Alert the atheists; there's a Supreme Court case brewing here.?
Word that investment bank and beacon of the global financial system,
Goldman Sachs (GS) thinks it's doing God's work may mean that
billions loaned previously under the government
rescue program may have violated the constitutional requirement of separation
between church and state.
I don’t know about you, but I for one am a bit concerned that my taxpayer
dollars were used to support Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein’s mission from God.
Perhaps an enterprising Justice Department lawyer can pursue this angle in hopes
of securing billions in settlement money.
The unrestrained pursuit of riches is just another symptom
of an obsessive compulsive disorder, no worse or no better than alcoholism,
drug abuse, and sex offenses.
Orwell flashback: No doubt that goldmanites are as close
to a special breed of gambling swines as one can get, but it's still it is unclear
why they need swine flue vaccine before pregnant woman, nurses and doctors in hospitals
? Just because "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal then others?"
The Unbearable Lightness of Being an economist says:
Soon will be the anniversary of famous Bush’s statement:
“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market
system,”(US President George W. Bush told CNN television on December 16th)
saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.”
It was my preferred quote of 2008, whatever it means…
A statistical phenomenon that creates the illusion of hope,
often with inverted reflections indicating a far distant recovery, and results
from distortion of markets by alternate layers of hot and cool government
policies.
The best and brightest used to do exotic math, or worry about string
theory, or add weird chemicals together or look for the vanishing yeti,
or dig holes in the ground and analyze pottery. None of this required too
much in the way of an intuitive understanding of what motivates people.
People who work for banks need to understand
people, bless their greedy little hearts.
Nanoo-Nanoo:
BUT Liz, banker got to be rock stars and worshiped by minions
via CNBS! How dare we question their kewlness and all powerful knowledge.
Schmucks like me couldn't possibly understand how hard they work for their
tens of millions in bonuses every year or how important they are to my life.
Lobbyist Ben Dover:
josap,
Many wonder why the rich get rich and the poor stay poor. The world of wannabees
grows.
lawyerliz:
True, mof. But I actually don't do much. I throw my
wrench into the monkeyworks and nothing happens for a year, year and a half.
Except sometimes I get a pleading that asks for more time
for answering the discovery. Sure, I say. Take all the time you want.
Take years. I've never gotten any discovery
back, don't know that I ever will.
ResistanceIsFeudal:
Hey, careful now, high-tech shell games are one of our only
remaining growth industries!
No need to expend resources trying to be accurate; better to enjoy a
long lunch…
skippy:
...what better way to keep rates where they are than than to tell China:
“Hey guys, you bust one auction, and this spring loaded balloon full of
$420 trillion pieces of worthless Washington feces will blow up right in
your face (and take us all down with you).” In essence this is an amusing
revision of that old fable: the Fed owes the world a few billion here and
there: well, Ben, you are out of luck, “You’re Fired”; the Fed owes the
world $1.4 quadrillion in naked and worthless pieces of paper (whose nudity
will become apparent the second someone calls Bernanke’s bluff) and the
Fed owns the world.
Being trained as a scientist in a former life just makes it
harder to watch this garbage. Yesterday afternoon some random NYSE floor monkey,
CNBC's "expert of the moment", expounded that if the unemployment rate came
in at 9.9%, the market was going to the moon, Alice. But (God forbid) if the
rate was 10%, we're all doomed. At which point my left eyeball began twitching
followed by my Bond-trader office mate and I embarking on a 30 minute session
of throwing things (Literally and figuratively) at the TV.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: a company that bases its valuation,
indeed its entire business, on the Trading Sardine principle
(see below) should be judged not by
analysts but by fishmongers. Better yet, by their wives..
____________________________________
The Trading Sardine
Andy convinces Billy to buy a can of sardines
at a high price by telling him how wonderful they taste. Billy, being greedy,
decides to resell them to Charlie for a profit at an even higher price by convincing
him, too, about how great these sardines are. The process is repeated several
times until the last buyer, let’s call him Zebediah, pays a million bucks to
Yorick for a can of the “world’s absolute best sardines – EVER”.
Well, Zebediah decides to open the can and
eat the sardines, only to discover they are ordinary, plain sardines. Furious
at being swindled, he yells at Yorick:
“You crook! You liar! I paid you a million
bucks for plain ordinary sardines. They were not the greatest tasting sardines
- EVER”, yells Zeb.
Yorick
shrugs and replies…
“Hey Zebediah,
you are such a schmuck. Those were not eating sardines – them were trading
sardines!"
Q: What’s not a government bond or cash but has a zero-per cent
risk capital weighting?
A: A bond sold as part of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s Temporary Liquidity
Guarantee Program.
"It seems that money had been showered down like manna from heaven
(this was before helicopters)."This is just a shameless attempt of a freer hand
to avoid responsibility and correct marking of assets.
“THE RISING TIDE LIFTS ALL SHIPS, but the galley slaves aren’t
feeling it. They’re rowing harder than ever to make up for their colleagues
who have been thrown overboard (getting rid of that extra weight improves the
vessel’s efficiency).
Now, after a long spate in the doldrums, the captain has called for those
still manning the oars to pick up the pace to move some cargoes, which had been
notably scarce for well on a year and a half. It seems that money had been showered
down like manna from heaven (this was before helicopters). That it came from
a printing press or by pledging the credit of the land mattered little. Some
of the money was spent, which, in turn, brought forth new orders of goods, since
the storehouses had been emptied. And thus the need for the slaves to pick up
their pace.
It has all put dough in the pouches of the owners and the captain of the
ship, but there isn’t much for the slaves. And, no surprise, that’s caused some
grumbling below. Not that there’s much the galley slaves can do about it, lest
they become the next to get tossed overboard.
“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement
of self-interest…”
Classic. If this wasn’t offered in self-parody, they’re not half as clever
as they think. If there’s any justice in this life — and I believe there is
— something important out there understands just how funny this statement really
is.
craazyman:
I hath appointed Goldman Sachs as master of my dominion, and ye have
been appointed as slaves and servants, to be trodden under the heal and
destroyed utterly, unto your last days. Hear, children, the voices of your
masters and obey, for my wrath is fierce and my judgment is swift, and there
be no mercy for those with hearts hardened against the will of the Lord.
-Bloviations, Book 5, verses 8-9
fresn dan:
“Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley stood at the wooden
lectern in St. Martin-in-the- Fields on London’s Trafalgar Square last night
and told the packed pews of the church that “profit is not satanic.””
I want the bankers burned at the stake not because of “obscene” or “satanic”
or “greedy” profits, but because there are NO PROFITS. I might settle for
them spending the rest of their lives in poverty, if it were not for the
fact that I am bailing them out.
i on the ball patriot:
...For GS god is just another derivative
product. Take anything of considered value — in this case
man’s legitimate search for understanding and meaning — co-opt it, slice
it, dice it, pervert it, and resell it it to scam the masses.
Obama presidency giving the word underachieving new meaning... BHO,
a Party Animal if every there was one given his non-resume
The Big Money is a whore with two naked tits and the Republicons suck on
one, the Demagogues on the other.
Fred:
So, the “We” look to Elliott Spitzer for guidance? Maybe he has some
dating advice for you, too.
Observer:
If it is as good as the political advice he is giving here, we should
take it!
bj:
“The GOP/Tea Party movement will very likely pick up the ball (breaking
up the big banks) and run with it.”
Maybe, but I doubt it. The right is working on its purity, so expect tax
cuts as their solution (again).
Doug Terpstra:
The Obama administration’s continuing fumble of this crisis and healthcare
refrom is baffling and maddening. And yes, the Democrats would surely be
toast in 2010 and 2012, except for one thing: Republicans have gone certifiably
insane, cuckoo, looney….
It’s all just too strange. It may well be a brilliant bit of collusive
theater in the end, to keep us all confused and conflicted.
Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) were overrated and overpriced the
minute they came to market. If that wasn’t enough, investment banks were creating
these things in their financial meth labs , knowingly selling things they knew
or should have known were overrated and overpriced.
A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system
was a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs paid themselves
billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with
money they didn’t have to customers who couldn’t pay back the loans.
10. I went to buy a toaster oven and they gave me a bank.
9. Hotwheels and Matchbox car companies are now trading higher than GM in
the stock market.
8. Obama met with small businesses GE, Pfizer, Chrysler, Citigroup, and GM
to discuss the Stimulus Package.
7. McDonald's is selling the 1/4 ouncer.
6. People in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and are learning their children's
names.
5. The most highly-paid job is now jury duty.
4. People in Africa are donating money to Americans. Mothers in Ethiopia
are telling their kids, "finish your plate; do you know how many kids are starving
in America?"
3. Motel Six won't leave the lights on.
2. The mafia is laying off judges.
1. If the bank returns your check marked as "insufficient funds," you have
to call them and ask if they meant you or them.
When I was a child, one of my favourite books was
“Alexander’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” by Judith
Viorst. Originally published in 1972, the story involves a young boy named Alexander,
who is experiencing a heavy dose of Murphy’s Law. Simply, he survives a day
in which absolutely everything goes wrong. For example, he wakes up with gum
in his hair, trips on his skateboard, and drops his sweater in the sink. His
brothers find cool toys in their breakfast cereal, while he finds only breakfast
cereal. At school during a counting exercise, he leaves out 16. At lunch, he
discovers that his mother has neglected to pack dessert. Shortly thereafter,
he has a dental appointment and learns that he has a cavity; then he falls in
some mud. Alexander proceeds to spill ink all over the place, miss out on the
shoes he wants, and start a fight. As if these weren’t enough, Alexander’s bath
was too hot and he loses his marbles down the drain. To cap off the day, he’s
forced to wear the dreaded railroad-train pajamas, his pillow is missing, and
his night-light burns out. With each indignity, Alexander wondered if life would
be better in Australia. However, while lying in his bed, Alexander notes the
following: “It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. My mom
says some days are like that. Even in Australia.”
Over the past several weeks, most investors have experienced these terrible,
horrible, no good, very bad days, as market indices have plunged and commodity
prices have collapsed. I have to admit that I find such days to be quite exciting.
I’ve always been interested in crisis and my career is littered with attempts
to understand how people react when the shit hits the fan. For example, my first
conference presentation involved examining media accounts of the 1987 stock
market crash. In another project, I looked at the influence of personality and
cognitive variables in explaining how people respond to declines in their portfolios.
Before becoming a faculty member, I worked at a 24-hour crisis hotline and trained
their counselors how to respond to those who were suicidal and in crisis. You
get the idea. I’m endlessly fascinated by terrible, horrible, no good, very
bad days.
In terms of the market, I believe such corrections are healthy and necessary.
They present an opportunity to remove speculative excess, bring valuations down
to more reasonable levels, and often present a wonderful buying opportunity.
I try to make the best of such days, even if my portfolio takes a bit of a hit.
So as a public service (coupled with my need to drive this into the ground),
I now present the top ten signs that you’re in the middle of a terrible, horrible,
no good, very bad market day. Remember, I’m not just talking about bad markets
days; they also have to be terrible, horrible, and no good…just trying to be
clear. Now, on to the signs:
1. Central bank officials and politicians can be heard to utter
the meaningless phrase, “the fundamentals of the economy are sound.”
The judges will also accept “the economy is fundamentally sound.” I also really
enjoy, “we’re monitoring the situation closely.” In other words, “this is bad,
we have no idea what’s happening, and we have no idea what to do. When we decide
how to proceed, we’ll probably overreact. Please don’t ask any more questions.
Thank you.”
Quote of the week #1, from
The Comedy Network’s
Stephen Colbert: “The fundamentals of our economy are strong. We still exchange
currency. We haven’t reverted to a barter system. Although I believe Bank of
America bought Merrill Lynch for 2 goats and a bushel of oranges.”
Quote of the week #2, courtesy of PM Stephen Harper: “If a crash
were coming, it would have already happened.” This logic would have caused Mr.
Spock to cry like an infant before experiencing an aneurysm. Harper is the same
man who recently promised tax incentives for new homebuyers. So the financial
crisis began by making it too easy for people to obtain houses. How do we solve
the problem? By making it easier for people to obtain houses. Got it. As Mark
Twain suggested, “If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get
us out?”
2. Everything is going down and I mean everything.
The stock screens are a sea of red and have me thinking of that scene in
The Shining when the elevators at the Overlook Hotel are spewing blood.
Did I just write that? Let’s move on. The most fascinating days involve complete,
total, unreserved capitulation. Stocks are blowing through their 52-week lows
and are doing so with extreme vigor. It’s like the Terminator: It can’t be reasoned
with, it can’t be bargained with, and it absolutely will not stop. Even the
most bullish of analysts and market watchers are suddenly recommending that
everyone stay on the sidelines until the dust settles. With apologies to Norm
Peterson of Cheers, it’s a dog-eat-dog market and you’re wearing Milk
Bone underwear. If you’re keeping score, this makes three 80s references in
one paragraph. As an investor, the day will see you exhibiting a variety of
bizarre behaviours, which include but are not limited to the following:
staring at the computer with your mouth open
refreshing your stock page like a hungry rat pressing the lever in a
Skinner box
trying to comment on the day and the best you can come up with is, “Holy
shit.” Yup…it’s a holy shit market.
3. High trading volumes. It has to be difficult
to get on to your brokers website or achieve access by phone. We may even hear
about technical glitches and that some systems are having trouble keeping up
with the activity. And since I have nothing else to add, did I mention that
we’re headed to New York and will be touring the Federal Reserve Bank? Market
Gal is thrilled (he noted sarcastically). Thankfully we also have tickets
to a Broadway show and
Letterman, so that should keep the peace.
4. People you know who usually aren’t interested in the markets
start talking with you about the markets. This happens with people
at work, buddies on MSN, in emails, etc. For example, the other day, my buddy
Ozner in Nepean mentioned the failing of Lehman Brothers. Twenty-four hours
before, he wouldn’t have known a Lehman from a Lohan. Friends and family who
are interested in the markets call as well, only they call earlier in the day.
For me, it’s Bouch in Embrun, Lloyd and Pat in Ottawa, and
of course, Market Dad. The phone call usually begins with “geez” or
“wow” or something to that effect. Next up is an accounting of how the portfolio
is doing and an identification of which stocks are faring the worst. Misery
loves company.
5. The newspapers and business web pages are littered with photos
of exhausted traders, concerned investors, and gawkers congregating outside
the offices of failing firms. The Friday edition of
BNNs Squeeze Play included
Andrew Bell and Kim Parlee interviewing traders at a downtown Toronto watering
hole. The patrons looked as though they’d just finished a 5-day enema.
6. The story of the markets migrates from the business pages
to the front pages. It’s the lead story and we are treated to
headlines such as “Markets Collapse,” which the editors present in
a really big font. You know it’s a really big deal when they bring out the really
big fonts. I also appreciate the words “contagion” and “panic” making their
inevitable appearance. The Globe and Mail recently offered, “A Day of Reckoning,”
which I thought was a nice touch.
My favourite part of the coverage involves placing the day in historical
context. For example, “this represents the largest decline in index A since
date B.” In order to qualify as a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day,
it has to be the worst day in several years. Saying it’s the worst trading day
since March doesn’t cut it (unless that day was terrible and horrible)….we have
to be making history. We’ve been hearing a lot about American stocks being wiped
out. However, did you know that Nortel recently had its worst trading day in
28 years? That’s what I’m talking about. Incidentally, Nortel is trading under
$3 and this includes a fairly recent 10-for1 stock consolidation. In other words,
if they hadn’t consolidated the stock, it would be trading under 30 cents. Let
us mourn the money that has been destroyed.
7. Business television behaves like a dog with a bone.
There’s one story and one story only: The market collapse. Networks often dispense
with goofy programming features because the day is all about chronicling the
crisis. Each guest is there to talk about the market action and each moment
brings us wonderful quotes such as this offering from BNN anchor Pat Bolland:
“This is a sick market.” Regular programming seems more important than usual
and the day is littered with “special editions.” For example, “today on BNN,
it’s a special edition of Squeeze Play.” This reminds me of watching
TV during my childhood…”this week, on a very special edition of Family Ties,
Steven, Elise and the kids rally around Uncle Ned who is coming to terms with
alcoholism. Tom Hanks guest stars.”
8. At some point during the day, we are reminded of the losses
that could trigger a halt in trading or a, gulp, market close.
This is a tough nut to crack, as it takes a 10% decline in the Dow Jones Industrials
to initiate a 30-minute to one-hour halt at the NYSE. A 20% decline prompts
a 1-2 hour halt, but if the decline is witnessed after 2pm, the whole place
shuts down. A 30% decline closes the market for the day, irrespective of timing.
Incidentally, the Russians shut down their exchange three times in the past
week (twice for going too low, and once for going too high…perhaps one day it
will be just right).
9. The business press starts interviewing the older brokers.
Specifically, they are looking for brokers and analysts who traded through the
’87 crash. These archetypal wise old men are simply the best. They’ve seen it
all, lived through some rough times, and always have great stories. Such figures
provide a calming presence, and their reassuring voices remind us that, given
time, the markets rebound. You can’t get this from a 22-year old just out of
business school.
10. The attributional search runs into overdrive.When positive things happen in life, we tend not to reflect on what
might have led to the good times. However, during bad times, we typically initiate
what’s called the attributional search. That is, we attempt to determine the
causal factors that led to the event. Basically, we’re asking “why did this
happen?” The process is intensified if the event is unexpected. During a terrible,
horrible, no good, very bad market day, we often hear that retail investors
are driving the panic and that the smart money is staying put or being put in
play. The last few days have elevated corporate greed, ignorance, and a lack
of regulation to the top of the list of suggested causal factors (John McCain
mentioned all three the other day). Given that we’re in the middle of a North
American election bonanza, expect the list to grow. I’m still waiting for the
religious right to somehow blame lesbianism.
In a related vein, it never ceases to amaze how many market participants
claim they saw it coming and took measures to protect their assets. Sure, their
top picks on BNN’s Market Call
are down 72%, but they claim to have made it out just fine. Sure thing, guys.
So how am I positioning myself to deal with these volatile times? To be honest,
I’m doing very little. Sure, my financial and international plays have been
on a wild ride. But with a focus on high-quality, dividend-growing value stocks,
my portfolio has been less volatile than the indices. So far I’m down 4% on
the year and this compares very favourably to the TSX, S&P 500 and the Dow.
Let’s just say I’m certainly not losing any sleep over it. Besides, it’s the
down markets when my approach really earns its keep. I’m less interested in
selecting big winners and more interested in avoiding big losers. There’s a
huge difference. Meanwhile, my watch list is long and although the names are
getting cheaper by the day I’m still not inclined to put a significant amount
of money to work. And for the record, Friday’s 7% advance on the TSX feels about
as shaky as Stephane Dion.
The past few days have been adventurous, but I can’t help but think we have
more terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days in the near future. And as these
days continue to come along, I expect to be a buyer. As Warren Buffett noted,
“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only
when others are fearful.”
The Market Guy is an Instructor with the Department of Psychology at
Carleton University. He’s not a professional advisor. He’s just a guy who loves
investing and talking about the markets…so do your homework before making any
investment decisions. Basing any financial decision on his column would be really,
really stupid and would demonstrate that you need therapy (he teaches psych,
so he’d know). In addition to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Spamalot
at the Shubert, and Letterman, he’ll also be holding a pilgrimage to Wall Street.
He may need to be sedated. Get high on life over at
mail@marketguy.ca
Forgive them father,
For they know not what they do,
The fed and the policy makers,
Are such an ignorant crew,
They have no knowledge,
Of how to blow bubbles,
To intentionally create,
Geopolitical troubles,
They are unaware,
Of global consumption,
And could not control it,
At least that’s the assumption,
But bubbles can take you up,
And bubbles can take you down,
They can fund sustainable growth,
Or they can make consumption drown,
And the bubble machine is never blind,
Especially when controlled by deception,
The monster bubbles will only end,
When the marks increase their perception …
Nice term "jobless recovery". Which suggests the question: "Recovery for whom
?" "Jobless
recovery" is code for "period of rapidly increasing inequality".
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
By Lewis Carroll
Humpty Dumpty
Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it carefully. 'That seems
to be done right—' he began.
'You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted.
'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round
for him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems
to be done right—though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now—and
that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might
get un-birthday presents—'
'Certainly,' said Alice.
'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't— till I tell
you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it
means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many
different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master— that's
all.'
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty
Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them— particularly verbs,
they're the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however,
I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice 'what that means?'
'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very
much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that
subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to
do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful
tone.
'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty,
'I always pay it extra.'
Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley were only two levels above
“junk” based on the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market. Specifically, prices for
credit-default swaps linked to the bonds of Goldman Sachs, Merrill and Morgan
Stanley last week traded at levels that equate to debt ratings of Baa2.
This could be because CDS traders are more bearish than bond traders and
have been more concerned about the slowdown in the housing (see
blog posting) and global equity markets, and therefore Goldman & Co’s exposure
to these markets through their massivley successful mortgage securitization
businesses (which includes significant exposure to subprime mortgages).
The size of the CDS market is now an enormous $26 trillion (twice the annual
economic output of the U.S.)!! According to Bloomberg, Goldman and Morgan Stanley
have $171.6 billion and $168.5 billion respectively in bonds outstanding.
"Gorbachev delivered Russia into the hands of a kleptocracy. Now, the
U.S. is in the hands of a kleptocracy, as well."
This may explain why Hank Paulson flew to Moscow to dine with Mihail
Gorbachev just a few months before the meltdown. Paulie was probably trying
to learn a thing or two from Gorby on how to pull off an even bigger heist
than his Russian counterparts did several decades back.
Assuming this is so, Goldman Sachs has truly
lived up to the name of Government Sachs. And there's certainly
no need for fiction when there's reality like this!
Goldman "had no obligation to disclose how it was managing its risk, nor
would investors have expected us to do so ... other market participants had
access to the same information we did."
We'll put that on their tombstone. Hey, I've got an idea. Let's let aircraft
mechanics take out life insurance policies on their passengers.
I keep waiting for the Teabaggers and the Left to realize they have a common
enemy...Then it will be popcorn and pitchforks time.
California's huge public employees' retirement system, known as CALPERS,
purchased $64.4 million in subprime mortgage-backed bonds from Goldman on March
1, 2007. While that represented a tiny percentage of the fund's holdings, in
July CALPERS listed the bonds' value at $16.6 million, a drop of nearly 75 percent,
according to documents obtained through a state public records request.
Pellice:
SNAFU, your comment above that "GS folks are financial 'terrorists' ,
with their education, brains, gall and connections in the WH, they can extract
any and all ransoms" is a useful way of looking at it. Financial Terrorists.
It allows me to ask the question as to whether GS has done as much damage
to the citizens of the US as a terrorist attack would have done. Their actions
are undermining our country's security.
The current state of economics is most remarkable for its arrogant complacency
in the face of two failed bubbles, a near systemic failure, a pseudo-scientific
perversion of mathematics exposed, and an incredible capacity for spin and self-delusion.
The people wish to believe, and Wall Street and the government economists are
all too willing to tell them whatever they wish to hear, for a variety of motives.
And there is an army of salesmen and lobbyists and econo-whores touting this
fraud around the clock.
So yes, they have certainly sold their goods to the highest bidders.
Indeed, at least some people trust prostitutes
morethan elected officials.
But the prostitution analogy is inaccurate.
Specifically, as the chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason
University (Donald J. Boudreaux)
points out:
Real whores, after all, personally supply the services their customers
seek. Prostitutes do not steal; their customers pay them voluntarily. And
their customers pay only with money belonging to these customers.
In contrast, members of Congress routinely truck and barter with other
people’s property…
Members of Congress are less like whores than they are like pimps for
persons unwillingly conscripted to perform unpleasant services.
Consider, for example, agricultural subsidies. Each year a handful of
farmers and agribusinesses receive billions of taxpayer dollars. These are
dollars that government forcibly takes from the pockets of taxpayers and
then transfers to farmers.
The customers, in this case, are the farmers and agribusinesses. The
suppliers of the services performed for these customers are taxpayers, for
it’s the taxpayers who possess the ultimate asset — money — that farmers
and agribusinesses lust after. And the intermediaries who oblige the suppliers
to satisfy the base lusts of the customers are politicians. Just as pimps
facilitate their customers’ access to prostitutes’ assets, politicians facilitate
their customers’ access to taxpayers’ assets.
We taxpayers have less say in the matter than we like to think. Sure,
we can vote. But if even just 50.00001 percent of voters cast their ballots
for the candidate proposing higher taxes, the assets of not only our pro-tax
citizens, but also those of the remaining 49.00009 percent of us anti-tax
citizens are put at the disposal of our pimps’ customers. (And note that
many of those who vote for higher taxes are not among those persons actually
subject to higher taxation)…
Politicians force taxpayers to pony it up — just as the services rendered
for a pimp’s customers are rendered not by that pimp personally, but by
the ladies under his charge. The pimp pockets the bulk of each payment;
he’s pleased with the transaction. His customer gets serviced well in return;
he’s pleased with the transaction. The only loser is the prostitute
forced to share her precious assets with strangers whom she doesn’t particularly
care for and who care nothing for her.Also like the ladies under pimps’
power, taxpayers who resist being exploited risk serious consequences to
their persons and pocketbooks. Uncle Sam doesn’t treat kindly taxpayers
who try to avoid the obligations that he assigns to them. Government is
a great deal more powerful, and often nastier, than is the typical taxpayer.
Practically speaking, the taxpayer has little choice but to perform as government
demands.
So to call politicians “whores” is to unduly insult women who either
choose or who are forced into the profession of prostitution. These women
aggress against no one; like all other respectable human beings, they do
their best to get by as well as they can without violating other people’s
rights.
The real villains in the prostitution arena are those pimps who coerce
women into satisfying the lusts of strangers. Such pimps pocket most of
the gains earned by the toil and risks involuntarily imposed upon the prostitutes
they control. No one thinks this arrangement is fair or justified. No one
gives pimps the title of “Honorable.” Decent people don’t care what pimps
think or suppose that pimps have any special insights into what is good
or bad for the women under their command. Decent people don’t pretend that
pimps act chiefly for the benefit of their prostitutes. Decent people believe
that pimps should be in prison.
Yet Americans continue to imagine that the typical representative or
senator is an upstanding citizen, a human being worthy of being feted and
listened to as if he or she possesses some unusually high moral or intellectual
stature.
It’s closer to the truth to see politicians as pimps who force ordinary
men and women to pony up freedoms and assets for the benefit of clients
we call “special-interest groups.”
Note: There are a handful of honest politicians, fighting for the American
people. But the exception proves the rule.
Advocatus Diaboli:
I always thought the prostitute analogy was not right, because most prostitutes
are honest and give what they exchange money for.
koshem:
The distinction between a whore and a pimp is silly in the context the
fact that the poor and the middle class of this country are screwed.
Kevin de Bruxelles:
If you want to make this john-pimp-whore analogy for wealthy elite-politician-common
taxpayer to work, you have to follow through and be clear who is playing
which role. The wealthy elite would be the johns since they are the ones
who are looking to exploit someone and are willing to pay a little to get
what they want; the politicians would be the pimps (as your post stated)
since they are getting paid to make the connection; but of course that leaves
the taxpayers to play the role of the whores since they are the weakest
link who are getting their rear ends reamed with force while at the same
time being so doped up on media bread and circuses that they are unable
to do resist their pimp’s demands to service their johns.
I don’t know though; the analogy seems a little forced. The wealthy elite
are stealing the taxpayers money with the help of the politicians so the
whole sex industry comparison has some weaknesses.
Personally, I think a simpler analogy is that in democracies, politicians
play the role the clergy used to play in the Middle Ages; their job is to
add legitimacy to sacrifices demanded by the aristocracy in order to convince
the serfs to willingly submit to their overlords so that outright violent
coercion can be kept to a minimum.
As for the few honest politicians, they play the same diversionary role
that the Jon Stewart show does for television: they shine just enough light
of integrity that many people are convinced to reist throwing their political
system/televisions into the pit of oblivion.
Bill:
If this guy is the Chair of the econ department at George Mason, you
have to wonder what type of indoctrination the students are getting. Sounds
like a wingnut.
Hugh:
Boudreaux misses the point. Both parties compete to do the bidding of
corporations and Wall Street. So in most of the time, we have no real choice.
And sure we are getting stiffed on some farm subsidies, but it is a vanishingly
small amount compared to what the banksters have looted. A very strange
post.
timbo:
I love me some bank-hatin – but this analogy not up to par.
Pimps do provide a service(protection), and while some do expropriate resources
via force, this is not the preferred business model of s successful pimp.
In short, pimps that underprovide services on the dollar are quickly weeded
out, and lose earning power from their hoes.
In the ultimate unregulated labor/management dispute, those that don’t meet
market demand (pimps or hoes) suffer the economic consequences.
Stangely, Congress does have, in theory a mechanism whereby those that don’t
meet market demands suffer. This historic mechanism used to be called the
voter.
So why haven’t we acted? Good question. The only answer is that we as a
people don’t get how badly we are being screwed.
I’ll leave you with two quotes from MY favorite pres. Andrew Jackson
“One man with courage makes a majority.”
“Gentleman, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced
that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in thebreadstuffs
of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when
you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits
from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families.
That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on,
you will ruin fifty thousand families and that will be my sin! You are a
den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal
God, I will rout you out. ”
There you have it - Outside The (Cardboard) Box’s 2009 Scary
Halloween Costume Ideas for the Economically Depressed. It’s worth mentioning
that a couple could dress as Blankfein AND Goldman and essentially rule
the Halloween Universe….
“the Madoff effect,” a swine-flu-grade virus that causes people who
witness corruption to conclude that cheating has become acceptable, and
to wind up cheating, too.
Bloomberg News
Trickle down really does work. Consider these inspired words, from
an online reader of USA Today, reacting last week to news that
Americans were lying, cheating and law-breaking to get their hands on
an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers:
“The system is scamming you, so why not scam back a little,” wrote
the reader, using the name “None in 08.” “You’ve seen what crooks in
Washington and on Wall Street can get away with.” So “it’s time to get
yours.”
Americans rejoice! GDP grew by 3.5% in the third quarter and the
recession is over.
It’s time to drink champagne, dance in the streets, and have a group
hug with Nancy Pelosi and Ben Bernanke. But whatever you do, don’t ask
yourself why the recession has ended. The answer might ruin the party.
Not Obama’s favorite banker, Jamie Dimon, though you’re on the right
track in assuming it’s someone who doesn’t take shit or prisoners from
anyone (though he will take a bullet). Someone who, perhaps unlike our
current Treasury Secretary, could stand up to Larry Summers and say
“No, you’ve had
enough Diet Coke for today,” and pass the big boy a Vitamin Water.
Someone, like Fifty Cent. And as luck would have it, Mr. Cent has
already stated publicly
that should the President decide to shake up the economic dream team,
he’s there.
Such people should be eligible for retirement into specialized mental
institution for maniacal-depressive disorders this probably was a height
of maniacal stage) ;-)
Greenspan had an unusual take on market
fraud, Born recounted: "He explained there wasn't a need for a law against
fraud because if a floor broker was committing fraud, the customer would
figure it out and stop doing business with him."
When Alan Greenspan predicted three percent economic growth showing
up in the reported figures for the third quarter of 2009, did he mean
executive compensation packages? Maybe the lesson here is: don't
ask a crackhead to predict the future supply of crack. Greenspan's
greatest success may be to drive economics into such disrepute that
it will be cut loose from the universities and only be taught by mail
order or internet subscription...
So, could money be flowing out of stocks as a reaction to the dumping
of support in preparation for the liquidity required by the notes, purposefully
by design, as speculated by Denver Dave? In the manner of pushing the
investor around, like the vegetables on your plate?
Or not. One can only wonder in this brave new world of opaque quantitative
easing and Federal Reserve innovations.
A quick message of inquiry to Treasury Tim and Zimbabwe Ben brought
no response, as they are tied up all day in a Working Groups meeting.
Lloyd and Jamie are attending on speakerphone to maintain a low profile,
obtain status updates, and provide direction as required to their staffs
at the Treasury, the Fed, and their proprietary trading desks, not necessarily
in that order.
Economists as porno stars in Viagra economics: make it bigger,
make it harder ;-)
In the long post WWII boom, as free market ideology triumphed, economists
have won for themselves a privileged place inside academia.
First there is the cash. It astonished some when Washington University,
a school with an economics department of modest prestige, hired economists
David Levine and Michele Boldrin by offering salaries
well in excess
of $500,000. But most high ranked economics departments have
professors earning in excess of $300,000. Not much by
the pornographic standards of finance,
but a fat paycheck compared to your average English or Physics professor.
"Anyone who takes Cramer's advice is an idiot and deserves to lose
money. Unfortunately people even dumber and greedier than Cramer make
policy in the USA."
"And let's not forget Cramer's calls on the "Fortress of Four" banks
back in July 08 - most notably, BAC & WFC, both of whom would be/should
be toast, if not for Govt. intervention...."
I see the title of Cramer's new book is "Getting Back to Even".
It should be "Getting Back to Even (After Listening to Me)".
Damien Hoffman over at Wall Street Cheat Sheet seems to have gotten
into the crosshairs of none other than book (and stock) promoter extraordinaire
James Cramer. Subsequent to our post on TheStreet.com
potentially
being in hot regulatory hot water, Damien penned the following post:
According to transitive logic, Jim Cramer recommends selling
the stock of his company The Street.com (Nasdaq:
TSCM).
In his books, Cramer says to dump stocks when executives depart
suddenly or companies miss their filings. Therefore, once The Street
“failed
to produce their 10-Q filing for the second quarter” and executives
started jumping ship, an honest Cramer would have been forced to
“Sell, Sell, Sell.”
If you are looking for supporting evidence to dump your TSCM
shares, here are a few strong data points:
4) The Street’s last go-to guru, Doug Kass, has an incredibly
questionable track record for RealMoney subscribers (See “Buy
the Financials. Yes, Buy” JANUARY 2008, and Doug’s
schizophrenic
Twitter stream of picks (e.g., April and May 2009) which contradict
his
jumpy calls and articles;
This morning my phone rang. It was Capital One's Fraud Department,
calling to ask me if I had placed some charges on the card. Now
to be fair, this card hasn't seen much use since I found PenFed
(http://penfed.org), a very nice credit
union that has an auto-crediting reward card and is a credit
union besides.
They went through their spiel about how I wasn't liable because of
their "superior" guarantee (rank BS; there is no liability, ever, for
fraudulent charges as a matter of Federal Law) and similar.
But I noticed something. I was having trouble understanding
the woman on the phone. I also couldn't stop her from script-reading;
I asked for access to be restored to the online system so I could look
at what, if anything, had gotten through their screen, and was refused
- then script resumed.
I asked for a supervisor. My first question: "Where are
you?"
Answer (no, I'm not making this up!): "A caribbean island"
This year they learned the ponzi scheme has another year or two
or 10 left in it, so why ruin the party?
greedy short-sighted scumbags... successfully own the political
system.
Another way of looking at it: the US is a meth crazed, alcoholic,
and borderline psychotic biz oligarchy.
Especially with short-sighted slimeballs like Summers and Geithner
on the job.
the bankstas have not gotten the lesson and are going to crash the
system AGAIN and in short order
The one thing that really gets my goat is that Phil Gramm has gotten
a free pass in this crisis after all the damage he did... Gramm would
be the ultimate Texas joke if he had not harmed so many lives.
A Casino never closes...the people just lose ALL their money...and
if they get mad, security comes and out ya go!
The idea that "action" could occur a moment before Lloyd and Jamie
decide it should is laughable, pathetic, and deeply naïve. There isn't
a single Senator or member of O's cabinet that isn't 100% bought and
paid for by the dirty 19.
Now we just pay the rating agencies to compute the risk and we are
back in business. AAA paying out 10-1. America, fuck yeah! Maybe there
should just be a progressive financial stabilization tax on financial
profits.
Government insured Too Big To Fail...Squid plays. 'Imagine if you
walked into a casino and the government gave you $95 to gamble for every
$5 of your own and you get to keep all the winnings. What would you
do? Play for high stakes' -Tymoigne & Wray, 'It Isn't Working...' (2009)
Has anyone asked Goldman Sachs what we should do ? The treasury
and fed are run for their benefit so what's in their best interests
?
"How about we call it a recoveryless recovery? Then we can be accurate
and the Dems can take credit for a recovery..." Potyomkin recovery might
be even better term...
Forget a jobless recovery. The economy may be entering a recovery
with job losses.
... ... ...
crazyv:
alchemist move over- Bernanke and Co. don't need you guys anymore.
Grow and economy while putting more people out of work. Lead to
gold anybody?
Angry Saver:
I'll say it again. There is no such thing as a jobless
recovery.
Angry Saver, you are a born and bred American dope of the highest
order. As long as the jobs and wealth of the bankers and top 1/100th
of 1% are saved it IS a recovery. The jobs and wealth of the majority
are meaningless in the new (e)CONomy.
More to the point, this job-loss recovery will be reported as a
Fed created miracle and dopes like you will be brainwashed into
believing that not only is it a strong recovery, but that asset
values are inexpensive and you and other B&BADs should go further
into debt to acquire said assets.
And another thing, sock puppets are totally inappropriate.
Angry Saver:
Lead to gold anybody?
crazyv,
How about trash to cash. That seems like more of a miracle
than lead to gold, no?
It is that these folks — many of whom are
assholes — make oodles and oodles of money, much more than they
would be permitted to if a munificent and just deity were paying closer
attention to this little ball of earth and water
That actually smells Lehman: It might be that Citibank real problem
is rolling the short term financing it uses to lend money to cardholders.
So they were cut off oxygen themselves and need to react.
This sort of "terms change", which is an effective declaration of
default even against those who haven't defaulted (see above; the same
30% rate is being applied to defaulted and non-defaulted accounts!),
will drive two consumer behaviors that could ultimately destroy Citibank's
credit card business and perhaps the bank as a whole:
A significant number of people, on receipt of this notice and understanding
what it means (a declaration that non-defaulted accounts are being charged
the same penalty rate as a defaulted account!) will immediately go out
and charge up the entire unused balance on their card and then intentionally
default.
In short, this looks to me like a "Hail Mary" pass. If Citigroup
is looking for an award, it can take the blue ribbon for greed, arrogance,
and stupidity in the off balance sheet category.
Over-aggressive, yappy and totally incapable of fending for themselves
- today's banks are similar to small breeds of dogs created by man's
manipulation of nature.
If the intention of United States economic mandarins was that tough
regulations would force the large investment banks that survived the
crisis to adapt to quiet, reserved suburban lifestyles, the reality
is that they've acted more like former gangsters placed into a witness
protection program, taking over the numbers racket on the Saturday pee-wee
sports fields.
"This Fed has neither the will nor the inclination to
preemptively
tighten policy. They will keep the pedal to the metal until they drive us
over the cliff ";-)
Just a thought, but maybe we should call our Federal Reserve Chairman
the "Bernanke-nator."
As
Kyle Reese said in the original Terminator movie ...
"Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't
be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity,
or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until
your dollars are worthless."
The most-densely populated U.S. state is making the payments under
an agreement made during the administration of former Governor
James E. McGreevey in 2003, when New Jersey’s
Transportation Trust Fund Authority sold $345 million in auction-rate
bonds whose yields fluctuated with short-term interest costs
The trust fund paid $4.5 million in penalty interest payments when the
auction-rate market collapsed and some borrowers’ costs soared. After
it failed to put together a sale of a different type of variable-rate
bonds, New Jersey then issued 11-year, fixed-rate notes yielding 4.18
percent in August 2008, according to the Office of Public Finance.
Refinancing the bonds cost $2.1 million, reducing the authority’s
savings on the transaction to $3.3 million, state records show.
Since then, the fund has paid almost four times that amount on a
contract that hedges nothing.
For New Jersey, the swap became “a tool for no purpose,” former regulator
Taylor said.
New Jersey, which Moody’s Investors Service called “one of the largest
users of swaps in the municipal market,” has 28 such contracts outstanding
on $4.4 billion worth of debt, according to a monthly valuation report.
This raises for some the prospect of a dollar crash and runaway inflation.
That is why it may pay to start thinking about the design of a $1 million
bill.
Face in the Crowd
So whose face should adorn this new bill? Here are some candidates
with the winner at the end.
Ben Bernanke: The Fed chairman, who once proposed that the central
bank drop dollars from helicopters to avert a crisis, has to top
anyone’s list of dollar debasers. Under him, the Fed has become
the global lender of last resort and has printed money to prop up
financial institutions and markets. All the while he has professed
having the magical ability to quickly mop up all the excess dollars
if and when inflation becomes a concern.
Bernie Madoff: Plenty of folks believe the U.S. has become nothing
short of a giant Ponzi scheme. It would only be fitting then to
have the Ponzi King front the currency.
George W. Bush: By pushing through tax cuts even as he embarked
upon wars in two countries, the second President Bush helped run
up the federal deficit, which has helped to undermine the dollar.
Great Reminder
Wen Jiabao: It may be time to acknowledge what seems to be China’s
inevitable rise on the global stage. Chinese Premier Jiabo’s visage
would also serve as a reminder that China has acted as the U.S.’s
drug dealer for years, feeding America’s debt
addiction.
Henry Paulson: How could the nation not put a former
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chairman on its currency, especially
since the U.S. government is essentially a subsidiary of the investment
bank.
Richard Nixon: In 1971, then President Nixon broke the last
link between currencies and gold, saying the U.S. would no longer
redeem dollars for gold. To many, this was the starting gun for
the dollar’s decline.
Jay-Z: The rapper helped undermine the dollar’s street cred.
In his video for “Blue Magic”, Jay-Z waved around 500 euro notes
instead of flashing the
Benjamins.
Mirror Image
Barney Frank: The chairman of the House
Financial Services Committee is emblematic of legislators who
care little about long-term, strategic policy, instead favoring
short-term tactical politics that undermine any sort of discipline
when it comes to fiscal policy.
Alan Greenspan: The former Fed chairman’s decision earlier this
decade to keep interest rates too low for too long contributed to
the credit and housing bubbles. That killed the economy, taking
the dollar’s prospects down with it.
And the winner is: A little mirror that allows U.S. consumers to
see their own reflection.
The change we can believe in turned to be a status quo ;-)
“Citizens, it is believed with some justification, cannot handle
the truth.”
57% Would Like to Replace Entire Congress
Just 14% give Congress good or excellent review for their
overall performance, while only 16% believe it’s Very Likely that
Congress will address the most important problems facing our nation…
► Despite these reviews, more than 90% of Congress routinely
gets reelected every two years. It’s a shock when any incumbent
loses. One explanation for this phenomenon frequently heard in Washington,
D.C. is that “people hate Congress but love their own congressman.”
"They screw us. We ridicule them. Guess who’s laughing."
Winston Munn:
Rutters
New York, New York
October 21, 2009
Goldman Sachs today announced they would lay off 1500 U.S. Treasury
Department employees and cut the salaries of another 52,000 federal
workers in order to compensate for lower-than-anticipated bonuses
for Goldman Sachs executives.
In a bipartisan measure meant to reassure those federal workers
affected, both the House and Senate passed by voice vote a “Fuck
it, What Are We Supposed To Do About It?” resolution to absolve
themselves from any blame over loss of wages, jobs, or home.
The ‘green manure’ recovery ;-) It seems no matter how large the cracks
and fractures in our institutions become, the camera stays firmly pointed
at the facade. As reader Hugh remarked (Oct
10, 2009): "The whole financial sector is bankrupt.
Banks, investment banks, hedge funds, private equity, pensions, bonds, insurance,
it is all paper chasing its own tail... And we don’t have just one emperor
with new clothes we have a whole kingdom that is naked."
Welcome to Zombieland USA
The new movie - Zombieland - about a group of survivors in a world of
zombies did fairly well at the box office. I can already picture the
sequel......
Welcome to Zombieland USA - starring Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Hank
Paulson, and a cast of thousands of Wall Street banksters.
Survivors of the US economic bubble of 2002-2007 must defend themselves
from the zombies!
Survivors are being attacked in the streets, in their homes, and in
their workplaces. Zombie banks - kept alive only by artificial stimulants
provided by the feds - take the survivors' money and their homes.
Meanwhile other zombies at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury department
gnaw at survivors' savings by debasing the dollar and thus encouraging
inflation. The only goal of these zombies is to allow the US to repay
their debts with nearly worthless dollars.
All kidding aside, what we have done in this country is that we have
saved zombie companies with zombie assets (debts that must be repaid
for generations to come) at the expense of the living, breathing engine
of the true free market capitalist system - small businesses and the
middle class.
GAZA: Gaza makes an important point here. In life, to fully understand
something, one needs to try to look at things from as many angles
as possible. The 'angle' that GAZA is referring to to relook at
the stock market from the insider's (or "seller's" if you will)
point of view.
Over the past 40+ years, a common perception had grown that the
"stock market" is the ideal place to put money for retirement. Well,
...
We all should have learned the true nature of these "wall street
insider's" over the past two years ... scumbags who would sell their
grandmothers into slavery for the cost of a sandwich. The thought
that they care in the least about laws, honor, ethics is just laugh-out-loud
funny. If they are selling you something, you can guarantee that
it is very bad for you. They are selling stocks - so why buy from
these dirtballs? They not only would screw you out of your money
in a heartbeat ; that is what they do, all of them, all of the time.
That is how they make their money. You are the sheep; they hold
the knife, and they are addicted to your blood. Open your eyes and
stop walking willingly towards the slaugherhouse. ReThink! Stocks
are not "for the long run", nor for the short run, nor for any "run".
Actually, run is a good term, as in "run in the other direction".
I predict, and apparently so does Gaza, that in short time, the
common perception of the stock market as a wise place for investment
will change drastically, and people will be no more likely to put
their retirement savings in the stock market as they would to put
it all on "Red" over in Vegas. Actually, that is not quite fair,
since in Vegas at least you have the pretty lights ... and maybe
free food ...
I am not yet a gold-bug, but I might be soon enough.
AP Worldstream
12-03-2004
Dateline: NEW YORK
U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow reiterated Friday that the Bush
administration has a strong dollar policy.
Snow's comments, made
in an interview with CNBC, came as the dollar sat at an all-time
low against the euro and near a 4 1/2-year low against the yen.
Asked if the administration has a policy of benign neglect toward
the U.S. currency or if it still has a strong dollar policy, Snow
said, "Well
of course, there has been (a strong dollar policy) and it continues.
It's the rock solid foundation of our policy."
The multi-billion dollar business of tattoo removal
is enjoying some recession-proof growth
-- with one LA-based clinic even planning on going public next year
to help fund a national expansion plan.
"More than 40 million people have tattoos and about seven million,
or 17 percent, are in the process of figuring out how to get rid of
them," said John Keefe, the CEO of Dr. Tatoff, a Californian tattoo
removal clinic, who hopes to use the proceeds from a 2010 initial public
offering to grow to a 10-location chain.
"More than 66 percent of those tattooed are between the ages of 25
and 45 and what was cool to them at 18 is an eyesore now that they are
a mother with kids," says Keefe. The executive said revenue per client
is about $1,600 -- which comes out to $40 per square inch, per laser
treatment with an average of 10 treatments required. The average tattoo
is four square inches, he said.
"It costs 10 times more to remove a tattoo than to put one on and
it takes one year for safe and effective removal," says Keefe.
The national market is currently fragmented, with dermatologists
operating on a one-off basis and usually not dedicating their entire
practice to tattoos removal.
The growing unemployment rate is also helping the company ink new
business as job hunters feel the need to be competitive. Of course,
many look to get rid of their tattoos because of personal taste -- they
may have simply fallen out of love with their tattoos or out of love
with the name of the person indelibly inked on their arm.
I think that trying to make safer CDS is like trying to make
safer asbestos.
When I watch Chairman Bernanke, Secretary Geithner and Mr. Summers
on TV, read speeches written by the Fed Governors, observe the “stimulus”
black hole, and think about our short-termism and lack of fiscal
discipline and political will, my instinct is to want to short the
dollar. But then I look at the other major currencies. The Euro,
the Yen, and the British Pound might be worse. So, I conclude that
picking one these currencies is like choosing my favorite dental
procedure. And I decide holding gold is better than holding cash,
especially now, where both earn no yield.
Like teenagers with their parents away, financial
institutions threw a wild party that eventually tore-up the neighborhood.
With their charge arrested and put in jail to detoxify, the supervisors
were faced with a decision: Do we let the party goers learn a tough
lesson or do we bail them out? Different parents with different
philosophies might come to different decisions on this point. As
you know our regulators went the bail-out route.
In dealing with the continued weak economy, our
leaders are so determined not to repeat the perceived mistakes of
the 1930s that they are risking policies with possibly far worse
consequences designed by the same people at the Fed who ran policy
with the short-term view that asset bubbles don’t matter because
the fallout can be managed after they pop. That view created a disaster
that required unprecedented intervention for which our leaders congratulated
themselves for doing whatever it took to solve.
Indeed, indeed, the next crisis is nigh at hand. Behold, it is
descending upon us already, like a thief in the night!
You need to be prepared. So, once again, here’s Dr. Vinny’s 5-easy
step prescription for your continued health and well being:
1.) A residence outside of the US and Western Europe
2.) 2+ passports
3.) Enough physical gold and silver to survive for at least 20
years
4.) A high quality blue-ray recorder and digital cable service,
so you can record in high definition the collapse of the evil western
world as we know it
5.) A stockpile of high quality coffee and a decent cappuccino
machine, so you can maximize your viewing pleasure of the recordings
made in point (D) above.
Now, if you have not already covered items (1) through (3) above,
may I politely ask, “What is wrong with you?”
Vinny G.
gruntled:
The System seems incapable of dealing with the after-effects
of previous bubbles without blowing new ones. This process reminds
one of that definition of insanity that goes something like “… doing
the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street makes off like bandits, the middle class
shrinks even further, and the country is in deeper debt…
This surely cannot go on forever.
Vinny G.:
These bubbles do resemble the process of addiction, where relapse
is part of the very definition and diagnosis of the disorder.
Unfortunately, addictions are not an easy thing to treat. Take
an alcoholic, for example. The physiological withdrawal from alcohol
(although painful and potentially dangerous) clears up in a matter
of days. However, the psychological addiction lingers on for a lifetime.
Every time such a “recovering” addict passes by the bar where he
used to hang out, the cravings will return. Every Friday evening
rolls around (when he used to do most of his drinking), the cravings
will return. And, most importantly, every time one of his old drinking
buddies calls, the cravings will return. In order for this person
to truly prevent relapse, he needs to end his contact with his drinking
friends, needs to take a different route back home (avoiding the
bar where he used to hang out), and needs to fill his Friday evenings
with non-drinking activities such as going to see a movie or two.
The same is true about our society which is addicted to easy
credit, excessive consumption, and an arrogant attitude of entitlement.
The booze pushers here are Wall Street, so we need to cut them down
to size, and we need to get them out of our face so we don’t have
to listen to their lies and empty promises day in and day out. Then
we need a radical change in lifestyle. No more credit, no more keeping
up with the Johnses, no more getting a new car every 3 years, no
more 3000 square feet homes for a family of 3. It is possible, but
it takes work. And, first and foremost, it takes putting Wall Street
in its place.
Just a few thoughts from a guy who dealt with a lot of addicts.
Vinny G.
Vinny G.:
If I may add to my analogy between addiction and our economic
system above:
The fundamental question that any addict must answer is the following:
“Is it worth going through all the trouble of kicking the addiction,
losing your current friends, changing your lifestyle, just not to
drink anymore? Is it worth doing this, especially considering that
that is the only thing you know how to do well?”
The answer is emphatically “Yes!” In the long run the life of
any “recovering” addict will be infinitely better. His relationship
with his wife will improve immensely (assuming she did not already
leave him, as she should have, years ago), his children and grandchildren
will now not be afraid to hang around him, and his relationship
with the rest of the family will improve immensely. Additionally,
his legal standing will improve (no more DUIs or spending the night
in jail after a bar fight). The money that used to be spent on booze
can now be spent on more constructive and useful things. His health
will also improve dramatically, with the probability of dying of
liver disease or ending up with dementia decreasing radically. And,
his mental stability will improve for the better — no more alcoholic
mood swings, no more unprovoked explosions, and a dramatic improvement
in self-esteem. All these are good things.
The same type of improvement can occur at national level if we
change our economic model to one that is not based on financial
addiction. An America without a Wall Street driven economy will
no longer need to get into mindless wars, it will not be hated or
despised by most of the world, and will be able to provide decent
health care and education for its people, rather than paying off
massive bailouts to the crooks that caused the problems to begin
with. We can then rebuilt this decaying infrastructure, enjoy a
prosperous lifestyle anchored into reality rather than phony credit,
and most importantly, we will be able to live in peace with the
rest of the world.
All it takes is putting this Wall Street drug cartel in its place.
Yet, this entire discussion is purely academic, considering this
cartel of criminals already turned this nation into the type of
plutocracy they had wanted. As such, I simply need to refer the
“sane” people amongst us to my “Dr. Vinny’s 5-easy step prescription
for continued health and well being” above.
“We would have been in that snowball tumbling down the hill with
everybody else. It would be ludicrous to say otherwise. As a member
of the system, we were all at risk. I will tell you I was more scared
than you, because I was closer to it and I knew more. If you had known
as much I did, you would have been as scared as I was.”
In his monthly column, Princeton economist Alan Blinder
gave President Obama an "A-" for his financial rescue plan, commending
him for "wisely resisted the siren songs coming from both the left (“nationalize
the banks”)."
Of course, Professor Blinder does not have a clue about what would
have happened if we tried some path of nationalization. (This guy couldn't
even see an $8 trillion housing bubble.) We do know what has happened
in the absence of nationalization. The banks share of corporate profits
now exceeds even the peaks reached in the bubble years. The executives
at banks like Goldman Sachs stand to earn higher bonuses than ever before.
Nothing has been done to prevent a comparable collapse in the future
and there is every reason to believe that the financial sector will
siphon off an even larger share of GDP in the future than it did in
the past.
If this merits an "A-," then Professor Blinder is a very easy grader.
--Dean Baker
Selected comments
skeptonomist
Maybe Obama should be flunked for using others' work. The bank
rescue plan was conceived and mostly executed during the Bush administration.
It was designed by actual bank executives like Paulson and their
supporters in the Fed including Bernanke and Geithner. Obama has
simply carried on the policy of letting the big banks regulate themselves
and back up their mistakes with taxpayer money.
Blinder himself is a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve
- should grades be given out by the students themselves?
Anonymous
"If this merits an "A-," then Professor Blinder is a very easy
grader."
He can't help it. He's an intellectually insipid academic welfare
tart.
Jesse
"The last duty of a central banker is to tell the truth."
A personal motto to which Alan Blinder has always been faithful.
There are many possible responses to the news that the United States
government has committed more than US$4 trillion of public money to
Wall Street. Mine is a roar of admiration. Four trillion dollars! Holy
hell! I didn't even know that was possible! USA! USA!
After all, the cost of World War II in inflation-adjusted dollars was
$4 trillion. This bailout thing is just getting started, and already
we've burned through that. Without even noticing. Certainly without
rationing sugar or collecting scrap rubber or any of that nonsense.
Who's the Greatest Generation now, baby?
“Another SUICIDE BOMBERS operation, give us another $ 700 Billion
or we are going blow this economy up, you know these bankers in
WallStreet are the equivalent of SUICIDE BOMBERS in another countries.
They threaten to blow themselves up and blow up the economy in an
exchange for huge bailout money”
We (meaning, in this case, TPTB) didn’t recognize the recession
until it was 2 or 3 quarters old. Now, the same people are prematurely
(and, in my mind, dishonestly) saying that it’s over. What would
motivate them to do such a thing?
Who ya’ gonna’ believe – people who would benefit should you
believe what they’re telling you, or your own lying eyes?
... No, rape is a good and accurate word. And when firms counterfeit
credit, inflate profits falsely, blow themselves up, get bailed
out by taxpayers, pay bonuses with taxpayer monies and laugh in
your face — they are raping you and they are “rapists” at an elemental
level.
And so the good men and women, the MBAs, CFAs, the gentle
yoga class going, bottled water drinking, organic food eating, marathon
running and symphony going worker bees in the brutal corners and
principal trading desks of the financial industrial complex — Yes,
you are “rapists”. And you, central bankers, academics, bailout
lobbyists and regulator enablers. You are aiding and abetting financial
rape.
You don’t like that word, do you? It makes you get angry and
squirm a bit.
Yeah, that’s the point.
Now think about it. And imagine what if feels like for the person
underneath you, while you’re doing it to them.
Looks like banksters pay well for NYT pen-pimps... As one commenter
on this crap aptly noted “Bowties and Reaganomics are for losers. You can
cry for the rich all you want, the rest of us will be happy to see them
get taxed.”
...if you’re wealthy and no one likes you, you still have lots of
money. But if you spend your free time obsessing about the rich, you
could end up in worse shape emotionally, personally and financially.
“People who get caught up in this paranoia spend all night reading
these blogs, and six months later they haven’t done anything to better
themselves,” Dr. Dammann said. “Even if they’re right, there is a lot
of wasted energy put into this. They need to look at the mistakes they’ve
made in their life.”
It's called, 'getting caught.' You see, when you get caught,
everyone else in business has to pretend they don't do it, and that
they are shocked! Shocked and appalled at the bad apples ruining
the barrel. By 'bad apples,' they mean, 'people just like me except
they got caught' and by 'ruining the barrel,' they mean, 'drawing
the attention of the peons to our utter corruption.'
sootman:
Alter Relationship It's just the bad 99% giving the other
1% a bad name. ;-)
"The pig men over
stepped and were aided and abetted by Congress and the Bush administration.
Congress abdicated its oversight responsibility and let the pig men go wild."
... Chief Financial Officer David Viniar [told] that the firm doesn’t
have a too- big-to-fail guarantee from the government
I suppose
smart *rich* guys using other peoples money to buy-off congress,
the senate, and the regulators would have been more accurate.
Chris:
Hey, I read
recently that it was because the government had been interfering
too much in the markets. If the government hadn't had so many regulations,
etc., the market wouldn't have collapsed. It was the government's
fault. LOL I like that interpretation. I like crazy ideas. America
deserves lots of crazy ideas circulating around to confuse people.
That's what makes America so adorable: a population of confused
people. Just relax and enjoy it.
Buffett agrees,
I think, with the guy in the bar. He famously said (channeling Vigil):
"Beware of geeks bearing formulas."
run75441
Some truth
to that state about smart guys. Set the Wabac machine to 1997 when
two men wone and shared the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences:
"Nine months before LTCM failed 1997, Merton and Scholes shared
the Nobel prize in economics. Merton, Scholes and Stanford's William
Sharp (famous for developing the sharp ratio to measure risk) are
some of the founders of modern finance, which attempts to apply
quantitative techniques to market analysis. Merton and Scholes jumped
at the chance to join LTCM where they could not only apply their
theoretical work but make a great deal of money. "
http://seekingalpha.com/article/44412-did-genius-fail-again-at-goldman-sachs-global-alpha-fund
"When Genius Failed."
In 1998, LTCM failed as its $4.6 billion collateral ran out on the
hedged $100 billion leveraged for $1.4 trillion. Damn Russians .
. .
Given the quality of the economics reporting, parents would be well-advised
to prohibit their children from reading the Washington Post so that
they don't get confused on basic arithmetic concepts.
`The low-hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose
parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there
for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not
worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose
to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers
and all levels of our government.
``All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up
making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other
sides of my trades. God Bless America.''
We firmly believe that new household
formation, and standard 'natural wastage' of puppies will assure
continued strong puppy demand, and that the minor retrenching of
delivered puppies is a temporary phenomenon.
This assures a permanently high plateau in puppy demand.
Juvenal Delinquent:
Never underestimate the power
of words and ideas, once planted in well-grounded mindfields.
badger:
Demagoguery is a wonderful
palliative.
NOTaREALmerican:
scone wrote:
I think that's what's going on at the Fed and Treasury now.
Hmmm. I think you are being too "nice". In my cynical world the
people at the top (which the Fed is) are the best that society has
to offer. It's a natural selection thing. The people that run the
financial system in the US are the smartest amoral scum-bags in
our society. That's why they are running off with all the loot.
The Fed isn't THE smartest people - otherwise they'd be working
for GS - but they are still smart amoral scum-bags, and are ONLY
concerned with saving their betters (the smarter amoral scum-bag
above them).
The Fed, Treasure, Congress, both Parties have evolved to have the
best people of our society running things. These people are now
looting the country. It's all working as evolution intented.
Who cares about “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,
relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
if you can take couple of million bucks as a bonus...
October 15th, 2009
Goldman executives were wounded by how seriously Mr Taibbi’s piece
was taken despite their riposte that vampire squids are small creatures
that present no danger to humanity.
bsneath:
Definition of a Clever Thug:
“And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few
hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get
control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power
corrupts absolutely.” – Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
Transor
Z:
The best or elite in any occupation be it sports
or investment banking are always suffering from public opinion.
That must be why the elite surgeons who reattach limbs, transplant
faces, save people with traumatic injuries get so much bad press
for their work. And elite fire jumpers are so hated by society.
And personally, there’s nothing I hate more than an elite marathon
runner. It’s all about the glamor with them and they never sign
autographs.
Robespierre:
“The Golden Years of the Capone Era Al Capone and Rocky Point Mexico
– Puerto Penasco
At the age of twenty-six, Al Capone assumed control
of the Torrio Organization, with over one thousand people on the
payroll of $300,000 a week.
The profits continued to roll in because the majority of people
felt that betting and bootlegging were minor vices and the man that
made these things possible was a public servant who did what he
could to meet the needs of the people. Capone, himself attempted
to put his feeling in regards to his business by stating,
“This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism,
call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity
if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.”
“Public service is my motto. Ninety percent of the people in
Chicago drink and gamble. I’ve tried to serve them decent liquor
and square games. But I’m not appreciated. I’m know all over the
world as a millionaire gorilla.”
But they totally “deserve” all that bonus money. Heck, they
deserve MORE for being such “brilliant” crim….., I mean, “business-people”,
yeah, business-people. That’s the ticket.
Team Obama’s only claim to fame thus far. And in case you missed
it, it appears that all this great PR is working. They managed to turn
a combo relief rally/short squeeze into something bigger by getting
the media to play along (this is
not just our conclusion, BTW).
And then they cleverly pointed to the stock market as proof certain
that Things Are Getting Better when the reality is Things Are Merely
Getting Worse Less Rapidly.
But this is America, the land of open skies, pink flamingoes, Prozac,
and plastic surgery, so we’ll happily go along with the idea that maybe
the powers that be can restore status quo ante, since the alternative
is painful, and we don’t do the hair shirt and sack cloth routine very
well.
Speaking to financial executives last month, Obama said:
“We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked
excess that was at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated
only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses.”
Here is a
link to the raw data, below a list of the top 10. NOTE: This includes
only public companies
According to
Calvin Trillin (or, more accurately, the probably-at-least-semi-fictional
interlocutor he meets at a bar in Midtown), the financial crisis was
caused by smart people going to work on Wall Street. In the old days,
the story goes, it was the lower third of the class that went to Wall
Street, and “by the standards that came later, they weren’t really greedy.
They just wanted a nice house in Greenwich and maybe a sailboat. A lot
of them were from families that had always been on Wall Street, so they
were accustomed to nice houses in Greenwich. They didn’t feel the need
to leverage the entire business so they could make the sort of money
that easily supports the second oceangoing yacht.”
Then, however, as college debts and Wall Street pay grew in tandem,
the smart kids started going to Wall Street to make the money, leading
to derivatives and securitization, until finally: “When the smart guys
started this business of securitizing things that didn’t even exist
in the first place, who was running the firms they worked for? Our guys!
The lower third of the class! Guys who didn’t have the foggiest notion
of what a credit default swap was.”
Selected comments
The cream rises to the top. Our system gives our best and brightest
astronomical rewards for extracting rents and fees from the productive
economy. And amazingly, we don’t even call it sociopathy.
As a
wise woman once said, eventually you run out of other people’s money.
“Society is
like a cup of coffee: the dregs sink to the bottom while the scum
rises to the top.”
– G. B. Shaw (?)
Then of course there’s the Hemingway novel, via Hunter S. Thompson:
Looks like "FOMC whatever" tattoo will be immensely popular in 2010...
poic:
It must be fun when you get to run the Economic experiment, write
the history book detailing the results and have full control over
all editorial changes as well as own the publishing house.
Rob Dawg:
• Jobless nonrecovery
• Federalconomy for the indefinite future
• Vietnam type entanglement in the markets
• We were wrong and don't know what we are doing
Eric:
Hence the "pushing on a string" metaphor.
Stop confusing Mr. Sixpack.
Dow 10K, all the way!
curious:
There are some unfortunate names among the attendees:
Ms. Low, Open Market Secretariat Specialist, Division of Monetary
Affairs, Board of Governors
Clearly, she needs to be replaced by Ms. High before things will
turn around!
NOTaREALmerican:
I don't dare tell him to look at the dollar, as he obviously
is clueless anyhow.
Hearing some happy talk here at work also. 401k's recovering. Most
people aren't planing on selling their houses anyway, so that housing-problem
is fading. The virtual wealth affect. Things are looking up dude.
Yeah, like totally. Sure paid off to stay in stocks dude. Yeah,
dude, gotta think long-term dude. Totally. Feel sorry for those
pussies that sold! HA!!! (High-five) Dude, Merica rocks, dude.
NOTaREALmerican:
I'm not a f***ing consumer, I am a United States Citizen.
Damn corporate media.
You will be assimilated!
Jonathan:
Check CNN, Obama is quitting and joining the Village People...
dryfly:
Yep...will fiscal and monetary policy be in the hands of alumni
of Citibank, or of Goldman? Or maybe it's time to turn it over to
former employees of J.P. Morgan.
Our two party state - the party of GS and the party of JPM.
“It’s going to look like this whole string of lowercase Ws
for the next five years,” with periods of growth followed by
periods of contraction.
yagij:
Oh the irony that one of Dubya's legacy is using his initial
to describe the economy as it bounces among cliff branches and ravine
bottoms.
.
Now when the economy starts doing the same thing after Obama's term,
we can describe them as Os as in we are just going in circles like
being stuck in an undercurrent.
Angry
Saver
From the market peak in 9/1929 until 9/1938 (nine years later),
the S&P 500 had annualized real total returns (including dividends)
of -2.95%.
From the market peak in 9/2000 through 8/2009 (nine years later),
the S&P 500 had annualized real total returns (including dividends)
of -4.82%!!!
In real terms, stocks in the first nine years of the Great Depression
outperformed stocks over the past nine years by 18% (nine years
@ 1.87%)!!! Of course Nasdaq investors fared much worse (winners
of the new world, woohoo! Cramer rocks!).
sterlingerl
Oops, somone at the London office of Marketwatch did not eat
the roastbeef:
By MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- In a decision as shocking as Friday's surprise
peace prize win, President Obama failed to win the Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences Monday.
gabyjan
ac
gibbons'the decline and fall of the roman empire" is in ten books.
our decline and fall maybe in half that.
Rob Dawg:
Ah - that's why I see so much crying to audit the Fed. Then all
of the dirty laundry comes out, and people have to accept that this
country is bankrupt. Eep.
First you have to admit you have a problem.
"Hi. My name is America and I have a credit addiction."
"Hi, America!!"
"Thanks. It's been 36 years now since I even pretended I could control
my urges. It's ruined my health, my relationships, everything."
"We, know america. We've been there."
"The thing is I wake up and I realize I haven't hit bottom yet.
That depresses and so I make myself feel better by going deeper
into debt. At this point I'm powerless. I need an intervention...
[sobs]"
"S'Okay America. we want to help. this is Hu. He'll be your mentor
and guide."
"Hi, Hu."
"Hi, America. Let's go spend money to make you feel better. We'll
start austerity tomorrow."
"Thanks, you're a great friend... [walk out arm in arm]"
Larry Kantor is not like other economists. While his peers have been
engaged in a vicious spat as to who can predict the darkest scenario
for the American economy, Kantor has been quietly and self-assuredly
forecasting quite the opposite.
In spite of oil closing at a new all-time record above $140 on Friday,
more than one million Americans facing the loss of their homes, and
major US stock markets on the verge of entering a bear market, Kantor
remains one of a small band of economists to remain positive on the
prospects for US financial wellbeing.
Kantor, global head of research at Barclays Capital,
predicts that the US economy will experience
a growth rate of 3pc in the second half.
Confused? You shouldn't be, argues the straight-talking American.
The US economy is not doomed, he argues,
as evidenced in the strength of consumer spending.
The more common school of thought suggests that US consumers have
stopped spending because they're being hit by a double whammy of being
unable to sell their home and price inflation.
"But there's no empirical evidence to support that at all," says
Kantor. "If that were the case, you'd see the savings rate go up. In
other words, people would be spending less out of their income, but
they're not, they're spending the same amount."
The big change is that "more of that spending is being taken up by
higher prices for gasoline and food, leaving less of that money for
discretionary spending".
Although he admits the rising oil price could knock his forecast
- due to the average American's reliance on his or her car - his research
implies that it will not keep on increasing, in spite of his firm belief
that the current price run is based on "fundamentals,
not a bubble".
"Yes, $140 is a high price, but we see the price average for 2008
between $125 and $130, and could even go as low as $110."
Kantor argues that for his forecasts to be proven accurate, the price
at the pump doesn't need to go down, it just needs to stabilise.
Growth in the second half will, he argues, be driven by the Bush
administration's $150bn (£75bn) fiscal stimulus package and the fact
that the US housing market will finally reach its nadir after almost
two years of trying.
He estimates that Americans will spend roughly 30pc of their $600-$1,200
rebate cheques - " an enormous impact" - helping to boost growth in
the third quarter, with the rebate effect steadying off in the fourth
quarter, by which time fuel prices should also have steadied.
On the housing market, Kantor is not naïve, acknowledging that the
contraction has been "dramatic", but he points to recent home sales
data which appear to be showing some signs of stability at last.
"I'm not saying that housing is going to bounce. What I am saying
is that this big drag on the economy should start to fade in the second
half of the year."
There are some scenes that that must have been shot around the period
when enraged screwed-over people gathered at the New York Stock Exchange
yelling, "Jump! Jump! Jump!" Moore has said in an interview, that while
at the NYSE the NY cops came up to him and the crew.
He told them "Hey guys, we’re just here to film a little comedy and
we won’t be long," thinking they were going to run him and crew off.
The cops responded,
"Mike, these bastards took a billion and a half dollars out of our police
retirement fund so you just take your time." [emphasis mine]
Famous Wall Street
one trick
pony ( aka analyst) Abby Joseph Cohen's has a very strong following
;-). In '08
she called for a sharp rise in the S&P 500 to a 2008
year end-level of 1675. The index finished the year below 1000.
Ouch.
In October 2008, as the global financial system teetered on
the brink of collapse, “sell” calls in U.S. markets constituted 6 percent
of the total recommendations by analysts, with “buys” comprising
36 percent and “holds,” 58 percent, according to Bloomberg data.
The lesson from the Lehman collapse seems to be, "Take whatever you
can and, when it crashes, you get to keep it."
Lehman Brothers collapsed one year ago. The U.S. government refused
a bailout and warned other financial institutions to be careful. ...
Little did the government realize that the
whole financial system was one giant Lehman.
Helping banksters is more expensive that fighting Nazi...
The cost of World War II in inflation-adjusted dollars was $4 trillion.
This bailout thing is just getting started, and already we've burned
through that. Without even noticing.
It's pretty funny that a chief architect of Great Recession, Ben Bernanke,
has earned the confidence of President Barack Obama, who lavished praise
on Helicopter Ben :-)
President Barack Obama may be remembered for permanent depression,
the way that Leon Trotsky's name is linked with permanent revolution.
Fiscal stimulus combined with near-zero interest rates have proven to
be a toxic cocktail for the United States, the macroeconomic equivalent
of barbiturates and alcohol.
‘I finally realize what a shit job I have got,’” Hopley says. “‘If
it wasn’t for the bonus, I wouldn’t be working these hours and I wouldn’t
be working with these people.’”
Blankfein: You betcha! We’ve got some swaps out on those guys
right now — a billion in the bank if they lose!
Geithner: Why didn’t you just go to Vegas or use a local bookie?
Blankfein: Then we wouldn’t be able dump the loss on you guys
if things do work out.
Geithner: Okey-Dokey. Let me know if you need some help. Oh
— somebody’s calling — it’s Barney Frank. (Shouts away from the phone:
“Tell him to leave a message!”)
Blankfein: I’m not rooting against the Yankees, but
you’ve got to cover your ass!
A new report from the Department of Labor finds an increasing number
of American workers are outsourcing their jobs. For more on this crucial
issue, let's go to Joshua Russel in the Money Room.
Thanks Brandon. For years, corporations have been outsourcing their
labor to developing nations as a way to cut costs. But recently, many
individual employees have been sending their own work overseas. I take
the money that I would have spent on coffee and pay someone in India
to do my job for me. It's allowed me to unleash my full potential. Philadelphia
accountant, Donald Felton, outsources the majority of his daily workload
to Jahanara Kashem, an accountant based in Bangalore, India. I give
my assignments from my supervision and I send it off to Jahanara. Sometimes,
I'll look at it when it's done, but usually, everything is right. Mr.
Kashem says he's extremely happy with the .68 cents an hour Donald pays
him. I am able to feed my family and Mr. Felton can devote more time
to his fantasy football team. And Donald is just of the close to 7 who
have come to rely on overseas labor. I've gotten two raises since Jahanara
started. He's really good at doing my work. But it's not just lower
level employees who have embraced the trend. In Donald's firm, many
senior level managers are now outsourcing their jobs as well. Workers
representing the companies executive officers meet via conference call
every Friday. (arguing in background, between Americans and their outsourced
workers in India) Some overseas workers have done so well, they've been
able to outsource their own outsourced work to those even poorer them
themselves. I pay a starving man in Jakarta one handful of rice per
day to fill out the expense reports that are send to me from the U.S.
Analyst predict that if the trend continues, by 2 Ahmed Khalili of Afghanistan,
will be doing 83% of the globes work. It's a scenario that would suit
Donald Felton just fine. I'm trying to get to a point where I can just
lay in one place and not have to do anything ever. With the Onion News
Network, I'm Joshua Russell.
Thanks Joshua. Personal outsourcing is expected to grow as much as
2 according to the Filipino team that completed the Department of Labor's
report. Coming up next: A new study find the meth epidemic is hitting
worthless Americans hardest.
if you’re deemed too big to fail, given billions of money for close
to nothing, and have access to trillions more at the price of NOTHING,
your operating profits will be reasonably positive unless you are a
complete idiot.
If money printing could solve so many problems why haven't we done
this before and why don't we continue it forever until everyone has
their own house, 3 cars, and a yacht?
"Three B's Hedge Fund": Beans, bullets and bullion.
you missed a 'B' in there: Bourbon
You think our ruling oligarchs are better than Robert Mugabe?
“Any time you hear a money manager say there’s $3.5 trillion
dollars in cash on the sidelines, take your money away from them. Because
he doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
"Think of the main US banks and dealers, along with their regulators,
as the Iraqi government – though without the same unity, purpose or
long-term planning…."
“The industry will argue for self-regulation, which bears the same
relationship to regulation that self importance does to importance”
"Derivatives and debt are the needles of finance
and bankers will continue to supply them to all the Dr Jekylls and Mr
Hydes alike for the foreseeable future as long as there is a buck to
be made in the trade."
A former technical analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
pleaded guilty to federal charges that he used false documents to obtain
student loans and a boat loan.
Curtis Wiltshire pleaded guilty today in Manhattan federal court,
about five months after he was charged with bank fraud and identity
theft, U.S. Attorney
Preet Bharara in Manhattan said in a statement. His brother, Kenneth
Wiltshire, pleaded guilty in the same case last month.
Curtis Wiltshire worked at the New York Fed from 2001 until Feb.
15, when he was fired for conduct unrelated to the alleged student-loan
scam, prosecutors said. Investigators said his work computer contained
an image of a driver’s license and other documents in the names of other
people, including someone who worked at the bank. Wiltshire used them
to win student loans of more than $100,000, prosecutors said.
Kenneth Wiltshire helped his brother, using a fraudulent Florida
driver’s license as part of his application for a mailbox in Jersey
City, New Jersey, prosecutors said. The license photo was that of a
Fed employee, they said. A boat loan application addressed to another
Fed employee who never sought the loan was sent to the mailbox, prosecutors
said.
Barry Ritholtz
has the answer to the question that Nobelists, professors, economists
and soothsayers have been asking for for 300 years. What drives
the stock market?
“Such is the result of giving
two million primates lots of money and keyboards and a belief
they can make a living based on numbers and letters moving around
— on a screen, in a futures pit, on an exchange floor, or even
under a buttonwood tree.”
You can think of the US economy as a kind of defunct amusement park,
over which the FED has poured trillions of dollars of syrupy goo. The
caramel candy is there for tasting, but it
doesn’t turn the machines back on. The
ferris wheel is silent.
... ... ...
Our society’s hierarchy rests in part upon the following assumption:
that the intellectual capacity of the chairman of the Federal Reserve,
with his PhD and his white papers, is superior to that of a mortgage
broker from Orange County, California. I think we need an adjustment
to this type of assumption.
Goldman, “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,
relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”
morphed in Halliburton. Another vampire squid. What a metamorphose :-)
Yakkis
Clearly the Government is in collusion with Wall St. to
keep the gambling parlor doors open.
You know, Barack Obama is looking more like one Class
A BS’er. Says one thing, does quite another…..
Yeah, it makes me nostalgic for ol’ W, who always spoke the
truth. You know, about the WMDs, torture, the housing bubble,
jobs, the greenhouse effect, and anything else you could think
of.
I believe he said once: “When I was a boy, I cut down
a cherry tree, and my father said ‘George, did you cut down
this tree?’ ‘Yes Dad,’ I said, ‘I cannot tell a lie. I hate
trees and someday I’ll pave over this place and put a parking
lot here.’”
That’s how he got the nickname “Honest George W.”
Min
Michael M Thomas: “I believe GS, a month or so ago, departed
bank holding company status and became something else, a strange
mutant entity neither fish nor fowl”
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan talks to Bloomberg
about the rebound in investment in listed corporations and the impact
of that on financial markets.
Wall Street behaves like a bunch of crack addicts; instead of cutting
them off of the financial crack pipe, the powers that be fed their addiction
with easier money and more securitization, essentially handing over
the dope to the dope fiends instead of serving their regulatory purpose
and saying “enough is enough, now give me your keys and sleep it off.”
The combination has, of course, proved to be deadly, at least in the
financial sense.
"It takes more than a 9-5 effort to turn the world's most powerful financial,
economic and military super power into an indebted, dysfunctional and militarily
impotent state in a few short years. "
Bankers are, apparently, being
rewarded generously for their fine performance in recent years:
SS:
TAKES MORE THAN 9 TO 5 -
It takes more than a 9-5 effort to
turn the world's most powerful financial, economic and military
super power into an indebted, dysfunctional and militarily impotent
state in a few short years. Perhaps they should owe
us a bonus!
Cynthia:
But, but, but bankers must be paid a lot more than their shareholders
'cause they need the extra cash on hand to buy off politicians to
make certain that the game stays rigged in their favor.
... In June 2008, Dr. Marc Faber ended his monthly bulletin with
the following :
"The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate.
If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If
we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer/Software
it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will
go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car
it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap it will go to
Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy.
The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on
prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced
in US. I've been doing my part."
"You know what the news is-- in a minute, you're going to
hear the rest of the story"- Paul Harvey
You need to understand, despite of all the political jawboning over
AIG bonuses, nothing will change. Oh, there will be a lot of talk, hearings,
and nasty comments in the press, but many of those doing the talking
are nothing more than "Prostitutes for the Wall Street Pimp."
1) In 2000, when Wall Street analysts and brokerages were issuing
bogus research reports, none of these people were found guilty or went
to jail. The analysts, as we later found, were nothing more than a "Prostitute
for the Wall Street Pimp."
2) Most of the brokers I know are nice guys, but they are also "team
players". Being a team player for a brokerage firm means you nothing
more than a "Prostitute for the Wall Street Pimp."
3) Investment banks are constantly sending every Presidential Administration
a Prostitutes to fill cabinet positions to represent the interests of
the Wall Street Pimp.
4) AIG bought bad assets from the Wall Street Pimp, received bailout
money, which eventually flowed through to the Pimps for advice and council.
5) According to
"Wall Street
Watch", between 1998-2008, "Wall Street investment firms, commercial
banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates
made $1.725 billion in political contributions and spent another $3.4
billion on lobbyists." The pimps paid the prostitutes well.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy has leaped with glee on the proposal
by a commission headed by Joseph Stiglitz to redefine Gross Domestic
Product. After all, if feminine attractiveness, length of vacations
and quantity of garlic in the food can be included, France will rank
much higher than in more old-fashioned measures. Plus, the existence
of a new measure will enable politicians to fiddle the figures some
more, something they always enjoy doing.
...One can understand why Sarkozy liked this. A society with lots
of leisure, more equal income distribution, massive recycling programs
and fussy food service would benefit immensely against a market-driven
fast food culture.
"Implying the recession is over is like saying, 'Yes, there's
been a nuclear detonation, but it's over now, so relax - and never
mind that we're living in a post-apocalyptic world of unemployment,
foreclosures and bankruptcies,'" said Ann Marie Spinosa of Astoria,
Queens, who's on a panel of New Yorkers who blog about coping with
hard times on our Web site, NYDailyNews.com.
Obviously, the economy will improve when all the people (SERVANTS)
who work for Wall Street bankers (our Overlords) get their holiday
bonuses. I love trickle-down economics.
Trillions of dollars of equity lost, millions of jobs lost, millions
of homes lost, trillions added to the debt. Trillions given away
to criminal bankers. ZERO investigations, Zero prosecutions, Zero
responsibility. Thats the FED!
Like a recovering alcoholic,who's first true test of character
must come when he passes in front of a liquor store window showcase,is
our credit addicted economy,every time it passes by easy money.
But the first thing an alcoholic learns, is that in order to maintain
sobriety, he must disassociate himself from his drunkard friends.
How then,can our economy possibly recover, when the credit junkies
themselves, are managing the credit?
I had to take some classes in upper level economics 25 years
ago. The Professor was a rational expectations guy. Basically the
practical conclusions were:
dont buy real estate (this advice has saved me several million)
dont by shares( I didn't; this also saved me millions).
Thanks Lucas. Thanks Rational expectations. Because of
you, I am a millionaire, still.
Former Fed Chairman
William McChesney Martin is most famous for his notorious quip that
the job of the Fed is to “take away the punchbowl just as the party
gets going.” It seems this has evolved into a full fledged
theory of monetary management.
...Without the right scalpels and scaffolding, the Fed will use a
sledgehammer – taking away the punchbowl during booms and giving it
back during busts. Except that it will almost always get the timing
wrong – taking away the punchbowl too fast and give it back too late,
due to poor regulation and dollar instability, and its own anti-inflation
intellectual bias and obsession with its credibility.
Oh, weep for those poor central bankers who so desperately want
effective and comprehensive regulation of the financial sector!
Oh, were it not for the bitter fruit of democracy that imposes upon
these wise Platonic technocrats the corruption of legislatures -
bodies so easily captured by the dark forces of financial interests.
And, tragically lacking the regulatory tools they need to fulfill
their proper role in the Republic, central bankers may need to use
the blunt instrument of monetary policy rather than the skillfully-wielded
scalpel of regulation.
This seems to me a story that badly misunderstands the nature
of regulatory capture and serves primarily as a myth with which
central bankers far gone in fantasies of moral self-justification
can comfort themselves while walking through the revolving door
between the financial sector and (nominal) public service. It ignores
the history of how central bankers have actually behaved when they
have had regulatory power and elides even the basic arguments put
forward by Galbraith to explain the NY Fed's behavior (specifically
its failure to "take away the methanol-and-vodka-spiked punchbowl")
in 1929.
The truth may be out there, but the lies are in your head.
Ted K
...And I think the THREAT of an audit alone would be a healthy
way to get Chairman Bernanke away from the Washington D.C. dinner
parties (a’ la Greenspan) and keep Bernanke’s eyes on big banks’
balance sheets.
albrt
..the Fed is in for a surprise when they try to withdraw money
from “credit channels” and find that the money has somehow migrated
into the personal pockets of the bankers, from which it is somewhat
harder to withdraw.
Perhaps you can invite 3-4 experts on organized crime to discuss
their thoughts on the extent to which criminals have captured the
mechanisms of economies?
Analysts have described the U.S. economic recovery in many shapes
and sizes, be it L-shaped, W-shaped, or even shaped like the Nike swoosh
symbol.
But David Roche, global strategist at Independent Strategy, added
a new wrinkle on CNBC Wednesday.
" You want to know my shape? My shape is a toilet shape," Roche said
on "Squawk Box Asia." "Because I think that's where 14% of (gross domestic
product) in terms of spending and central bank help will disappear."
“USG: You are in trouble and could take the financial market
with you, but that’s just a perception issue. We’ll issue a statement
that the USG will backstop your screw-ups and once people see this
their perceptions will change. When they do, you go forward like
nothing happened because nothing did. We don’t hit you for any fees,
and you don’t go tits-up and implode the economy.”
“BOA: Deal.”
Issue press-release. Go home.
tippygolden
What I find interesting is an American culture of “gaming” the
system.
It seems the financial elites have carte blanche to game the
system it operates in.
Given what Mr. Grant has just written, I can only ask: Did one of
the world's best known bears just ring the bell at the top of the great
dead cat bounce?
In banana republics it´s very common to not only pick bananas,
but also print a lot of money. it´s said to be very cool. First
you pick bananas, then cut down the trees, produce paper and finally
print money on that paper. It´s the whole business cycle. Highly
recommended!
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee
met in August suggests that economic activity has picked up following
its severe downturn. Conditions in financial markets have
improved further, and activity in the housing sector has increased.
We have monetized a scad of debt and that cash has wound
up in equity markets. They have risen in response to the dynamic
of supply and demand. Speaking of activity in the housing sector
we're referring to the rocket-shot defaults on FHA mortgages.
Household spending seems to be stabilizing, but remains constrained
by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth,
and tight credit. Businesses are still cutting back on fixed
investment and staffing, though at a slower pace; they continue
to make progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment
with sales.
Neither business or consumer activity supports stock prices
or provides us with any sort of indication that credit demand growth
is going to return any time soon.
Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time,
the Committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial
markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market
forces will support a strengthening of economic growth and a gradual
return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of
price stability.
We believe in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus too, as
shown by the clear contradiction with our previous paragraph.
With substantial resource slack likely to continue to dampen
cost pressures and with longer-term inflation expectations stable,
the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some
time.
Prices are deflating, but we never use that word.
In these circumstances, the Federal Reserve will continue to
employ a wide range of tools to promote economic recovery and to
preserve price stability. The Committee will maintain the
target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and
continues to anticipate that economic conditions are likely to warrant
exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended
period.
We told you there was no credit demand and that neither
consumer or business conditions warranted any sort of real optimism,
but since you're hard-headed we'll say it again.
To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and
to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal
Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed
securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt. The Committee
will gradually slow the pace of these purchases in order to promote
a smooth transition in markets and anticipates that they will be
executed by the end of the first quarter of 2010. As previously
announced, the Federal Reserve’s purchases of $300 billion of Treasury
securities will be completed by the end of October 2009.
The flood of monetization that powered the market
from 666 to 1070 is ending. We're going to taper this
program down, mostly because we're rapidly becoming the entire market,
and that's bad news (never mind that we might wind up with ALL of the
credit risk, especially in the MBS market, which is substantial!
That would suck.)
The Committee will continue to evaluate the timing and overall
amounts of its purchases of securities in light of the evolving
economic outlook and conditions in financial markets. The
Federal Reserve is monitoring the size and composition of its balance
sheet and will make adjustments to its credit and liquidity programs
as warranted.
We're sitting on a metric ton of used dog-food and are
having trouble sleeping at night.
Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke,
Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Charles
L. Evans; Donald L. Kohn; Jeffrey M. Lacker; Dennis P. Lockhart;
Daniel K. Tarullo; Kevin M. Warsh; and Janet L. Yellen.
We all hold hands now as we head for the cliff.... Wheeeeeee!
This pic really sums it up for me. The “eye” analogy fits perfectly
, IMO.
When Obama was elected I had hopes that there would be real , bold
change which would allow us to escape relatively unscathed. Now that
I see that the kleptocrats will remain in control , I feel like Clooney
in “The Perfect Storm” when they are again overtaken by the storm after
passing thru the eye :
” She’s not gonna let us out. ”
Another quote from that movie that comes to mind — near the end ,
the guy down below who’s up to his chin in water :
Well, that was a huge surprise. Should be good for +200 on the
Dow.
iceman:
Nemo, why do you hate America?
Fed statements are like Viagra to gold.
They Shoot Horses Dont They:
The Federal Reserve is monitoring the size and composition of
its balance sheet and will make adjustments to its credit and liquidity
programs as warranted.
Barley:
"After the collapse in several years, will condoms be
a tradeable commodity?"
New or used?
"We know monetary policy can't actually grow an economy, but
we will continue to do the only thing we know how to do, flood the
system with cheap debased dollars."
Fact: The Republican Platform's main pillar is fiscal responsibility,
while Democrats are always being accused of wasteful spending.
Fact: Reagan ran up a huge deficit.
Fact: H Bush continued that deficit.
Fact: Bill Clinton balanced the budget and left office with over 250
billion dollars in SURPLUS.
Fact: Dubya lost the surplus and ran up a trillion dollar deficit.
Warren Buffet once described bankers in the following terms: “Wall
Street never voluntarily abandons a highly profitable field. Years ago…
a fellow down on Wall Street…was talking about the evils of drugs…he
ranted on for 15 or 20 minutes to a small crowd…then…he said: “Do you
have any questions?”
One bright investment banking type said to him: “yeah, who makes
the needles?
DownSouth:
The Reign of Terror, we should remember, followed upon the
period when all political developments had fallen under the influence
of Louis XVI’s ill-fated cabals and intrigues. The violence of terror,
at least to a certain extent, was the reaction to a series of broken
oaths and unkept promises that were the perfect political equivalent
of the customary intrigues of Court society… Promises and oaths
were nothing but a rather awkwardly construed frontage with which
to cover up, and win time for, an even more inept intrigue contrived
towards the breaking of all promises and all oaths… The widespread
opinion that the most successful modes of political action are intrigue,
falsehood, and machination, if they are not outright violence, goes
back to these experiences… Whenever (genteel) society was permitted
to invade, to overgrow, and eventually to absorb the political realm,
it imposed its own mores and ‘moral’ standards, the intrigues and
perfidies of high society, to which the lower strata responded by
violence and brutality.
–Hannah Arendt, On Revolution
Consumers and banks both are suffering from a massive hangover. Their
willingness and ability to drink is gone. No matter how many pints of
whiskey Bernanke sets in front of someone passed out on the floor, liquor
sales will not rise.
Shichinin no Economai--NOT!!
Nice gallery of freshwater Lysenkoists. Nice rhetoric question
from the discussion: "How can disparate groups of top-ranking scholars
consider the members of other groups as complete idiots? "
Justin Fox, in referencing the saltwater/freshwater divide, described
Prescott's Arizona State as a "no water" school. Which is funny because
it is true.
Is it really possible that economists from top rank departments,
some with Nobel prizes, are really making elementary, undergraduate
errors?
"it appears to me that what these people are saying is closer to
religion that science."
Fama's last reasonable chance (i.e., the last year it could be given
to him without making Sveriges Riksbank a laughingstock) may have been
last year
In A Farewell to Alms, Greg Clark wrote that modern economic theory
was useful for understanding pre-industrial economies but useless for
explaining the modern world
An ode to those Bay Aryans that bought the loan-laced kool-aid...
Juvenal Delinquent:
(Summer of Shove)
If you're owing in San Francisco
You probably have a $400k HELOC on your lair
If you're owing in San Francisco
You're gonna have some upside-down company there
For those who owe in San Francisco
Summertime will be a send-off there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people losing their lair
All across the nation such a strange vibration
People in foreclosure
There's a whole generation with no explanation
People in foreclosure, people in foreclosure
For those who owe in San Francisco
Be sure to have a getaway bag in your lair
If you owe in San Francisco
Sheriff's gonna show and request you get out of there
If you owe in San Francisco
Summertime will be a shove-out there
"The first point that people need to understand is that we
live in a democracy. We don't have a dictator who can just wave
his hand and abolish government programs."
Instead we have a sociopathic corporate oligarchy with votes
for sale to the highest bidder.
Larry:
The stuff the beast strategy has worked far better than Reagan's
more-famous starve the beast approach, since LBJ, really.
Larry:
"'Do they not always run on their dedication to the effort to
end wasteful government spending?'
What politician doesn't love to promise to eliminate waste, fraud
and abuse from government spending? What politician ever has? Remember
'reinventing government'?"
"HOW'S YOUR WIFE?" "COMPARED TO WHAT?" Henny Youngman may
be gone more than a decade, but his one-liners live on. And that old
joke provides insight into what's happening with currencies.
“This book will convince you of the single most important fact
about stocks at the dawn of the twenty-first century: They are cheap….If
you are worried about missing the market’s big move upward, you
will discover that it is not too late. Stocks are now in the midst
of a one-time-only rise to much higher ground–to the neighborhood
of 36,000 on the Dow Jones industrial average.”
Call it the audacity of cluelessness: Let us congratulate James K.
Glassman and Kevin Hassett, the authors of the incredibly money losing
advice in their book
Dow 36,000, on their 10 year anniversary.
super_trooper:
I hope they’ll remember their reply to critics in the January
2000 issue of The Atlantic Monthly: “if the Dow is closer to 10,000
than to 36,000 ten years from now [i.e. if the Dow is below 23,000
in January 2010], we will each give $1,000 to the charity of your
choice.”
On the other hand, G&H laughed all the way to the bank after writing
the book. The book was probably their best investment in the market.
How the Common Man Sees It:
DOW 36,000
The book… 18 used from $0.32
So here is some irrational rationalizing:
When the book was first sold it was probably going for 30 bucks.
So the price tag relative to the 36,000 prediction looked pretty
steep. Now, the book is 32 cents and the Dow is at 9820. So relatively
speaking that book is a DEAL!
Numerous people sent me a link to a preposterous statement by fund
manager Ken Fisher regarding debt. Please consider Too Much Debt? Please.
We Need MORE Debt, Says Ken Fisher.
stan:
Good Fisher. You have just prescribed the alcoholic more booze.
You told the drug addict to snort more crack. You told the man addicted
to gambling to move next to a casino. You told the obese woman to
eat 3 chocolate cakes and 5 boxes of twinkies a day.
You told the sex addict to get the playboy channel.
...English economist Arthur C. Pigou is credited a bon mot that exactly
frames the issue. "The error of optimism dies in the crisis, but in
dying it gives birth to an error of pessimism. This new error is born
not an infant, but a giant."
... the picture of an economy that got drunk, fell down a flight
of stairs, broke a leg and deserves to be lying flat on its back in
the hospital contemplating the wages of sin
a country of self-reliant individualists became what he calls
“a nanny state for well paid bankers.”
U.S. Treasuries, he says, are “backed by the full faith and
credit of the U.S. government (and
86th Airborne, if push really comes to shove).”
Don't forget. Obama is a community activist who now is President
and can do more for his community. If you are not part of his community
than you are sh*t out of luck.
No matter how much your debt is, it is still not too late for you
to free yourself from your debt. Visit Free From Debt today (http://FreeFromDebt.com)
and find the solution to be a debt free tomorrow.
“It is stunning that we can go from abyss to euphoria in 12
months. Actually, this is just hard for me to grok. It is this rapid
and intense turn in sentiment that has made this rally so unusual.”
I have some relatives with ADHD and some other relatives with
manic depression (now known as bipolar disorder). Euphoria and extreme
grandiosity is common in the manic phase. Did the world look black
yesterday? Hey, yesterday was a thousand years ago!
We're all better. Now that didn't hurt
too much. Helicopter Ben says the recession is over. Third quarter GDP
will probably be between 3% and 4%. It is amazing what you can do to
GDP when you hand people thousands of dollars to buy cars and new homes.
You just print trillions of new fresh dollar bills, drop them from helicopters
and poof - positive GDP. Why didn't we think of this before?
adopting the "wait and see" approach is like giving Bernie Madoff
another five years to run his Ponzi scheme, just to make absolutely
sure he's a crook.
SERWER: I mean, it's amazing to me that as we recover, you know, come
out of this financial crisis, you know, you'd expect a company like
Goldman Sachs maybe things are improving, make a little money. But they
have a record quarter. In other words, they made more money in this
three month period than they ever had in any other--
SCARBOROUGH: [archly] But they just made some good guesses, right?
SERWER: Well, I don't know if it's okay or not, but I think what
happened is that the government has telegraphed to Wall Street, not
only Goldman Sachs but the other firms what it was doing, what was going
on, what the program was, and so, essentially, it's like telling a Goldman
Sachs, "Hey, put your money on 32 Black" at the casino, at the roulette
wheel. And the thing spins and lo and behold, where does it end up,
Joe?
The Community Organizer-in-Chief is speaking to New York's Wall Street
today, urging them to do the right thing for the country.
...So, when Obama chides the Wall Street wiseguys in stern terms
to 'do the right thing,' one can forgive us if we hear, in echoes from
the back of the room, "do this" and "get bent."
He may as well walk into the aftermath of a vicious bank robbery and
say to the perps with cash still in hand, "Now you boys stop doing that
this minute. This is the fifth time you have stolen money and endangered
the lives of innocent people. You can keep the money, but you had
better not do it again.
Sheriff Summers and Deputy Tim, who you know so well from drinking
with them after hours at your clubs, will stop you if you do. And remember,
Bennie the Bookie has his eye on you. By the way, Rahm says thanks for
the gifts and remembrances, as always."
Steve Keen, an Australian economist whose theories are heavily influenced
by Hyman Minsky, has a cogent analysis of the true structural deficits
in the current economic model that I think bears repeating here. He
warns that we are trying to kick the can down the road and this will
lead to an even larger bust.
In his most recent post, he put it in
terms anyone can understand.
You have just come from your annual medical checkup, where your
doctor assures you that you are in robust health.
Walking jauntily down the street, you bump into a practitioner
of alternative medicine. He takes one look at you and declares “You
have a serious tumour! It must be removed or you will die”.
You ignore him as you always have, and continue your merry way
down the street. One day later, a stabbing pain suddenly cripples
you, and you collapse to the pavement.
In agony, your call your doctor, who initially refuses to send
an ambulance because he knows you are well.
When you lapse into a coma and stop talking mid-sentence, your
doctor concludes that perhaps something is wrong, and sends an ambulance
to take you to hospital.
Initially the doctor waits for you to revive spontaneously, because
he still knows there’s nothing really wrong with you. But as your
pulse starts to weaken, he reluctantly calls a retired doctor who
had experience of a similar inexplicable malady in the distant past.
She prescribes massive doses of tranquilisers, painkillers, vitamins,
and oxygen—all substances that had been removed from the medical
panoply due to recent advances in medical theory. Reluctantly, your
doctor follows his retired colleague’s advice—and miraculously,
you start to revive.
After a year of expensive medical treatment, you return to the
same robust health you displayed before your inexplicable illness.
Triumphant, if somewhat puzzled, your doctor declares you well once
more, and releases you from intensive care.
As you stride confidently away from the hospital, you have the
misfortune to once again bump into the practitioner of alternative
medicine.
“But they haven’t removed the tumour!”, he declares.
… ... ...
One shouldn’t have to spell out the details of such an analogy,
but in times of widespread denial, one has to:
You are the economy;
The tumour is a massive accumulation of private debt;
Your doctor is Neoclassical Economics, and the retired colleague
is a so-called “Keynesian” Economist — who doesn’t know it,
since her medical textbooks were poorly written, but he’s actually
following another economist called Paul Samuelson,
Bernanke said recession over. Time to get out of the market ?
Recall it was Mr. Bernanke who described the sub-prime situation
as “Contained;” it was he who believed Housing would not spill over
to the broader economy; and it was he who somehow thought the Bear Stearns
situation was a one-off.
Amusing take on Ambrose Bierce’s classic in the Journal today.
Excerpt:
AAA, n., obsolete. A rhetorical device used
to dupe buyers into purchasing securities backed by shacks dressed
as houses, and to secure the highest possible spot in telephone
directories. Common usage: AAA Septic Drainage and Mortgage Backed
Security Services.
BAILOUT, n. First known use: Noah. Novel regressive
taxation scheme whereby vast sums of capital are transferred from
those citizens who didn’t participate in the illusory Bacchanalia
of the housing bubble to those who did and weren’t clever enough
to get out in time.
BANK, GOOD, n., archaic. Sober, conservative,
risk-averse institutions designed to midwife customers’ capital
and enable prudent lending to deserving businesses and consumers.
See Capra, F., the Bailey Building & Loan Association.
BANK, BAD, n. 1. Everyone else. 2. Especially
Goldman Sachs.
CREDIT-DEFAULT SWAP, n. loose translation from
the original Latin “ubi mel ibi apes,” or “where there’s honey there
are bees.” 1. A complex financial instrument vital to the functioning
of a modern economy in the way it spreads risk among consenting
parties. (Greenspan, A., pre-Sept. 2008.) 2. A complex financial
instrument that nearly destroyed modern capitalism (Greenspan, A.,
post-Sept. 2008).
CREDIT LINE, n. A set amount of borrowed money
available only to those who don’t need it.
CREDIT-RATING FIRMS, n. Firms that do scant
rating of people with scant credit.
DEFICIT, n. For the party in power, at worst
a minor irritant and at best a precondition for economic growth.
For the minority, the gravest threat to the stability of the Republic.
TOO BIG TO FAIL, idiom. Banks, insurance companies,
car companies, presidential approval ratings, Fed chairmen seeking
second terms, other people who think they should be Fed chairman,
the reputations of people who’d be responsible for letting things
fail. Antonym: TOO BORING TO SAVE.
Bernanke or Bernanked: Unconditional love. First defined in the
Great Recession when very bad, no good investment banks were given
huge sums of money, and then proceeded to spend large portions of
that Bernanked money on bonuses for a job well done in creating
a state of bankruptcy. A difficult definition to understand unless
one lived through that time.
investment bank: 1) can be an over-leveraged investment co. (see:
hedge fund) which morphs into a bank holding company in order to
receive TARP funds, then back to investment bank. 2) Whatever it
wants to be. 3) Depends on rules of the game, which change frequently
to facilitate maximum profits. Rules set, and unset by Congress,
and function of campaign contribution amount. 4) Need to define
“is” first. See “Bad Bank”, above.
Retirement: (archaic)…The end of one’s working life. In times
goneby, a time to reflect and enjoy the fruits of one’s labor. For
all intents and purposes ended as a viable definition in September,
2008.
Federal funds rate: Definition unchanged since 2009. Became known
as “zero”. Minor attempts to change the definition brought about
gnashing of teeth and wailing in Washington, D.C. so the definition
became permanent by law in December, 2009.
My friend Scott is a hedge fund manager who noted the following,
with just a trace of irony in his voice:
Joe Stiglitz, in an interview from Paris with
Bloomberg over the weekend, noted that “if workers do not
have income, it’s very hard to see how the U.S. will generate the
demand that the world economy needs.”
With all due respect to a Nobelist who’s been on the right side
of many of the economic debates of the last few years, I’m surprised
that the obvious and simple answer to declining worker incomes in
the United States escaped him: We all become banks, borrowing
short from the Fed at zero interest, and lending long to the Treasury
at 330-370 basis points. The profits from that trade can be invested
in the stock market, so that we can all diversify our income streams.
Presto, household balance sheets repaired, and we’re off to the
races again.
Is not Yellen just another despicable Greenspan crony ?
That is Janet speaking, not Shiela.
The boomers were basically the last generation of a formerly very
wealthy family, which pissed through the family savings in an orgy of
spending and stupid policy.
"Greenspan Says Capital Requirements Must Be Raised " Who was the
jackass who left the barn door open in the first place again? Greenie's
specs must be specially made for hindsight.
Yellen, just like the rest of the
Fed, is just so full of sh8t and full of themselves. We know
that they don't know. Nothing more than fortune tellers.
But if the recession is over, what is the justification for 0% rates?
Or is that the mixed message to which you refer?
"She's telling the TRUTH! She's telling the TRUTH!" If that wasn't
a Monty Python sketch, it should be.
"We at the
Fed are and will remain fiercely independent from politics"
Kinda like the new song:
Fed: Jump
Politicians: How high?
pavel.chichikov:
I'm going to go back to reading about the the battle of the Somme.
Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967). Counter-Attack and Other Poems.
1918.
The General
‘GOOD-MORNING; good-morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
. . . .
Donald Luskin looks like a worthwhile competitor of Larry Kudlow ;-)
While everyone is so focused on the anniversary of Lehman Brothers
(9/15) and AIG (9/16), today is a different sort of anniversary:
Its been exactly one year months since the single dumbest column ever
published in The Washington Post appeared:
Quit Doling Out That Bad-Economy Line.
Breathtaking in its ignorance, shocking in its fallibility, astonishing
in its author’s perversely misperceived world view, it stands as a monument
to sheer cluelessness in a single person:
By Donald Luskin Sunday, September 14, 2008; Page B01
"It was the worst of times, and it was the worst of times."
I imagine that's what Charles Dickens would conclude about the
current condition of the U.S. economy, based on the relentless drumbeat
of pessimism in the media and on the campaign trail. In the past
two months, this newspaper alone has written no fewer than nine
times, in news stories, columns and op-eds, that key elements of
the economy are the worst they've been "since the Great Depression."
That diagnosis has been applied twice to the housing "slump" and
once to the housing "crisis," to the "severe" decline in home prices,
to the "spike" in mortgage foreclosures, to the "change" in the
mortgage market and the "turmoil" in debt markets, and to the "crisis"
or "meltdown" in financial markets.
It's a virus -- and it's spreading. Do a Google News search for
"since the Great Depression," and you come up with more than 4,500
examples of the phrase's use in just the past month.
But that doesn't make any of it true.
Things today just aren't that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots
in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants
Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm
Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures
are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression
-- or exaggerated Depression comparisons.
Overall, the pessimists are up against an insurmountable reality:
In the last reported quarter, the U.S. economy grew at an annual
rate of 3.3 percent, adjusted for inflation. That's virtually the
same as the 3.4 percent average growth rate since -- yes -- the
Great Depression.
Why, then, does the public appear to agree with the media? A
recent Zogby poll shows that 66 percent of likely voters believe
that "the entire world is either now locked in a global economic
recession or soon will be." Actually, that's a major clue to what
started this thought-contagion about everything being the worst
it has been "since the Great Depression": Politics.
Patient zero in this epidemic is the
Democratic candidate for president. As it would be for any challenger,
it's in his interest to portray the incumbent party's economic performance
in the grimmest possible terms. Barack Obama has frequently used
the Depression exaggeration, including during a
campaign speech in June, when he said that the "percentage of
homes in foreclosure and late mortgage payments is the highest since
the Great Depression." At best, this statement is a good guess.
To be really true, it would have to be heavily qualified with words
such as "maybe" or "probably." According to economist David C. Wheelock
of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, who has studied the history
of mortgage markets for the Fed, "there are no consistent data on
foreclosure or delinquency going all the way back to the Depression."
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) database, which allows
rigorous apples-to-apples comparisons, only goes back to 1979. It
shows that today's delinquency rate is only a little higher than
the level seen in 1985. As to the foreclosure rate, it was setting
records for the day -- the highest since the Great Depression, one
supposes -- in 1999, at the peak of the Clinton-era prosperity that
Obama celebrated in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National
Convention late last month. I don't recall hearing any Democratic
politicians complaining back then.
Even if Obama is right that the foreclosure rate is the worst
since the Great Depression, it's spurious to evoke memories of that
great national calamity when talking about today -- it's akin to
equating a sore throat with stomach cancer. According to the MBA,
6.4 percent of mortgages are delinquent to some extent, and 2.75
percent are in foreclosure. During the Great Depression, according
to Wheelock's research, more than 50 percent of home loans were
in default.
Moreover,
MBA data show that today's foreclosures are concentrated in
that small fraction of U.S. homes financed by subprime mortgages.
Such homes make up only 12 percent of all mortgages, yet account
for 52 percent of foreclosures. This suggests that today's mortgage
difficulties are probably a side effect of the otherwise happy fact
that, over the past several years, millions of Americans of modest
means have come to own their own homes for the first time.
Here's another one not to be too alarmed
about: Obama is flat-out wrong when he frets on his
campaign
Web site that "the personal savings rate is now the lowest it's
been since the Great Depression." The
latest rate, for the second quarter of 2008, is 2.6 percent
-- higher than the 1.9 percent rate that prevailed in the
last quarter of Bill Clinton's presidency.
Full disclosure: I'm an adviser to John McCain's campaign, though
as far as I know, the senator has never taken one word of my advice.
He's been sounding a little pessimistic on the economy of late,
too. And to be fair, he isn't immune to the Depression-exaggeration
virus, either. At a campaign news conference in July, my fellow
adviser Steve Forbes warned that Obama was seeking "the biggest
tax increase since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression." Factual?
Almost certainly not.
... ... ...
And Obama's infection by the Depression-exaggeration bug goes
way back. His first outbreak came on Oct. 2, 2002, in his famous
speech opposing the invasion of Iraq, delivered when he was an Illinois
state senator. He said that the invasion was "the attempt by political
hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from" a litany of economic troubles
including "a stock market that has just gone through the worst month
since the Great Depression."
... ... ...
McCain campaign adviser and former U.S. senator Phil Gramm
was right in July when he said that our current state "is a mental
recession." Maybe he was out of line when he added that the United
States has become "a nation of whiners." But when it comes to the
economy, we have surely become a nation of exaggerators.
BEHOLD THE 9/11 PATRIOTIC PUMP, brought to you by your prop trading
desks. We salute you, robots….
“Come on Lloyd! Hit those buttons… Call it up to 1054, MAKE ME PROUD!”
… long and strong -- that’s my motto...
...Strong drink and harsh language – that’s my motto.
call me ahab
at 3:42 pm
lloyd did say it was justifiable for people to be upset about bank
pay and bonuses-
what a guy-he’s just like one of us-i want to have a beer with him
“Kinda tough to swim in the fog”
Yeah, I guess it’s onward and upward. Traders have gotta make a
living. It’s just a pity that markets are composed of more kinds of
people than traders.
Why are Corporate Bonds holding up so well? Civil is uncertain
(i.e. Clueless).
But I bet China has something to do with it!
All this talk of a powerful China has Civil considering how to profit
from this.
After viewing Swani's excellent China links "City On Steroids" &
"Outsourcing Unemployment" by Vanguard, and my other massive readings
on the topic of China's rise, Civil likes what he sees in China.
Civil has decided to take bold action.
I have scheduled a "Nationality Change Operation".
Yes. That's right. The China story is so compelling, that Civil
is going to be operated on, by some leading edge doctors.
Civil is going to become Chinese!
It will not be easy. But I cannot see the existing policies in USA
working to make us a better society to live in. There will be a
decline in standards of living in USA. The outright theft of the
USA, and not a single indictment or prosecution, is too much for
Civil to bear.
Civil-Disobedience normally thrives in times of Civil unrest, but
this may be too much to handle. So Civil is going to "bite the bullet",
and take it one level past Mr Jim Rogers, who just moved to China.
Civil will be Chinese.
The Obama plan would label Bank of America, New York-based Citigroup
and others as “systemically important.” It would subject them to
capital and liquidity requirements and stricter oversight,
relying on the same regulators who didn’t
understand the consequences of a Lehman failure.
The good news is that the patient (ie the economy) is out of
the hospital. The bad news is that he must return to a dialysis
center (ie the Fed) 3 times a week to pull toxic waste out.
Does anyone except for the most imbecilically naive still believe
that Barak Obama is anything but the most insufferable marionette?
Mike Meyer
Andrei: IMHO GWB holds the lifetime title for Most Insufferable.
BUT since WE've already suffered through 8 years worth of Codpiece,
YOU may have a point by this time next year. 'Till then he's just
runnerup.
...bank charged him seven $34 fees to cover seven purchases when
there was not enough cash in his account, notifying him only afterward.
So he was stunned when his bank charged
him seven $34 fees to cover seven purchases when there was not enough
cash in his account, notifying him only afterward. He
paid $4.14 for a coffee at Starbucks — and a $34 fee. He got the $6.50
student discount at the movie theater — but no discount on the $34 fee.
He paid $6.76 at Lowe’s for screws — and yet another $34 fee.
All told, he owed $238 in extra charges for just a day’s worth of
activity.
A friend of mine - I'm gonna call him Gilbert - was telling me about
some happenings at his office that might sound familiar, as I've heard
quite a few variations on this theme recently. Gilbert is a middle manager
at a Fortune 500 multinational, which, like many companies large and
small, had a couple well-publicized rounds of layoffs this year and
last, and one kind of phantom round in 2007 (which I believe puts them
ahead of the layoff curve). The phantom round was somewhat disguised
by a simultaneous generous early retirement offer to which all employees
sixty and over were eligible.
The interesting thing is this... the end result of these layoffs,
as far as Gilbert is concerned, is that the likelihood of an incompetent
person being fired from the company has decreased since 2007. This is
because, in ordinary times, a manager will get rid of those he deems
incompetent because he knows he will be allowed to replace those individuals
when suitable replacements are located. Furthermore, in the interim,
before a competent replacement is found and hired, there's enough slack
in the system that the functionalities formerly performed (or not) by
the incompetent employee can be performed (and performed better) by
others in the organization.
On the other hand, in times of large scale layoffs, there is no slack.
There is nobody else there to take on the functionality during the intervening
transition. But there is also no intervening transition. When there
are layoffs going on, many (most?) spots on the org chart that don't
have people's names on them stay empty. Eventually, many of these empty
spots disappear. Those who manage staff understand that they will retain
the responsibilities, even if they don't have the resources, and a lousy
resource is better than no resource at all. So in times of layoffs,
they don't volunteer their reports, even the ones they would normally
like to fire.
Now, you may be thinking... well, when a manager like Gilbert is
told he has to reduce his head count by X as part of some layoff, he's
going to pick his X least competent employees and fire them. But it
turns out that is only partly true. See, layoffs are also occasions
in which the needs of the organization are "rationalized." That is to
say, a number of functionalities are deemed redundant, and the folks
who do those jobs are let go, whether competent or not. The decision
about which functionalities are no longer necessary are often made by
someone high up in the organization, and according to Gilbert at least,
are usually wrong.
The logical end result of Gilbert's theory... the company he works
for now has a greater percentage of incompetent people working in it
now than it did before it started laying people off. That would otherwise
make the company that much less competitive, except that its main competitor
has undergone exactly the same process.
It's no secret why this is so: spending on medical care has exploded
in the last 25 years, and now accounts for a whopping 20% of personal
consumption expenditures and 14% of GDP.
"Do we have to suffer through this transparently
manipulative pseudo-reality again?"
- Dr Sheldon Cooper,
Big Bang Theory, Series 2. [1]
Yes Dr Cooper, apparently we do.
As we approach the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall,
the decline of the Soviet Union is being mirrored by a parallel decline
of the United States. What passes as reality on the pages and screens
of the
financial media today is so far removed from ground realities
as to suggest a renewed version of the Pravda economy that the Soviet
Union tried to build and failed. A "then and now" comparison isn't just
stark but also quite scary for anyone with common sense (that excludes
today's
stock market investors right away).
Then (or, a long time ago in the Soviet Union):
The Soviet Union controlled a vast array
of vassal states using far-flung military bases that were all steadily
declining.
The army was mired in Afghanistan, 10 years
after the beginning of a "just" liberation that proved anything
but.
The government owned car companies that
made sub-standard products no one really wanted.
There were long queues for bread and vodka
across the nation.
A deep recession was in place, caused by
the decline in demand from poorer countries and falling oil prices.
The actions of president Mikhail Gorbachev,
a political reformer, were characteristic of those of a person who
wanted change to ensure his place in history.
The fall of the Berlin Wall fatally weakened
Soviet authority across the satellites.
Poor distribution led to massive food waste.
The rouble became worthless after the pseudo-reality
holding it up (namely parity with the US dollar) was exposed as
a cruel hoax.
Now (or, as things stand in the new Soviet Union):
America's allies are in dangerous decline
- be it Turkey, Egypt or worst of all, Pakistan.
The military is mired in Afghanistan - almost
eight years of incessant activity haven't yielded the simple result
of finding Osama Bin Laden or Taliban leader Mullah Omar. (For good
measure, America is also mired in another Islamic country, Iraq
... just in case the challenge of getting one's behind spanked in
one country wasn't enough).
The American government is the proud owner
of General Motors, a car company that apparently doesn't know how
to make cars and, even less, profitable cars;
Citibank, a bank that apparently doesn't know how to
make
loans and, even less, profitable loans; Fannie Mae ...
okay, you get the picture.
The US economy is in recession, and will
permanently remain in this state.
There are long queues for dole
payments, food stamps and the like. Prescription drugs,
mainly antidepressants, are the new normal for the country.
President Barack Obama is increasingly being
seen as a politician who would do pretty much anything - ranging
from limitless
economic intervention to throwing Israel to the Arab
wolves - to ensure his place in history.
Mainly thanks to the continued American
fascination with burgers and other fast food - that deliver calories
without the nutrients - the level of food waste in the US today
exceeds the total food production of many European countries.
The US dollar is, well, worth less (that's
two words - for now at least) with respect to its purchasing power;
and is being held up by the pseudo-reality of a consumer economy.
Creating the pseudo-reality: Ignore the important and the obvious
Ignoring abject reality is the key process of governance. In the
Soviet Union, this was achieved through the simple medium of a complete
news blackout for citizens, other than state-sponsored propaganda through
various channels. In the case of the US, much the same has been achieved,
but by using the opposite tactic of selective reinterpretation of news
that helps cast it in much better light.
For example, consider what is going on in Afghanistan. The Soviet
Union denied to its citizens that the occupation was going badly, and
indeed did not publish any figures for personnel losses. Right up to
the day that Soviet troops pulled out of the country, bled dry by the
insurgents who had been sponsored by the Americans, citizens of the
USSR did not even know how bad the situation was.
When the then-Afghan president Mohammad Najibullah was stripped and
hanged in public by the Taliban in 1996, the news media finally should
have taken cognizance of the monster that had been unleashed in the
form of militants whose answer to a "higher calling" was to do some
pretty awful things in their temporal existence. Instead, the American
and European media extolled the "freedom fighters" while quietly praying
that the chaps would turn in their unused Stinger missiles. Well, we
all know how that went.
Fast forward to now, and the steady erosion of North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) authority across Afghanistan isn't fully understood
by viewers of American television, nor perhaps by the average newspaper
reader. To wit, the rapid increase in the deaths of British soldiers
that could well spiral into their complete withdrawal from the country
at the drop of a terrorist hat (the British will only be following the
course of the Spanish, who left Iraq in response to the terrorist bombing
of trains in Madrid in 2004), a course of action that will soon be adopted
by all other components of NATO in Afghanistan.
Where that will leave the US, I do not know. However, the trend is
quite clear and Obama's addition of a few thousand troops will prove
about as significant as throwing a water balloon at a California wildfire.
Now, most readers of this publication will already be familiar with
all of this. The point to note is that the Afghan situation hasn't been
seriously discussed on US networks because of fear of where the conversation
will lead. The point isn't so much whether the country is Obama's Vietnam
(technically speaking, it will have to be characterized as that of president
George W Bush), but what the actual end game is that's being played
out here.
Does the US think that staying in the country for the next 20 years
is feasible? Would Americans expect a reduction or an increase in the
production of opium? Is there an ethnic allocation plan in place (think
Iraq, but with real bloodthirst and guns) - because the notion of a
single country is quite laughable? How are the terrorists and the Taliban
to be dealt with - through education and modernization as per the NATO
dream or through continued bombings as per the current plan?
Most of all, what is the actual definition of success in Afghanistan
for NATO and the US?
For the Soviet Union, there were no real answers to the questions
I pose above. It actually wouldn't really have known even if victory
had passed it on the high road to Kabul a couple of times, mainly because
there was no actual definition of victory. It was basically occupation
for its own sake.
You might ask why any of this is relevant to the broader issues raised
at the beginning of the article. From my viewpoint, Afghanistan is an
important issue because understanding the end game may well offer a
vignette of the thinking on all other radical measures being planned
and executed by the US government - ranging from the Keynesian economy
of zombie companies and individuals to the next steps on medical services
reform.
Drugs and reality
In the Soviet Union, there was an appropriate saying, "The government
pretends to pay the workers, and workers pretend to work." The downside
of that trade-off was that Russians (and other nationalities contained
within the Soviet Union) did not believe in the possibility of any improvements
in their life quality and behaved with the nihilism appropriate to that
observation.
This seemingly harsh statement has within it the notion of truth
wrought by the idea of what separated a successful Russia from an unsuccessful
one in that era: getting ahead in the ration queue, or getting to drive
the plush version of the Lada. Gee, what an improvement over being a
few places behind in the same queue for stale bread and spoilt meat;
or driving a smaller Lada.
No surprise then that Russians took to vodka. As a society, Russians
looked at the queues as unfairness of the system towards them as individuals
(because some people were able to leapfrog the system), rather than
recognize that they were victims of an unsustainable economic system.
Being unable to distinguish between secular and cyclical decline
is the actual problem for developed nations today - Americans and Europeans
think of equity market declines and the house-price falls of 2006-08
as the key issue, rather than as a necessary correction after years
of excess. So now traditions and social mores are sacrificed at the
altar of recovering wealth lost over the past two years.
How intelligent people reconcile the obvious areas of cognitive dissonance
- many people you know are not only
bankrupt but also unemployed and unlikely to rebound any
time soon, yet you are asked to believe that the "economy is growing
again" - is a matter not so much of anthropological interest but one
that determines the course of global developments.
It's interesting to me then that pretty much no one appears bothered
that the rising scourge of prescription drugs, particularly antidepressants,
could well prove to be the key problem for these societies down the
road; if anything, some in the media appear to believe that drugs are
helping to "contain" social problems. Much like alcoholism cured Russian
violence, I'm sure.
History may choose not to repeat itself. But if it does, watch for
results that aren't vastly dissimilar to the declines that we saw in
the case of the Soviet Union. In the interim, the number of people who
do not want to hear the truth will likely rise, as denial becomes one
of the cornerstones of happiness.
Eat a burger, drink some beer and pop some pills, dude. Then switch
on the telly and have the cable news ladies tell you how good things
are going to be.
Note 1.Big
Bang Theory is a CBS television series in which fictional character
Sheldon Cooper, played by Jim Parsons, is a theoretical physicist.
The Jackson Hole retreat truly kept central bankers in the hole as
they savored the success of their sauvetage of failing banks
and boasting full confidence about economic recovery.
...Their pronouncement is akin to a drunken driver saying that the
lesson from being drunk is that one gets a hangover and says and does
things that hurt others - conveniently forgetting that it is excessive
alcohol that led him to his drunken state and the next time he could
kill himself as well as others.
Perhaps a future economics teacher, after lecturing on the previous
historical epochs of agricultural capitalism, feudal capitalism, industrial
capitalism and finance capitalism, will look down into his textbook
to see the chapter heading that covers our current era - "moron capitalism".
It's definitely clogs the arteries of economic and endanger patient
with obesity ;-). but it's more like gambling -- an activity that produces
no tangible or lasting good to its willing participants, yet yields to its
operators an ever increasing share of economic output. It's a huge rent
(private tax) extracted from the society.
...there is growing evidence that the vast majority of what happens
in and around modern financial markets is much more like
junk food – little
nutritional value, bad for your health, and a hard habit to kick.
All we need for a complete bubble reflation is people avidly gaming
the system... oh wait, we have that, too. A recent Time magazine
cover story on
Las Vegas contained this informative tidbit (courtesy of Michael
Goodfellow):
(Realtor) Boemio specializes in short selling, in a particularly
Vegas way. Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house
than the house is worth (and that's about 60% of homeowners in Las
Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they've been
living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then
she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until
the bank becomes so fed up that it's willing to let the owner sell
the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure.
Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent
out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit.
Should hedge funds be setting their Outlook to auto-delete anything
from GS.com research department?
The question isn’t whether Goldman Sachs is
Taibbi’s “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of
humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that
smells like money.”
It is much more simple than that — the
more relevant question is “Can Goldman Sachs be trusted by their
own clients ?”
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably
in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you.
Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
“The “market” is merely a reflection of the fears, hopes, greed,
and intelligence or lack thereof of its participants.”
LMFAO
Well, as this thread suggests (a thought that is MIRRORED by
just about every deep thinking blog in the financial community)…
The MARKET is controlled by the USG, the Fed, & GS at the moment…
“i think the Fed/Treasury were so desperate that they could care
less if people could connect the dots”
Correct. Tiny Tim sent Blanky and Jamie some money and told them
to “get this mo-fo market going North so I can dump my POS house
in Westchester and get out from under this crushing mortgage”. The
man can dream, right?
This morning the spokesmodels for Wall Street on Bloomberg Television
were touting the 'better than expected' unemployment claims figures.
They came in at 'only 570,000.'
Wait a minute. That does not seem right. Have another cup of coffee
and look up the figures.
The consensus of expectations was 565,000. The actual was 570,000.
That's better?
Betty Liu went on to explain, 'they are better than expected because
they fell from the week before.' The prior week's figures were revised
from 576,000 to 580,000.
In her defense, she just says what they
put in front of her. I wonder if the same can be said for Obama.
The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few
liberties with our stock recommendations; we did.
But you can't hold all of Goldman Sachs responsible for the behavior
of a few sick, perverted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't
we blame the whole investment banking system? And if the whole investment
banking system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our financial
institutions in general?
I put it to you, dear readers - isn't this an indictment of our entire
American society?
Well, you can do what you want to us, but we're not going to sit
here and listen to you bad-mouth the United States of America.
“Forget properties or shares,” writes a dear reader.
Here’s how to make real money:
From the Bristol Evening Post:
“Outside Bristol Zoo is the car park, with spaces for 150 cars and
8 coaches. It has been manned 6 days a week for 23 years by the same
charming and very polite car park attendant with the ticket machine.
The charges are £1. per car and £5. per coach.
“On Monday 1 June, he did not turn up for work. Bristol Zoo management
phoned Bristol City Council to ask them to send a replacement parking
attendant.
“The Council said, ‘That car park is your responsibility.’ The Zoo
said, ‘The attendant was employed by the City Council…wasn’t he?’ The
Council said, ‘What attendant?’
“Gone missing from his home is a man who has been taking
daily the car park fees amounting to about £400. per day for the last
23 years…!
This was too good to pass up. The key section of an offering at
The Reformed Broker (hat tip reader Gonzalo):
The Five Stages of Panic Buying!
Denial (Late March/ Early April)
“Ha, another Bear Market rally…wait til the foreclosure/ new
home sales/ confidence data comes in! Right back to 6500, maybe
lower…bagholders”
“Dude, the stress tests are coming out next
month. B of A may be done-ski. Sell the May 10 calls, you’ll
never have to cover.”
Anger (Mid-April)
“What the f@&% do you mean the goddamn banks are cheap based
on normalized earnings? They will never ever earn anything again,
ever! Idiot!”
“You gotta be kidding me with these retailers
running now. RETAILERS? Are you nuts? They’re FINISHED!”
“If one more consumer discretionary name rallies on a less-than-expected
loss, I’m gonna kick this Bloomberg down a flight of stairs.”
Bargaining (May-June)
“Okay, I can stomach picking up some large cap tech and I’ll
nibble – NIBBLE! – at discount retailers, but I will absolutely
NOT buy Goldman Sachs at 130.”
If China would just pull back
5 to 7% I’d get in, but I can’t chase it here…except Sohu, and
I guess a little Baidu and I’ll just take a quarter position
in China Mobile just in case. But I’m not chasing here.”
“(whispered) Dear market god, please stop the tape. Just
give me one crack at the Nazz and some banks and I will never
doubt the solvency of the US balance sheet or the wisdom of
the Troubled Asset Relief Program ever again.”
Depression (July)
“I can’t believe I missed it. Those D-bags next to me are high-fiving
after every earnings report. Hate those f@&%ing guys.”
“How
could Las Vegas Sands do this to me? I’ve been watching this
stock go up for 900% now. Couldn’t just give me one chance to
get in. I suck.”
Acceptance (Early August)
“That’s it! I don’t give a damn anymore, GET ME IN NOW! Forget
the big ones, they’re already up too much, are there any $5
stocks left that haven’t done anything yet?
“I gotta blow
out this stupid GLD, it does nothing, sick of it and sick of
hearing about inflation. Even Paulson blew it out. Get me some
$2 biotechs and some midwest regional bank stocks, I gotta get
poppin’ over here! We’re going to 10,000 baby!”
“You can lead a conservative corporate treasurer to a low interest
loan to buy back shares, but you need a board approved bonus to
make him do the deed."
civil-disobedience:
“Of course you can make the horsey drink. You just select the
LONG WAY to the water. Horsey will be thirsty. And horsey will drink."
WASHINGTON—Despite ongoing economic woes and a jobless rate that has
been approaching 10 percent, U.S. unemployment projections drastically
improved Monday after the consumption of five beers.
"It's going up," leading economist David Singleton said confidently,
indicating the predicted growth in jobs with an upward wave of a Bud
Light bottle. "All the way up. By the end of the month. No problem."
Singleton said the economy would begin its rebound once employers
realized that there were many currently unemployed skilled laborers
across the country who would "bust their asses" in a number of growing
fields.
"Whether it's manufacturing, finance, hospitality, or manufacturing,
these dudes trying to reenter the workforce right now have awesome skill
sets and, most of all, they really deserve it," he said. "They're great,
great guys. All of them."
According to analysts, both long- and short-term forecasts showed
signs of recovery between the third and fourth beer...
... Reports from those well on their way toward putting away a whole
six pack suggested that unemployed Americans could look forward to increased
job security and much higher salaries. In addition, many half-in-the-bag
analysts said they foresee greater career satisfaction and massive quality-of-life
improvements following the inevitable arrival of new employment opportunities.
"Why should those who've lost work have to live paycheck to paycheck,
doing some miserable wage-slave job a goddamn monkey could do?" said
Donald Ellington, a completely hammered senior adviser at JPMorgan Chase.
"All these layoffs, they're totally a blessing in disguise. Now these
people can do the thing they've always wanted to do. Like becoming a
sportswriter. Or a musician. Or a pilot, even!"
... Joblessness was not the only domestic problem that began to appear
eminently solvable after the rapid downing of five beers. Also substantially
improved were projections for the housing crisis, the affordability
of health care, getting hot wings later, and being able to drive home
just fine.
Though most on their fifth beer showed unbridled optimism—and in
some cases outright cockiness—in terms of the employment landscape,
those who greatly exceeded that number said they saw the current job
market as hopelessly bleak. Contrary to the rosy prospects he had described
earlier in the evening, economist David Singleton, after imbibing nine
beers and an unknown quantity of Wild Turkey, lamented that there would
have to be a comprehensive shift in the nation's entire economic structure
before any lasting improvement could be realized.
the Federal Reserve Chairman’s 2008 salary of $191,300 is less than
half the guaranteed minimum a rookie MLB relief pitcher would get...
the Goldman Sachs equivalent of a waiter’s tip.
Media Management, what Media Management ;-). That's a "Change we can
believe in" -- a complete break with Bush administration traditions :-)
The surprise isn't that Barack Obama reappointed Ben Bernanke. It's
that he announced reappointing Ben Bernanke today. Obama is
on vacation in Martha's Vineyard. It's a rare person who reappoints
the Fed chairman in order to relax.
The following video should make people think twice about listening
to anything that Chairmen of the Fed Ben Bernanke says. It's a compilation
of statements he made from 2005-2007 that will have your head spinning.
Repeating John Hussman: "We continue to expect a fresh acceleration
of credit losses as we enter 2010. It would be best if we faced these
challenges with more thoughtful leadership."
“The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern…American
business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.”
– Julius Barnes, head of Hoover’s National Business
Survey Conference, March 16, 1930
“While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced
we have now passed through the worst — and with continued unity
of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant
bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us.”
“Romer said in an interview on Reuters Television. “I haven’t
seen anything yet about this recession or about what’s happened
to our basic infrastructure, our factories and whatever, that would
lead me to think that we’re in for a period of lower normal growth.”
Could an artist rearrange the sidewalk
outside 85 Broad to look like a pig feed lot where the feed trough
is filled with fake dollars and the biggest pig bears a resemblance
to Lloyd Blankfein? Who would own the copyright and can someone
else copyright Mr Blankfein’s image.
Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, in his capacity as an AIG board
member, actually opposed accepting a Fed rescue. According to Wessel,
Feldstein "said it wasn't the government's role to forcibly buy private
companies." (Apparently Feldstein thought his duty was to his personal
economic philosophy, rather than to the shareholders. What a clown.)
...
...Feldstein was a board member of AIG Financial Products, the part
of the biz that lost all the money.
Hank Paulson, to Geithner and Bernanke, on the possibility of bailing
out Lehman: "I'm being called Mr. Bailout. I can't do it again."
Saturday Night Live nailed it in this mock address by Geithner:
Earlier this week, I reported to you the results of the so-called
stress tests my department ran on the nation’s 19 largest banks.
This was an effort to determine each bank’s fiscal soundness…Tonight,
I would like to reveal to you, the American people, the results
to part 2 of the stress tests, the written exam taken by all 19
banks’ CEOs…. Initially, my department had planned to give each
bank a numerical grade of one to 100, 100 being a perfect score.
But then we decided that might unfairly stigmatize banks who scored
low on the test because they followed reckless lending practices
or were otherwise not good at banking. So we changed to a simple
pass/fail system.
However, on reflection, a few of us felt that system was too
rigid, so we changed it once again, to pass,/pass*. This seemed
less judgmental and more inclusive.
Eventually, at the banks’ suggestion, we dropped the asterisk
and went with a pass/pass system.
Tonight, I am proud to say that after
the written tests were examined, every one of the 19 banks scored
a “pass”. Congratulations, banks!
...the Fed is like an addict who realizes his actions are wrong,
but he continues to do them nonetheless because he is so used to it
and has never learned to do the opposite.
Anonymous said...
9:48 AM
Agree with Anon 9.48 re bloomberg's new CNBC slant. Must have taken
ths fed/GS/illuminati shilling ..
Its all like living in "the Matrix" at the moment. The governing
powers are sucking dry the very lifeforce of the populace for their
own means, all the while providing there comatose bodies with an illusion
of a false reality.
Humor aside, the way GS is making profits (excessive trading and pyramid
lending is nothing but a way to extract cash pumped in by the government
) at the time when economy is in the downturn is perverse and, well, not
entirely honest. The clawback provision in Sarbanes-Oxley should probably
be used on GS executives including Paulson.
July 28, 2006 | Bloomberg
...America stands at a crossroads, and Goldman Sachs now owns both
of them. In choosing which road to take, ordinary Americans must not
be distracted by unproductive resentment toward the toll-takers. To
that end we at Goldman Sachs would like to dispel several false and
insidious rumors.
Rumor No. 1: “Goldman Sachs controls the U.S. government.”
Every time we hear the phrase “the United States of Goldman Sachs”
we shake our heads in wonder. Every ninth-grader knows that the U.S.
government consists of three branches. Goldman owns just one of these
outright; the second we simply rent, and the third we have no interest
in at all. (Note there isn’t a single former Goldman employee on the
Supreme Court.)
What small interest we maintain in the U.S. government is, we feel,
in the public interest. Our current financial crisis has its roots in
a single easily identifiable source: the envy others felt toward Goldman
Sachs.
The bozos at Merrill Lynch, the dimwits at
Citigroup, the nimrods at Lehman Brothers, the louts at Bear Stearns,
even that momentarily useful lunatic
Joe Cassano at AIG -- all of these people took risks that no non-Goldman
person should ever take, in a pathetic attempt to replicate Goldman’s
financial returns.
For too long we have allowed others to emulate us. Now we are working
productively with Treasury Secretary
Tim Geithner and the Congress to ensure that we alone are allowed
to take the sort of risks that might destroy the financial system.
Rumor No. 2: “When the U.S. government bailed out AIG, and paid
off its gambling debts, it saved not AIG but Goldman Sachs.”
... ... ...
Rumor No. 3: “As the U.S. government will eat the losses if Goldman
Sachs goes bust, Goldman Sachs shouldn’t be allowed to keep making these
massive financial bets.
Rumor No. 5: Goldman Sachs is “a
great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly
jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
... ... ...
Those words are of course taken from a recent issue of Rolling Stone
magazine and they are transparently false.
For starters, the vampire squid doesn’t feed on human flesh.
Ergo, no vampire squid would ever wrap itself
around the face of humanity, except by accident. And nothing that happens
at Goldman Sachs -- nothing that Goldman Sachs thinks, nothing that
Goldman Sachs feels, nothing that Goldman Sachs does -- ever happens
by accident.
(Michael
Lewis is a columnist for Bloomberg News and the author of “Liar’s
Poker,” “Moneyball” and “The Blind Side,” soon to be a major motion
picture. The opinions expressed are his own.)
Paul Krugman - a very clever fellow who should never be allowed
to use the word "wonk." (If it is a word)
Brad DeLong - Another clever fellow - unfortunately also a reincarnation
of Savronala. Could stand to be more temperate/mealy mouthed.
Eugene Fama - Who?
Tyler Cowen - A very clever fellow who would be more successful
if he were less concerned with being the coolest kid in the school.
John Cochrane - Eugene Fama's son-in-law. The Fama family's most
useful output: Children's stories.
Greg Mankiw I - Prolific writer of unintelligible but prestigious
textbooks. Good blogger.
Greg Mankiw II - Bottom dwelling Bush admin econo-liar. Not known
to be related to his namesake.
Steven Landsberg - Math/relativity dropout. Also, frequently annoying
twit.
Steven Levitt - Economist with a genius for self-promotion.
Milton Friedmann, John M Keynes, Adam Smith. Members of two famous
economics clubs: G = good economists, D = dead economists. An important
but unproven conjecture holds that G is a subset of D.
Lawrence Summers - Former Harvard President and Treasury Sec. Famed
for his groundbreaking study: "The Economics of Tact."
Wonk - The sound a goose makes as it is sucked into the engine of
an Airbus A-380 personal luxury jet with onboard parking for your Rolls.
A song about fair value (mark-to-market) accounting. Dedicated
to the "courageous" men and women of the Financial Accounting Standards
Board, who watered down fair value accounting in 2009.
The only job worse than dealing with Greenspan's mess is cleaning
up after
Bernanke.
Pity the fool that gets the next
nod. bearly
I scored some tickets from a scalper for the Tour and it cost me
a few Benjamins, but I like to see him in concert with useful idiots
asking all the wrong questions... The rogues go on forever and the story
never ends. Juvenal Delinquent
A good many of you have had the chance to work in your fields of
endeavor with workmates that are book smart, but have no idea how things
really work in the world... Exhibit A: Benjamin Bernanke. Juvenal
Delinquent
Then again... the future doesn't matter
to us outside a narrow horizon of self-interest. Our culture's greatest
accomplishment. ResistanceIsFeudal
I'm thinking a sock puppet could do a better job. It would also
say less stupid things during the re-appointment tour. Which
is worse - bankers or terrorists
I really suggest reading up on the French Revolution, and consider
the weaponry of then vs. now in the arms of a pissed off populace; A
RPG fired into your board room really harshes your mellow.
adornosghost
Proposed set list on the opening tour date:
-Feb Lube
-Helo Bucks
-Zero Bound and Down
-Printers Blues
-Shake Down Sheep
-Plain Vanilla Dollar Swaps
-Gold H8TR
-Thundering Herd (drum solo)
-Another Song about Pain
"You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter." Dick Cheney to
Paul O'Neill
Beat the Press
Does Blinder's thumb-sucking cheerleading for the status quo get
you a tenured position at Princeton and a column in the NYT, or do you
get a tenured position at Princeton and a column in the NYT because
you are a thumb-sucking cheerleader for the status quo?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur came to a
House committee hearing on Thursday prepared to ask U.S. Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson tough questions about his involvement in the subprime
mortgage crisis.
Unfortunately, she was questioning the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
The Ohio Democrat, at a ouse of Representatives Budget Committee
hearing, said she wanted to know what Wall Street firms were responsible
for the securitization of subprime mortgages.
She then asked: "Seeing as how you were the former CEO of Goldman
Sachs ..." But the only person testifying at the hearing interrupted.
"No, no, no, you're confusing me with the Treasury Secretary," said
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
"I've got the wrong firm? Paulson, Oh, OK. Where were you sir?" Kaptur
said.
Bernanke noted that he was head of the Princeton University economics
department.
"Oh, Princeton, oh, all right, sorry. I got you confused with the
other one ... I'm glad you clarified that for the record," she said.
"Let's be honest - we need another bubble. Nothing else will lead
to material economic growth. " Somebody needs to securitize bankers.
Individuals. Base the value of the security on their future earnings.
Be a great ride for the next couple of years. Bob Dobbs
The Cunning Realist has done it
again: he's
uncovered an oldie-but-goodie quote that seems to sum up the analytical
capabilities of at least some of those who are charged with looking
after our nation's economic interests.
"It's a safe banking system, a sound
banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very
manageable situation."
Money can't buy love, but they can buy WaPo authors. For proof, look
no further than Mark Gimein ;-)
Money can't buy love? For proof, look no further than
Goldman Sachs.
Selected comments
Love the title, are you a former Goldman Sach stenographer?.
Whos butt are you kissing?
Goldman, as Matt Taibbi pointed out, is "successful" in the
way the any mafia is successful.
“The problem with [Kleptocratic] Socialism is that eventually
you run out of other peoples money" Margret Thatcher
Even CNBC talking heads are calling out Goldman Sachs. We are
so screwed.
Goldman Sachs (aka "Government" Sachs) are scum -- financial
terrorist that belong at the dock in the Hague. Who but scum would
turn be shorting the very products they have pushed on their customers?
after all, Joseph
Stiglitz is as much of the economics discipline, if not more, than
Eugene Fama.
Selected comments
Charles N. Steele
I had a good laugh when I heard that AER has offered authors
with papers scheduled for publication the chance to withdraw them
if they predict a strong economy -- and no one accepted. Getting
published is more important than getting it right.
The macro profession failed to see the crisis coming, and I think
it's because modern macro is indeed an apparatus, a body of techniques
that's first of all for tackling academic puzzles and publishing,
rather than a body of theory that deals with the behavior of real
humans in any important way. Summers' "The Scientific Illusion in
Modern Macro" deserves a re-reading.
Jobless Jack is up and running (er, falling) for your viewing pleasure
and employment tips. Take a lesson from Goldman Sachs and learn all
about bailouts and recession fun!
And what was the most enlightening snippet of crisis-related
information Henry Paulson, former US Treasury Secretary, revealed to
some very hostile US House of Representatives?
The fact that he never used email while in office.
Here’s the exchange between Congresswoman Jackie Speier and Henry
Paulson:
JS: Do you use email?
HP: Do I use email? No, I don’t use it, personally.
JS: You don’t use it personally or professionally?
HP: I just don’t. I’ve never used it for any business communications,
I just never use it.
JS: So while you were Treasury secretary you never used email?
JS: How did you communicate with people?
HP: Telephone?
In the past Reptilicans and Sociocrats
were so evenly matched that the American economy was in a constant state
of schizophrenia, never quite committing itself to one failed philosophy
or the other. The irony was that somewhere in between was about as good
as it gets for America.
Now that Reptilicans have committed ritual
self-immolation Sociocrats finally have the stage all
to themselves and will predictably proceed to hang themselves in a few
years at the end of their tired, 20th century socialist cliches.
What then? Perhaps in two or three years the pain will have grown
so great that the blinders will finally fall from the average Americans'
eyes and they'll see their true problem for what it is . . . that their
society has been saddled with so many public and private sacred cows
that it can't possibly compete and provide jobs until
No-one can deny that the United States, for all its financial follies,
is a rich country. It turns out that it is possible to be corrupt
in a fundamental way and still be rich.
"For a firm that probably would have collapsed without government
capital, debt guarantees and fast-track approval to turn itself
into a commercial bank (not to mention a multibillion-dollar payout
as a counterparty of American International Group), such largesse
is cheeky at best, distasteful at worst."
The key is to keep your torso well clear of the "blood funnel" of
Goldman Sucks.
In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal
in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today
that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
According to Goldman spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between
Goldman and the Treasury Department is “a good fit” because “they’re
in the business of printing money and so are we.”
The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies
for both entities: “We already have so many employees and so much money
flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things.”
Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing
the merger “is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept.
we don’t already own.”
Goldman recently celebrated record earnings by roasting a suckling
pig over a bonfire of hundred-dollar bills.
Elsewhere, conspiracy theorists celebrated the 40th anniversary
of NASA faking the moon landing.
And in South Carolina, Gov. Mark Sanford gave his wife a new diamond
ring, while his wife gave him an electronic ankle bracelet.
Selected Comments
I’m not sure GS wants to pay Timmy’s overdue tax bills…leftback
This is obviously a fictional story. Why would Goldman Sachs
pay for something they already own?? Dave
Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department
Big mistake. A classic case of over expansion. Overhead will
just explode. Try as they might, they just won’t be able to spin
anything off. This will just kill their bottom line. They should
just put the ego aside and let Tim and B.O. think they still run
things. Sure they will have to eat a little shit now and then, but
if it gets too rough they can hire a flunky to stand out in front
and do it.
This the craziest story I have ever heard. Goldman should just
wait until China takes the US into bankrupcy court, then pick off
the best assets for pennies on the dollar (or yuan). jeffgronwol
Timmy, is probably licking his lips in anticipation of a pay
raise and bonuses. Pat G.
What’s good for General Goldman is good for the USA!
But wouldn’t this be just another blow to the separation of
powers as envisioned by the founding fathers? After all GS, already
owns the US Congress.
I ran into another Harvard student who recently had lunch with Ken
Rogoff. Rogoff is telling students the following anecdote. Apparently
Rogoff is involved in some way with the American Economics Review.
(I couldn't find him on their web site, so some of the details in
this story may need to be checked. But the student in question is
not the type to make serious exaggerations.)
The AER has a backlog
of two to three years between when papers are submitted and when
they appear in print. Some of the papers currently in the pipeline,
submitted before the crisis broke, predicted that the U.S. or global
economy would remain prosperous and stable for many years to come.
Rogoff wrote to all of these authors, asking them if they would
like to withdraw their articles or at least modify them. All refused.
Consequently, for something like the next three years, the AER
will interleave articles explaining why the crisis occurred with
articles explaining why the crisis could not occur.
...new oracle of wall street and as a means to bring
all religions together under one brokerage
Playboy pictorials work wonders for reviving the careers of spent
actresses. Maybe something can be figured out here … The Girls of CNBC?
“Who is Goldman’s CDS counterparty for their CIT hedges?” AIG would
be really ironic.
Of course Goldman has no material exposure to CIT. They’ve got no
“material exposure” to any fucking thing. What part of socialized losses
and privatized profits don’t we understand? Where have I heard that
no material exposure line before? Oh that’s right:
http://www.marketwatch.com/m/story/c177ea75-3eb8-4631-b1ec-6ebae68cdcb7/0
No material exposure to AIG either apparently? I thought they had 19
Billion of exposure that taxpayers coughed up for.
Isn’t accounting fun?
Roubini has overstayed his 15 minutes of fame ...
call me ahab Says:
Tyler Durden-
funny stuff- so . . . you are implying there is a connection
between sponsors and coverage?-
hmmm . . . implying they are shills? . . . hmm . . . but Dennis
Kneale is legit- right? And Cramer is a market genius - right?
too early in the morning too have all my illusions shattered
Jul 16 |
FT Alphaville Matt Taibbi’s
description of Goldman Sachs being ” a great vampire squid wrapped
around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into
anything that smells like money” seems to have really captured the world’s
attention (at least if this Google
news search is anything to go by).
A successful thief can be hard working, innovative and
a leader in the field and make a lot on money but is still a thief
JimVinFalz 15 Jul 09, 2:35pm
From that socialist rag, The Economist:
"For a firm that probably would have collapsed without government
capital, debt guarantees and fast-track approval to turn itself
into a commercial bank (not to mention a multibillion-dollar
payout as a counterparty of American International Group), such
largesse is cheeky at best, distasteful at worst."
The key is to keep your torso well clear of the "blood funnel"
of Goldman Sucks.
This should prove a challenging week on the PR front for us at Goldman
Sachs. There are a few situations surfacing for which appropriate clarification
will provide you sufficient context in the event that the inevitable
questions arise. We also have a couple of suggestions.
... ... ...
On other matters, thank you for keeping those lovable and sleepy
bureaucrats at the SEC off our backs. We also have to express our sincere
gratitude for leaving the AIG dogs to die without clamor. Our involvement
was very profitable, but if it had surfaced too visibly, the exposure
would have been embarrassing. Our boy Tim is pretty slick isn't he?
He left all the folks in place at AIG who rode that trick pony over
the abyss. Amazing talent. Keep him in the job for another year, or
two, won't you? Make sure the billions in bailout checks are cashed
before sending him to Paris as ambassador. We need to make sure our
friends on the Street are still standing. Competition is good for us,
to a certain extent. The smaller fish keep prying eyes busy.
On a sadder note, we feel really bad for the Iceland economic implosion,
but hey, we didn't force them to buy our derivative packages. We sell
what we can to make money. They had cash that needed to find a home,
and we obliged.
We should point out that operating speculative derivative or futures
markets outside the bounds of national or international oversight is
fundamentally critical and necessary given the world we now live in.
How else could we possibly continue to take advantage of events and
situations around the globe unfolding at lightning speed and impacting
the fluctuations in such things as commodities or financial instruments.
You can get more background on this from Tim, but being nimble in a
rapidly changing environment is critical to success. Nothing moves faster
than money flowing over electronic waves. Agility is part of our very
survival.
Like one commenter noted "government is of Goldman Sachs (GS), for GS
and by GS". Reminds me famous quote "This is far and away the strongest
global economy I've seen in my business lifetime."
--Hank Paulson
soberly planning for contingencies, July 12, 2007.
"I know of many rats (no pun intended) in the pension industry who
I suspect took kickbacks and used fraudulent accounting to "juice up"
their returns. There is an old Greek saying, "he who has honey on his
fingers, can't help licking them."
A clown playing a role of "nonsense for a long run" professor is a nice
match to a clown playing a role of financial talk show host , "an
impersonation of the late Phil Hartman doing a caricature of a financial
talking head."
maybe you should remind J. Siegel that if “Juanito” had defaced
UPenn signage the way his ‘works’ have blemished the Quakers reputation,
he’d be in Jail.. with that, you should ask him if feels fortunate
for the Tan he’s sporting..
Sorry Barry…watching you on Larry K’s show would mean I would
have to watch Larry K from 4:00 to 4:05 Pacific, which is about
5 minutes longer than the maximum Kudlow exposure allowed under
the Geneva Convention.
... I could not resist asking Wells Fargo Bank NA why it filed a
civil complaint against itself in a mortgage foreclosure case in
Hillsborough County, Fla.
...
In this particular case, Wells Fargo holds the first and second
mortgages on a condominium, according to Sarasota, Fla., attorney
Dan McKillop, who represents the condo owner.
As holder of the
first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including the
holder of the second, which is itself.
... court documents clearly label "Wells Fargo Bank NA" as the
plaintiff and "Wells Fargo Bank NA" as a defendant.
Wells Fargo hired Florida Default Law Group., P.L., of Tampa,
Fla., to file the lawsuit against itself.
And then Wells Fargo hired another Tampa law firm -- Kass, Shuler,
Solomon, Spector, Foyle & Singer P.A. -- to defend itself against
its own lawsuit, according to court documents.
Wells Fargo's defense lawyers even filed an answer to their client's
own complaint.
"Defendant admits that it is the owner and holder of a mortgage
encumbering the subject real property," the answer reads. "All other
allegations of the complaint are denied."
"The employers and the states want near 90-100% output for 70-80%
pay. A good deal for them. This is will turn into permanent pay
structures over time. Second-world, here comes the USA."
And the employees on reduced salaries and wages buy 90-100%?
Time for an Orwell quote: ""If you want a vision of the future,
imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.""
Jim Cramers Next Donut:
Joe Goodpay: Hey, Neighbor Bob! How's it going?
Neighbor Bob: Pretty good. Just found out our
bank lopped
sixty large off our mortgage balance. Seems they're nervous about
us maybe trying to walk.
Joe Goodpay: Ya don't say? Why would they think that?
Neighbor Bob: Probably 'cause we haven't made a payment since
last October.
Joe Goodpay: Wow. Sixty grand, huh?
Neighbor Bob: Yep.
Credit's dinged, sure, but I reckon we can deal with that.
Free
money's free money.
Joe Goodpay: Right. Well, see you later, Bob. Gotta catch the
wife before she writes that next mortgage check!
Could Obama shut up or say something like "Geither, Summers and
Rubin are telling me all is OK, Bernanke agrees with them"
Rohrschach Job Test?
Government spending: Food stamps, extended unemployment and war
...
Amazing how historical data, estimates, and correlates wind up being
an economic Law. Hubris, meet Nemesis.
As unemployed people buy less imported goods, that pushes GDP up
Disempowered Paper Pusher, Reading too much Ayn Rand?
NET NET: Okun's law is irrelevant Well, even Isaac Newton's formulation
of Gravitational Law worked until you got to an area that needed a relativistic
interpretation. Okun didn't account for the intense perturbations caused
by circling a black hole, or
credit expanding at the speed of light.
Obama hails Africa's promise...Hmmm is that why he promised $63B
when this country is broke ?
I am not sure the military couldn't do a better job than the idiots
in Washington. I think a trained Gibbon could frankly
So, say we have 50% unemployment, does that mean we have a 100%
decrease in output? Does that mean that half of the economy is being
paid to do nothing?
~~~~~
No but it would be close to zero while the riots/ revolution happens
....
Imagine if Wall Street was Las Vegas in the 50's, these cats would
have ended up either dead in shallow graves or beaten bloody and dumped
out into the desert, i.e. get out of town.
If you were taking votes, the stock market has given the near future
a "thumbs down" for the economy.
Despite the efforts of Geithner/Summers, this House of Cards cannot
be rebuilt. It is time to hit reset.
“But the trouble is that he had been an Ayn Rander.
You can take the boy out of the cult but
you can’t take the cult out of the boy. “ (Paul Samuelson
on Alan Greenspan)
Please cease referring to Alan
Stanford as "a Financier".
If your prose is feeling naked and you are looking for an appropriate
job description might I suggest "Ponzista", "Contrapreneur", "Confidence
Man", "Trickster", "Financial Huckster" "Snake-Oil Salesman", or "Pathological
Liar", Barricuda, Bilker, Bunco, Cheater, Clip Artist, Crook, Deceiver,
Fleecer, Flimflammer, Fraudster, Hoser, Hustler, Mountebank, Scam Artist,
Scammer, Shark, Sharpie, Smoothie, Swindler, or Antiguan Anti-Christ.
Should you feel these tags a tad premature (editorially-speaking),
do not hesitate to preface it with "alledged", or for those willing
to go out (but not too for out) on a limb, "likely".
1. Formulate comprehensive plan
2. Generate community enthusiasm
3. Get 'buy in' from industry/government/UN/Vatican etc
4. Use mass media to create public awareness
5. Form action committees and grant structures
6. Develop legislation and lobby parliaments
7. Secure corporate sponsorships
8. Execute pilot programs
9. Publish papers, present results at conferences
10.WATCH THE COLLAPSE!
She cunningly forgot the unemployment rate and the fact that California,
NY, New Jersey and couple of other prosperous states that are on edge of
bankruptcy... Goldman Sacks probably was shooting the rally at the
moment she made her bold prediction. But I think that even completely
brainwashed 401K lemmings became a little bit more realistic after the recent
carnage... In the meantime, earnings forecasts are being trimmed
steadily for the balance of the year. In fact, forward P/E multiple of 15x
operating and 30x on reported EPS are not that compelling. So, we do not
have a strong valuation argument. We do not have a strong earnings argument.
May 1 (Bloomberg) -- The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may
jump 20 percent to 1,050 over the next six to 12 months as investors
buy stocks trading at low valuations, said Abby Joseph Cohen,
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s senior investment strategist.
Lucifer (profile) wrote on Wed, 7/1/2009 - 1:57 am
A hedge fund manager calling others greedy.. my irony meter just
overloaded!
________________________________________________________________
Madoff Investors 'Greedy': Hendry
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31652780
By: CNBC.com | 30 Jun 2009 | 04:52 AM ET
People who invested with Bernard Madoff were greedy and happy
to accept high returns without probing too much in the way these
were achieved, Hugh Hendry, chief investment officer at hedge fund
Eclectica, told CNBC Tuesday.
broward,
you might get a kick out of this one.
______________________________________
How to Collaborate with Your Contractors
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/harvardbusiness?sid=H8374319fe11083fda005f...
04:27 PM Monday June 29, 2009
By John Baldoni
The other day a good friend of mine called to express the frustration
he was feeling about working with his current IT vendor. My friend
is in the pre-launch phase of an e-commerce start up and he was
discouraged with the lack of progress the vendor is making. He was
tempted to pull the plug on the project and award it to someone
else. Entrepreneurs feeling frustrated with subcontractor work is
nothing new. I know of another start-up executive who is expressing
similar feelings about a manufacturing vendor.
broward (homepage, profile) wrote on Wed, 7/1/2009 - 2:03
am How to Collaborate with Your Contractors
--------
My experience is a lot of dishonesty in consulting.... on both
sides.
I tried to get out in 2006 but after six months of unemployment,
I took another contracting job.
It's like being typecast in acting.
The United States runs on dishonesty and denial.
I've seen the real extent of it over the past few years.
Lucifer (profile) wrote on Wed, 7/1/2009 - 2:08 am
It always has.. it just happens that now we cannot keep on going
down that road.
Ponzi schemes require an ever increasing amount of fresh recruits..
demography has sealed that avenue.
//The United States runs on dishonesty and denial.
I've seen the real extent of it over the past few years.//
Which is worse - bankers or terrorists (profile) wrote on
Wed, 7/1/2009 - 2:06 am
No, Broward, the US runs on oil. But that is about to change....
hans (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Wed, 7/1/2009 - 3:13 am
I think this country has talent, but maybe not enough....
One of the differences I've noticed between say a foreign engineer
and an American one, is American ones tend to be much more creative
and adaptable. It might just be the way people are raised here,
maybe all that emphasis on creativity and art and such in high school
compared to most Asian countries is paying off.
That said, the problem with this country is people do not want
to be engineers. It is a difficult job in general, and requires
far more work than say trading derivative paper around (I know far
more people involved in finance from my high school... than who
went into engineering).
Most of the people you have in my field (software dev , 6 years
out of college, which puts me in a similar situation as you) love
the field. But a lot of them uh aren't that talented. There are
probably people who trade derivatives who love engineering and have
even more innate talent who just let the idea of getting filthy
rich get to them and went that way. I mean thats a much easier career
path. College in that field is much more fun and easy. It is very
very very tempting (hell I knew people who switched to business
or econ majors from engineering, you really had to like it to stay
I guess). My cousin wanted to be a chemist , but he thought that
business would be more lucrative and now he works in client support
at some retirement fixed income fund (customer support basically
but it pays more than you'd think). He was prodded in that direction
by 2 of my other cousins who are derivatives brokers for Goldman
and Barclays. The influence of what is considered a high return
on investment career path can derail tons of people from engineering.
I think if the country destroys the financial incentive for smart
people (who might even have a passion for say chemistry or electronics)
to go into the FIRE jobs maybe we could be back on the right track.
America has a lot of ingenuity, and plenty of talent. We just have
to steer people back into where we need them , we definitely don't
need people in banking. China does it by force. India does it because
engineering pays A LOT there relatively.
w10949 (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Wed, 7/1/2009 -
3:43 am
One of the differences I've noticed between say a foreign engineer
and an American one, is American ones tend to be much more creative
and adaptable. It might just be the way people are raised here,
maybe all that emphasis on creativity and art and such in high school
compared to most Asian countries is paying off.
As a European working for US corp firms for last 12 years. My
perspective is that the biggest issue I see working with Americans
is that there is too much focus on the positive and too little reality
in projects, issues and problems get buried and small successes
get puffed up massively. There is a
'stated' culture of openness but no one ever wants to hear bad news.
The reality is openness as long as its positive.
On a cultural side there is always lots of talk of cultural awareness
but in the background you get constant sniping around difficulties
in making redundancies and changes in Europe without employee consultation.
You can argue the rights and wrongs of this but you don't open the
business up without knowing the situation.
Business is run on a hunger and burst basis, its either
massive bloated expansion or huge cuts. Its like a constant corporate
bubble, inflating then deflating then inflating.....in fact corporate
life is like the US in miniature.
Denise Hubbard, I wish it were that simple. The cause runs much
deeper than ignorance. The insiders including many who are supposed
to be protecting the American public know exactly what they are
doing. The SEC will do what they have historically done - not a
damn thing.
Basel - "Erin Burnett was trying to justify the increased salaries at
Citi by saying it was needed to "protect" the government's investment,
so we couldn't let C fail via brain drain." Honestly? Has she moved
to SNL?
A bit of preemptive brain drain might head of pretending the gangrene
was a few surface lesions.
Don't cry for Ken Lewis or the board of Bank of America, though,
as their cries of coercion ring hollow. Crooks as victims, that's rich.
I remember a picture from the front of The Economist I think
that showed Greenspan handing off to Bernanke a stick of dynamite in
a track relay. Written on the dynamite was the word "Economy".
Here is how I look at this: the more daring these criminals become
in their current feeding frenzy, the more of their heads will roll off
the guillotine
Ahead of Bernanke's 10am testimony on the Bofa-Merrill deal where
he and Paulson are being accused of strong arming Ken Lewis to follow
thru with the deal on its original terms, it hit me the striking similarity
in looks that Bernanke has with Frank Pentangeli (without the beard),
the character in Godfather II that went to Congress to testify against
Michael Corleone:
[Jun 26, 2009] Now we can guess why the governor of SC does not need
any stimulus: he got his from Argentina
No wonder Stanford said he didn't need any stimulus.
Not only did Gov. Sanford have an affair, he outsourced it.
Used to be it was mainly Dem office-holders who had the sex scandals.
Republicans in office and in the administration were these square, balding
guys who served the interests of big business but never got caught with
their pants down.
Lucifer:"Ya.. underage boys and gay escorts are a careeerkiller for
politicians."
-----------------------------------
But you can change careers and get a front row seat (and get picked
often to ask questions) at the white house press conferences.
There was a wonderful story in
today's
WSJ about how some big banks managed to lose some of their hard-earned
TARP money.
Let me begin with a little background. A
credit default swap is sometimes described as an insurance contract
written against the possibility of default of a particular underlying
asset. If I buy a CDS and the specified asset defaults, I get to collect
money from whoever sold me the contract. If I also have a long position
in the asset in question, I might consider buying a CDS written against
that asset as an insurance or hedge against the possibility that the
asset loses its value.
But I don't actually have to own the asset in question in order to
buy a CDS from somebody else. I might want to buy a CDS as a partial
hedge against some other asset I hold with which the specified security
could be correlated. Or maybe I just feel like making a bet with somebody
I think is dumber than I am.
The fun and games begin when multiple contracts get written on a
single credit event and the notional value of outstanding contracts
on that event-- the total amount of money that is promised to be paid
to the buyers of those CDS in the event of a default on the underlying
asset-- becomes larger than the par value of the underlying asset itself.
Then it would clearly pay the party who sold those contracts to buy
the underlying asset itself at par, relieve the original debtors of
their burdensome obligations, and be out only $X (the underlying event)
rather than some multiple of $X (all the contracts written on the event).
And so the
WSJ
recounts the tale of a security based on $29 million (par) worth
of subprime loans in California, half of which were already delinquent
or in default. Betting that the loans weren't worth $29 million sounds
like easy money, and the smart guys were willing to pay 80 to 90 cents
for each dollar of CDS insurance.
It appears from the WSJ account as if little Amherst Holdings of
Austin, Texas was happy to sell the big guys like J.P. Morgan Chase,
Royal Bank of Scotland, and Bank of America something like $130 million
notional CDS on a $27 million credit event, used the proceeds to buy
off and make good the underlying subprime loans, and pocketed $70 million
or so for their troubles. The big guys, on the other hand, paid perhaps
a hundred million and got back zip.
Said big guys, naturally, are screaming bloody murder, trying to
bring in the lawyers to show that Amherst wasn't playing by the rules
of the game.
For my money, the first rule we need would be a law, not a rule,
that notional not exceed actual.
Barring that, here's another rule I trust: a fool and his money are
soon parted.
The NAR and NAMB have the ethics of Taiwanese pimps selling 10 year
olds girls to the sex tourist trade. To say these shameless whores disgust
me is to understate the issue . . .
Fools and their money will be
separated.
Reminds me of the old Marxism (Groucho, that is):
“Who are you going to believe — me, or your own lying eyes?”
To fully reflect current "inalienable rights," a New Bill of Rights
should be added to the U.S. Constitution.
Given the mindsets which dominate American culture, a New Bill
of Rights should be added to the U.S. Constitution to reflect our additional
"inalienable rights." While the original
United States Bill of Rights addressed basic liberties, it simply
doesn't cover various financial and global rights which are now implicit
in 21st century America.
Here are my proposed New Rights:
... ... ...
Amendment Three: The Right to Borrow From Other Nations
The rights of the Nation to borrow unlimited sums of money from other
nations shall not be restricted by matters of finance, debt or international
law.
Amendment Four: The Right to Cheap Goods
The rights of the people to buy commodities and manufactured goods from
other nations at low prices shall be inviolate. (Also known as the "what's
our oil doing under your land?" amendment.)
Amendment Five: The Right to Rising Real Estate
That real estate valuations shall always rise is a fundamental right
of the people, and the Government is hereby ordered to move Heaven and
Earth to insure this right.
Amendment Six: The Right to a Fiat Currency Which Does Not Fall
to Zero
Though all fiat currencies are doomed to fall to zero valuation, it
is the right of the Nation and its people to exchange U.S. fiat currency
(dollars) for tangible goods without limit.
Uncle Bernie Madoff as the face of Mr Market is not inaccurate at
this time.
Don’t underestimate the stupidity of the American people -- this
time around
While most drunken idiots would have no trouble seeing a bubble
in formation, our best and brightest disagree.
The market can be expected to fool nearly all
of the people nearly all of the time. This is a game where the many
losers fund the outsized gains of the few winners. And the winners
have nothing going for them other than dumb, stupid luck.
And the crap about not being able to recognizing
bubble before hand: a 2 year old would have recognized the last 2 bubbles.
Actually, I love hearing new terms that clever
“TBP” bloggers toss out…My current favorites…
“Green Chutes”
& “Presstitutes”
.. all the Reaganites, Bushmeisters , and Supply Sliders (sic intentional)
are in denial mode
The phenomenon that’s being called “liquidity” is nothing more than
a combination of fiscal irresponsibility and risk blindness
Peer pressure.. in the old days peer pressure only made to you smoke,
drink and do drugs.. Now it makes you buy interest rate swaps,
What about the infamous group of 19... The financial institutions
(not the hijackers)
It is a crime only if your caught.. or black. Otherwise, the
victim gets a "the world is not fair" speech. //Failure to disclose
a material event on a timely basis. Opens the door wide to insider trading.//
I think what Hillary said about Obama during the primaries is probably
true: "he makes good speeches".... I can imagine him singing " anything
Bill can do I can do better" and that applies to the "slick Willie"
title.
the notion of V-shaped recoveries -- especially after what we've
been through -- is one of Wall Street's favorite (unfulfilled) fantasies.
Obama knows Wall St is already “FIXED”. What more could he do?
“Politics is a dirty, dishonest,
self serving business - it always has been, and always will
be. Anyone who doesn’t understand that and thought that things
would change all that much with Obama being elected is sorely
out of touch with reality.”
Sounds like the soft bigotry of
low expectations to me. Quite frankly, I’m tired of it.
Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, quoted one critic’s view that giving
the central bank more power was like awarding a son a “bigger, faster
car right after he crashed the family station wagon.” He added that
he hadn’t made a conclusion on the issue.
No doubt you are already aware of the wild stories circulating in
response to the news that two Japanese nationals were caught trying
to smuggle some $134 billion in U.S. Government bearer bonds into Switzerland
from Italy. Since the Secret Service seems a bit slow in addressing
the issue (What's the problem? Haven't you hired an undersecretary of
Secret Service motivation yet? Couldn't you get Agent Frank Horrigan
out of retirement and send him on special assignment or something?)
and the Italians change their story about the instruments almost as
often as they change governments, we thought you might benefit from
some of our analysis.
Obviously, with respect to authenticity, there are three options:
1. All the documents are fake.
2. Some of the documents are fake.
3. None of the documents are fake.
wtf
$134 billion only? That's like children playing. (Hint to Yusuf,
they play in Italy my friend).
You see, those two "Japanese" got beat by 4 guys in Denver in 2002.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Four busted in $250B bond scam
Denver Business Journal - by Paula Moore
On Oct. 10, federal agents in metro Denver broke up a sting operation
to sell bogus bearer bonds represented as worth $250 billion.
A deal to sell 250 bonds, supposedly with a face value of $1 billion
each, was to have been concluded in Denver on Oct. 9, according to a
U.S. District Court filing in Denver.
Officials at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver were unavailable
for comment.
The dealers arranged to sell the bonds via a California company called
Concord Capital Ltd. to a Greenwood Village-based company called NCO/Capstone
Consulting, a fake company created by federal agents. NCO agreed to
pay $100 million for the 250 bonds, according an agreement between the
parties.
At Wednesday's meeting to consummate the deal, U.S. Customs and Secret
Service agents arrested the brokers. They are: Johnny Tal of Agoura
Hills, Calif., also called Yoni; Stephen M. Feldman of Encino, Calif.;
Nathan A. Bickley of Dallas, Texas; and Jerry J. Tidmore, address unknown.
The four are charged with one count each of attempting to sell fraudulent
securities. If convicted, each faces 25 years in prison and $250,000
in fines.
The government learned of the dealers in June of this year, when
the U.S. Customs Service got a tip that Feldman was trying to broker
the sale of fake Federal Reserve bearer bonds.
Bearer bonds are a type of bond not registered on the books of the
issuer. Their owner holds them and gets interest payments by detaching
coupons from the bond certificate, and delivering them to the paying
agent.
A customs agent then went undercover as a representative of NCO/Capstone,
and Feldman allegedly tried to sell him bogus bonds supposedly valued
at more than $1 trillion. In July, the undercover agent offered Feldman
$100 million for the fake bonds and was turned down.
Tal, saying he was client of Feldman's named Yoni, then allegedly
contacted the agent in September, and said he would sell $25 billion
worth of bonds for $100 million, according to the court filing. "Yoni"
supposedly told the agent he had a company called Concord Capital and
that he formerly was with the Israeli Secret Service.
Clearly, your chart selection is faulty. You need to either find
charts with “green shoots” in them or you need to manually paint “green
shoots” lines over the graphs to render them all good and green shooty.
"as a profession, economics not only
has nothing to say about what caused the world to come to the brink
of financial collapse last autumn, but also a supreme lack of interest"
When Hank Paulson, who played football at
Dartmouth, sought to redo the financial regulatory
system back in March 2008, he described the Federal Reserve
as the “free safety” in the system. Now Larry Summers,
who didn’t play football at MIT,
is
taking on the same chore — and using the same metaphor.
Paulson insisted, though, that the Fed would have sufficient
power to act as needed. A onetime Dartmouth College football standout,
Paulson likened the central bank’s new role to that of a “free safety,”
roaming the field.
–
USA Today, April 1, 2008
The administration backed Paulson’s decision in June 2007 to
launch an elaborate program to create a new “Blueprint for Regulatory
Reform.” It proposed streamlining regulations, and a new role for
the Federal Reserve as overall “market stability regulator,” with
an assignment Paulson likens to that of a roving free safety in
football.
–
Washington Post, July 18, 2008
In a world where financial innovation is, for good reason, pervasive
and where market conditions constantly change, public regulatory
authorities need to have the ability to perform what might be compared
to the “free safety” function in football: taking a holistic view
of the playing field, identifying gaps, pointing to unsustainable
trends, and raising questions about new kinds of interactions.
–
Larry Summers, June 12, 2009
When the nonsensical economic policy being followed by President Obama
— namely “continuity and confidence” — turns to dust later this year, President
Obama will be lucky to have Sheila Bair available to pick up the pieces.
And when Bair goes to China to meet with our largest foreign creditor as
the first female Secretary of the Treasury, the people in the audience will
not laugh openly. See Bob Kuttner’s piece from last October:
“Sheila Bair for Treasury Secretary.”
It all comes down to one question: do you want the blue pill or
the pink pill?
The big banks are not just zombies. Right now, they are incompetent
zombies as well.
If Reagan’s no-money-down mortgages’re the sort of financial innovation
you don’t approve of… well you can cancel my subscription to this blog
immediately… if not sooner.
This reminds one of the article about Brooksley Born(sp) that was
linked to on this site a while back. Where it told how Bob Rubin wanted
to back her down and she would not, They legislated her powers away.
The two main men in that, they testified in front of the subcommitee,
were Al (the fool) Greenspan & Larry (the tool) Summers. why haven’t
both of them been exiled.
""The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled,
public
debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be
tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should
be
curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work,
instead of living on public assistance." - Cicero - 55 BC"
pavel.chichikov (homepage, profile) wrote on Thu, 6/11/2009 - 8:10 pm
An incessant and unlimited piling up of wealth at last becomes irrational
and without purpose. If in the end our society is based on this and
on momentary pleasure it too is irrational and without purpose.
And in the end it turns on itself in an act of self-destruction. The
snake eating its own tail.
credit default swaps are indeed the realm of the absurd. What perverse
accounting standards gave birth to these crazy financial instruments
from OZ? One group of college educated, but real world ignorant, pinstriped
suit wearing, concrete canyon living boneheads generates a 200 page
contract to insure a bundle of notes on some real estate they have never
seen, and they negotiate said contract with another group of college
educated, pinstriped suit wearing, concrete canyon living boneheads...
all for the purpose of gaming some accounting guideline. And the boneheads
get paid seven figure bonuses for doing that, and the boneheads actually
think they deserve the seven figure bonuses, but they are too obtuse
to realize it is blood money.
[Jun 12, 2009] "Money is better than poverty, if only for financial
reasons." —Woody Allen
What's funny is that this was stated after "McMurray gave an almost
academic presentation that included 29 slides packed with graphics and charts
on the risks and causes of mortgage delinquency. He explained how larger
loans, lower credit scores, higher loan-to-value ratios, and less required
documentation from loan applicants were coinciding with greater delinquency,
wrote Cabray Haines, who summarized the conference for the Chicago Fed Letter.
“Borrowers have more choices and greater access to credit; lenders
and investors are better able to measure and manage risk; and,
because of the dispersion of financial risks
to those more willing and able to bear them, the economy and the financial
system are more resilient,” Bernanke said, according
to a transcript of his speech.
Chairman Bernandke,
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s annual conference
on bank structure and competition
May 18, 2006
How about a bit of reality? Not the ridiculous promises from Washington:
the absurd talk of "green shoots" while unemployment soars and investment
falls; the silly guarantees that GM has a bright future, even as its
stock price falls to less than the price of a Snickers bar; the nonsense
about how if we spend more and inflate more, recovery will come tomorrow
morning.
As we reported
here, Geithner’s attempts to reassure Beijing authorities that the
US government was still upholding a strong US dollar policy were met
with loud laughter by an audience of students at Peking university.
This fact, apparently, went mostly unreported among the US press
according to Gartman. As he surmises:
The utter and harsh reality of the US present fiscal circumstance
is that the world is laughing at the Obama Administration’s handling
of it. Mr. Geithner is the global vicar of the US fiscal
policy, and never, ever in our lifetime have we seen or heard of
a US Treasury Secretary being laughed at… until now. It is one thing
to be derided; it is entirely another to be laughed at, and the
US is now being laughed at.
...an economist will forcefully express the view that the only meaningful
goal of the rational business executive is the maximization of his own
profits. But, even that is not going to ring true to anyone who has
ever experienced a situation where he had to put his son-in-law in a
business.
—Stephen M. Axinn, "A lawyer's response," Antitrust Law
Journal 52(3), September 1983, p. 647.
[Jun 6, 2009] Is there insider trading on Wall Street? Do Germans drink
beer?
600K new filings each week and records levels of continuing claims,
9.4% unemployment rate, a U-6 of over 16.4% and they post 345K lost.
Who the hell is running the show at the BLS? Baghdad Bob?
Rajesh Says:
Birth/death model added 220k jobs: I guess a lot of Chrysler workers
suddenly opened up new businesses. Who knew they were such go-getters.
“Either cuts in spending or increases in taxes will be necessary
to stabilize the fiscal situation,” said Ben Bernanke in response to
a question posed by a member of Congress. Then, he added…
“The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.”
That last sentence has a ring to it. It reminds us of Richard Nixon’s
“I am not a crook.” Surely, it is destined to make its way into the
history books, alongside Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that
woman” and the builder of the Titanic’s “even God himself couldn’t sink
this ship.”
Travellers - Don't laugh. I thought they were owned by Citi? But
I, like the majority of the US pay no attention to banks. That's just
were I park my money right?
Since 1994, fourteen of the thirty dow components have been replaced.
This is how i know we are a stupid nation.
Yeah, what's the difference? There's no requirement that a Dow component
have profits or a business plan, is there?
...our bet on EU and US unemployment rates, which was that the combined
rates of unemployment and incarceration in the US would exceed those
in the EU over the next ten years.
After nearly four months of frank, honest, and open dialogue about
the failing economy, a weary U.S. populace announced this week that
it is once again ready to be lied to about the current state of the
financial system.Tired of hearing the grim truth about their economic
future, Americans demanded that the bald-faced lies resume immediately,
particularly whenever politicians feel the need to divulge another terrifying
problem with Wall Street, the housing market, or any one of a hundred
other ticking time bombs everyone was better off not knowing about.
In addition, citizens are requesting that the phrase, “It will only
get worse before it gets better,” be permanently replaced with, “Things
are going great. Enjoy yourselves.”
As far as I can tell the formula
for consumer confidence is pretty simple:
Cc = Stock Prices - Gas Prices
In some cases the oil thieves and the naked shorts were the
same people.
It’s all a scam by a limited number of people with huge resources
to pump the market and suck in the gullible. The SEC apparently
doesn’t care.
Oh yeah, end of month, someone had to make their numbers. Monday
is a new month.
Wow. Major Phat Phinger trading, that is interesting.
Well….let’s see…the US$ tanked and the Ten Year bond suddenly
found support into a nice technical target….I’m guessing we get
some sort of “surprise” announcement from the Fed that they intend
to piss into the wind some more and buy even more government debt…borrowing
from ourselves…..genius!
“I wonder if all the TARP money given to
the TBTF banks came with a mandate to drive up share prices?”
Ha ha ha, ya think???
[May 29, 2009] The reason for this rally today is best captured by an
old stock market adage.
The losses are there and someone has to bear them. There are two
possibilities. Banks go under and the stakeholders are left with nothing,
as is the case with Lehman Brothers, or governments pump money into
the financial system so that the incompetent
financial clowns in Bahnhofstrasse [Zurich's financial centre] and Wall
Street can continue to eat in fancy restaurants.
Right you are Professor ! We are reminded of James Carville
speaking with Louis Uchitelle in the 6/12/1994 NYTimes Sunday Magazine:
"I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come
back as the President or the Pope or as a .400 basball hitter,"
he said. "But now I would like to come back as the bond market.
You can intimidate everybody."
No one can bail out the dollar except the printer.
As Rick said in 'Casablanca,' "maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow,
but soon, and for the rest of your life."
In a perfectly rational and certain world, there would be no
disagreement about the future even between economists. However,
in the real world that we find ourselves in, the opinions of economists
are at best no better than those forthcoming from sorcerers. When
those opinions are coloured with political biases and emanate from
the closed mindset of flawed ideology, they are worst than useless
and are in fact destructive.
Placing any credence in the utterances of economists is akin to
paying attention to the ranting of the village idiot of yore.
1. Reduce nominal interest rate to zero. Check. That didn’t work...
2. Increase the number of dollars in circulation, or credibly threaten
to do so. Check. That didn’t work...
3. Expand the scale of asset purchases or, possibly, expand the menu
of assets it buys. Check & check. That didn’t work...
4. Make low-interest-rate loans to banks. Check. That didn’t work...
5. Cooperate with fiscal authorities to inject more money. Check. That
didn’t work...
... ... ...
The market calls all bluffs. Eventually Bernanke's "credible threat"
of hyperinflation will be seen for exactly what it is: a threat,
and nothing more.
Hyperinflation is the end-game for the
Fed and, as Karl Denninger points out, potentially resolves itself
with Bernanke swinging from a lamppost. They will
never go that far, and the market will eventually figure that out
and resume of process of debt deflation and liquidation.
Vinny GOLDberg
Andrew Bissell: “Bernanke swinging from a lamppost”
May I have that episode on DVD, please? Thank you.
Green shoots is the new "Goldilocks". We all know how THAT turned
out. Freakin Kudlow. Angry Saver
A small point, which is often forgotten. One avoids bankruptcy simply
by remaining solvent
A recovery in the second half of this year will be 'moderate,'
according to a report from the National Association for Business Economics.(CNN
Money) Don't quit that second job bussing tables just yet .... Samdog
BK is going to do wonders for the suppliers. ...they might pack
up their toys and go home
The American Civil War, notwithstanding, is there any chance Cali
might leave the Union and take "American Idol" and its other sideshows
with it? Samdog
The square root recovery.. . that is amusing. lawyerliz
"Continued gains in the Present Situation Index indicate that
current conditions have moderately improved, and growth in the second
quarter is likely to be less negative than in the first" (italics added)."
Now, what the heck kind of language is this? It certainly doesn't
qualify as proper English, since "negative growth" is an outright
oxymoron. What the
establishment's perennial cheerleaders are attempting is to couch their
statements in as anodyne a language as possible. It wouldn't be as obfuscatory
and deceiving to simply say, for example: "The US economy is in decline
but next quarter it may drop a bit less fast".
A process that long has other implications. First, the longer things
play out, the greater the odds that customers get cold feet and sales
fall below projected levels. That will require Uncle Sam to provide
more in the way of financing, and will also damage GM suppliers, who
are already on the ropes. If sales fall far enough, GM may no longer
look viable and may go into Chapter 7, a liquidation. That would produce
huge job losses.
Murray Barr was a bear of a man, an ex-marine, six feet tall and
heavyset, and when he fell down—which he did nearly every day—it
could take two or three grown men to pick him up....He was missing
most of his teeth. He had a wonderful smile. People loved Murray....
"If he was on a runner, we could pick him up several times a day,"
Patrick O'Bryan, who is a bicycle cop in downtown Reno, said. "And
he's gone on some amazing runners. He would get picked up, get detoxed,
then get back out a couple of hours later and start up again. ...Murray
was such a character and had such a great sense of humor that we
somehow got past that....
"I've been a police officer for fifteen years," O'Bryan's partner,
Steve Johns, said. "I picked up Murray my whole career. Literally."...
Johns and O'Bryan realized that if you totted up all his hospital
bills for the ten years that he had been on the streets—as well
as substance-abuse-treatment costs, doctors' fees, and other expenses—Murray
Barr probably ran up a medical bill as large as anyone in the state
of Nevada.
"It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray,"
O'Bryan said.
I've just found the perfect website for the permabulls in your life:
Recession blocker.
Simply key in the URL for any news site, and the returned search
blacks out any unwelcome words and phrases (e.g., "credit crunch," "recession,"
"banking crisis," "unemployment").
We need to make sure these professionals are well-compensated so
that they don't jump ship to another company. The talent pool is sooooooooooo
small in the banking and finance world.
Therefore, sometime in 2010, the Federal Reserve will create and
loan out hundreds of billions of fresh dollars to the usual well-connected
suspects, instructing them to buy up stocks on the public's behalf.
This scheme will have a fancy but meaningless name - something like
the "Taxpayer Assurance Equities Facility". It will have no effect other
than to serve as buyer of last resort for capitulating smart-money types
who want to get out of stocks entirely.
Burn Burn Burn...Burnin' Lake of Fire. I go down down down but the
flames are gettin' higher. Burning Lake of Fire.....The financial sector
is the Lake of Fire. Money Man
I dunno Money Man, the lowest circle of hell is ice. lawyerliz
- Casey's not only alive and free but surrounded by beautiful
young women! broward
- Broward, Women love bombastic conmen. Lucifer
Our current reality makes the "matrix" look good and compassionate..Lucifer
My mom and dad taught me that knowledge was important. But the more
I watch the U.S. economy, the more I realize that it's basically run
by Alpha male dildoes with no true understanding of anything. broward
I would argue that the AMDs (alpha male dildos) have good interpersonal
skills, are not terribly creative, don't make waves, and tend toward
conservatism. They are not the worker bees, they're the face-men.
"Two terms from in the DA program, "terminal vagueness" and "compulsively
inattentive," are used to describe the characteristic behaviors of compulsive
debtors. They refer to a systematic avoidance of monitoring one's finances.
In this way compulsive debtors either overestimate or underestimate
their account balances, but never know exact amounts." Sounds like a
Treasury Secretary.
Housing at 2.5-3x income would be like putting a Gorilla on the
diet designed for a chimp. It would starve to death...This economy is
a freaking Gorilla with a voracious appetite for dept and spending.
It will die either way...with no more consumption or feeding it all
we can. DOA none the less..... Money Man
1. "Damn it, Dagny! I need the government to get out of the
way and let me do my job!"
She sat across the desk from him. She appeared casual but confident,
a slim body with rounded shoulders like an exquisitely engineered truss.
How he hated his debased need for her, he who loathed self-sacrifice
but would give up everything he valued to get in her pants ... Did she
know?
"I heard the thugs in Washington were trying to take your Rearden
metal at the point of a gun," she said. "Don't let them, Hank. With
your advanced alloy and my high-tech railroad, we'll revitalize our
country's failing infrastructure and make big, virtuous profits."
"Oh, no, I got out of that suckers' game. I now run my own hedge-fund
firm, Rearden Capital Management."
"What?"
He stood and adjusted his suit jacket so that his body didn't betray
his shameful weakness. He walked toward her and sat informally on the
edge of her desk. "Why make a product when you can make dollars? Right
this second, I'm earning millions in interest off money I don't even
have."
He gestured to his floor-to-ceiling windows, a symbol of his productive
ability and goodness.
"There's a whole world out there of byzantine financial products
just waiting to be invented, Dagny. Let the leeches run my factories
into the ground! I hope they do! I've taken out more insurance on a
single Rearden Steel bond than the entire company is even worth! When
my old company finally tanks, I'll make a cool $877 million."
Their eyes locked with an intensity she was only beginning to understand.
Yes, Hank ... claim me ... If we're to win the battle against the leeches,
we must get it on ... right now ... Don't let them torture us for our
happiness ... or our billions.
He tore his eyes away.
"I can't. Sex is base and vile!"
"No, it's an expression of our highest values and our admiration
for each other's minds."
"Your mind gives me the biggest boner, Dagny Taggart."
He fell upon her like a savage, wielding his mouth like a machete,
and in the pleasure she took from him her body became an extension of
her quarterly earnings report—proof of her worthiness as a lover. His
hard-on was sanction enough.
Bernanke's helicopter only drops money on bankster banks ...
mmckinl
"Bernanke IS the systemic risk. Run him out of town."mmckinl
Like weather forecasters, economic forecasters must deal
with a system that is extraordinarily complex, that is subject to
random shocks, and about which our data and understanding will always
be imperfect.
Except the weather does not have a financial interest in outsmarting
you. Not One Cent
and who replaces Summers? Kondratieff Winters. Yalt
"I have become death, destroyer of the world"
— Oppenheimer
"I have become debt, destroyer of the world"
— Bernanke
“So, why the attraction of green shoots? One can only speculate that
they must be in some ways intoxicating. Perhaps not the shoots exactly,
or the stems or seeds, but the leaves of a certain plant. Those might
be smoked or otherwise ingested to bring about a euphoric effect. From
what I’ve read, the current crop is far more potent than the commodity
available in years past. How else to explain the mind-bending notion
that an economy that is declining less quickly is somehow improving?”
yea and what about… “you rip off the American people and the entire
freakin world for TRILLIONS
of dollars and GUESS WHAT… the government aka the people step in and
call BULLSHIT on you efferrs.”
whole lotta people oughta be locked up in Guantanamo for life are
now out there runnin around crying “keep the big bad government off
my back”.
"...someone must have fed the D-J Industrial Average (DJIA/8268.64)
a similar “sugar cube” 10 weeks ago, as the major averages have “galloped”
from a generational oversold reading into the longest “buying stampede”
of my lifetime"
'Reminding us of the current equity market is an anecdote about the
Sport of Kings that took place in London:
An American race horse owner, while parading his entry in the paddock
just before the event, fed the horse what appeared to be a white
tablet. Noticed and challenged by an English track official, Lord
Marlboro, the American was informed that his horse would have to
be disqualified. Protesting vehemently that he only gave the horse
a sugar cube, the owner popped one into his mouth and offered Lord
Marlboro a cube as proof. The English official tasted and swallowed
the cube. He agreed with the owner that it was a harmless sugar
cube and waived the disqualification. Just before the race horse
was to enter the gate, the American signaled his jockey, instructing
him to keep his horse clear of trouble near the start and try for
the lead early since his horse was sure to win. “In fact,” he told
the jockey, “Only two have a chance to beat our horse.” “What two?”
asked the jockey? The American owner replied . . . “Me and Lord
Marlboro!”
We recalled the “Me and Lord Marlboro” quip as we watched the running
of the Preakness over the weekend. Evidently, someone fed Rachel Alexandra
the proverbial “sugar cube” as she won the Preakness by beating “Mine
That Bird” to become the first filly to win said event since 1924. Likewise,
someone must have fed the D-J Industrial
Average (DJIA/8268.64) a similar “sugar cube” 10 weeks ago,
as the major averages have “galloped” from a generational oversold reading
into the longest “buying stampede” of my lifetime...
I marvel at the regularity of the pulse and respirations of
the patient on the heart/lung machine... -- energyecon
the money flows freely between the ponzi units -- Comrade
Elmer Fudd
Here comes Mr. Bond again to put a damper on the market. Where
is Ben? -- Blackhalo
We need a obstructition to induce LIBOR on this pregnant
pause in the market. No, we need an obstetrician because
we are about to give birth to the unrelated twins of inflation and
depression. Ben Bernanke, midwife and suspected father of one of
them.
it just happens that utopian ideas that are adjusted to the
reality of human behavior end in disaster.
"And the beat goes on ... " DOOM DOOM DOOM... just kidding
Bob Dobbs
Arbitrage_Macht_Frei, Why not call our current era 1980-2009
"Triumph des Scharlatan"? Lucifer
It's going to be so much harder for the sheeple to live like
millionaires...Angry Saver
"I find the obsession with firearms on the part of some here
to be strange. You can't shoot your real problems." You've obviously
never met my ex >; ) Deflationary Jane
Does anyone offer a "Green Shoots" card? The NRA should. Eco
friendly and extra points for purchasing gear. nova
weapons of dental destruction - lol... ShadowInventory
This is a green shoot. People who default on their credit cards
have more disposable cash to buy stuff, and once the bad debt is
written off, they can more, bigger credit cards. It is all good.
[/sarcasm] Yancey Ward
I don't really want to be left out. Everybody is walking away
from their credit card debt and I don't have any! I am going to
go buy something expensive to max out my cards just so that I can
participate in the great American credit card shredding party. Anything
less is unamerican. ponyless
Most of the time, the path to survival in financial bureaucracies
is through company-party-line on-message bullishness. That's particularly
true in the US, where pessimism about the future is not just bad business,
but unpatriotic.
Not true today. More than sufficient electric shocks have been administered
to the rats. Now, the corporate rodents know that PowerPoints projecting
trees growing to the sky are going to get you fired, not promoted.
The Great Wish across America is to resume the life of comfort-and-convenience
that seemed so nirvana-like just a few short years ago, when the very
constellations of the heavens might have been renamed after heroic Atlanta
realtors and Connecticut hedge fund warriors, and the boomer portfolios
groaned with earnings, and millions of graying corporate salary mules
dreamed of their approaching retirement to a satori of golf and Viagra,
and the interior decorators grew so rich installing granite countertops
that they could buy their own houses in the East Hampton...
It's good to see that we've not completely forgotten former Fed Chairman
Alan Greenspan, two items appearing today as reminders of just what
a mess has been made. Dan O'Connor at the Mises Institute
reckons the former Fed chief is a lot like Darth Vader (hat tip
BY).
The
former chairman of the US Federal Reserve shares a lot in common
with one of the most famous villain characters in the history of
Hollywood, Darth Vader, who was first a member of the Jedi coalition
when his name was Anakin Skywalker.
...
The policies of the Federal Reserve Bank had an enormous impact
on our current crisis; and the American people have come to realize
how destructive the force of the Fed can be. By expanding the supply
of credit, inflating the currency, and keeping interest rates artificially
low and fixed for an extensive period of time (a form of price fixing),
the country — and globe — became plagued by malinvestment: people
and banking institutions were encouraged by this dark and opaque
monolith in Washington DC to buy and spend.
Dan goes on to suggest that the former "Maetsro" might redeem himself
in some way by exposing the Federal Reserve and all of its evils before
its too late.
We are finally beginning to see the seeds of a bottoming [in
the housing industry. The U.S. is] at the edge of a major liquidation
[in the stock of unsold properties, which may help to stabilize
prices].
—Alan Greenspan, May 12 2009
“I don’t know, but I think the worst of this may well be over.”
—Alan Greenspan, October 2006
I’m with Venn, let Greenspan keep his Miss USA title… despite
all the naked pictures you have of him. Besides, he’s become
entertaining, hasn’t he? Much like the NAR. I mean what’s the
harm? Maybe just causing those that might actually listen to
him to make terrible personal and professional financial choices.
Oh yeah, I guess there’s that…class="commentlist">
In a small town on the South Coast of France, the holiday season
is in full swing, but it is raining so there is not too much business
taking place.
Everyone is heavily in debt.
Luckily, a rich Russian tourist arrives in the foyer of the small
local hotel. He asks for a room and puts a Euro100 note on the reception
counter, takes a key and goes to inspect the room located up the stairs
on the third floor.
• The hotel owner takes the banknote in a hurry and rushes to his
meat supplier to whom he owes E100.
• The butcher takes the money and races to his supplier to pay his debt.
• The wholesaler rushes to the farmer to pay E100 for pigs he purchased
some time ago.
• The farmer triumphantly gives the E100 note to a local prostitute
who gave him her services on credit.
• The prostitute quickly goes to the hotel, as she was owing the hotel
for her hourly room used to entertain clients.
At that moment, the rich Russian comes down to reception and informs
the hotel owner that the room is unsatisfactory and takes his E100 back
and departs.
There was no profit or income. But everyone no longer has any debt
and the small town’s people look optimistically towards their future.
Could this be the solution to the global financial crisis?
nova (profile)
wrote on Sun, 5/10/2009 - 9:04 am
Quit whining. You are not mentally equipped to deal with the challenges
that face the United States of America. These men and women are experts
in their fields and they understand the problems, and are supremely
qualified to find the solutions. So stop the bleating!
reposted cause
I spent so much time typing it to see a pig looking at me
This is the Rules! Please observe them.
1. Continue working while you can. If you become unemployed, it is
up to you to retrain in a field that will continue or improve your purchasing
power. This is America! Dream big and win big!
2. Do not curtail purchases. Real Americans believe in themselves
and the future. Do not drag you, and your country down. by saving, bleating,
or posting doom crap on blogs.
3. Sure there may be a period of belt tightening. Remain compassionate
and support Goldman Sachs in the absence of a government safety net.
Remember! Americans can sacrifice, and rest assured you are building
character and a better future!
4. Should you find yourself in a cardboard box eating tuna from a
can and trembling at the sound of approaching foot steps - remember
this! You had your chance. You were obviously not loved by God or really
stupid to allow yourself to get in this predicament. It is okay though.
Your government still loves you.
One day, American Express woke up and saw it was capital poor. "Oh,
woe," it said.
A little bird appeared in the window. "Cheer up," it said. "Just
borrow (quantitatively eased) money from the Fed for free, and then
lend it to Mr. Jones for whatever the traffic will bear."
American Express bucked up. "I'll do it! In fact, I have an even
better idea." And so American Express offered Mr. Jones a teaser
rate on a very generous credit line. Mr. Jones accepted. Then, when
Mr. Jones was too deep in hock to make his payments, American Express
offered to roll the loan over, at ten times the teaser rate.
American Express knew that Mr. Jones might lose his job. And then
he might go to the bankruptcy court, and American Express might
not earn a dime, let alone earn solvency. But he didn't care. He
knew that enough of the other Mr. Joneses would make their payments.
And if they lost their jobs, or had their wages cut - or if their
employers who also borrowed money didn't earn that much, it still
would be ok. President Obama would come around with another bagful
of (virtual) money.
And so it happened. And then Mr. Obama went on the television and
said, "If you, and you, and I give all our money to American Express
and its banking peers, then surely they'll earn their way to solvency.
And if that doesn't work, we'll just repeat the process."
Mr. Friedman bought 37,300 more Goldman shares in December,
which have since risen $1.7 million in value
In his resignation letter, Mr. Friedman said his public service on the
board was being characterized as “improper” despite his compliance with
the rules. “The Federal Reserve System has important work to do and
does not need this distraction,” he said.
“With respect to Steve’s purchases of Goldman shares in December
of 2008 and January of 2009, which have been the object of some attention
lately, it is my view that these purchases did not violate any Federal
Reserve statute, rule or policy,” Thomas C. Baxter, the general counsel
of the New York Fed, said in a statement. “I enjoyed working with Steve,
and will miss his contributions in the boardroom.”
We like you. Well, not in that way, but we are taxpayers. If we didn't
like you, why would we give you billions of our money to insure your
survival? So we kind of have to like you, same way we like our deviant,
foster kids.
Agreed? Let's move on. As a recipient of our generous TARP contribution
and FDIC guarantees, we expect you to be active in the capital markets,
lend into the economy (you know, that progressively angrier Main Street)
and provide liquidity when needed.
Now at this point, from our perch, we don't see much improvement
in lending from you, dear deviant child, but we do see non-stop attempts
to avoid pay caps and so on. Don't you want to spin of PDT
just for that reason? Great! Just making sure we are on the same
page...
Let's get back to our favorite pet topic liquidity.
You, sweet child of ours, recently advertised
about 2x to 3x of SPY volume than the next lucky broker in the hierarchy.
As our favorite captain of vertical take off/landing aircraft said yesterday,
too big to fail is not a policy, it's a problem. We,
the taxpayers, don't want our TARP funds making the problem worse. We
want it to get better.
So what was that 10% of SPY volume all about? Was it natural volume?
If so, please go ahead and advertise that. We would love to know how
your agency business is doing. We want that. Was is PDT trading? In
that case this is very troubling. Did you advertise internal prop trading
volume? Now that, as you very well know, is kind of creepy.
You know, dear MS, with 10% ADV of SPY volume applied at strategically
important time frames you can affect markets? And no, we the taxpayers
here at Zero Hedge don't want to see that. We don't want our levered
up TARP funds to be used in this way. How about you tell us how much
of this 10% of ADV was your customers, how much was ETF desk and in-house
props? That will help a lot and avoid any future confusion.
And please keep our $10 that we gave to you in the first place to
lend to Main Street, not to bet against anonymous financial blogs...
and lose.
Is Asness Santelli II or Cramer III. He definitely can benefit
from an interview on Comedy Central. I like the quote: "Find me a
hedge fund, even a failed one, that has asked for one."
Hedge funds are victims. That's rich.
Greedy hedge funds surrounded by firing squad and angry civilians!
Nowhere to escape. lol.
Either administration is too soft and is the lackey of the capitalists
or they bare their fangs and are big bullies, Waaa, why can't we have
a goldilock scenario.
Aww the poor babies were "threatened." boo freakin' hoo, this is
business. if you don't like it go find a new profession.
Compare this to Timmy's tactic of repeatedly asking "How many digits
do you want in your check? Are you sure I can't give you a bigger check?"
Timmy is an American f-wad.
I'd love to see some of these alleged Obama hardball tactics employed
against Wall Street. Maybe he could sneer as he gave them another trillion
or two of taxpayer money.
You telling me that hedge funds have not played hardball with others?
"Once the normal Americans seize back control of their nation, I
say it's time to purge our soceity of this Leftist infection. " -- Man!
I thought we just got over a fascist cancer...now we've got a leftist
infection?
... armies of flesh eating $500-$2000 an hour lawyers will swarm
the corpse to insure that it doesn't re-emerge until they are sated.
I am a hater of morons who ask for a bailout with one hand and punch
back with the other. Grow up.
a bunch of hedge fund crybabies who did not make the money they
were expecting on the Chrysler deal. So what?
[May 6, 2009] Quotable
Economies of scale might work all too well when it comes to influencing
government. Still while the federal government is grossly corrupt and
inefficient, it is whole orders of magnitude less so than the majority
of state governments.
The problem this time around is that due to the Electronic Media
Age all of us (or many) feel as though we are within the plot of some
"summer blockbuster" (though safe in our cushioned seats with cup holders).
We are programmed from birth for the happy ending and the fact Amerika
can never fail. We are the "Shining Light on the Hill" after all.
Comments to
Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler The Bottom
A video of a backhoe knocking down homes in Victorville, Calif., was
posted on YouTube by the founder of a Web site called Vision Victory.
A Texas bank is about done demolishing 16 new and partially built houses
acquired in Southern California through foreclosure, figuring it was
better to knock them down than to try selling them in the depressed
housing market.
Guaranty Bank of Austin is wrecking the
structures to provide a "safe environment" for neighbors
of the abandoned housing tract in Victorville, a high-desert
city about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles, a bank spokesman said.
" Thought-terminating
cliché” Includes false associations of someone’s ideas with a larger
group/ideology. Probably can be considered a weaker but more general form
of “Godwin’s
Law” (or at least connected with). BTW “monetary anesthesia” is a great
term!
Ritholtz on Geithner's
Most hurtful quote: In response to
Geithner's
statement that "We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders,
managed by private institutions, and we'd like to do our best to preserve
that system,"
Ritholtz exploded:
"No! Defending these idiots was your old gig. In the new job, you no
longer work for the cretins responsible for bringing down the global
economy. Please stop rationalizing their behavior, and preserving the
status quo!"
Selected comments
The joke’s on you, Republican
Ritholtz. The monetary anesthesia
is in full force and bearish contrarians with funny accents like
Roubini, Faber, and you are on the run.
50% of contribution from 2003 was just wiped out... Good luck with with
89% of stocks for another 30 years ;-)
Published: Thursday, 30 Apr 2009 | 2:29 PM ET By: Bill Losey
Q. I am 28 and have been maxing out my Roth IRA since 2003. I have invested
all of this money in the Vanguard 2045 Fund. Is this a good long term
strategy? -Diana, NY
A. Diana, congrats on maxing out your Roth for
the last six years! If you keep that up for the next 30 years you
will have a very good chance of being a millionaire by the time you
retire. The Vanguard 2045 is a target-date retirement fund with
five underlying funds with a current allocation of 89 percent stocks
and 11 percent bonds. As you get older that allocation will shift and
you will have a smaller percentage in stcoks and a greater percentage
in bonds.
President Kennedy: Let every nation know, whether they
mean us harm or well, that we will bear any burden, pay any price,
fight any foe...to defend liberty.
President Obama: Let every taxpayer know, that we will
bailout every bank, secure every CDS, and back every bond...because
we need low interest rates so we can get back to borrowing!!! Its
what we do. And its the only thing we do!
NedFlanders19"
The system works!!"
- Ed Liddy
"By the way, when I spoke of change, I meant it with a small
'c.'"
Debt will cause more stress that a pandemic flu.
Call it pandemic debt.
Yep, keep raping savers to protect fools and fraudsters. This'll
end well...again. Suppressing interest rates should be punishable by
death.
People of the future will have tiny legs, as with advanced transportation
they'll hardly do any walking. They'll have short arms, because the
machines will perform all the manual labor. They'll have tiny mouths,
because all the food will be replaced by tiny nutritional pills... and
they'll have huge heads, spending all their time thinking about how
to get those damn pills.
Mad Max is over - welcome to Japan and a zombified national economy.
It’s funny that many Americans will call the French 'cheese-eating
surrender monkeys' and, yet, the French would never quietly slip away
into the night to live in a carpark or a tent city while bankers get
billions in taxpayer financed bonuses. So why do Americans go so quietly?
Ben is playing whack-a-mole with agency paper and LIBOR, now Ts
are popping up again. The man behind the curtain better get busy, some
of those ARMs are tied to the ten year.
Remember all those who said that America wouldn't elect a black
President until pigs could fly. Well, I guess you could say, swine flu.
Badum bum
I don't see the low rates helping much because for every pardon
my french dipshit who is underwater on their mortgage your killing a
retiree who needs interest income.
Bear vs. Bulls at Skeptical Capitalist. Good for a smile during
the pain.
[May 1, 2009] Swine flu on Wall street: Banksters are starting to feel
the heat
May 1 notes ;-)
“Bankers have no tool making skills??? Doesn't debt
qualify as a tool? They make a hell of a lot of that and look
how versatile of a tool it is. It can be securitized, monetized and
seniorized; floated, bloated and off -loaded, It can be used to
indemnitize, pauperize and paralyze a nation. Its a veritable
swiss army knife of financial innovation.
Why are bankers still being treated like royalty ~ Angry Bear
Comments
Walter Massey will replace Lewis as Chairman. Now
maybe Bernanke can be stripped of the title Uberload of the Formerly
Free Financial Markets and Emperor of the Amazingly Ubiquitous SPY Bid.
Is there any truth to the reports that Rush Limbaugh
and Newt Gingrich are proposing that we need to cut tax rates on dividends
and capital gains to deal with the swine flu?
Swine
flu
It's hard to argue with this logic about pushpins from the folks
at
The Onion.
With unemployment at its highest rate in 25 years and countless
retirement savings wiped out by the collapse of the stock market,
experts say the American pushpin industry may be the lone bright
spot in an otherwise bleak financial landscape.
knows that when the economy contracts, pushpin sales
expand," said Paul Michelson, a pushpin analyst for Wells Fargo.
"
In uncertain times, they provide a sense of stability
to those who just lost their jobs or may be late with their mortgage
payments."
Added Michelson, "Pushpins are sharp, rigid, and enable you to attach
thin items to the wall. People really gravitate toward that."
In times of prosperity, however, consumers tend to be more interested
in high-ticket items such as flat-screen TVs or oil paintings. During
economic booms, the pushpins go in the back of the junk drawer until
hard times hit again.
I've used pushpins a lot more than usual over the last year. Anyone
else?
As to Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke, we're sure they, too, are decent
souls and value truth, except when it's inconvenient.
Shareholders Be Damned! - Barrons.com
By and large, though, markets are unpredictable, and they need to
stay that way. If markets were predictable, they would cease to exist...
some one or a few would run off with all the money. To the extent that
it has been "predictable" and made some corporations lots of money recently...
as we have seen, that was largely due to manipulation and corruption,
not the effects of free markets.
A few have run off with all the money. Who was on the other
side of those massively leveraged positions that the banks lost on?
It seems to me that the fact the losers are now being bailed out by
the government means that effectively there has been a massive transfer
of wealth from taxpayers to the "winners" of those bets.
Manipulated, corrupt and un-free markets indeed.
My suggestion to the submitter is to
try a more honorable career, like record-company executive or drug-dealer.
LOL! The Stimulus Czar needs stimulating... asleep at the wheel while
Obama blabs away. Perhaps a portent of things to come? Will this administration
sleep while Rome burns?
The economy is filled with dour and miserable people who rate
110% on the buzzkill meter. The stock market is filled with happy
people who are making lots of money and lots of professionals who
want to be my friend (except for short sellers, who just hate everybody).
The stock market has happy news business reporters who tell me it’s
OK to make money with stocks. The economy looks depressed enough
to hang itself, but not until it talks you into going first.
Therefore, all you need to do to profit beyond avarice is to
buy companies where a) insiders aren’t selling and b) companies
where insiders are selling. You can’t lose. The stock market will
protect you from the economy.
So wait…I’m to believe that the economy is crashing because corporate
managers were too stupid to see the dangerous bubble they had created,
and I’m also to believe that corporate managers are so brilliant
that they’re anticipating problems ahead and dumping stock like
crazy?
I love it…everyone who agrees with
me right now is a genius. The same guy, if he disagrees with me
tomorrow, is a moron.
So wait…I’m to believe that the economy is crashing because
corporate managers were too stupid to see the dangerous bubble
they had created, and I’m also to believe that corporate managers
are so brilliant that they’re anticipating problems ahead and
dumping stock like crazy
reply:
——
Point [well] taken. Since these people are confirmed stupid, this
is absolute proof of a market that has nowhere to go but up. The
economy may be noxious, but the stock market is soaring.
It’s become the official Happy People
Club. Happy people attract happy people. This is the real secret
to success.
What good are economists anyway? A commenter on a housing blog wrote
recently that economists did a worse job of forecasting the housing
market than either his father, who has no formal education, or his mother,
who got up to second grade. “If you are an economist and did not see
this coming, you should seriously reconsider the value of your education
and maybe do something with a tangible value to society, like picking
vegetables,” he wrote on patrick.net.
Take that, you pointy-headed failures! Go jump off a supply curve!”
Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota recently said she fears
that Obama will build "reeducation" camps to indoctrinate young people.
But Obama hasn't made any moves toward taking anyone's guns, and
with money as tight as it is, the last thing
the president wants to do is run a camp where he has to shelter and
feed a bunch of fat, angry white people.
Look, I get it, "real America." After an eight-year run of controlling
the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, this latest election
has you feeling like a rejected husband. You've come home to find your
things out on the front lawn -- or at least more things than you usually
keep out on the front lawn. You're not ready to let go, but the country
you love is moving on. And now you want to call it a whore and key its
car.
These days, bankster-bashing is a popular sport; for some reason
Summers enjoy the same status. May be he is really one of them...
Americans may be struggling to pay their credit card debt. But for Larry
Summers, President Obama’s chief economic adviser, the issue is apparently
a snooze.
Mr. Summers was caught dozing in a Roosevelt Room meeting
this afternoon as Mr. Obama addressed credit card industry officials,
according to a White House pool report.
Mr. Summers “appeared to be nodding off near the beginning’’ of Mr.
Obama’s remarks, the report said. It went on “And then he DID nod off,
doing the head on the hand and then head falling off the hand thing.’’
The photographers had a field day at what would otherwise have been
just another White House photo op with officials seated around a table.
Selected Comments
I’m sure he’s burning the midnight
oil on all our behalves…Obama should bang the table tho and wake
him up; it’s a little embarrassing.
— scottso
Well it WAS a boring meeting topic. I mean,
unless it involves hedge funds or bailing out his buddies, the Masters
of the Universe, why would Summers care? Only Little People pay
credit card interest, after all.
— Parakeeta Byrd
He was having a dream that
went like this:
” Water glass: $5.00
” Embossed namecard: $10.00
” Official pen: $11.00
” Access to the President: priceless.”
— a. hamilton
Obama likes to talk and talk and talk, so no wonder Summers
is bored out. He has probably heard Obama say the same thing a 1000
times. Kudos to Summers for actually getting a power-nap while Obama
keeps blabbing.
“It was the culture of what some called IBG-YBG: I’ll be gone, you’ll
be gone,”
“Rich Democrats don’t like having their taxes raised either …
“When I talked to my friends in November and December at firms like
Goldman, they would tell me, ‘If the government doesn’t bail us out,
we’re going down.’ They really thought they were going to zero, and
without exception, they all forget that now,” he says. “They forget
that their company’s stock was going to zero. It’s a state of delusion;
they don’t remember those days. The flip side of that is,
every guy except the Goldman guy remembers
that Goldman was bailed out.”
“You wear a nice suit on the subway, and people look at you,”
“The more I see and hear Secretary Geithner speak on financial services
policy, the more I am convinced that this man has not a clue what he
is doing …”
“In a witch hunt, the witches have feelings, too.”
"Capitol One is famous for their predatory practices. I imagine smiles
across the nation as people take a small pleasure in defaulting on their
Capital One credit cards. "
Borrow from the Fed at 0%, lend at 30%, and be backstopped by the
Fed? Even I could make money doing that. Sign up for your pre-approved
Brewcrew card today! Special lower interest rates for customers of Lefty's
Liquors.
"One of the lessons that
investors seem to have to learn over and over again, and will again
in the future, is that not only can you not turn a toad into a prince
by kissing it, but you cannot turn a toad into a prince by repackaging
it. But very imaginative people in the securities market try to do that.
If you have bad mortgages they do not come better by repackaging them.
To some extent the chickens are coming home to roost for the mortgage
originators and securitisers."
"People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should
never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators,
central bankers, government officials, various organizations staffed with
economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system."
![[obamastinkinbadges.JPG]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2DePAZe2gA/SvROY3Egg5I/AAAAAAAAKTM/rfrlE0lOIbw/s1600/obamastinkinbadges.JPG)
The
former chairman of the US Federal Reserve shares a lot in common
with one of the most famous villain characters in the history of
Hollywood, Darth Vader, who was first a member of the Jedi coalition
when his name was Anakin Skywalker.
Definition of a Clever Thug:
“And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” – Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
The best or elite in any occupation be it sports or investment banking are always suffering from public opinion.
That must be why the elite surgeons who reattach limbs, transplant faces, save people with traumatic injuries get so much bad press for their work. And elite fire jumpers are so hated by society. And personally, there’s nothing I hate more than an elite marathon runner. It’s all about the glamor with them and they never sign autographs.
“The Golden Years of the Capone Era Al Capone and Rocky Point Mexico – Puerto Penasco
At the age of twenty-six, Al Capone assumed control of the Torrio Organization, with over one thousand people on the payroll of $300,000 a week.
The profits continued to roll in because the majority of people felt that betting and bootlegging were minor vices and the man that made these things possible was a public servant who did what he could to meet the needs of the people. Capone, himself attempted to put his feeling in regards to his business by stating,
“This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.”
“Public service is my motto. Ninety percent of the people in Chicago drink and gamble. I’ve tried to serve them decent liquor and square games. But I’m not appreciated. I’m know all over the world as a millionaire gorilla.”
http://www.rockypointmexico.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=53&Itemid=65
Now does that sound familiar to anyone?