Rep07

Singing the Praises of Financial Innovation

F*ck innovation. We've had enough "innovation" to last a couple lifetimes. Innovation has already done whatever good work it can, long ago. Now that it's turned into a euphemism for fraud, fiduciary negligence and crime, let's crush innovation with the most Draconian regulation ever seen in America. "Free market" capitalism has all but destroyed the world in the last few years. It's time to beat the "free market" to its knees and chain it with punitive regulations that will geld "cowboy" management forever. We need to embed a permanent, total skepticism, mistrust, disrespect, and contempt for upper management into the regulatory system. We need to ASSUME a high percentage of criminal and evasive motivation is innate in management personalities, and design the system as mortally adversarial to those personalities.

We don't need innovation. We need stability and security, above all, in the financial system--AT ANY COST. America's MBAs and executives have proven forever that they aren't responsible or trustworthy enough to manage our system. Therefore, we need to take it out of their hands--in justice, anger, and vengeance.

How Much Can We Blame the Uptick Rule?

We need a DOWNTICK RULE!!

We have to prevent "naked longs" from driving stocks up in a frenzy. It's blatant market manipulation and it's increasing volatility in the market. Look at what happens with GOOG, FSLR, etc.--too many investors are being hurt because out-of-control buying is allowed without comment. Longs buying on upticks should never have been tolerated in the first place, it's the single largest cause of investor losses and excess volatility.

Any questions?

Visa Already Twice MasterCard's Market Cap

Hey what about the Brazilian Visa (VisaNet Brasil)? They are going public separately, and soon. When is that? Another winner probably.

Also there is Redecard (RDCD3.SA). Where does it fit in to the picture?

The Coming Crash of 2008: A Result of Overleveraging

Great article... right in the face of snotty happy-thinking moron longs like georealist and disbeliever. It scares them, you can tell by the tone of their juvenile replies. Though the ongoing crisis will do untold damage to the world economy, it will be a pleasure knowing that insolent fools like them are being re-educated the hard way.

Time for Greater Oversight of Mortgage Lenders? Duh!

Yeah, the government has been inexcusably negligent on regulation, and the bank managements have been criminally negligent on obviously unsound lending policies, and the bankers should be fired, charged, and jailed en masse. These g-d people have done more damage to the USA than any terrorist.

Really, a smart junior-high-school kid could see that the teaser rates were going to blow up the world eventually. All these execs knew very well what would happen and they let it happen anyway because THEY KNEW THE FED WOULD BAIL THEM OUT. What we need now is for the government to ALLOW the next ten major bank failures, without a bailout, so that it puts the fear of God into all the other cos. Then slam down the most oppressive industry regulation the country has ever seen, just totally constrain what the lenders are allowed to do.

Bottom line: laissez-faire just doesn't work. Criminal management teams keep destroying everything over and over again--S&L's, dotcoms, hedge funds, subprime, option-ARMS. It's time to ditch laissez-faire in favor of brutal draconian regulation.

Flawed Technology, Bloated Market Cap - Amerigon's an Attractive Short

Excellent article! Great analysis... thanks.

Flawed Technology, Bloated Market Cap - Amerigon's an Attractive Short

Great article and analysis! Quality stuff.

Time to Cut Your Exposure to Investment Banking and Mortgages

Two words: S&L Crisis.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Over 1,000 S&Ls failed. Total government bailout of $125 billion. Went on for years and years.

That's the closest thing to what's happening now. Except that this probably cost taxpayers $125 billion just in the last 3 months. This is potentially like, 10x bigger $$ than the S&L bust. Maybe more.

Let's hope we don't end up with 1,000 companies going down in this one. Because that would mean that it's only just barely begun.

Converted Organics: Greed, Fear and Greater Fools

This may be a total scam. How are they going to segregate the organic vs. inorganic waste streams? Where is the operational trial plant proving the concept actually works at industrial scale? This is BS, it's going to come apart like a rotted pumpkin after about 3 months when it turns out there is no significant usable or saleable compost coming out the end of their municipal-level plant--hence no basis for the carbon credits, or the municipal contracts. This is one of those ideas that works in the fantasy world but not in the real world. In the real world someone would have to separate the food and green waste from the metal / plastic / paper waste. = lots of intensely expensive labor and machinery. You need a nice clean "ideal" input stream of organic waste for this idea to work. City garbage trucks don't bring you that! Sure they're eager to find someone who will take it--but when COIN is stuck with mountains of mixed garbage they can't really process because its quality varies so wildly, this scheme will just come apart in a few weeks.

No Bear Yet? Average Stock Already Down 30%

Won't see the lows til August-October timeframe (ARMS damage wave working its way through the system).

Bad news will keep getting worse in Apr, Jul, and Oct reports.

11,000 by June, 10,200 by October.

Moving Beyond the Hype, SaaS Stocks Soften

OMG, they've reinvented timesharing! SaaS -- ooo-ooo so new! Oooo so cool! lol, there was this thing called a "service bureau" back in the 60's and 70's. Yeah, the vendor had the software and you just sent 'em your data. Later there were these things called "terminals" where you could log in and enter your data to the vendor's system and get back reports online. Hmmm, them terminals were kinda like "thin clients", not much brains cause the processing was on the vendor system. Lol... the more things change the more they stay the same.

Picking Apart the WSJ's Manipulative Gold Reporting

There's no error in the S&P return calculation. There's an error in your thinking.

You're forgetting the S&P dividends paid over all those years. They add up. And they compound. That's one of the disadvantages of gold. It doesn't pay any dividends as it sits out back in your bomb shelter with your survival rations, guns, and conspiracy-theory books.

BTW, the gold chart since 2000 bears a striking resemblance to the stock market just before the dotcom bubble burst. An accelerating, unsustainable parabolic rise which always, inevitably leads to a collapse. Followed by years of underperformance.

Sell now, do yourself a favor.