tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30368639.post4071891406882722578..comments2023-10-16T01:58:50.870-07:00Comments on TRADING WITH WAXIE: If they can LIE about GM, how can ya trust them about the BANKS?!Waxiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08513802524809539679noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30368639.post-4495969463180428152009-03-30T12:20:00.000-07:002009-03-30T12:20:00.000-07:00Hey Waxie,I hope you are feeling better soon. Sca...Hey Waxie,<BR/><BR/>I hope you are feeling better soon. Scary thing cars.<BR/><BR/>Thank you for fitb and fas and all that at the beginning of March.<BR/>March coming in like a lion and going out like i don't know what.<BR/><BR/>Folks in the congressional committee on the mark to market issue are outrighht threatening the chair of the financial accounting standards board with termination, if the fasb doesn't immediately come to heel and adjust the mark to market rule to the specifications of the banking institutions that have made substantial political contributions congressmen on the financial services committees.<BR/><BR/>During the bank run-up at the beginning of the month some BAC executive was quoted as saying, "Thank god for country-wide." Which pretty much translates as - hey congress is on our payroll and they're gonna make it so that we can systematically and legally lie about the value of the debt on our balance sheet - and country-wide has a whole lot of this really lousy debt, so we'll be able to lie alot and it'll look like we're making money when we're actually broke and that's a great thing for us and the country, too. Hey, don't you think?<BR/><BR/>And this BAC yo yo is probably getting lots of conventional compensation and even more bonus money cause he's so smart and loyal and cause of course leverage still works. you just have to alternately bribe and threaten the government with financial annihilation.<BR/><BR/>It's sick really. It's tough to judge who is stupider and more lacking in integrity - these babbling clowns at the banks<BR/>or their tools down in DC.<BR/>Bernanke is at least relatively consistent in his actions and in what he says; and, I believe, is as straight as he knows how, whether he's right or wrong.<BR/>maybe there'll be a miracle and everything will be all right.mike whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03386242245790724666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30368639.post-37387346032111247222009-03-30T07:49:00.000-07:002009-03-30T07:49:00.000-07:00ITS MUCH TOUGHER TO STEAL MORE MONEY FROM TAXPAYER...ITS MUCH TOUGHER TO STEAL MORE MONEY FROM TAXPAYERS VIA CONGRESS, ESPECIALLY AFTER AIG BONUS SAGA... OBAMA KNOWS IT. HENCEFORTH, THE CHANGE OF HEART FOR GM.<BR/><BR/>LAST week raised the likelihood of a play on the major indices because of probable quarter-ending window-dressing. <BR/><BR/>This much is relatively easy to figure out. It's beyond the next week that things get a bit more hazy. There seems to be a feeling in some circles that the bottom has been reached and it's probably sunny skies ahead - Fed officials on Friday for example, spoke of the economic data picking up possibly by mid-year, while some analysts have been quoted as referring to 'inflection points' implying that markets have turned. Our take on all this is the same as it's been for months now - if you print enough money and pump enough cash into zombie banks, car companies, insurance giants and a hugely leveraged consumer-driven economy, even the worst of blood-sucking undeads should twitch into some semblance of life. <BR/><BR/>But it will not result in a lasting, durable recovery; in fact, it is possible that the subsequent fallout will be worse than before because of the disappointment that will ensue. <BR/><BR/>This is what is happening now in the US - thanks to an estimated US$3 trillion that the Federal Reserve and Treasury are injecting into America's economy (without accountability, a topic we'll leave for another column), people are starting to think that the worst is over and Wall Street, whose run over the past fortnight was also probably aided by window-dressing, has tried the get the bullish bandwagon running again. <BR/><BR/>The truth of the matter is that although the bandwagon might trundle along for a while yet - possibly even a few more months - it cannot sustain because of the flimsiness of the underlying economic recovery that is being engineered, especially when the engineers are ex-Wall Street types. <BR/><BR/>Rather than rely on Fed officialdom and investment bankers, both who have a vested interest in claiming a recovery is imminent, our preference is for independent observers who operate beyond the sphere of Wall Street and politics. <BR/><BR/>One outspoken critic of the latest US bank bailout plan is Princeton academic Paul Krugman, 2008's Nobel Prize winner for economics, who has openly said that the plan will not work and when it fails, Congress will probably not approve any more money for the Obama administration. <BR/><BR/>In his Friday New York Times commentary titled 'The market mystique', Prof Krugman correctly points out that the government is in effect bribing the private sector to buy toxic assets with its proposed public-private partnership and also correctly criticises the 'quick-fix' mentality behind the entire rescue effort that is trying to get banks back to where they were a few years ago. <BR/><BR/>'As you can guess, I don't share that vision. I don't think this is just a financial panic; I believe that it represents the failure of a whole model of banking, of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good,' said Prof Krugman. <BR/><BR/>Interestingly, Citigroup's FX Technicals said basically the same thing in its Friday market commentary: 'We honestly still think that people do not get the seriousness of this 'economic deleveraging' taking place . . . this is not a deleverage of the past five-six years, but of 25-30 years worth of excess,' it said. <BR/><BR/>The unit goes on to say that the US and entire global economy has been operating like a massive hedge fund for the past three decades, supplementing stagnant real incomes with cheap credit and asset market appreciation to maintain a lifestyle and illusory wealth creation that would otherwise not have been possible. <BR/><BR/>The worry is this - that model of the world is clearly unsustainable going forward yet everyone (led by Wall Street-backed US officialdom) is doing their best to engineer a quick return to that model as possible. It will probably result in a short-term uptick in the numbers and the market will respond, but when - not if - the next collapse comes, it's difficult to see how an even bigger rescue can be mounted.ROYhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16245063744601237800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30368639.post-58039336987832245022009-03-30T06:09:00.000-07:002009-03-30T06:09:00.000-07:00Thanks for your insite.Thanks for your insite.Nickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03609589810057815849noreply@blogger.com