Fighting Yoda

Private Equity Releverages with a Vengeance

The Ponzi scheme bubble business is back. Of course the Fed and Treasury are going to backstop everything - everyone wants one more bubble and all losses will be wiped out.

Hype springs eternal.

If Asset Prices Are Dropping, Why Are Bank Stocks Rising?

Hype springs eternal - it is America after all. PPT team is hard at work, Fed and Treasury have the spigots open - PPIP, TALF, clunkers, 8K home credit, M2M,... Foolish investors never learn they always follow the piper - once again we hear the same stories- China, commodities - and people are going for it. Likely to see cash for appliance, cash for clothes, furniture - the possiblities are endless.

Yes banks will be hit even more in the next round with CMBSs, Fed is rapidly buying all the toxic stuff last count $666B, they will keep buying PPIP, TALF, and rest of the alphabet soup.
You of course can sell more homes and cars with cash rebates – earlier the manufacturers did it themselves - went bankrupt. Now Govt. is decided to get into the game – where will the Govt end up – of course in the very same place bankruptcy. Lot of states are already there- biggest California.

Not only these stimulus programs world over will end sometime soon, after that you have to pay for them- higher taxes, lower entitlements - we will see the other side of all this pretty soon.

BHO who was promising to balance the budget in 4 years is now guaranteeing quadrupling the deficit in 8 years. 1 Trillion stimulus 'unemployment will be kept under 8%', changes to 2 Trillion to keep the unemployment under 10% - so it goes.

Forget the 1930s; We're Reliving 1975 (Part 1)

Just because you do not “see’ soup kitchens, or bank runs, or unemployment lines – it is better than depression. Now we have a safety nets in place – food stamps, FDIC insurance, unemployment benefits- all these programs are running at their historic peaks. All these make things easier and better, but of course. But at the end of the day there is no free lunch – everything has to be paid for – much higher taxes are coming- about 24 Trillion has to be repaid. All this would lead to the big double dip.

The day of reckoning has been pushed – it is simply “delay and pretend”.

Citigroup Slammed for Pay Hikes

Citi and rest of Wall Street are nothing but a bunch of shameless crooks. They somehow think they deserve more - notwithstanding anything. Their greed has no bounds - losses etc don't matter -someone else pays for it - the share holders, tax payers who ever. The problem s we have the system of oligarchy in place and what is good for wall Street is deemed for good for America (we know how that ended for GM). Either there is complete radical social/political change or the suffering will continue.

The FDIC Is Upset There's No Real Banking Experience Running Citibank

Yes Ichan is right- "CEOs for our largest companies is some kind of inbred, country club, nonsense".

Consumer Confidence Index Encourages an Economic Rebound

"Consumer Confidence Index Encourages an Economic Rebound". It should be the other way around - Economic Rebound Encourages Consumer Confidence Index. That is where the problem lies - cart before the horse.

Bill Miller vs. Meredith Whitney - Why They're Both Right

Here are the financial sector profit estimates for the S&P (as % of entire S&P profits)
’06 – 45%, ’07 – 33%, ‘08 – loss --- Actuals
’09 – 13%, ‘010 – 18% --- Estimates



On Jun 01 02:43 AM Fighting Yoda wrote:

> Bill Miller made money the previous 15 years when he rode the bull
> wave - the credit bubble, housing bubble etc. BM is thinking everything
> will revert back, that is not the likely scenario. Financial sector
> earnings were at historic bubble high in 2006. Financials contributed
> to 45% of S&P500 earnings, with a sector weight of 22.5%. Now
> the sector weight is back to 12-13%. The earnings coincided with
> the credit bubble. The credit is gone, the earnings for the financials
> is gone. The bubble business model of financials is finished.
>
> With the ARM resets etc still to unfold WFC (Wachovia, Golden West)
> - there is lot more trouble for them. Same with BofA.
>
> Meredith was right, Bill Miller was wrong, she will continue to be
> right.

Candidates to Replace GM, Citigroup in the Dow

Het at least one of my picks CSCO came through


On May 30 01:16 AM Fighting Yoda wrote:

> I will vote for Cisco and Wells Fargo

Bill Miller vs. Meredith Whitney - Why They're Both Right

Bill Miller made money the previous 15 years when he rode the bull wave - the credit bubble, housing bubble etc. BM is thinking everything will revert back, that is not the likely scenario. Financial sector earnings were at historic bubble high in 2006. Financials contributed to 45% of S&P500 earnings, with a sector weight of 22.5%. Now the sector weight is back to 12-13%. The earnings coincided with the credit bubble. The credit is gone, the earnings for the financials is gone. The bubble business model of financials is finished.

With the ARM resets etc still to unfold WFC (Wachovia, Golden West) - there is lot more trouble for them. Same with BofA.

Meredith was right, Bill Miller was wrong, she will continue to be right.

Candidates to Replace GM, Citigroup in the Dow

I will vote for Cisco and Wells Fargo

Is There Any Limit to Bank Arrogance?

Banksters have taken over. We are back to the era of robber barons, with the difference Govt. is now on their side. When AIG people demand bonuses and actually get them, we have a problem.

Is There Any Limit to Bank Arrogance?

Banksters have taken over. We are back in the era of robber barons, with the difference Govt. is on their side. It is beyond arrogance when people at AIG demand and get bonuses.

Well capitalism as we knew it or imagined it to be is all gone. We have this new thing- worst of both capitalism and socialism - privatize the profits and socialize the losses.

Obama is going to distrubute a lot of wealth and make us all very poor.

Four Points on the 'Great Short Trade'

"never met an actual person who made money in the market without some optimism in reserve." - well you can be an optimist on the short side too.

Well if you consider 500K+ job losses and 2%+ PM home price drops as green shoots - good luck to you.

We had a bubble stock market and a phony economy for last 20 years - ever since Greenspan. That era is over. Being long has not worked for the last 10 years. Time to rethink all investment strategies. There are no simple answers out there - long or short or long-short, biding time is my strategy for now - will wait for the euphoria to settle.


On May 28 05:45 PM JVan wrote:

> I find myself in agreement with wpdragon. The shorts are in bad shape,
> and anyone who has traded awhile knows better than to fight the tape.
> With a bit of common sense about buying low and selling high within
> the support-resistance ranges of stocks that are in good uptrends,
> you should be able to make money in this market.
>
> There are bears who write about everything that is the matter with
> the economy--and we learn a lot from them. But I never met an actual
> person who made money in the market without some optimism in reserve.
> There are enough green shoots sprouting these days to put me in that
> camp.

FDIC Won’t Rule Out Banks as Buyers of Toxic Assets

The ultimate in self dealing, double dealing- this was feared all along since the beginning. Banksters have taken over. Just stay away - Obama socialism and corruption will kill us all.

America: The Land of the Fleece Scam

Per WSJ, the latest is banks want to buy their own securities under PPIP. The ultimate self dealing - banks can sell at high price get it financed by tax payer - book the profits, the buyer can incur losses - dump is on the tax payer.

This is what was feared when the program was proposed, it was expected banks would be restricted form doing it, but they could still doo it through front companies. Now all semblance is of fair dealing is given up. We should simply declare US as a banana republic and be done with it.