Tony Soprano

Fast Money Recap 3/19/08: Morgan Stanley Outshines Goldman

Since there is so much angst directed toward the Fed and the US Government, I decided to listed some events, not all of them, that had dramatic ramifications on lives, cost and the psychology of our country. I started in 1906 because it’s just a little over a hundred years. As I compiled the list, I could not help but feel the great sacrifices that many American’s have made and what a resilient country, economy and government we have in American.

The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and fire, registered 8.25 on the Richter scale; estimates range from 700 to 3,000 dead or missing, approximately 225,000 injuries and $400,000,000 in 1906 dollars.

Recession, May 1907-June 1908, 13 mo

Recession Jan. 1910-Jan. 1912, 24 months

Completion of the Panama Canal, 1914 – 27,500 workers are estimated to have died

Recession Jan. 1913-Dec. 1914 23 months

World War I -- 116,708 killed – 33 billion

Spanish influenza, 1918, killed over 500,000 people in the worst single U.S. epidemic.

Recession Aug. 1918-March 1919 7 months

Recession Jan. 1920-July 1921, 18 months

Recession May 1923-July 1924 14 months

Recession Oct. 1926-Nov. 1927 13 months

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, flooded 27,000 square miles, 246 killed

The Great Depression, Black Tuesday, crop prices fell by 40 to 60 percent, after the panic of 1929, and during the first 10 months of 1930, 744 US banks failed. (In all, 9,000 banks failed during the 1930s). By 1933, depositors had lost $140 billion in deposits.

The Dirty Thirties, longest drought of 20th century. Peak periods were 1930, 1934, 1936, 1939, and 1940. The "dust bowl" covered 50 million acres in the south-central plains during the winter of 1935-1936.

Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, 400 killed

Recession May 1937-June 1938 13 months

World War II – 408,306 killed – 360 billion

Wartime Controls: 1941-1945 rationed consumer items ranging from sugar to gasoline

Recession Feb. 1945-Oct. 1945 8 months

The Marshall Plan, July 1947 – 13 billion in economic and technical assistance were given to help the recovery of the European countries

Recession Nov. 1948-Oct. 1949 11 months

Korean War, July 1951 - July 1953 – 33,000 killed in action

Recession July 1953-May 1954 10 months

Recession Aug. 1957-April 1958 8 months

Recession April 1960-Feb. 1961 10 months

The Cold War, some estimates shows $8 trillion was spent, worldwide, on nuclear and other weapons between 1945 and 1996

The Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct. 1962

Good Friday Earthquake (1964) In Alaska, it was the fourth biggest earthquake recorded

Vietnam War, 1963 – 47,378 killed in action

The murder of JFK, 1963 Nov

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Aug 1964

The murder of Dr King, April 1968 and Bobby Kennedy, June 1968

The city riots of April, 1968 – 30 cities affected

Hurricane Camille, Aug 1969, 259 killed

Recession Dec. 1969-Nov. 1970 11 months

Stagflation of the 1970s began

Nixon first imposed wage and price controls on August 15, 1971

Oil Embargo, Oct 1973 long gas lines

Recession Nov. 1973-March 1975 16 months

Articles of Impeachment of Nixon started
(Approved by a vote of 27-11 by the House Judiciary Committee on Saturday, July 27, 1974.)

Deregulation: 1974-1992 this era began when Nixon left office

Three Mile Island nuclear power plant crisis, March 1979

Mount St. Helens eruption 1980

Recession Jan. 1980-July 1980 6 months

Prime reached unbelievable 20% in January 1981,

AIDS was first reported June 5, 1981 by the government – It is thought that more than one million people are living with HIV in the USA and that more than half a million have died after developing AIDS.

Recession July 1981-Nov. 1982 16 months

California earthquake 1983

The 87 market crash - Black Monday

California earthquake, 1989

Recession July 1990-March 1991 8 months

Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990

The Persian Gulf War, 1991 or Desert Storm Jan 1991

Hurricane Andrew 1992 very destructive United States hurricane

The Great USA Flood of 1993

Intervention in the Former Yugoslavia,

Dot Com Bubble, climaxed on March 10th, 2000 with the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52

9/11 Attack, 2,974 people died

Recession March 2001-Nov. 2001 8 months, Airline Industry Collapsed

Enron bankruptcy in late 2001, employed 22,000

WorldCom, July 21, 2002, filed for Chapter 11

Iraq War, March 19, 2003 – 4,000 dead

Hurricane Katrina, late August 2005, 1,836 people lost their lives

Start of the Great Housing Recession or Sub-prime Recession 2006 or 07, 08? Date to be determined.

Time to Get Serious About Utilizing Short ETFs

To: Richard Shinnick

Rule #6 (never go long stocks) is a bad strategy. Never is a long time! We should be able to use all of the tools that the markets make available to us. For the young and the non experienced investors and traders this type of guidance is a disservice.

I have been long the stock market for over 45 years. There were many, many days, weeks and months of toil along the way. My longest of longs was WPO. The IPO was $25 and it did not take long for it to go to $14. I kept WPO because their circulation was skyrocketing. Evening papers were dying then because of the advent of evening news; this made it easier for morning papers to grow faster. There are many other factoids from Watergate and the Warren Buffet affect that I can give you but I will let the facts speak for themselves.

Below is a very interesting article that may have an affect or our markets and I think it will. We already know that foreign money has been and will continue to move into US and European banks. However, now it looks like foreign funds will be moving into commercial real estate as well.

Foreign buyers see U.S. property as currency play
03/07/2008 07:00 AM EST
Copyright 2008 Reuters

By Ilaina Jonas

NEW YORK, March 7 (Reuters) - For over a year, U.S. real estate has offered bargains to foreign buyers as the euro or British pound gets ever more bang against the sinking buck.

Now, however, a shopping mall, office building, high-rise condominium, or hotel is, to some foreign investors, a vehicle to bet on the dollar.

The trend hasn't escaped Rene-Pierre Azria, chief executive of Tegris, a New York investment bank specializing in cross-border mergers and acquisitions.

Azria has been meeting with investors for Tegris' third real estate fund. The firm plans to raise $300 million in foreign currency in Rossrock Fund III LP to buy the least risky senior portion of distressed commercial real estate mortgages.

While making his rounds to British and European investors, many institutional buyers wanted the funds invested immediately instead of spreading them out for more consistent returns over two or three years.

"They said, 'I want to buy dollars now and get out whenever the fund matures ... (say) in four years, five or six years, because then I'll be making money on the exchange rate,'" he said.

On Friday, the dollar hit a record low of about $1.54 against the euro. The British pound rose to a year's high of more than $2.00.

Commercial real estate investors traditionally have hedged against currency fluctuations.

However, European and British investors remember when the dollar was on top and believe it will happen again as Europe succumbs to an even longer and more painful economic slowdown than in the United States, said Azria, former global partner with investment bank Rothschild Inc.

"Therefore, the exchange rate turnaround is going to happen sooner rather than later," said Azria, whose co-founder Janet Christensen was chief of staff to Blackstone Group LP Chairman Stephen Schwarzman.

"By the time they take their money out of the fund, which is three, four, five years down the road, it will be fully in their favor," he said.

The dollar could begin to strengthen against both currencies in the second half of 2008, said foreign exchange analyst John Normand at J.P. Morgan Securities.

A strengthening dollar could boost the eventual property sales value, as well as the rent, for European property owners who buy now and hold their U.S. investment for several years.

Even half-empty new condo projects and foreclosed houses in Florida have attracted foreign buyers, said Peter Zalewski founder of Condo Vultures, a real estate investment consulting firm in Bal Harbour, Florida.

"They're saying, 'Let's get into dollars simply because we think there's a currency arbitrage play there,'" Zalewski said.

Hedge funds from the Czech Republic, Monaco, Belgium and France, and a Singapore fund looking to recycle pounds earned from London office properties into dollars have contacted him.

One UK fund wanted only single-family homes in southwest Florida markets such as Naples and downtrodden Ft. Myers, he said. "They want to get out of pounds, get into U.S. dollars."

STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW

Yet many real estate experts recommend that commercial property investors avoid currency plays.

"Real estate investors are not experts in currency," said Michael Pralle, president of real estate private equity firm JER Partners.

"People who get into currency speculation, that's fine, but they should recognize that's exactly what it is," said Pralle, the former head of General Electric Co's GE Real Estate unit. "That's a different business from ... real estate. The people that mix it up, they're fooling themselves."

The U.S. economy also could wipe out any currency gains by driving down rents, said Benjamin Lambert, chairman of real estate brokerage Eastdil Secured, a unit of Wells Fargo & Co .

"For the most part, the activity that we've seen has been from pretty sophisticated people," Lambert said. "A great deal of them are more concerned about a recession."

(See [Link removed for security purposes] for the new global service for real estate professionals from Reuters)

(Editing by Richard Chang)