daffy

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Andrew Baker

you are more right than most will ever know. Silver and gold, silver and gold . . .

Yep, it's starting: they'll inflate the debt away, they think. In the meantime, gold and oil and the like will go north at a rate of knots, and the US $ will head southwards. We'll also get treated to a lot of irrelevant chatter and going-nowhere "disputes" (like the AIG bonuses) to try to get us on side and stop us noticing what's really happening.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Very true Hedged In,

Good article. It would be interested in knowing exactly what the actual increase in debt has been thusfar, and where the directed numbers are taking us in regards to national debt. From my simplistic models using growth charts over the last century (pop, GDP, debt, etc.) I am finding that by 2015 we will hit a 34 T Public debt. That is eliminating all extra deficit spending by 2010, which is now a wholly ridiculous assumption. It appears we may approach 50 T with servicing costs, etc. People are just starting to bring numbers to the table and speaking out about this. Thta is not a sustainable debt.

The only thing that is happening here, is that we are moving the over leveraged part of our economic system to the gov which will then become weaker, and much more vulnerable to economic attack. We should be embarrassed to be letting all of this happen.

I agree that this rally is not sustainable. I am in for a short ride, maybe til earnings start coming in.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

axelrod,

let us just hope that we see a continued rally so this spring when when cap and trade comes into the spotlight, they won't be able to push a stimulus 2 (as an actual rebate)at the same time to give an illusion that the bottom 95% will get a rebate from the Cap and Trade program. That is surely how they will drum support and leave the two completely separate. I totally agree with you, but we have to ever cognizant of the reality of our government. Cards are so far up the sleeves it is like they have a full deck hidden, and claiming just one deck being played with.

Also, be very wary of what is coming out of Copenhagen this week at the Climate Conference. Cap and Trade may work on a very small scale, but I get the feeling this global in scope. There is a lot of hand waving going on, and whenever I ask on of these "Climate experts" to show a viable forward and reverse model that doesn't explode, the can't. My education was in geophysics, and these experts claim that they need geophysicists to work on the problem, but very few geophysicists agree with them as far as I can tell.

Just watch it very carefully, and expect extremely underhanded tricks. This is apolitical movement and it has nothing to do with anything but selling a product that has no value.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

I am curious as to who believes Lewis and Pandit?

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

James,

since when did you believe it would be anything but?

Seriously, the political and financial elite could care less about you. It is just becoming more obvious.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

you all want to take down the banks? Stop paying your credit cards.

Number of U.S. Homes With Negative Equity Is Stunning

vbierschwale~

I would hope that you would add:

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd for endorsing high loan to value and other practises in Fannie and freddie therefore giving the market par to shoot for. Who was the major purchaser of Country Wide loans? Hmmm.

I wonder

Home loans for all ~ ~ ~

keep the practise going!

Market Skepticism About BofA / Merrill Deal

lewis . . . incompetent?

Hmmm, he is the CEO of BofA. Seriously. If you were half the man that he was, you still would be no where near where he is. SA is continuing to show me that the readers have fallen a few grades to be par with the contributors.

Alternative Buyers for Lehman (and Not Just the Usual Suspects)

wow, I see great humor here.

Someone actually has a sense of humor!

XOM's R&D will never buffer a buyout though, and to tell you the truth XOM likes geoscientists in management, not MBA's. XOM does a hell of a lot more than buying a few mortgages for our society (that would be like throwing a doallr in the offering plate for them). So all of you who actually take any of this article seriously, try Paxil, you might actually feel better about yourself.

BAC's Ken Lewis Mulls Another Deal as Lehman Reaches Brink

Yeah, I am long BAC. Yeah, I am not so happy about it. Yeah, the only reason I hold onto it is the realization tha there has to be at least one bank out there that doesn't fail over this financial mess we are in. At least one Ken. AT LEAST ONE!

An Involuntary Transaction: Why BAC + CFC May Never Close

way to kill the thread H2O,

seriously, after reading that crap from you, I am sure no one will come back to comment.

Go away.

Under The Radar News - Monday

Reagan,

There are many more where the following comes from:

and you can quote me.

I hope pray and prey that iTechnology becomes byeTechnology.

Apple should be embarrassed, but I figure that they will be following their current "plan" to re-invent everything and sell it to the idiots of the world.

Hitting the Reset Button On Home Mortgages

I think that everything you are writing is fine and dandy as far as a bailout for homeowners go, but there seems to be one thing that people are increasingly willing to ignore.

A good percentage of people who are in danger of foreclosure shouldn't have been in the home in the first place.

I have been on my block for about 5 years now. In the last 8 months there have been 4 foreclosures (I live in Miineapolis). Of those foreclosures, one was a cut to pieces mansion for rental units that I have offered the value of the land minus tear down costs (after foreclosure). It really is that bad. Two of the home are valued higher but are really the least valuable homes on the block (they are like track homes in a neighborhood of turn of the century architecture). The final home is a traditional home symbolic of the neighborhood.

OK, now onto the "owners". The first home was occupied by some young partier who threw outrageous parties with sword fighting and the likes at all hours. Foreclosed, I am sure failure to make payments. The second two were occupied by people who had migrated home to home as renters and were always evicted (either by the city (condemnation) or the landlord). The fourth one was occupied by a couple who took out an arm loan and invested all of thier savings into a restaraunt in 2007. A start up restaraunt.

Ok, if you ask me, the only people who should have been in their home are the restauranteers. The other three occupiers did not belong in the position of having a mortgage to be responsible for. They couldn't even handle a lease for god's sake.

So, as far as I can see, at best 75% of the people in this bad debt situation should have never been there in the first place. So, no we should NOT bail them out. If the government wants to step in, well, let them help the couple who made a mistake in their mortgage choices and the choices of their business start up. At least they were willing to risk what they had to possibly provide a better life for themselves and others as well as provide for a larger tax base.

Seriously folks, you are not going to entrust your Maserati Quattroporte Executive GT to an alcoholic with a BAC of 0.33%. Just the same as you are not going to entrust your retirement porfolio to the homeless guy on the park bench.

Let's stop with the broad sweeping regulatory changes. Pretty soon home ownership will be a right, and the governemnt will be bailing out everyone. Driving is a priviledge, and so IS HOME OWNERSHIP. THESE ARE PRIVILEDGES YOU HAVE TO TAKLE SERIOUSLY AND BE RESPONSIBLE FOR.

Stocks: Risky, But Tempting

There is something that scares me worse than a 10,683 DJIA. That is statements like the following:

If you buy stocks when they're going down, they might be cheap, but they're almost certainly going to get cheaper before they rebound (if they rebound).

If they rebound?

What stocks are you looking at?

Are you telling me that MSFT is going to go down, maybe to 23 and stay there forever? Maybe they might go away altogether. Maybe MSFT will just fold, and everyone who falls under the 267.2B market cap will die.

Come on Felix. Get a grip.

Everybody seems to be focused on the short term gain that they have lost sight of a simple truth. Short-term gain tax-rates jump from 15% to 28% on plays lasting less than a year. Of course that is a simplification, and just a side note. But seriously. I am curious as to how many people are out there, at age 48, are fretting the 10-15% continued downturn that might occur over the next 4-6 months in their IRA. In their IRA. Should I say it again?

I think you made another huge mistake in your article to bring CFC into this picture. Not only is the CFC deal RISKY, it may be downright stupid. CFC is going to drag down BAC with it, and the only spread there is, is the difference between BAC*(0.1822) - CFC which puts the spread at $1.78 on a CFC current price of $4.78. CFC is valued, according to my understanding of the deal, at 6.57 when I did these numbers. You have to be careful there. $7.16 is not the price right now. So, 1.78/4.78 = 37.6% gain on something that might not happen, and if it does might get revamped, and then it will only happen in 3Q 08 . . . maybe. That is why there is such a spread. I am suprised it is not more for the risk.

OK, now that there is clarification on the CFC-BAC deal, I will have to give you credit to your statement which I take as bordering on lunacy. CFC might go away. But MSFT? GRMN? RTP? BAC?

I think you need to reel yourself back in, and maybe try and take the "Death to all Mankind" out of your fear-mongering.

And just to clarify, I am not short term bullish on the market, but over the next two years, you could say that I am moderately bullish.

I think you need to lighten up Felix.

I wish my name was Oscar.


I just would really like to know when all this "sky is falling rhetoic is going to stop". Of course the sea is choppy. Do you really think we don't know that? Who are you talking to? I am still buying in, and will continue to. I could care less what my stocks are going to do in the next month or two, or 5. What goes up, might come down, and what goes down, will usually go up. Look at the DJIA over the last 20 years and you will have no choice but to agree that USUALLY trumps MIGHT every time in the previous statement.

That is for all you math people out there USUALLY > MIGHT. Notice there isn't even an equals sign udner that symbol. Unless of course you are talking about CFC.

Bad example Felix.

Financials and Retail: Not as Dire as They Seem

I love it:

"give yourself some time for stupid to be finished"