It survived because the institutions around it — auditors, feeder funds, regulators — had every incentive to believe the returns were real and no incentive to prove they weren't. This is the financial autopsy of Bernard Madoff: how a three-person auditing firm in a strip mall, a regulator that received documented evidence three times and did nothing, and feeder funds collecting hundreds of millions in fees built the architecture that kept sixty-five billion dollars of fiction alive. The fraud wasn't complicated. The failure to find it was.

When a bank is excluded from SWIFT, it doesn't lose its assets. It loses the ability to instruct anyone to move them. That distinction — between holding an asset and being able to use it — is the weapon. And it was visible in the Iran 2012 precedent for ten years before Russia 2022.This is the T2 GP/LP analysis of SWIFT as sovereign commitment optionality — three red flags, the carve-out structure that reveals the limits of the weapon, and the operational continuity question that almost no treasury function had answered before February 26th. Financial Forensics Labs. Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.

On February 26th, 2022, seven finance ministers disconnected Russia from the system that moves forty trillion dollars a day. It took seventy-two hours. This is the financial autopsy of SWIFT as a geopolitical weapon — and the sovereign exclusion mechanism that no central bank had modeled as operational risk until it was too late to hedge. Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.

Every fund that runs macro has a version of this trade in its history. A government makes a public commitment. The fund models the finite capacity behind it. The government capitulates. The fund collects. This episode is the GP/LP analysis of Black Wednesday — not as a story about Soros, but as a framework for evaluating any sovereign policy commitment as a financial instrument with a defined payoff structure and a quantifiable probability of failure. The ERM in 1992. Currency pegs today. Rate caps. Debt ceilings. The mechanism is identical. The arithmetic is always in the public data.

On September 16, 1992, George Soros made one billion dollars in a single day. He didn't find an edge nobody had. He read a government document, ran the arithmetic, and concluded the Bank of England was defending a promise it mathematically could not keep. Then he sized a ten billion dollar position against it. This episode dissects the mechanism — how a public commitment becomes a one-sided trade, how finite reserves define the entry, and why the same pattern has repeated in every major currency crisis since. Mexico 1994. Thailand 1997. Argentina 2001. The variable is always timing. The direction of failure is never a surprise.

Every institutional portfolio carries a position it never approved: a long on the continued credibility of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. No mandate. No risk committee sign-off. No line in the attribution report. This episode is the GP/LP analysis of the central bank gold reallocation of 2024 and 2025 — the reserve currency risk premium that the market is already pricing and most institutional frameworks are not. Three questions every portfolio with significant dollar-denominated exposure should be able to answer. Most can't.

Every year since 2022, central banks have bought more than one thousand metric tons of gold. The same institutions that spent fifty years calling gold a relic. They didn't announce it. They didn't hold press conferences. They just bought. This episode dissects the mechanism behind the purchases — why February 2022 changed the calculus permanently, what the gold price is actually signaling in a high-rate environment, and what it means for every portfolio built on the assumption that dollar dominance is a constant. The system isn't collapsing. It's repricing. And the reprice started three years ago, quietly, in reserve management departments that don't give interviews.

In 2024, the securities regulator of the world's largest democracy concluded a two-year investigation into alleged stock manipulation — and the primary target's stock was trading higher than before the investigation began. That outcome is not evidence of innocence. It's evidence of how difficult it is to prove manipulation in a complex multi-entity structure when the offshore holding chains run through jurisdictions that don't cooperate with regulatory requests. This episode dissects the structural mechanism behind the Hindenburg Research report on Adani Group — promoter-related entities holding through Mauritius-based funds, related party transactions extracting value from listed entities, and a float dynamic the public market couldn't independently audit. What a GP or LP needs to model before taking any large-cap conglomerate position in an emerging market where beneficial ownership disclosure is structurally incomplete.6:06 p. m.Claude respondió: EP15 — Adani Group 2023: Float Manipulation & Related Party Architecture — GP/LP Analysis

In January 2023, a single research report erased a hundred and fifty billion dollars in market value in ten days. No missed earnings. No fraud conviction. No regulatory action. A short seller published a document — and the market believed it more than it believed the company. This is the financial autopsy of Adani Group and the Hindenburg Research report that triggered the largest single-week wealth destruction in Indian financial history. How short selling works as a market discipline mechanism, what Hindenburg actually alleged about offshore ownership structures and related party transactions, and why the market reacted before any regulator moved. The legal outcome remains contested. The mechanism is not.

Every sovereign debt restructuring since 2020 has stalled on the same question: what did China's loan agreements actually say — and who had the right to see them before the country defaulted. In most cases, the borrowing government's own finance ministry didn't have full visibility. The IMF didn't. Private bondholders didn't. The terms were contractually confidential. This episode dissects the contract architecture behind China's infrastructure lending in Africa — collateral clauses over strategic assets, confidentiality obligations that blocked third-party review, and cross-default triggers that could crystallize an entire country's exposure on a single missed payment. What a GP or LP with frontier market sovereign debt exposure needs to model before the next restructuring cycle.

In 2017, a government handed over a port to China for ninety-nine years. Not because of war. Not because of sanctions. Because of a loan it couldn't repay. The loan had been offered with generous terms, low rates, and a long repayment horizon. The conditions were in the contract. Nobody in the government read to the end. This is the financial autopsy of China's debt trap in Africa — the sovereign collateral mechanism that turned infrastructure loans into long-term asset transfers. Hambantota Port. Zambia. Kenya. The pattern is the same. The mechanism is still running.

Every institution that financed an Odebrecht project had access to three signals that defined the risk. The margin was too stable across markets too structurally different. The offshore architecture was visible in the corporate structure. And every USD-denominated instrument created direct FCPA exposure. Nobody asked the questions. This is the institutional analysis of Odebrecht — regulatory arbitrage at sovereign scale, the due diligence gap that kept it invisible for twenty years, and why the same structure is active today in emerging market infrastructure financing. GP/LP analysis. No summaries. No shortcuts.

The largest construction company in Latin America didn't bribe officials with envelopes under the table. It built a division for it. Proprietary software. Offshore accounts in four jurisdictions. An annual budget reviewed by senior management. 12 countries. $788 million in documented payments. All of it logged in their own system. This is the financial autopsy of Odebrecht — and the regulatory arbitrage mechanism that industrialized corruption into a budgeted operating function for twenty years. Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.

SoftBank committed $10 billion to a company with $47 billion in fixed lease liabilities and variable short-term income. The coordinating banks had every number. The stress test was never modeled. This is the institutional analysis of WeWork — the three due diligence questions that destroyed the IPO, the governance structure designed for extraction, and why the same mechanism is active in every public exit process with adjusted metrics and a founder holding supervoting shares. GP/LP analysis. No summaries. No shortcuts.

In 2019, WeWork was valued at $47 billion. It was losing $2 for every $1 it made. The IPO prospectus had 359 pages. Everything that destroyed the offering was in those pages — the invented profitability metric, the $47 billion in lease liabilities, the founder who sold $700 million before listing. This is the financial autopsy of WeWork. And the IPO window dressing mechanism that the biggest banks in the world almost validated. Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.

Eighty thousand homes. Post-2008 distressed assets acquired at scale while the families who lost them had no mechanism to participate in the recovery. The IRR looks institutional. The subsidy embedded in it doesn't appear in the attribution. This is the analysis of regulatory capture through asset conversion — how a fund builds a return profile that depends on a specific policy environment remaining stable, reports that return as alpha, and stress-tests it against market scenarios but never against the political scenario where the subsidy disappears. What a GP or LP disaggregates before attributing return to manager skill versus policy tailwind.

The best-selling personal finance book in history. Forty million readers. And a corporate structure of ten active entities designed with surgical precision to isolate liability from assets — described explicitly in the same book nobody read as an operating manual. This is the analysis of entity shielding — how a sponsor structures a transaction so the contracting entity holds the liability and a related entity holds the assets. No fraud. No hidden mechanism. The document that taught you how the system works was simultaneously the document that made you a counterparty to someone who already knew how to use it better. What a GP or LP maps before entering any significant financial relationship.

Bill Hwang didn't hide the position. He distributed it. Six prime brokers simultaneously, each seeing only its own slice of a thirty-six billion dollar concentrated bet on the same stocks. Each bank thought they had a manageable counterparty. None of them knew they were all financing the same trade. This is the analysis from the bank's side — how the fee revenue from a prime brokerage relationship corrupts the risk committee's ability to ask the question that would end it. What a GP or LP requires in counterparty onboarding before the margin call makes the question irrelevant.

Sequoia Capital wrote down five hundred million dollars in a single day. Not because the market moved. Because nobody had asked for an audited balance sheet from a thirty-two billion dollar company before wiring the money. This is the analysis of custody failure — how a custodian moves client assets into a proprietary trading operation, guarantees the resulting debt with collateral it manufactured itself, and builds a reputation so solid that asking for the documents feels like an insult. What a GP or LP requires from any custody counterparty before the first wire.

The thirty-to-one leverage ratio was in the annual report. The real estate concentration was in the filings. The funding mismatch was disclosed. Every checkpoint in the system reviewed the structure and approved it — because the professional cost of being the first to act was higher than the professional cost of waiting. This is the analysis of the incentive architecture of not seeing — how rating agencies, auditors, analysts, and regulators are structurally incentivized to protect relationships over capital. What a GP or LP models when the counterparty's survival depends on the market staying open.

Robert Triffin documented the problem in 1960. Nobody resolved it. One third of US federal debt matures in under twelve months. Foreign official holdings have been declining since 2014. Central bank gold purchases are at their highest since the 1960s. This is the analysis of reserve currency mechanics — how the global financial system built a rollover architecture that works perfectly until it doesn't, and called that stability for fifty years. What a GP or LP reads in sovereign debt positioning before the next refinancing cycle.

Twenty percent of global oil supply. No alternative infrastructure. The war-risk insurance premium: a fraction of a percent per transit. The market had been systematically underpricing the same chokepoint since 1973. This is the analysis of institutional tail risk mispricing — how a known, documented, and quantifiable risk gets approved as acceptable by every committee because the cost of hedging is visible and the cost of not hedging is theoretical. Until it isn't. What a GP or LP stress-tests before approving geopolitical exposure as unhedged.

Sixteen Wall Street analysts. Fifteen had a buy recommendation. None of them had read the footnotes. This is the analysis of off-balance-sheet debt architecture — how a company moves liabilities into separate vehicles, uses its own stock as the collateral backing those vehicles, and builds a structure that collapses precisely when the stock falls. The auditor saw it. The board approved it. The regulator received it. What a GP or LP asks about circular collateral before signing.

One hundred and two billion dollars in external debt. The largest sovereign default in history. The investors who lost the most weren't the hedge funds — they had already left. This is the analysis of sovereign financial repression — how a government changes the legal definition of an instrument without technically defaulting, and how three signals in the public record had already mapped the terminal sequence months before the Corralito. What a GP or LP models in emerging market sovereign debt before the refinancing window closes.

The casino filed four times in twenty-three years. The bondholders lost every time. The promoter collected at every stage — construction, opening, management, restructuring. This is the analysis of fee extraction over equity alignment — how a sponsor structures a vehicle where his compensation is contractually protected regardless of asset performance. What a GP or LP reads in the bond indenture before the first coupon is missed.

Two Nobel Prize winners. One hundred and twenty-five billion dollars in exposure. The Federal Reserve forced to intervene. LTCM's models predicted every scenario except the one where every counterparty moves simultaneously. This is the analysis of distributed prime brokerage leverage — how nine banks each thought they had a manageable exposure, and none of them knew they were all financing the same concentrated position. What a GP or LP should have seen in the LPA before the margin call arrived.

EP11 — Blackstone & Invitation Homes 2012After the 2008 crash, Wall Street didn't justsurvive the housing collapse. It bought it.Between 2012 and 2017, institutional investorsspent over $60 billion acquiring single-family homes across theUnited States. Blackstone alone bought 80,000 houses — roughly 50homes per day at peak. They didn't buy them to live in. They packagedthem into a financial instrument, took them public, and turned theAmerican housing market into an institutional asset class. Thefamilies who lost their homes in 2008 were now renting them back froma hedge fund.This episode dissects the exact mechanism behindthe trade: how distressed asset acquisition at scale works, why thesecuritization of rental income created a new asset class thatchanged housing economics permanently, and what the LP structureslooked like inside the vehicles that executed the strategy.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in this autopsy:— How Blackstone acquired 80,000 homes using astructure no individual buyer could replicate— Why the single-family rental securitizationmodel was a direct consequence of 2008 policy decisions— The LP vehicle architecture that turned housesinto bonds— The pattern active today in everyinstitutional real estate fund acquiring residential assets at scaleThis wasn't opportunism. It was a mechanism. Andit's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — capital marketsadvisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutional investorrelations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Master inFinance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: Autopsy Files — Everycollapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.🎧 Follow on Spotify for every autopsy as itdrops.

Rich Dad Poor DadThe most influential personal finance book inhistory was written by a man who went bankrupt twice and has neverdisclosed a single verified investment return.Rich Dad Poor Dad has sold 40 million copies in109 countries since 1997. Robert Kiyosaki built a global empire onone idea: the rich don't work for money, money works for them. Whatthe book doesn't tell you: the rich dad never existed, the advice isstructurally designed to sell courses, and the same man telling youto buy assets filed for $1 billion in corporate bankruptcy in 2012.This episode dissects the exact mechanism behindthe Kiyosaki machine: how IPO window dressing of ideas works in thepersonal finance industry, why the related party ecosystem ofcourses, coaches and certifications is the real product, and whathappens to the people who follow the advice without the safety netKiyosaki never had.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in this autopsy:— How a fictional character became thefoundation of a $80 million personal brand— Why the advice works for Kiyosaki and failsfor the people who follow it literally— The licensing and franchising structure thatturned readers into a distribution network— The pattern active today in every financialinfluencer selling freedom through a courseThis wasn't bad advice. It was a mechanism. Andit's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — capital marketsadvisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutional investorrelations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Master inFinance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: Autopsy Files — Everycollapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.🎧 Follow on Spotify for every autopsy as itdrops.

Archegos Capital 2021A family office nobody hadheard of lost $20 billion in two days. The banks that lent it themoney lost another $10 billion trying to get out.In March 2021, Archegos CapitalManagement held concentrated positions worth over $100 billionthrough Total Return Swaps — a derivative structure that let BillHwang control massive stakes in public companies without everappearing on a single regulatory filing. When the margin calls came,six prime brokers tried to exit the same positions at the same time.The stocks collapsed. The losses were catastrophic.This episode dissects the exactmechanism behind the collapse: how TRS structures created $100billion in exposure that was invisible to regulators, why primebrokerage leverage at 8x made the margin call cascade mathematicallyinevitable, and what the risk desks at Credit Suisse and Nomuramissed — or chose not to see.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in thisautopsy:— How Bill Hwang controlled$100 billion in stocks without owning a single share on record— Why six prime brokers hadthe same exposure and none of them knew about each other— The margin call cascadethat destroyed $30 billion in market value in 48 hours— The pattern active today inevery family office using derivatives to hide concentrated positionsThis wasn't a market crash. Itwas a structure. And it's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben —capital markets advisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutionalinvestor relations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Masterin Finance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: AutopsyFiles — Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer bylayer.🎧 Follow on Spotify forevery autopsy as it drops.

EP08 FTX 2022 : A 30-year-old moved $8 billion in client funds to his own tradingfirm. He did it in plain sight. Nobody stopped him.In November 2022, FTX was thesecond largest crypto exchange in the world. Sam Bankman-Fried was onmagazine covers, testifying before Congress, and donating millions topolitical campaigns. Behind the interface, client funds were beingtransferred directly to Alameda Research — his personal hedge fund— to cover losing trades and fund a $300 million real estateportfolio in the Bahamas.This episode dissects the exactmechanism behind the collapse: how regulatory arbitrage let FTXoperate outside every jurisdiction that would have caught it, why therelated party transactions between FTX and Alameda were invisible toeveryone who chose not to look, and what the on-chain data showedbefore the bank run started.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in thisautopsy:— How $8 billion in clientfunds moved through a backdoor in the FTX accounting system— Why Alameda's balance sheetwas built on FTT — a token FTX printed itself— The 72-hour bank run thatturned a liquidity problem into a $32 billion crater— The pattern active today inevery unregulated platform holding client capital offshoreThis wasn't a crash. It was atheft. And the mechanism is still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben —capital markets advisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutionalinvestor relations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Masterin Finance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: AutopsyFiles — Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer bylayer.🎧 Follow on Spotify forevery autopsy as it drops.

EP07 — Lehman Brothers 2008A bank with $600 billion inassets filed for bankruptcy on a Sunday night. By Monday morning, theentire global financial system was in cardiac arrest.In September 2008, LehmanBrothers was the fourth largest investment bank in the United States.It had survived the Great Depression, two world wars, and everyfinancial crisis for 158 years. It didn't survive its own balancesheet. When it collapsed, $46 trillion in credit default swaps had nocounterparty. The system froze.This episode dissects the exactmechanism behind the collapse: how Repo 105 transactions moved $50billion in toxic assets off Lehman's balance sheet at quarter-end,why prime brokerage leverage made the exposure invisible until itwasn't, and what the term sheets showed when the Fed decided not tointervene.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in thisautopsy:— How Repo 105 turned $50billion in liabilities into a accounting illusion every quarter— Why the Fed saved BearStearns and let Lehman die — and what that decision actually meant— The margin call cascadethat turned one bank's failure into a global liquidity freeze— The pattern active today inevery leveraged financial institution with off-balance-sheet exposureThis wasn't a surprise. It wasa mechanism. And it's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben —capital markets advisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutionalinvestor relations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Masterin Finance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: AutopsyFiles — Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer bylayer.🎧 Follow on Spotify forevery autopsy as it drops.

EP06 — World DebtThe entire world owes more money than it has ever owed in human history. And nobody is asking who pays it back.Global debt crossed $315 trillion in 2024. That's $315,000,000,000,000 — roughly 330% of world GDP. Governments, corporations, and households borrowed their way through every crisis for thirty years. The bill exists. The mechanism to pay it doesn't.This episode dissects the exact structure behind the global debt machine: how reserve currency mechanics allow some countries to borrow without consequences, why rollover risk is the silent threat inside every sovereign balance sheet, and what the IMF's own data shows about who holds the exposure.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in this autopsy:— How the dollar's reserve status turned US debt into everyone else's problem— Why $7 trillion in sovereign debt matures in 2024 alone — and what happens when it can't roll— The capital flight patterns that appear before a sovereign debt crisis is officially declared— The active threat to any cross-border portfolio today — US, LatAm, and EuropeThis isn't a warning. It's already in motion. And it's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — capital markets advisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutional investor relations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Master in Finance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: Autopsy Files — Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.🎧 Follow on Spotify for every autopsy as it drops.

EP05 —Straits of Ormuz 2026Twenty percent of the world's oil passes through a strait 33 kilometers wide. One miscalculation closes it. Every market on earth feels it within 48 hours.The Strait of Hormuz is the single most important chokepoint in global energy markets. Nine countries depend on it for over 50% of their oil exports. The US Fifth Fleet patrols it. Iran controls the northern shore. In 2026, that tension stopped being theoretical.This episode dissects the exact mechanism behind the chokepoint risk: how a geographic bottleneck becomes a financial weapon, why energy markets price in conflict before governments admit it exists, and what the futures curves showed before the headlines caught up.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in this autopsy:— How 33 kilometers of water controls the price of everything from fuel to food— Why sanctions weaponization made the strait more volatile than any single market event— The capital flight patterns that appear in energy futures before a geopolitical trigger— The active threat to any portfolio with exposure to emerging market energy todayThis isn't geopolitics. It's a mechanism. And it's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — capital markets advisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutional investor relations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Master in Finance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: Autopsy Files — Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.🎧 Follow on Spotify for every autopsy as it drops.

EP04 — Enron 2001The most admired company in America was running on debt it had hidden from its own balance sheet.In 2000, Enron was worth $74 billion. Fortune named it the most innovative company in America six years in a row. Its executives were on magazine covers. Its stock was in every pension fund. Eighteen months later it was gone — and $74 billion in shareholder value had vanished with it.This episode dissects the exact mechanism behind the collapse: how Enron used Special Purpose Vehicles to move $30 billion in debt off its balance sheet, why its auditors signed off on numbers that didn't exist, and what the term sheets looked like when the structure finally collapsed.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in this autopsy:— How SPVs turned fictional profits into audited financial statements— Why mark-to-market accounting let Enron book revenue that never arrived— The related party transactions that made insiders rich while the company burned— The pattern active today in every leveraged corporate structure that looks too cleanThis wasn't an accounting error. It was a mechanism. And it's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — capital markets advisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutional investor relations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Master in Finance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: Autopsy Files — Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.🎧 Follow on Spotify for every autopsy as it drops.

EP03 — Argentina Default 2001A country with the third largest IMF bailout in history defaulted anyway. Then it froze every bank account in the country overnight.In 2001, Argentina owed $132 billion in sovereign debt. The IMF had injected $40 billion to defend the peso's peg to the dollar. It wasn't enough. When the government ran out of options, it didn't just default — it locked 40 million people out of their own money with a single decree. The Corralito.This episode dissects the exact mechanism behind the collapse: how a currency peg became a trap, why the rollover risk made default mathematically inevitable, and what the capital flight data showed six months before anyone declared an emergency.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in this autopsy:— How the convertibility law turned the peso into a ticking clock— Why the IMF conditionality program accelerated the collapse it was designed to prevent— The capital flight that moved $20 billion out of Argentina before the freeze— The pattern active today in every emerging market defending a currency pegThis isn't bad luck. It's a mechanism. And it's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — capital markets advisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutional investor relations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Master in Finance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: Autopsy Files — Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.🎧 Follow on Spotify for every autopsy as it drops.

EP02 — Trump Taj Mahal 1991The world's biggest casino opened $675 million in debt. It was bankrupt in 18 months.In 1990, Donald Trump opened the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City — the largest casino on earth. He called it the eighth wonder of the world. What he didn't say: it was financed entirely with junk bonds at 14% interest, generating $1 million in daily interest payments before a single chip hit the table.This episode dissects the exact mechanism behind the collapse: how a overleveraged vanity project cannibalized Trump's own casino portfolio, why the bondholders had no exit, and what the capital structure looked like when the courts got involved.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in this autopsy:— How $675M in junk bonds made bankruptcy inevitable from day one— Why the Taj cannibalized Trump Plaza and Trump Castle before it failed— The debt restructuring that let Trump walk away while bondholders took the loss— The pattern of overleveraged trophy assets still active in real estate and private equity todayThis isn't bad luck. It's a mechanism. And it's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — capital markets advisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutional investor relations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Master in Finance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: Autopsy Files — Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.🎧 Follow on Spotify for every autopsy as it drops.

EP01 — LTCM 1998Two Nobel Prize winners built the perfect financial model. It almost destroyed the global economy in 90 days.In 1998, Long-Term Capital Management held $125 billion in assets and controlled over $1 trillion in derivatives. The fund was run by the brightest minds in finance — two of them Nobel laureates. Their models said the risk was contained. They were wrong.This episode dissects the exact mechanism that turned academic certainty into systemic collapse: how leverage at 25:1 became a death spiral, why the Fed had to orchestrate a private bailout, and what the term sheets actually showed when the walls came down.Stage by stage. Layer by layer.What you'll find in this autopsy:— How a "market-neutral" strategy became the most concentrated risk position on Wall Street— The role of Russian sovereign default as the trigger nobody modeled— Why 14 major banks had no choice but to inject $3.6 billion in 72 hours— The pattern that reappeared in 2008, 2020, and is active in leverage structures todayThis isn't bad luck. It's a mechanism. And it's still running.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — capital markets advisor, 15 years in GP/LP relations, institutional investor relations, and cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Master in Finance (Di Tella, CFA-aligned).Financial Forensics: Autopsy Files — Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.🎧 Follow on Spotify for every autopsy as it drops.