swaps's Comments

The NYT Finally Admits There's a Spending Problem

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:22:50 -0500

Good post.
I also support Gary A's comments which I wrote about in my instablog today but cannot copy into this message.

In essence, I wrote default to the central banks and let Japan and China - if the dollars they hold become worthless - seek international litigation against the Federal Reserve and its shareholder banks.
Issue a new U. S. government currency to replace the privately issued Federal Reserve notes. Hold Congress accountable for the value of the new currency.
Pay back foreign debt holders by a portion of any future expanded production in the U. S. This gives the global elites an incentive to return the factory production they outsourced overseas and to stop importing wage busting cheap illegal labor.

On Nov 24 02:51 AM Gary A wrote:

> It is criminal to pay interest to central banks who are in on all
> this raising of the interest on the national debt to critical levels.
> I say we default on the central banks, and pay our obligations to
> China and Japan.
>
> Then we ask the Fed to leave our shores permanently. The Fed allowed
> the ponzi housing scheme and is profiting for the member central
> banks because of our deflationary pressures.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:22:33 -0500

After doing what the banks wanted, Geithner is now taking the fall.

Maybe Dimon does not want to serve his country so much as he wants to save the banking system from total wipeout.

Did it not take Chase a century to accumulate its first billion dollars, and then only four years to double that by being the banker in Vietnan, a war advocated by its chaiman?

Will Dimon pursue a policy of breaking down banks to smaller size that are big enough to fail, or will he want to close banks and then sweep its customers into the ever growing JP. Morgan Bank One Chase etc super bank with government backing?

Hopefully Dimon is being altruistic and will do what is best for the public and the republic, but so far bankers are only waging constant class warfare against everyone else.

The Single Most Important Thing to Understand About the Fed

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:00:57 -0500

You totally forget the Federal Reserve is a privately owned bank, owned by banks.
The last time I looked at a "dollar" it was a Federal Reserve note, backed by the privately owned Federal Reserve.
There is much talk of a dollar collapse. If that occurs, it will be a collapse of the Federal Reserve notes (dollars) and privately owned Federal Reserve money system.
Any attempt to make U. S. citizens liable for the losses at a privately owned bank would be outright cirminal fraud. The banking system currently has an insurance program in place which is funded by the industry itself.
If an audit determines the Federal Reserve is bankrupt and thus cannot continue to operate as a privately owned bank it will have to be liquidated.
China, Japan and entitites and individuals holding worthless Fedeal Reserve dollars and obligations could theoretically go to the World Court and seek prosecution of Fed officers and shareholders, the banks, for mismanagement and possibly fraud if that is detected.
I can now see that the audit is absolutely necessary If the Fed is insolvent, it can be eliminated like any other privately owned bankrupt enterprise.
The federal government could then issue new dollars, this time backed by the U S. government and overseen with transparency by the U S. Congress, which would be held accountable.
I see no reason why the audit of a privately owned bank operating within the U. S. should be exempt from routine audits and oversight when all other privately owned banks are subjected to audits.
Appointments of the "governors" at the Federal Reserve banks is just deceptive eyewash for clearly the Fed has operated as an independent bank since 1913.
In my lifetime every top Fed chairman has come from only one inbred group, one of the problems for this management chain has no feel for the broader community it is supposed to serve.
The collapse of the Federal Reserve would not be the collapse of the United States, but the collapse of a private bank that should not have been created in the first place.
Any martial law will only have to be imposed on the banking system. When Hank Paulson threatend to take down the country last autumn the U. S. should have immediately imposed martial law on the rebellious banking system whch has been waging class war with its 29 percent interest rates and other predatory practices.

Pay Extra Close Attention to the Dollar

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:47:33 -0500

Shoving all that extra money out the door last autumn did little to solve the main problem - the huge pile up of unsustainable debt.

Who is going to pay it down? If "they" do, won't that be deflationary because money to pay interest and debt won't be available for spending?

New York Times. Government faces a wave of debt.

www.nytimes.com/2009/1...

Why a Market Crash Doesn’t Matter

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:41:50 -0500

Warren Buffet was so concerned about the stock market crash last autumn that he lobbied for the government to bail out his companies' bad financial holdings.

The Fed Backed Itself into a Corner

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:44:27 -0500

I blame the Federal Reserve and Allan Greenspan and all the other inbred chief central bankers for this mess.
Their exploded laboratory should be abolished. Period.

The King Canute Economy: Governments' Futile Attempt to Stem the Tide

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:42:34 -0500

This is madness. A huge government like the U. S. needs money. It goes to a central bank, which creates money out of thin air and loans it to the U. S.
The U. S. then spends the money....;and then has to tax citizens to pay back the money and compounding interest to the central bank in gratitude for the money the central bank created out of thin air.
How much wiser for the government to have just spent the money in form of digital credits deposited to vendors, contractors and retirees. and have no debt to pay off or interest tread mill to begin running on.
If inflation started to heat up from the distribution of government money it simply had to adjust tax revenue rates to soak up money that was exceeding productivity.
A simple system but too simple for the evil minds that need complexity for the evil spells they cast on politicians and publics.

Could England Be Headed for a Sudden Stop?

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:37:48 -0500

In this deflationary environment with no money around Britian like the U S. has to just print money and distribute it. The Rothschild banking syhstem apparently does not have enough money to loan to governments - instead governments are having to make imaginary loans to the banks who are now saved and paying themselves huge bonuses so they won't go elsewhere to "makek more" Why should large governments think they have to borrow if they have more outgo than income?
And how in heck are Britain and the U. S. going to pay back any new debts when they have clearly demonstrated the inability to pay down the huge debt obligations already accumulated since 1913 and the banking takeover of the nation?
No government should be issuing new debt to investors whether other governments or individuals.. Just print money and get it out there. Investors should be deploying their money only to businesses so they have the capital to operate and expand as opportunities arise.
By dumbly thinking that a large once dynamic country like Britian or the U. S. has to go hat in hand year after year to borrow and be ever further indebted to bankers or other nations who tell it what to do has resulted in this situation. Obviously, listening to bankers and borrowing from them has the same consequences as it did hundreds of years ago when kings were decapitated or run off after piling up debts to finance dreams of empire or revenge..
So far the western world is proving only that history repeats itsel over and over when it comes to money. That staying with the bondage of usury banking only results in periodic chaos, economic collapse and people arguing how to resume with an economic system that is inherently flawed to begin with.
Printing money will not cause inflation. But trying to raise taxes to pay off more borrowed money will be futher deflationary.
Paying interest on a loan is a drag on spending, whether public or private. Thus it is deflationary, the dreaded monster of the banking system.

Robert Samuelson on Debt in First-World Nations

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:03:58 -0500

This whole situation is absurd because the federal government bought into the myth that it could not just print money and had to borrow from the banks - who through fraud became insolvent and then had to borrow from the citizens in theory to keep banks and citizens going.
. Huge sums of more massive debt was theoretically piled onto the citizens (as if they can be taxed enough to ever pay it back) last autumn by a Congress with a gun held to its head.
The extortion imposed on Congress last autumn by Paulson and the Federal Reserve has only made the debt situation far worse and harder to resolve.
The people who love money the most - like the banks who borrow TARP money at near zero and then loan it back at 29 percent interest to the citizens who theoretically saved the banks - should now experience the pain of more default by the citizens. Default on exorbitant high interest mortgage loans did not teach the banks a lesson, which now charge exorbitant credit card and loan rates.
(If the banks are trying to make borrowing so painful so as to kill lending, then the banks and their balance sheets should have just been liquidated in an orderly fashion anyway.)
If the banks are trying to kill lending, then why did Paulson insist Congress try to save lending last autumn?
The whole panic city scene last year was illogical and the only martial law should have been imposed on Wall Street and the too big to fail banks - and no where else.
Citizens should default on all debt.. And then the citizens, being insolvent, can apply for TARP funds from the government and buy back its defaulted debts from the banks and sell them to the government and the privately owned and never audited Federal Reserve.
This complexity is so simple to solve with must more complexity and every rising debt totals. The investment banker way.
In the long run no tree grows to the sky....and Congress, the banksters and central banks don't know that....and the citizens who did were ignored.

Keynes is now irrelevant.
Fraudulent derivatives made it so. Keynes never factored in fraud and 300 to 1 derivatives leveraging.

Our Steroid Pumped Economy

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:52:36 -0500

CNN today reports that the interest on the federal debt will total $4.8 trillion by 2019.

It's now time for the federal government to just print money and spend it - and stop trynig to borrow and borrow and borrow and borrow and borrow and borrow and borrow.

Congress should have imposed martial law on Hank Paulson when he threatened to take down the nation if Congress did not borrow and borrow and borrow and borrow to cover up the fraud at the banks.

On Nov 18 04:33 PM bob adamson wrote:

> Judged solely by this article I would assume that you, Mr. Katsenelson,
> oppose the fiscal and monetary efforts by governments and central
> banks made around October of 2008 and thereafter to forestall the
> collapse of the banks, near banks and government insurers that caused
> and were collapsing as a result of the housing, mortgage, secularized
> debt instrument and derivative bubble. Whatever your position on
> that, you clearly oppose the extent and duration of these government
> and central bank interventions in the free market.
>
> Clearly these interventions are massively expensive and fault can
> easily be found in the detail of how these expenditures were applied
> in many cases. That said, which of the following best describes your
> position:
> 1. The free market would have essentially focused its creative destruction
> on the banks, near banks and government insurers at fault and whatever
> collateral damage was caused to the rest of the economy would have
> been no worse than what has been experienced after all the stimulus
> that has been mistakenly applied.
> 2. A deep recession/depression would have occurred but is only being
> delayed by these interferences with the free market. Not only is
> such interference expensive, it will only make a much worse depression
> unavoidable sometime soon; such interference only delays and makes
> more painful the necessary cleansing action by the free market.
3.
> Some focused and limited stimulus intervention (tax holidays for
> corporations generally, for example) to mute overreaction during
> the October 2008 panic might have been justified but not the measures
> taken.
>
> Judging from your article, one might assume that position 2 best
> describes your bottom line position (i.e. position 1 would have applied
> if we were very lucky but position 2 was more likely given past interference
> with earlier recessions) and also that you would have the guts to
> say so. While I don’t share your analysis of the economy and the
> solution to its ills, I can respect an honestly held different position
> and a willingness to acknowledge the consequences of that position.
>
>
> Any reaction to the forgoing?

How U.S. Investors Can Play the Carry Trade

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:49:01 -0500

CNN today reports the federal government will owe 4.8 trillion in interest by 2019.

This is an incredibly imaginative and audacious result of Hank Paulson threatening Congress with riots and martial law if they did not go along with more debt creation.

Is there a way to dump all this debt into an ETF or trust fund and make it go away...forever???

Seaboard: Watching the Stocks that Nobody Watches

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:54:07 -0500

I deeply regreet not buying LUK - I think it was formerly Talcott Factoring - years ago when I parted ways with Ian Cumming. Instead, years ago I picked up a LUK bond paying beaucoups interest but he craftily called it in.

I have a small holding of LUK now the past three years but last year's purchase of some JEF shares, a LUK balance sheet affiliate after a billion dollar investment, is up a lot more short term than the LUK holding intermediate term.

Another 22000% gain is hard to pull off since no tree grows to the sky, and a greater challenge will be replacing in the distant future the intuitive cagey Cumming, who is a Canadian original with great intelligence and resolve.

It is difficult to pile into an affiliate investment made by Cumming - Steinberg because it will not be disclosed until well after the fact, but following them into affiliated ventures that are still publicly held outside LUK might be one way to play this the next few years. But choose carefully.

That is what I did with JEF, which I rode down in the debable, and then rode up for a nice recovery and then some.

By the way, years ago Cumming called himself a pirate. But he is not a pirate like Dr. John Malone - also an alumnus of him, who got rich more by crafty stock options and relentless mergers that diverted equity to himself. Investors in LUK share more in the spoils because Cumming and Steinberg have more directly invested in LUK themselves and do not use the super voting shares trick to leverage more modest ownership.

Coincidentally yesterday a private company, Powdr Corp., started by Ian Cumming but now owned by his sons added Copper Mounain Ski Resort in Colorado to its holdings. Powdr gained some notoriety in New England when it fired year round domestic workers and replaced them with cheaper seasonal foreign workers.
But there is no way to benefit from that play. Unless you are cheap foreign labor from Peru or elsewhere.

Whistling Past the Deficit - NYT

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:42:42 -0500

To my knowledge, state governments cannot deficit spend forever - unless the Federal Reserve Bank is abolished and is replaced by (privately owned) central banks in each state that can print fiat mney to cover the local spending deficits.

California - the gorilla in the United States - is cracking under the strain of ongoing deficit spending.

Usury banking requires a periodic year of jubille when compounded debt has to be written off one way or another.

No compounded debt tree grows to the sky. Otherwise the ancient Roman Empire would still be here. Debt drove its native farmers off the land, forcing them to migrate to the fringes of empire or Rome and leaving their land to be worked by new waves of debt free immigrants.

California has been exporting its former land owners to Idaho, Utah and Colorado and importing hordes of cheap workers from Mexico. This has not shored up California's state finances.

The darkness is now here whether it is being cursed or not.

On Nov 17 03:01 AM bob adamson wrote:

> Arguably Mr. Winkler is neglecting to give sufficient consideration
> to all relevant factors governing government spending at this point
> in time. Sure, it would be great if taxes could be lowered and budgets
> balanced (and winters were shorted and milder, except on ski hills)
> but these objectives have to be prioritized against other economic
> objectives.
>
> Nine months ago the US and global economies were in clear and present
> danger of collapse into deflationary depression chaos and maintenance
> and even enhancement of public spending was and remains an important
> bulwark against such collapse. The price of maintenance of those
> levels of public spending was high and this will weaken the capacity
> of governments in the future to provide needed public goods and services.
> Unfortunately, there were no other easy and thrifty options; either
> the economy would be stabilized through expensive stimulus spending
> (together with monetary easing) until true recovery can be achieved
> or it would be allowed to collapse and hopefully recover at some
> later date without government intervention. Deficit government spending
> (together with monetary easing) was therefore the least bad option
> available and it has not yet completed its intended role of setting
> the stage for recovery. It is pointless to decry the price, risks
> and burden entailed in choosing the stimulus route unless this is
> coupled with a concrete, practical and affordable plan to achieve
> recovery now at less cost and with less pain and misery. It is equally
> pointless to abandon stimulus prematurely as this would be the worst
> of all possible choices (i.e. the cost of stimulus to date would
> be incurred but deflationary depression would also be induced by
> conscious choice).
>
> Mr. Winkler’s article simply curses the darkness without even suggesting
> that there is a candle, let alone lighting one.

Is This the Beginning of a New Secular Bull Market?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:23:36 -0500

Interstng article. But there are no underlying fundamentals to justify this rally - a rally which is much appreciated by me.

How much of this "rally" is actualy repricing of stocks in terms of a cheapening fiat dollar that requires more of them to buy anything? How much of this rally is enginneered by a plunge protection team that was overwhelmed in late 2008?

In 2002 the DOW fluctuated between roughly 7400 and 10000 and was around 8800 in Nov. 2002.

In 2002 gold prices were fluctuating around $300 rising to around $330 in the last half I think.

Today the Dow is at 10400

Gold is at $1,100..

Is gold in a secular rally or being priced in terms of the falling dollar?

Is the DOW in a rally or just repriced in 2009 inflationary dollars?

Goldcorp-Canplats Deal Highlights Value of Junior Gold Miners

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:08:23 -0500

I took all my profits on Goldcorp months ago because it seemed their mines were aging. This purchase makes sense. But for now I will remain exposed to gold through Kinross and New Gold.

GG merits continued watching.

Why the Stock Market Should Crash

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:54:30 -0500

The current shrinkage of the stock market from its all-time highs somewhat correlates with the shrinkage of the job base.

The market will crash when the nation totally crashes and the greedy elites seem to be workng toward that with their relentless ourstourcing, cheap labor importing and massive defrauding.

Too Big to Fail Banks: A Simple Solution

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:08:20 -0500

Canada and Australia simply prove that U. S. and British banks are too big to manage.

And Canada and Australia also prove that vigorous regulation of banking keeps bankers from destroying the landscape.

What else is there to prove?

Five European Oil Stock Bargains

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:46:14 -0500

I simply bought RDS a few months ago because its yield was so much higher than the others. Since then a price hike had boosted the yield further

It's nice to have your sophisticated study back up my intuition and gut feeling.

Dow Remains Resilient Despite Calls for a Correction

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:40:28 -0500

Ooops. This should read "when I returned from a 10-day road trip,I learned my modest......."

On Nov 10 10:36 AM swaps wrote:

> When I left town on a 10-day road trip in late October I found my
> modest holdings had dropped nine percent.
>
> That was the correction. And now they have already rebounded and
> come close to closing the gap.
>
> So maybe the called for correction has come and gone. I hope so.

Dow Remains Resilient Despite Calls for a Correction

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:36:58 -0500

When I left town on a 10-day road trip in late October I found my modest holdings had dropped nine percent.

That was the correction. And now they have already rebounded and come close to closing the gap.

So maybe the called for correction has come and gone. I hope so.

The Unsustainable Lie of Inflation

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:32:46 -0500

Very good summary.

But the current system is so embedded there seems to be little chance of deconstructing without reverting to the so-called Dark Ages of chaos, pestilence and constant war. Wait, we have that now too.

Inflation has been so persistent because wage inflation is absolutely required to make usury banking work. Workers need rising wages to keep up with compounding interest, or else money would eventually aggregate into the hands of lenders.

Thirty nine, if inflation robs the rich then why has the gap between rich and poor risen? Top managers who are paid 50 or 60 times more than the production worker leave the lower ones in the dust.
And I question Tack's assertion that living standards are rising.
Yes, we have Blackberries and I-phones and 52-inch HD screens and cars that make the Model T look like a golf cart. But in the Dark Ages peasants only worked six weeks a year to take care of all their shelter and food needs.
No, I do not want to go back to huts and porridge, but some of the standard of living is illusory as the 17 percent unemployed are finding out. Does sitting around at night being mentally programmed and entertained by Modern Family actually cut into our real productivity and a real rise in sustainable living standards?
As for the person who cited Buffett, his 23 percent rate of return would have been given a big haircut if the government elites had not bailed out his financial positions, the same government that has told seniors - whose transfer payments lag real post 1990 inlfation by 50 percent - to stuff it and tighten their belts.
But again, this article does a great job of summarizing reality. But the financial elites - what Ferdinand Lundberg called Finpols - absolutely have us by the throat.

Wall Street: Dumb as It Ever Was

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:10:24 -0500

I am a student of psychological warfare and I am still amazed that simply rounding up prices on a menu can cause such psychological angst and suffering when a diner does not see the odd $9.95 price tag for a salad.

And they walked out without ordering? I really need to find out why the human mind is now so strongly conditioned to only expect a fractional price. There is something very deep at play here, somethng the manipulators have now embedded in our stimulus - response conditioning.

And this is just one of the mind control triggers among countless unknown ones..

On Nov 07 09:03 AM americanincanada wrote:

> From my experience the reason why consumers like a price of $9.95
> rather than $10.00 is the impression that the former price is carefully
> calculated, the best possible deal that gives the store a minimal
> profit to survive, while the latter round number looks like it was
> picked out of the air and probably has a built in too generous profit.
> Announcing a 10.2% or 9.9% unemployment rate seems to reflect careful
> gathering of statistics, while 10 % sounds like a number pulled out
> of a hat and probably not valid. Foolish yes, but I saw the disaster
> that happened when a menu at a restaurant I owned was replaced by
> the exact same menu with the prices changed up or down by slight
> amounts to become round numbers. The new manager made the change
> because he thought the previous prices were silly. There were lots
> of complaints, some people got up and walked out before ordering,
> and revenue plummeted.

Breaking Up the Banks: How Likely Is Legislation?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:26:48 -0500

Sheila Blair should be terminated. Ask a couple of MBA classes how to best break up the banking system - and reward the winning group with million dollars jobs as czars of the financial restructuring.

To say the banks can't be broken down into smaller parts doesn't consider how the Soviet Union broke down into smaller components and emerged as a stronger Russia.

Dumb people in charge in the U. S.

Charlie Gasparino: Another Crash 'Has to Happen Again'

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:22:16 -0500

Insightufl post. Except that ulitmately Citi did not benefit from the abolition of Glassman - Steagall. Look at its stock price.

I agree the financial industry is destroyed. But like poker players they are trying to outbluff the world and win the pot with a pair of deuces, backed up by trillions issued by the privately owned Fed and backed up by I guess the public....but that is not clear when it comes to fiat money.

For Your Perusal: The Glory of Free Market Oil Supply

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:53:59 -0500

That chart looks like declining non-Open oil production to me. T Boone Pickens has been saying for years the big oil pools are found. Sure, some more are popping up now in Brazil and elsewhere - but India and China are boosting demand.
I recently drove from Colorado to North Carolina and back. Prices at the pump seemed higher than in the summer. No winter price decline yet. Oh, I only buy he highest octane gas because that is better for my car's engine. I will not economize there.

Finance's Changing Playing Field

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:45:00 -0400

The dumb money won't complain yet because the big banks led the broader market up from the edge of the abyss that your charts show was forthcoming. Disclosure. Still long.

Congress clearly still does not understand central banking, investment banking - or should we say inwestment banking, cute tv ad.

Congress understands that money comes to it from the financial sector. Maybe that is why they bailed out the banks and turn their heads away from the obscene bonuses being paid to bankers who would be on the street if their holdings had not been bailed out by fiat money.

The uptick rule is still abolished. No get-tough agency has been formed to oversee that FDIC and SEC enforce laws on the books already.

GS rules. Congress follows. The regulators look at porno on their computers during the work day, I guess. They are accountable to no one.

No one.

As Paulson warned last autumn. If Congress gets tough, if Congress does not authorize a private bank to print all the money it wants, if Congress audits the Central Bank - then "we" will take the country down.

As if they haven't already.

Will the New York Times' San Fransisco Edition Make a Difference?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:15:19 -0400

Interesting commentary. No one can really predict how this will turn out. But give the Times a thumbs up for thinking outside the box.

It could develop into a national print powerhouse with numerous local affiliates. But it should have held onto its tv stations too. Those damn incompetent investment banker advisers......

Disclosure: Long NYT.

California's New Budget Already $1B in the Hole

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:42:57 -0400

This essay plays into my personal belief that institutions are too big to manage.

For a start, perhaps Californiai should break into three states, with each area trying to fix itself.

A major problem for California is that its elites have numbed Californians to accept hordes of illegal cheap laborers, with a resulting huge drain on state resources and a destructive rise in crime rates that makes decent people want to flee or just stay indoors.

There are so many Hispanic and socilaist subversives in Californiai government at all levels there is no easy way to fix the problem.

Actually, when Jeff writes about the upper 20 percent hoarding their money this is similar to the Mexican economic model. I have read Mexico has the highest number of per capital millionaires in the world, but also a huge peasant class. The elites refused to tax themselves to improve the education and opportunities of theiri Indian blooded citizens. Opting instead to force them to migrate to the U. S. where corrupt leaders welcome them as an instrument to destabilize and destroy the U. S. middle class.

An impermeable border - to also protect us from alleged Islam terrorists - would have penned in the admittedly sympathetic Indian Mexicans to put revolutionary pressure on the Mexican elites to act more responsibly.

Former U. S. Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado, a dual citizen if there ever was one, was a blue dog Democrat. He, like his Mexican fellow elites, wants Mexicans to flood into the U. S., but at the same time he did not want to raise taxes to pay for the inevitable subsidies that unfunded labor requires for health, housing, education and incarceration. This is the same strategy that ruined California.

We need to keep taxes low in the U. S., but we also need to stop the corporate, immigrant and defense contractor welfare programs that bankrupted us. Fraudulent banks should have collapsed into the void.

Following the same deficit spending course as the U. S., California has failed because it did not have a state federal bank that could just print fiat money to keep the balls juggling in the air for a little while longer.

Why Exxon Should Significantly Increase its Dividend

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:24:42 -0400

One of the factors contributing to dividend yield also is how high or low the price is bid up or down to by the market cogniescenti...My latest oil buy was based on yield alone. Fundamental and emotional factors affecting the price of low dividend stocks can change as well as it can for higher yielding ones.

And buyer sentiment can fluctuate wildly too. How often do we see a stock priced at $45 now and then $32 six months later and that does not mean there was a sudden 30 percent hole cut out of the company.

Years ago I interviewed the head of a public corporation who said his master's thesis was on whether or not dividend yield influences stock investing decisions. His thesis concluded that overall it did not. Of course, that applies to the macro and not the mico.

On a given day I might buy into RDS.B because I want higher yield and others will pile into XOM confident that the latter will give them a higher total return over the time frame they have in mind - which for most traders seems to be a few days.

long: CVX, MUR, RDS.B

The TARP Deadbeats

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:22:12 -0400

A list of the non paying TARP borrowers can be found here

www.businessinsider.co...