farmer448

OTC No More: Blessing or Curse for Institutional Investors?

And don't forget AIG.......

Has 'The Trampoline Effect' Come to an End?

The last time this crazyness went on Volker pulled the plug.

How Unions Destroy Shareholder Wealth

As an investor you shoould be more worried about what you can control. The board of Directors and the Chairman of the board have done such a wonderful job representing the small investors interests.

So if you are to rant, rant about your representatives not labors.

Steve Forbes calls on the administration to rethink nationalized health care: "President Obama says he wants to make health care affordable for all. Applying free-market principles to health care would do just that."

When I was a young man, I came down to Houston and stayed with a friend of mine. He worked for Roadway Express. One night we got to talking about Unions and he said, Roadway loved the unions. Everytime they got a pay raise they just went to the Government and got their rates raised. Then like magicians, Roadway had a bigger absolute bottom line as everything was based on percentages in setting rates.

The private medical insurance model seems to follow the same path. Insurance companies just take the higher costs add their percentage and magically a bigger bottom line. What is their incentive to control costs? I don't see any. Looking for a more informed person to refute.

We’re within shouting distance of a housing market bottom, mortgage-bond pioneer Lewis Ranieri says. "I’m actually very enthusiastic about housing, and I haven’t said that in five years." Ranieri sees a paradigm shift as lower prices enfranchise people who never had the opportunity to own a home.

Maybe Mr. Ranieri should see the inside of a jail cell as he signed off on Franklin Banks Financials and internal controls. But then that would mean taking responsibility as Chairman of the Board.

So where are the Feds in prosecuting this?

A California Default

So why do bondholders keep buying california debt. There is always two sides to a transaction.

This is in-line with too big to fail. If California defaults, then who will buy their bonds without a higher risk premium. Sometimes it takes a rude awakening to bring about a sustainable balance.

Punishing Bankers' Behavior Could Backfire - Barron's

Excuse me Millman, what planet are you living on?
Please send all of these poor bankers to London, Singapore, Japan. Those markets have also been hosed by the Wall Street Turks. These guys were at the wheel and on the accelerator until they burned out the Worlds Commerce Engine. So please let someone else hire them.

As for Wall Street and the Capital Markets in General could you please help me with the following:

Why didn't Greenspan invoke Reg Q in 1996 when he admitted to the stock market overheating that led to the crash of 2001?
Mr. Invisible Hand tell me why the Fed had to intervene in Long Term Capital's bet on Russia?
Mr. Invisible Hand tell me why the bankruptcy of Lehman brought down the worlds capital markets?
Mr. Invisible Hand please explain to me all of the questionable assets that private banks have transfered to the Federal Reserve?
Mr Invisible Hand, why has the US government been forced to invest 180 billion dollars in AIG?
Mr. Invisible Hand, why did the US government put together TARP to put money in commercial banks?
Mr Invisible Hand, why did the US governement have to 'lend' GM and Chrysler millions of dollars before the end of 2008?
Mr Invisible Hand, why did the CDS market reach how many trillions of dollars?
Mr Invisible Hand, do you still think it is a wonderful idea to turn over the Social Security Safety net to Wall Street.
Mr. Invisible Hand, why is the Federal Government being forced to cover unemployment insurance extensions for many states?
Mr SEC maybe you can explain why so many Ponzi Schemes have come to light?

Mr. Millman please come back to Earth and use your knowledge in trying to define the role of the capital markets in the US economy. We need to rebuild the Commerce Engine the Turks blew up. Your knowledge of the different types and flavors of transactions between counterparties is invaluable.

What kind of regulators/circuit breakers are needed to keep the engine of commerce from burning out again while providing for the credit necessary for growth of the economy.

FedEx (FDX) threatens to cancel the purchase of 30 new Boeing (BA) cargo planes if Congress allows it to fall into the hands of the union-friendly National Labor Relations Board - a move it says will strangle the company.

Fed Ex CEO
We have to many planes on order. Need to cancel them until times get better.

Fed Ex Lobbyist:
Gee lets use it as a bargaining chip with the politicians. We can try and de-rail the political efforts of the average worker gaining a more equal footing with management.

Investor:
Are these guys nuts. They think they can publicly force the union issue by threatening to cancel aircraft. Do they think I just fell off the turnip truck. Why does management want to stir these waters? It sure isn't going to make their employees any happier and I don't think a stick approach ever works with politicians. What boneheads Fed Ex management have become.

Steve Waldman at Interfluidity thinks private investors in Treasury's PPIF ("let's call them PIMROCK") could be "convinced" by Geithner et al to buy toxic assets at way above market price - thereby bailing out the banks and saving their bondholders (um... PIMROCK). Scary theory.

Are PIMROCKS to be the Pop Rocks of the financial industry

What Leads to Market Bottoms?

Mr. Banks,

The most important thing that happened after 9/11 is the FAA mandated the locking of cockpit doors.

The last time this happened was in the 1970s when the PLO was hijacking. And as Gomer Pyle used to say, Surprise Surprise the hijacking stop.

Yes searching at a gate is important, but the Theater of the TSA searching is gone to the absurd.

So when you are thinking about terrorism, how do you keep hijackers out of the cockpit of Planes, Trucks and Trains....

AIG vs. America

The bonus issue is not a red herring. It shows the absolute lack of leadership by AIG management. AIG should have just said No to the bonuses due to the losses. In fact their should have been across the board salary cuts. That is admitting to the problem, taking responsibility and doing something about it.,

Instead they hide behind contract law. Please a CDS is a contract and AIG cannot make good on those, so why are bonus contracts more sacred then a CDS

Finally, if the employees want to go to court to sue for their bonuses, get in line on legal time.

AIG in reality is bankrupt in its current form. Dead company walking. So should we be like the Japanese and put off the day of reckoning or bite the bullet and take the trash out while government works at minimizing the collateral damage. Shouldn't the FED and Treasury learned something from Lehman?

How AIG Bamboozled the Government

I agree that AIG should have gone the Bankruptcy route one subsidiary at a time.
Then the bonus babies who put AIG in this mess would just be one more creditor.

When government bailouts were proposed and voted on the principal was no bonuses.
So why did any of the financial leaders who took the bailout think they could get around the principal the politicans sold the voters?

The reality is AIG is bankrupt. Old contracts are worth the paper they are written on. It is time for the Financial Community to Deal with it by figuring out how to transform themselves.

As "stop loss" soldiers in Iraq learned, the Government can do as it pleases. I cannot believe the financial leadership is so foolish as to fight the anger of the voter. The day of buying off politicians is over ( at least for the forseeable future).

It is time to take the financial markets back from the gamblers....

Friday Market Recap

Gee could it be Friday was also triple witching....

Talking about AIG's (AIG) bonuses, White House economic adviser Larry Summers said yesterday, "We're not a country where contracts just get abrogated willy nilly." In that case, Greg Mankiw wonders what Summers thinks about Obama's mortgage cramdowns.

So maybe you care to explain why Sammy Davis's widow who just died still has not had her day in court?
Or why the Valdez accident still is in the courts
Or why if you take a check to the bank the check is drawn on, you must pay a fee to get the cash. So much for demand notes.

The reality is these idiots screwed the pooch. So how can they be rewarded for losing billions in 2008.

So what exactly can the government do to blockade AIG's (AIG) outrageous ($165M or $450M depending on your yardstick) bonuses? Quite a bit.

Well lets see. I bet the london derivatives business is under its own corporate banner.

Put the london derivatives corporation into bankruptcy court in london.

This is kinda like what happened with the Airlines when they could no longer handle compensation.