The Daily Show on the Shady Wall Street Deals No One Really Talks About

The Daily Show
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A private equity firm named Blackstone bought credit default swaps against a Spanish gaming company called Codere, betting that Codere would fail to make its debt payments on time, and then paid Codere to purposely miss a debt payment so that it would receive a payout triggered by the swaps. Blackstone made at least $15.4 million through the scheme, which was all legal. On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart compared the scheme to buying insurance on a restaurant, and then burning down the restaurant to collect the insurance money (i.e. Goodfellas).

None of the major television news networks covered the story, and neither did The New York Times. The one major news outlet that did cover the story was Bloomberg, which had the dry headline: “Blackstone Unit Wins in No-Lose Codere Trade.” The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee asked the Times why they didn’t cover the story, and the reporter shrugged saying that they were busy covering other stories, and that this was just “another day on Wall Street.”

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