buyitcheap

Why Too-big-to-fail = Too-big-to-exist

Absolutely fantastic. Had this happened in China, these bankers would have been executed or committed suicide by now. They all need to be broken up and their senior leadership's assets seized, sold and then they should do major prison time for what they have done to this country.

Dave Fry: Thoughts on Leveraged ETFs

What the heck happened to TNA on Friday 11/20? Closed Thursday at 40.17 opened at 35 and change!

Why the Stock Market Should Crash

The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent, or short or rolling puts....

Meredith Whitney: 'I Haven't Been This Bearish in a Year'

Yeah!!!! She's dead right and to be dead right twice not only in a decade, but in 24 months - Garzarelli who??

Closed-End Funds and Tax Free Dividends

Ironically, even after adjusting for Mass taxes, the california fund is still a better yield. The October downturn last year brought a tremendous buy opportunity. Pray we get another one.

MEH - is also good for Mass taxpayers.

Are Markets Headed for an 800-Point Blow-Off Day?

I like the way you think on this. particularly on the income side.

China's exports continued to improve, falling 13.8% in October vs. a 15.2% decline in September and 20%-plus drops earlier in the year. Chinese authorities have begun urging banks to be more cautious in lending, and today the PBOC warned "definite expectations of inflation have formed in the market." (ETFs: FXI, PGJ)

Wow - improving by stinking less. Would that we were all held to such low expectations. Interesting note on the inflation expectations.

Sidelined Cash: Fuel for the Fire

Baloney! Pipe dream! That money on the side is being held in the event of a layoff and to payoff credit cards. (Investors tend to be a sort that care about personal and corporate balance sheets.) 98 cents tomorrow for adollar today in a money market makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than 60 cents in an index fund were another correction to come in, and given the pathetic volumes, it wouldn't take much.

Is a Weak Dollar Creating a Bubble?

The correlations are very high and can't be ignored.

Buying Apple Today: Like Buying Microsoft in 1998?

What you're alluding to is the equivalent of "escape velocity" vis a vis apple's market cap. Same thing happened to MSFT, goog, Orcl all of them. . Did the market really intend in 98 to value it at half a trillion dollars or something approaching that? No. It could not get past the gravity, the pull back to reasonable valuations. aaple will have the same issue. There's simply not enough thrust to break it and even if it did, it would be a spectacular blow off.

The Unsustainable Lie of Inflation

Yes, as Jim Grant said recently, when technology is applied and prices go down, we shouldn't call that deflation, but rather, progress. Too bad the Fed doesn't have the same outlook.

Watching the USD Drop? Here's What You Should Really Be Watching

Been waiting for a pop on the buck for a long time and don't see it.

May the Lloyd Be with You: Blankfein Doing 'God's Work'?

I understand a rebranding effort is underway Goldman Sancti(?)

10.2%

I largely agree with your commentary - what I do find interesting is that some (and it is definitely a small subset) kids are creating work/jobs in new areas. My niece is selling on ebay, making her own clothes, and another is writing code for iphone apps. Stuff we never would've thought of. In my day, you could get a summer job in construction but now you're competing with 20 immigrants who will work for less, so those opportunities go away, unless of course, you're the one hiring them.


On Nov 07 07:40 AM Dan in mpls wrote:

> You may think that minimum wage is for kids but that is because you
> don't know many people who live on it and do survive. In many towns
> across America one can rent a 2 bedroom apartment for $400.00 very
> easily. I know that I have not been able to raise the rents on my
> rental housing in Minneapolis for the last 8 years. Apartment rentals
> are therefore getting cheaper by the year. Across the globe families
> do live in multi generational households. This will most probably
> become the norm as families pull together to fill the Mc Mansions
> that dot the countryside sucking energy and now commonly house two
> people.
> Most of the millionaires who are reading this seem rather sure that
> our country isn't gong to be the same free spending country we have
> all grown accustomed to yet most here cannot fathom life at a five
> dollar an hour wage. It would be better for millions more people
> to be working and creating something than sitting out this great
> recession in depression and helplessness. I would expect that we
> will have to wait for inflation to lower the minimum wage before
> we will see hiring on a large scale. Vast swathes of the younger
> generations have no work ethic so they should not expect to have
> what their parents did, nor will they. At some point the free ride
> legions of the poor are getting from the government will have to
> end as America joins most other nations of the world in what we must
> call a more normal (poorer) lifestyle. We really are no longer the
> land of the free and the home of the brave. The current Administration
> is working desperately to mold the nation into one that is a lot
> more like Europe. This will have to include unemployment levels similar
> to what they have suffered unless we create a wage that matches the
> skill set of the poor and lower middle classes We need a lower
> minimum wage to help the newly employed build job skills like showing
> up to work the day after they get paid and staying sober and drug
> free.
> At the current levels of Federal deficit spending, the lower middle
> class will be basically reduced to the living on the minimum wage
> that you think is so beneath the American worker as it stands now.
> It would be far better to put people to work than to create debt
> and and wait for inflation to do the job for us.

10.2%

The fed should raise to half a point and pay less on deposits. Get the @#$*(@#* money back into the economy. I can't believe we're lending banks money at .25 and paying them 2.5%. Why the hell would you lend at all? Sign me up for that deal. Oh, wait, I don't own any politicians.