swaps

Backroom Bear Stearns Deal Exposed

Correction
It was Arthur Koester who wrote the Thirteenth Tribe.

I mis typed.

Backroom Bear Stearns Deal Exposed

Lots of emotional reaction to this posting, so the original post is to be commended.

Thanks Tom for reminding me that The Fed is privately owned by the banks themselves, and thus when Sen. Bunning and Sen. Melendez opined during the hearing about the American people facing losses if the toxic waste the Fed took cannot be marketed we realize:
The senators don't know The Fed is a private, or at least quasi private central bank at the core of the financial beast system.
Or the American people are indeed having to absorb losses while investment banking profits stay privatized. That is not only hazardous but immoral.
To the person who called Deacon an anti-Semite, I recall when I reminded Bob Bjork - and copied the Wall Street Journal - that Bjork was intellectually dishonest for calling Pat Buchanan an anti-Semite back when Pat was running for president.
Certainly the Jews know that the Arabs are the Semites and most contemporary followers of Judaism - 95 percent according to Thirteenth Tribe author Arthur Liester - descend from a Turkish sub tribe with Mongol genetic infusion, the Khazars. While Bjork did not acknowledge my criticism of his intellectual dishonesty, the Wall Street Journal a few months later printed a front page piece on the Khazars and a map of the area north of the Black Sea, where they lived when they converted to Judaism around 700 A. D.
The I guess Semitic Jews of the Old Testament times were almost virtually wiped out by the Romans in 70 A.D by the Romans because they would not assimilate. Everyone knows that, but have just conveniently forgotten it. The survivors of the Roman holocaust later surfaced in the European courts of the middle ages and then some of them migrated to what became the United States soon after the Mayflower, arriving from Portugal, Spain by way of south America. Stephen Birmingham writes about the sephardic branch, if that is the correct term, in the Grandees. Most of them seemed to have died out in the U. S. due to inbreeding. Though some of them also married into the WASP establishment.
As I have shown dogs and owned horses I clearly understand that Springer Spaniels do not look like Vizlas and Thoroughbreds do not look like Shetland ponies. And most Jews in the U. S. do not look like the Arabs. Just as the Semitic Arabs do not look like the Persians of Iran.
Anyway, the intellectually dishonest use of the racially charged words "anti semites" really needs to be replaced with something more accurate.

The Coming Crash of 2008: A Result of Overleveraging

IOver leveraging through derivatives. Warren Buffeet said this in 2002:)


I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system.
Basically these instruments call for money to change hands at some future date, with the amount to be
determined by one or more reference items, such as interest rates, stock prices, or currency values. For
example, if you are either long or short an S&P 500 futures contract, you are a party to a very simple
derivatives transaction, with your gain or loss derived from movements in the index. Derivatives contracts
are of varying duration, running sometimes to 20 or more years, and their value is often tied to several
variables.

Unless derivatives contracts are collateralized or guaranteed, their ultimate value also depends on the
creditworthiness of the counter-parties to them. But before a contract is settled, the counter-parties record
profits and losses – often huge in amount – in their current earnings statements without so much as a
penny changing hands. Reported earnings on derivatives are often wildly overstated. That’s because
today’s earnings are in a significant way based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for
many years.

The errors usually reflect the human tendency to take an optimistic view of one’s commitments. But the
parties to derivatives also have enormous incentives to cheat in accounting for them.