Chinese bubble

Janet Tavakoli Q and A

More with Janet Tavakoli.

Naked Power Grab

By the Fed., Inc. and Treasury. Each are actively soliciting through baby steps the ‘additional powers‘ they so crave. This is  grand-standing by the very same people, all creatures of Wall Street, who now have slipped back in through the revolving door and for now hold regulatory posts (fox, meet henhouse) for this toothless regime, should make each of us very very suspicious.

Without actually acknowledging there is a problem per se, Turbo Timmeh Shitener thinks the solution is him and his cronies co-horts having more bigger, more faster, more and more power over more and more businesses, such as hedge funds and insurance (the states are supposed to regulate insurance, but the Fed was always stepping on their toes).

I think they kinda mean somthing like a politburo.

Yet where were the feds when Made-off was running his Ponzi scheme for FORTY FUCKING YEARS eh? SEC? In da house? No? Where the fuck are ye then?

SEC sock puppets got treated to a free seven-course lunch (who sez that don’t exist?) and all the coke they could snort and hookers they could screw, and gave Bernie and his merry band of Ponzis a pass until the next year. Rinse, lather, repeat. Times forty.

Sure, TT, *more power*, you stumbled upon the answer;  Oh wait, I forgot the question. How do we stop this sort of thing from happening again?

Well, um, let’s see what happens when you cannot/do not know how to use the powers and tools already provided?

Oh right, we get a big fucking mess like we have right now.

Yeah, thanks for that, TT. You are a *star*.

Meantime we’re supposed to be relieved and reassured that the next Even Greater Depression (GD3?) forty years hence will deffo not be happening.

Color me relieved! I can stop worrying now. Everyone, no need to worry anymore, the next GD ain’t never gonna happen! Whoopee!

C’mon. The regulator guys always had the tools. The just didn’t realize they weren’t supposed to be the tools.

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“Finance should be the grease that keeps the engine going. Yet in our last decade, finance became the actual engine. That is the root of the problem. ” -Dr. Housing Bubble

Notable Quotables for $20 Alex

“Posterity is just around the corner” [Wikipedia]

“He is a nice man, but he is out of his depth.” [Spectator]

“What I don’t think people should do is suddenly stuff money in their mattresses and pull back completely from spending” [Faux Hotlanta]

“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”  [Wikipedia]

“In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate rules…it’s impossible for a violation to go undetected, and certainly not for a considerable period of time.”  [Wikipedia]

“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” [Wikipedia]

“Self-regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance”  [FT]

“Rome is on fire. The government is pumping gasoline through the fire hoses, and the only ones benefiting are the recipients of the trillions and trillions of dollars of your money. Fairly soon, I think it will be safe to say that the formerly prosperous middle class will become the working poor, in a land filled with half-vacant strip malls selling shoddily-made crap to a populace so numb and dazed it doesn’t know the difference and can’t remember anything better. Just as 50 years ago seems like a fairy-tale time, when a gas station attendant could support a wife, kids, a car or two, and a home on his salary, a few years ago will sound surreal to our children; imagine a time when two working parents could afford a home and a car! Imagine when there was enough work for both of them to even work steadily! Imagine owning a car! Or a home! That’s crazy talk, and we can’t change things, so why dwell on it…”  [Sanity Check]

“In characteristic Trump fashion, Trump Ocean Resort Baja will be the best of the best, and consequently always in demand” [Breitbart]

…

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First they came for the homeowners and I didn’t complain.
Then they came for the credit card holders and I didn’t complain.
When they came for me, there was nobody left to complain.

I feel so used

And Asshat of the Year goes to…

R.I.P.

• Shoe Pavilion [Marketwatch]
• Linens ‘n’ Things (superb – always hated that name) [Bloomberg]
• Mervyn’s [Marketwatch]
• Zima [Bizjournal]
• Even the happy hunting grounds are being foreclosed upon in Cali: Winchester Country Club, Running Horse, McAllister Ranch, Diablo (heh) Grande  [Sacbee]

Prognosis negative:

• Circuit City [Marketwatch]

Nuclear farts

JP is upping their offer? Why? As reported here the reason is:

“JPMorgan boosted investors’ optimism by lifting its offer for Bear Stearns to $10 per share from $2. The revised plan is aimed at soothing Bear Stearns shareholders upset over JPMorgan’s earlier offer, which was made at the behest of the Federal Reserve when Bear Stearns was near collapse.”

Ahhh, the newly poor BSC shareholders are upset about the hurried buyout offer. JP Morgan had second thoughts, and obv. they want to do the right thing. Isn’t that nice!? When it comes to making money, there are absolutely no hard feelings about fair play, and making full restitution to investors who in retrospect appear to have gotten dealt a bad hand at the (Liar’s) poker table. On Wall Street people sure play nice!

Karl sez:

“See, it appears that Bear managed to stick a nuclear bomb (and its ticking!) in the “merger agreement.” That, being a clause that survived even if the deal failed to close that obligated JPM to guarantee some of Bear’s liabilities!

“Oops.

“Rumor is that Dimon was apoplectic when he discovered this and suddenly there was interest in renegotiation.”

BUHUHAHAHAHA.

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“He who smelt it, dealt it.” -Some Wisenheimer

A run on an investment bank crashes Bear Stearns

20/20 hindsight.

Despite the fact that the market surged yesterday on news that S&P claimed the rating agencies were nearly finished with downgrades, as is usual it is what was left unsaid that was most revealing.

“March 11 (Bloomberg) — Even after downgrading almost 10,000 subprime-mortgage bonds, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service haven’t cut the ones that matter most: AAA securities that are the mainstays of bank and insurance company investments.’

So, yeah, they’e playing games of hide the sausage with one another. When you have an industry which is given the mandate to police itself (fox, henhouse, get it?), rather then by an objective commission (*cough* SEC *cough*) this is the result.

Is Bush fiddling while Rome burns? He says everything is cool, we shouldn’t worry, and we definitely shouldn’t panic.

When authority figures tell sheeple not to panic, they usually panic.

Next week should be an interesting one in the markets.

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“No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe, while Congress is in session.” -Mark Twain “

Hell, I coulda told them that

if only they had asked:

Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists

Analysis of unseen trials and other data concludes it is no better than placebo