Jason Tillberg

The Coming Consequences of Banking Fraud

"A sound money backed by precious metals, can be the people’s liberation from this war."

The earliest Americans already spilled their blood for that. :(

WSJ 1930s Articles Show Eerie Similarities

Its still so difficult to time when things play out. It's one thing to be right about how things play out. The timing is that much harder.

seekingalpha.com/artic...

Gold Above $1,000: Indicative of an Imminent Market Fall?

Write downs? Where were they last quarter? You have some 13% of total mortgages delinquent, yet banks didn't have much write downs.

Soon, 50% of all mortgage holders will be underwater. Completely broke and earnings less money than before if they are lucky to have a job.

When the write downs come, I suspect the dollar will rally as people scramble to get dollars to pay down their debt.

The debt is still there. Equity can easily evaporate and I suspect at some point, we will see a massive liquidation and monster crisis.

I put time frame between now and as late as end of 2012.

Will the Market 'Melt Up'?

The market melted up already. IYR melted up in the last 2 months. FNM, AIG, C all melted up.

Be fearful when others are greedy.

Starbucks: Highly Overvalued in a Mightily Overbought Market

I bought a Jan 16.00 put today. 10 contracts for speculation.

Monday's 6.7% drop in China may have been spurred by reports authorities will allow state-run companies to default on derivative contracts.

Economic warfare just getting started. Pen mightier than sword?

Transparency, you say? Citigroup (C) has sold undisclosed credit card portfolios to undisclosed buyers for an undisclosed price. Now you're informed.

Get on it Bloomberg.

Doug Kass Goes All In Short

" Market timing is a b*tch, but Kass has flipped that statement upside-down and made the market his b*tch." That made me laugh!!

A double-dip recession? "Simply out of the question," says Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, whose Weekly Leading Index was on pace for its highest annualized growth rate in 38 years. Achuthan said the recovery is moving at the strongest pace the U.S. has seen since the early '80s.

Is the consensus we dip in the 4th quarter? I was thinking the double dip would happen throughout 2010... and last into 2012.

SEC chief Mary Schapiro says she can't police the big boys unless they open up the doors, particularly to the opaque derivatives market: Regulators need "information that allows us to construct an audit trail, so that we can find insider trading, manipulation and other concerns that can reverberate through the entire marketplace."

HR 1207 should pass in October Barney Frank said. Can't help but to think of Andrew Jackson: "Gentlemen, 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 the breadstuffs 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 would 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."

~ President Andrew Jackson 1832

Leverage on Wall Street is rising at the fastest pace since 2007. "I am surprised by how quickly the market has become receptive to leverage again."

Animal Spirits are back. But that's what happens when you get a 60% rally in 6 months time.

Individual Investors Not as Bullish as the Pros

If anything, I prefer to see the 4 week moving average. This index is volatile.

An illustration, in quotes, of the five stages of panic buying - where investors on the sidelines buy aggressively in the face of a huge rally, afraid they're missing out.

Concur. Well defined. I can attest to the reluctance to want to invest in March just as the rally started. I had some reluctant clients in March wanting to invest who later (early August) demanded ideas for going long in which I had a hard time finding.

FDIC's Bair: "Deteriorating loan quality is having the greatest impact on industry earnings as insured institutions continue to set aside reserves to cover loan losses. Of all the major earnings components, the amount that insured institutions added to their reserves for loan losses was, by far, the largest drag on industry earnings compared to a year ago."

Yet they could still afford massive bonuses??

Bear Value, Fair Value, and Bull Value

One caveat to comparing the P/E in the 98' to 09' period is that we were in a tech boom where we went from 40% of households having internet and cell phones in 98' to 90% in 08'.

Of course P/E's will be high in those high growth years for tech stocks.

Mortgage debt went from $4.95 trillion in 99' to over $10 trillion by 07'. That kind of new debt was a boom to financials. They too enjoyed high P/Es for their growth.

I think the next 6 - 10 years, earnings overall will be anemic.