axelrod608

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Get real. The "crackdown" is on GS and other megabank competition. With GS controlling the Fed, the Treasury and all the pResident's advisors, the real insiders will surely get a free ride.

Get real. ZIRP benefits megabanks. And megagovernment. Interest rates are going nowhere as long as GS can use free money for trading and the Gummint can use free money for, well, every stupid thing they can think of.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

>> ..."big drugmakers announced deals that give them rights to new flu vaccines, increasing their exposure to one of pharma's brightest, but riskiest, segments " >>

How can you call vaccines risky when Congress has already preemptively bailed the drugmakers out ? Big pharma no longer has ANY risk other than losing money if they don't sell. Under current law, any person killed, crippled or made sick by a vaccine can only sue for damages in "vaccine court" and if they win, the TAXPAYERS pay the damages.

Worse, because of shortages this year, vaccine peddlers are "extending" (diluting) vaccines to make them go farther. The adjuvitants used to dilute the vaccines are NOT tested for use in humans. Some of them are known carcinogens.

See Dr. Joseph Mercola's article for complete info at mercola.com.

Add to that the fact that two states have made vaccinations MANDATORY. If you refuse, they can force you into quarantine until the threat is over.

The land of the free and home of the brave is crumbling under massive government overregulation that favors big business over individual rights.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

The peak month for Alt A and other "prime" mortgage resets is this November. Anyone who expects foreclosure rates to drop had best prepare for disappointment.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

OOoops.... level 2 and 3 assets... above...

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

>> "How can it be that these banks are not just swimming in cash. Borrow at 0% and loan at 5-8% is just like printing money. " >>

Unfortunately, our "leaders" gave that 0% money to companies holding lots of level 3 and 4 "assets" that were worth a whole lot less than they claimed. So despite making easy money on new loans, they have continuing writeoff losses on the junk.

There's a LOT of junk left, thus a lot of losses yet to be booked. And if the economy keeps deteriorating, the losses will keep coming and growing.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

>> "The World Bank lowered its outlook for global growth, forecasting a 2.9% contraction this year vs. a previous forecast of -1.7%. Growth in 2010 will reach 2%," >>

I sure would like to see the "improvements" that the World Bank uses to predict 2% growth in 2010. Getting worse slower is NOT a turnaround.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

>> "Financial reforms snag non-banks." >>

Unrestrained greed with a total lack of concern for risk got us here. Will sufficient reform in regulation to fix the problems have unseen, unanticipated consequences ? Absolutely. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

The financial industry was allowed to "grow like topsy" and turned out to be an unregulated disaster. If our leaders don't fix it, it will likely have another meltdown in the future.

What we should really be doing in public policy is to debate the issue of whether an economy 70% driven by consumer spending with half of the rest coming from finance is a desirable or sustainable economy. In my estimation is is not.

As an old gearhead I like to use car analogies. For $60,000 you can restore a 1955 Chevy to new condition. For $20,000 you can buy a new Cobalt. Which do you want to drive daily ? We need an economy that serves today's needs, not an unsustainable antique designed for an era long past

We need too-big-to-fail financials like a fish needs a bicycle. Our kids and grandkids need an economy that will serve them as well as we have been served. I'd sure like to see our "leaders" get something right for a change..

Justice Department Is Confused About Tech Hiring Practices

What they SHOULD be investigating is why thousands of American tech and IT engineers can't get hired because MS and other employers import thousands of Pakistani and Indian techies who will work for 25% of what an American gets paid.

They import these scabs on special visas that are supposed to be given only for work no Americans are available for - shortage areas. They LIE on the visa applications when they say no Americans are available for the work.

It is a shameful, fraudulent, unpatriotic employment abuse and it should be stopped and the perps made to pay.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

It's not crooked dealing, it's the law. Big firms have legal contractual agreements with labor, dealers, several classes of investors, emloyees - and, unfortunately, each one has legal rights and lawyers to enforce them.

Canned bankruptcies are a complex problem when various interests choose to fight it out in court.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Thanks, Jim Hawthorne for the url.

Y'know, there's an old saying, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" that must not be known in China. Are the Chinese still buying Treasuries ? Yes. Still putting money in US companies ? Yes.

This international finger pointing is as constructive and productive as the partisan fingerpointing in DC.

FINANCIAL RECKONING DAY and a host of similar books have been in print well over five years. Anyone who couldn't see this mess coming is either illiterate, ignorant or naively optimistic.

The US government fiscal policy is the greatest con game ever played. And the "regulators" let American financial giants play along. The end result has always been certain, though the date and time are not. Things that are inevitable, eventually happen.

No person, company or nation has ever spent its way to wealth and prosperity. Water's wet, rocks are hard and the sun rises in the east. This cannot end well. Yet it looks like the Chinese are in the game, playing their part now as in the past.

There's only one finger I point with about this whole federal financial mess.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Good job. Keep those breakfast buffets coming. Always informative and timely.

As I watched our new Prez and a roomful of his picks take the oath of office I was struck as they all swore to uphold and defend the Constitution, and later the same day map out the strategy for the next round of bailouts.

It makes one wonder if any of them ever actually read the Constitution, which contains an assortment of good ideas including the one which lays out the proper way to handle failing companies. Bankruptcy is the Constitution's mandate for dealing with our current financial mess.

And there's not a word in the Constitution authorizing anyone or any branch of government to bail out failing individuals or businesses using federal funds.

We have totally lost our way. Our leaders treat our Constitution as an old decrepit second cousin they let sleep in the attic and feed occasionally. Drag him out occasionally for show and family photos.

I don't know about anybody else, but the "change" I was hoping for included going back to the ways our founding fathers instructed us to follow in the operation of government. Then again, I wasn;t naive enough to actually believe it would ever happen.

Tax and spend, borrow and spend - there's no real difference. Looks like we get to settle for a "change" of names on the doors and desks.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Retail woes, consumer confudence, earnings all related to job cuts, unemployment. Corporations cut employees to get better earnings, but the unemployed spend a lot less. It is a downward spiral with consequences.

"Our" government is reporting unemploymen around 5% while shadowstats has it around 15%. When the Soviets did it, they were accused of propaganda. The feds calls it "seasonally adjusted".

Instead of reinflating the credit bubble, our tax money should be put to work in local banks to keep people working.

The losses of the nation's major megabanks are history. No amount of new money will rehab them. Why keep throwing good money after bad ?

GM, Ford and Chrysler are history waiting for the banana peel. They sealed their fate years ago fighting every mpg and environmental improvement and focusing on gas guzzlers. Taxpayer monies should go to the companies that will replace them..

The focus by American government on "fixing" the perps that got us here is a perverse repudiation of the Constitution of the United Sataes. Nowhere does it give the government the right to favor corporations over the good of individuals.

It's time to outlaw lobbying and lobbyists. 100% government campaign funding. Or pay the price as we are now doing.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

OOOPS !!! Senior moment above....

The CDS's are not 1,000 Trillion - that's the total of all derivatives. The CDS problem is that they were invented to be an alternative to insurance with no requirements for sequestering funds to cover them. The companies that sold the CDS's cannot cover the losses, so the "insurance" buyers of derivatives were counting on to cover losses doesn't exist. The losses are uninsured. So the holders of all those derivatives just have to eat the losses.

Real, regulated insurance requires funds to be safely held to cover losses. CDS's aren't worth the paper they're written on.

THAT's the problem.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

19 months of endless campaign drivel and people have to make it spill over here....

Divided we fall. Just keep pointing those fingers and calling loyal Americans who disagree with you names. It will surely hasten our demise.

Back on subject, the breakfast had one indigestible tidbit - the one by the talking head in charge of CDS's saying CDS's are being unfairly blamed for the mess. CDS's ARE the mess.

First, they are stupid, highly leveraged "securities" with no security, no requiremets for security. Backed by nothing, worth no more than a rube will pay for them. They sell at market somewhere between 16 cents and 65 cents on the dollar and there's 1,000 TRILLION dollars of them globally.

Second, they are held off the books, totally negating any transparency the holder may have in its other assets.

No amount of money will make their holders solvent. The "bailout" is akin to bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon.

Dishonest "leadership" is too afraid to level with the American people. They'd rather keep us busy pointing fingers at and calling each other names. Sadly, many Americans buy in to this charade.

Newsflash - it matters not who "wins" the election. The minor differences are dwarfed by the immensity of the underlying problem.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

-jr - "Quite obvious Georgell is not equiped to handle those finnace boys from wall street, they sure got one over on the good old boys from Texas."

That is not my take. I see this as yet another in a string of "crises" George II is using to put yet another one over on the sheeple and the Congress at the expense of the taxpayers. Patriot Act, WMD, attack Iraq, all presented to the Congress and the American people with the same hurry up, we gotta do this now, can't wait and if you're opposed you're unpatriotic. Bush acts like a hick, but he's not a dummy. You don't get an MBA from an Ivy League School if you're a dummy. Congress will wring their hands, talk tough and pass some poorly planned piece of legislation that few if any of them will read before voting on it.

This is not news. I started shorting Fannie and Freddy over two years ago. Lots of people knew and many have been talking about the coming debt crisis. EMPIRE OF DEBT has been out for years. The rush to try to fix this quick, now, is just George II's parting scam. Payback for years of campaign contributions, etc. It is the systemic version of Enron.