Financial Humor Bulletin, September 2010

[via Cyril Morong] Dr. Richard Head
on Wed, 09/22/2010 - 10:00
#597226

DAMNIT ALREADY THE RECESSION IS OVER!!!! Our lords have decreed this, so be it.

Go buy a Kindle or something already. Real estate is a good bet too, this is a buyer's market ya know.

[Sep 21, 2010] Links on Lawrence Summers' Departure

Bye bye Larry. Too bad you can't take Timmy with you ;-)

longtimelurker:

Is Phil Gramm free?

alley_boy:

How much money did Summers lose at Harvard? I read somewhere @ $1.8 billion. Why do they want him back?

Barley:

Maybe Kramer will take the job

JP

How long before Geithner decides to spend more time with his banking-based family?

brianinboise:

Mr. Geithner will stay as Sec'y until the statute of limitations has run.

Bob Dawg:

comrade mike:

I would like to see Timmy fired.

+1... oh wait, I thought you said fried.

NOTaREALmerican :

digalert :

Christina Romer, Peter Orszag, and now Lawrence Summers

These three will write in their memoirs: "we bailed before the SHTF."

lackhalo:

Not a perp walk, but better than letting the crook continue to run things, i guess.

[Sep 21, 2010] Thieves defy Bernanke's deflation

September 21, 2010 | Au Contrarian

In July 2010, police in Homestead, Florida, "said thieves are striking at farms, stealing produce to sell on the black market." Three weeks later, in West Philadelphia, a four-year-old boy was "swallowed" by the sewer system after a manhole cover had been stolen.

The Associated Press reported: "In 2008, the department began installing locks on some of the 76,000 manhole covers in the city but still officials are looking at options. 'We're also looking into alternative materials to where [sic] they won't be attractive for the scrap yards' ". (The four-year old lived.)

In San Francisco, federal detention centers are "slowly filling up with a new type of criminal... a rising tide of copper thieves raiding abandoned government facilities for their heavy gauge electrical wire."

[Sep 21, 2010] zerohedge once again pissed that asteroid avoided colliding with earth

Recession Porn “confusing“: The flip side of the bullish trader sentiment is the obsession with every negative datapoint. From Roubini to Zero Hedge, people seem to be hunting down anything foreboding. (How funny is this tweet: zerohedge once again pissed that asteroid avoided colliding with earth)

[Sep 19, 2010] Still Funny

OK, maybe I've got a twisted sense of humor, but this oldie-but-goodie (note that it includes the ex-Secretary of the Treasury) is (still) pretty funny -- probably because not much has changed as far as policymaking goes since the crisis began:

(Hat tip to The Daily Bail)

[Sep 19, 2010] FRBC Normal Recovery, Elevated Unemployment Levels

The Big Picture

constantnormal:

@Petey Wheatstraw

“I wonder what they’ll say when their faces hit the windshield”

They’ll say “whocoodaknowed?”, of course.

RW:

...If a recovery it truly is then might as well skip the 20th Century altogether — no point in fooling around when skipping economic periods that disagree with a thesis ...

It’s not my father’s recovery, granted, but it could be my grandfather’s.

[Sep 19, 2010] Not With A Whimper But A Bang

zero hedge

Dburn

Didn't anybody take cash advances on their cards to short bank stocks in 2008? What a terrific account payable call.

"Sir, you are 90 days late on your credit card payment. "

"Yeah, hey sorry about that and I also would like to thank you for the 6 figure line of credit that I'm currently making a bloody fortune off of shorting your stock. If you could wait about 15 days , I'll pay you when the calendar year passes. ok?"

"You are using our cards to short our stock...I ah....click...bzzzz.

[Sep 17, 2010] Economist's View Paul Krugman The Tax-Cut Racket

"I suppose their next move will be a Medal of Honor for Lloyd Blankfein."

September 17, 2010

Lawrence:

And I would safely assume Senator McConnel thinks he's a champion of liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I haven't been feeling very happy with his behavior these past two years. It seems he would have been good friends with Heydrich.

dave:

I would venture to say that the vast majority of public figures in Washington these days would take to late 30's German politics like a fish to water.

JM:

Of course it's time for Democrats to take a stand. So what is the hold up? There are reports that 31 House Dems are asking to support tax cuts for the wealthy. Not to mention friend of the people Nelson. I suppose their next move will be a Medal of Honor for Lloyd Blankfein.

With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans?

[Sep 17, 2010] Democrat or Republican ?

Sep 17, 2010 | The Big Picture

I am not a Democrat, because I have no idea what their economic policies are; And I am not a Republican, because I know precisely what their economic policies are.

d4winds :

love the D vs. R remark. wrt the corporatocracy versus the individual, in my mind John Stewart nailed it in restating the D slogan for the midterms, “We suck less.” Of course, sucking less still sucks.

Chief Tomahawk:

“Things are going to change — I can feel it.”

George H. W. Bush

JustinTheSkeptic:

Let me sum up the american political scene as we know it – “I once knew a women from Nantucket!…”

[Sep 16, 2010] ETFs For a Brave New World

The Big Picture

Cassandra Does Tokyo is a former hedge fund manager and ex NY Trader, who is now living abroad.

~~~

ETFs clearly can provide some advantages for obtaining otherwise-expensive-to-obtain exposures for thematically-oriented investors. More noteworthy perhaps is the way that such vehicles have captured the imagination of Promoters and Managers as a salvation for otherwise stagnant revenue growth. This has lead to a proliferation of ever-more-focused ETFs to cater to the evolving fancies of investors looking for errrr… umm… something, indeed anything different. I would like to add my two-cents worth here and now, so BlackRock, take note: Here are some candidates for your marketing machine to focus on for the next decade:

Rent-Seeking ETF – While the maxim “Death and Taxes” is known to all, few realize that the original phrase was “Death, Taxes and Corruption”. Indeed Companies that purchase influence, contracts, and favorable legislation/regulation are worthy of investor attention (not because they are more dynamic, which they aren’t) but because they have a definable edge – something many others cannot boast about. Of course, ETF marketers would need to sanitize the pursuit into something like “Government Partnership Focused ETF” or

Gilded-Age ETF – Anyone who does their own shopping cannot ignore the the increasing gulf between winners and losers. As the a large portion of the former middle class sinks lower, a smaller but not reasonably-sized segment is promoted higher. This phenomena has meaningful effects ETF marketers can exploit as those companies focused upon the top-layer and growing underclass relatively prosper as the expense of the middle market. This ETF might have Whole Foods (WFMI) and Coach (COH) alongside pawnshops, check-cashing firms, pay-day loan enterprises and dollar discount stores.

Sin-City ETF – Booze, Cigarettes, Recre-ceuticals, Trans-Fats-In-A-Bag-To-Go, Espionage and surveillance equipment, Gambling, Porn, all in a neat little exchange-traded bundle. Reasonably recession-proof. High-profitability. Growing (except tobacco). Need I say more…?

Follow-The-Insider ETF – Alpha is getting harder to achieve these days. Covert insider-trading is getting riskier (just ask Raj!). But we know from some of the recent academic research that there is information contained in selective but systematically definable insider purchases and sales that yields abnormal excess returns. This is an easy one to flog, and panders to the twin pillar retail beliefs that “the market is rigged” and “it is nearly impossible for Average Joe to beat the market.

New Age ETF – Even tree-huggers have money to invest and would benefit from a convenient vehicle. And their numbers along with greater public awareness of what is environmentally good an bad, healthy or unhealthy, kharmically or spiritually desirable will make this a winner. The allure of this ETF is that it has many degrees of freedom in which to invest – from alternative energy, to agriculture and food science, from any company with sustainable approach to yoga-mat and acupuncture needle manufacturers. Build it (and advertise it convincingly) and they will come…

Bugger-The-Shorts ETF – This ETF, which will concentrate highly-shorted and crowded short stocks, may appeal to several classes of investor. First there are those that philosophically dislike the short side of the market – whether for moral or philosophical reasons. But there are also those devilish mischievous investors who can smell easy prey, and get sadistic pleasure out of squeezing weak (or system-driven) shorts out of their positions for fun and/or profit. This could potentially be popular with hedge funds as a way of quickly reversing exposure when they’ve been plunging themselves and find their positions on the wrong side of vicious pops so characteristic of bear-market rallies.

Activists Choice ETF – An ETF focusing on trumpted or reported positions disclosed by so-called activist investors are a so-called lay-up for ETF promoters. Primarily because activists themselves are such wonderful self-promoters, and quite adept at talking their own books. But also because they can tout “a hedge-fund strategy and performance without hedge fund fees” – always a winning slogan in the aggregation of retail funds.

Orlov’s ETF – With an increasing number of doomsdayers crawling out from all crevices, under the svengali-like piping of Glenn Beck, subscribing to Dimitry Orlov-like visions of the future, perhaps an ETF focused on a belief in the coming unravelling would sell well. Manufacturers of home generators, self-sufficiency tools, small arms and ammo, micro-water-purification systems, drought-resistant seeds, land-mines and barbed-wire, as well as gold-miners, and private prison and security services all could have a place in this portfolio. The only draw back is the non-sequitir if investors peer too far into the future where property rights and the financial system dissolve into complete chaos…

The “US Healthcare System Is The Best” ETF – Americans have a peculiar love affair with their Health Care system, irrespective of how completely buggered it is in comparison to the rest of the civilized (and much of the recently civilizing) world for the insured (as well as the uninsured, and financiers of both). ETF promoters can exploit this inexplicably visceral love-affair by helping them put their money where their mouth is, and creating the market-traded basket that invests a portfolio of companies prospering from a continuation of US Healthcare haplessness.

Greying Demographics ETF – Another obvious marketing target with many degrees of investment freedom, that are increasingly visible to investors. Motorized buggies, time-shares, home-health monitoring, nutraceuticals, senior-assisted living, bingo and slot-machine manufacturers, all in a single portfolio.

The Two-Cent Nickel ETF – Americans can rarely resist a bargain. As America slides closer to Japanification, ETF marketers might take a page from the Japanese Investment Trust playbook which for years has sported The Hidden Asset Trust or similar fund focusing upon companies with net substantial real assets well below market values, particularly where such assets are not reflected on the books of the company at current market values. Some of these assets are land, subsidiaries, other securities that provide seductive teasers to bargain-hunting investors. Of course, they must be careful not to rely too heavily upon Japanese experience for performance comparisons.

Fund of Fund of Hedge Funds ETF - The Coup de Grace offering must be the Fund of Hedge Fund-of-Funds to give the punter access to the broadest participation of hedge funds, something the small-punter has arguably had difficulty in obtaining. And in an exchange traded vehicle where they can dump their exposure at the first sign of distress. The remarkable attribute of this ETF (from the industry’s perspective) must be the multiple fee dollops that are removed from investors’ investments on a monthly basis. This is truly the ETF Triple Dip straight from the in the Wall Street’s finest creamery! But even better for the true skeptics, I know that you are thinking more like John Paulson, so if only someone (Hello GS!) can create for us a synthetic version of this that we can short, we too might find a good way to participate in the fee bonanza.

Of course, this is by no means an exhaustive list, as I am certain to have left some other crumbs on the table, so please feel free to submit your own additions.

[Sep 15, 2010] Tinkerbell Talk, Parsing the Economic Tea Leaves and Market Schizophrenia

naked capitalism

tenletters:

“We are looking to hire an experienced and hardworking employee. $8 an hour. Must have car and phone.”

aet:

If you pay peanuts, you’ll end up with monkeys.

[Sep 14, 2010] Lieberman Favors Extension of Bush-Era Tax Rates for the Wealthy

"shark bait for the Wall Street" would be a nice definition of 401K investors.

Economist's View

Cynthia:

First he sabotaged our efforts to pass meaningful health care reform. Now he's trying to sabotage our efforts to restore taxes on the rich. So we must throw Traitor Joe out on his ear before he turns all of us ordinary folks into shark bait for the rich, just as he would have done to these ordinary pups...:'(

http://www.fishingfury.com/20051006/live-dogs-used-as-shark-bait-by-rich-douchebags/

bob mcmanus:

And who chose Joe Lieberman as his mentor when he first arrived in the Senate?

Obama

[Sep 13, 2010] Primary Dealers Prepare To Invest $27 Billion In Fed Money, Levered 30x Over The Next Month, To Buy High Beta Names

I like "the markets will move in the direction that hurts the most people" and I'd rather watch professional wrestling than even bother with this shit anymore.

You didn't think a politically "impartial" Fed would allow a market crash before the mid-terms now, did you?

Boilermaker:

Huh? You mean a 600 point hi-jacking of the DOW and 80 handle move on SPX in 9 trading sessions isn't organic?

You know what? Fuck it. They can have it. I don't care anymore. I'm not losing anymore money. The dickheads doing this can play with themselves to the end of days. I don't care anymore.

... ... ...

I'd rather watch professional wrestling than even bother with this shit anymore.

unwashedmass

and by the grace of god and 30x leverage, they will rebuild their balance sheets over the next nine years of no civil unrest, no terrorist attacks, no counterparty defaults and a population looking at the resulting hyperinflation and docilely still buying bonds....

yup. that's gonna happen.

[Sep 12, 2010] Goldman Faces "Near Record Fine" In London

Let's talk about one area of successful export growth...

Financial fraud has been a major export from the US for the past ten years.

[Sep 11, 2010] More Poverty = More Religion

"United States truly is a blessed nation" + "“Religion is the Opium of the people” = ? I like question “Would you rather I burned your life savings or all your bibles?” as the test of real religiosity. I strongly doubt that on this metric the USA can successfully compete in religiosity ;-).

September 9, 2010 | The Big Picture

Chuck Ponzi:

The United States truly is a blessed nation. We all hope it stays that way.

philipat:

“Religion is the Opium of the people”

Karl Marx.

Expat:

Given what I know of America, if we are destined to move closer to the norm, it is likely we will move left and up rather than down. It would be interesting to poll Americans about the question, asking them “Would you rather America were more religious or richer?” and perhaps, “Would you rather I burned your life savings or all your bibles?”

ashpelham2:

America is a nation of contradictions.

[Sep 10, 2010] Regulators close small Florida bank

Yahoo! Finance

With 119 closures nationwide so far this year, the pace of bank failures exceeds that of 2009, which was already a brisk year for shutdowns. By this time last year, regulators had closed 92 banks.

JDD:

Come on America. Let's shoot for a record. Can we get to 200 bank failures by the end of the year ?

[Sep 10, 2010] My Equity Scenario for the Rest of 2010 zero hedge

Bankster T Cubed:

What is an appropriate p/e for the market in a system that is headed for collapse sometime between tomorrow and 6 months?

[Sep 09, 2010] Initial Claims Come At 451K On Expectations Of 470K, Trade Deficit Declines From $47 Billion To $42.8 Billion

zero hedge

Pining for the ...

I agree, but I think it is a different sketch, hence my screen name. The economy is the parrot, Bernanke is the shop owner, Tyler is the skeptical John Cleese.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE

DaveyJones:

it's bleeding demised!

groucho_marxist :

no, it's just restin'.

Paper CRUSHer:

Where the hell is Larry Kudlow these days?.

I miss that good ol' 'mustard seed' idiot and all that 'goldilocks economy' shit.

old_turk :

He's doing the '12 Steps to Prosperity' speil now. Yeah, the AA connection is really apparent ... and troubling.

The analogy of a credit junkie grabbing the credit punch bowl and dumping on himself comes to mind.

[/sarc]

jefe95:

The yahoo headline.....

"New Filings for Jobless Benefits Tumble"

Yahoo!!! indeed.....

This from an "AP Economics writer"

This is all one big joke.

TheGreatPonzi:

We live in a big joke, that's for sure. But you can ease your nerves by thinking that all these cocksuckers (AP journalists included) are about to die with the Ponzi system.

Bankster T Cubed:

oh boy! I am so confident about the future of the economy!

because they tell me I can be! the Fed pumping the stock market is so awesome! We'll all be rich!

Sean7k :

42.8 billion is a very large number and much bigger than it has been. This is NOT good news. Someone should start asking: What do we produce that has any real value? Because the world doesn't seem to want much of what we make. Further, we obviously need to buy from the world, as we cannot source locally at a reasonable price. Thank goodness the FED can continue to print money or we would be broke??????

Sudden Debt :

there's always a party pooper... AND TODAY, YOU ARE IT!

BETTER THEN EXPECTED MAN!

RECOVERY!

HOPE! YES WE CAN!

bugs_:

Consumer credit heading in the right direction - and now the gift of the trade deficit heading in the right direction - and its not even Christmas yet!

[Sep 09, 2010] "I Am Jim Cramer And I Approve Of The President's Message (Because The Market Moved Up By 3 Points)" by Tyler Durden

"There are women (and men) who will do anything for a price." ;-)

09/08/2010

There are women (and men) who will do anything for a price. Then there is Jim Cramer who will go from hating Obama (and the impact of his policies on the market, all the while misinterpreting such impact: i.e. the brilliant "Passage of the healthcare bill means a double dip is coming", and other such pearls), to loving the president, in the span of 40 minutes just so long as the market does not vommit for the duration of a teleprompted address. And the master of momo mediocrity may want to sit down with his "Stop Trading" friend Erin Burnett so two can clarify the official CNBC stance on Obama and his policies:

Burnett: "I think the problem is you have the fastest job creation in this recovery than you have in any recession in 25 years... Technically speaking this recovery has not been tepid."

Cramer: "I can show you chapter and verse how this is the weakest post-recovery environment since World War II." Sigh. Then again, if it makes for good theater, and the filling of some free ad slots in another Nielsen-rating impaired cable station, so much the better.

[Sep 06, 2010] Have a happy labor day

Hat tip to Tim Iacono

[Sep 06, 2010] A Walk in the Woods – We Hate Goldman

zero hedge

You can imagine (if you know me) my anger, shock and disappointment to see this at the trail juncture:

Apparently three years ago the nice folks at Goldie wrote a tax deductable check and had some help bring in some wood chips for this trail. Now they get a plaque with their name on it that will last forever. Whatever improvements GS made back then have been washed away from three hard winters. But Goldie still has their advertisement right in the middle of the woods.

I was looking at this and taking a picture when a teenage couple came up the path. I guessed that they were not this deep in the woods for “sylvan” pleasures. I pointed to the sign and asked:

BK: Do you know who Goldman Sachs is?

BOY: They’re the ones who stole the money in the stock market.

GIRL: My father says it’s the Wall Street that caused the depression.

BK: That sounds about right.

BOY: Should we rip it out?

BK: No. Let’s leave it. Everyone who walks by this spot will be reminded of how much we don’t like these guys.

BOY: Okay. Which way you going?

I pointed left. They went right.

[Sep 06, 2010] Bernanke, Bubble Denier The Greatest Fed Tool of All

zero hedge

CulturalEngineer:

The Bernanke testimony... short version:

"We've determined that the Fed's welfare system for the elite political and financial sectors is essentially working fine. The decimation of the American middle-class and destruction of the rest of the economy is unfortunate but completely unrelated. However, its critical to note that we do feel bad and wish you all the best."

[Sep 06, 2010] HOW TO MAKE CONGRESS ACCOUNTABLE

The Burning Platform

In ancient Rome, engineers were forced to stand under the arches they had designed when the scaffolding was removed. And in ancient Greece not only did the sons of the assemblymen go out to fight, so did the leaders themselves. Not only that; the oldest veterans were put in the front lines! And during the period of Athenian democracy, if a delegate proposed a scheme to improve the future and it was not approved, he would be put to death. If Americans want to make their government more responsible, it can be easily done. They can force members of Congress to put all their wealth in US dollar bonds, serve in every war they start, and pay the ultimate price when they propose some absurd new program.”

Mobs, Messiahs and Markets

[Sep 05, 2010] Analysts Iraq war ‘partly to blame’ for financial crisis

Raw Story

Dennis Boylon:

Wow...you mean war spending isn't good for the economy unless you are Dick Cheney or a Halliburton contractor?

The rest of the country get poorer while the MIC eats up the country's wealth?

We have less to spend on actual productive endeavors because we are too bush destroying and killing?

Amazing...what would we do without these geniuses to tell us how the world works.

showdown0_0 :

First war I ever saw that they sent PALLETS of $100.00 Dollars bills into a war zone.

usmcr:

Not just pallets. 3 KC-130s full of 463L pallets . Most of it is unaccounted for.. Some of it is showing up on the "enemy". And still.... no one has been investigated prosecuted or held accountable.

[Sep 04, 2010] Economist's View How Illegal Immigrants are Helping Social Security

Goldilocksisableachblonde:

I don't know , they're just something about the phrase "illegal immigrants" that bugs me.

Wait , I think I've got it :

Illegal = Against The Law

Yep , that's the problem. Now , what to do about it. The favored solution seems to be the one we've successfully applied in the financial arena , represented by the following equation :

(Illegal) - (Il) = (Legal).

Voila !!

Problem solved.

[Sep 04, 2010] Psychics and Fortune Tellers Being Regulated to Reduce Fraud - by Elizabeth Dias

Why financial forthume tellers aren't regulated too. Arn't they alsoin the fortune-telling business? What about Golden Sacks "analysts"? Why they don't have to be "of good moral character"? People want to know :-)

Sep 3, 2010 | Time/Yahoo! News

Starting this week, fortune tellers in Warren, Mich., must be fingerprinted and pay an annual fee of $150 - plus $10 for a police background check - to practice their craft. The new rules are among America's strictest on palmists, fortune readers and other psychics, part of a growing push to regulate a business that has never been taken, or overseen, very seriously. But officials in Warren, a town of 138,000 near Detroit, say it's time to weed out tricksters. "We had no mechanism of enforcement to protect people against unsavory characters," Warren city-council member Keith Sadowski says. "We want to be sure there is some recourse in case we do get somebody who is not legitimate."

Regulating an industry that deems itself clairvoyant, has no standard education requirements and yet rakes in cash for revealing spiritual truths may itself be an act of faith. It also might make good economic sense: about 1 in 7 Americans consulted a psychic or fortune teller in 2009, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. That could be 30 million or more people. (See people finding God on YouTube.)

Municipalities are struggling to manage their activities. Annapolis, Md., issues what it calls a "fortune-telling license" only if its police force concludes the applicant is "of good moral character." Last year, Will County, Illinois, decided to count fortune telling as an official business (along with tattooing and dog watching). Three years ago, Salem, Mass., famous for its 17th century witch trials - and something of a magnet for spiritual artisans - tightened its rules on background checks for psychics while easing its cap on the number of local fortune tellers allowed in town.

Warren's beefed-up regs came about this spring when Matt Nichols, a Warren police officer, told the city council that the town appeared vulnerable to fortune-telling crime. Once a year since at least 2005, Nichols says, he has had to try to persuade a psychic to return jewelry or cash taken from a client in exchange for performing spells or freeing the client from a curse. But since no regulations barred such acts, criminal charges weren't an option. "We are not looking to do anything to oppress people's beliefs," argues Nichols, who is also a member of the National Association of Bunco Investigators, a nonprofit group dedicated to combating scams and cons. "We are looking to specifically identify crime and people who prey on the vulnerable."

That makes sense, given the harm unscrupulous fortune tellers can inflict. Psychic Gina Marie Marks pleaded guilty Wednesday, Sept. 1, in Florida to grand theft and organized fraud. One of her victims testified that Marks swindled her out of $312,926.29 - and persuaded her to get a tattoo, to boot. It's now "a constant reminder of the psychological abuse I endured at the hands of this false prophet," she told a Broward County judge.