ain't no fortunate son

AIG Counterparties: The SIGTARP Report

Thank you Karl.. as an old insurance guy, I've watched this whole ponzi/ lack of collateral scam materialize and blow up over the past couple of years with varying degrees of amazement, incredulity and disgust... oh, and abject terror too. There was a reason these guys didn't want to be regulated... they would have been shut down in a New York minute.

These guys are writing insurance contracts without having any conception whatsoever of general insurance principles, risk assumption, risk management, or risk avoidance, calculation of probable maximum loss, necessity of maintaining adequate reserves, maintaining proper spread of risk, calculating catastrophe exposure, reinsurance, etc etc etc...

Oh, well of course, I forgot, silly me - they DO have unlimited reinsurance coverage - its called the American middle class taxpayer. So screw all those other details.

Business Trends: Banks, Cars, Healthcare and Safe Vermont Mortgages

wherever we live the longer number of days - in my case FL, by about two weeks... that is determined by my knees, not the electoral process.


On Aug 26 08:35 AM john s. gordon wrote:

> there re people who spend summers in vermont & spend winters
> in florida. they are called snowbirds. where do they vote?

Expecting a Sell-Off: 35 Ways to Protect for Less

Since I posted this on a couple of blogs here, a number of people have mentioned it happened to them as well... at least one (TheresaE) complained to the webmaster about it.

The cause is a spammer.. taking an educated guess, I would say in all probability the same "iamned" guy who has been spamming the site relentlessly for months now, and who management has been totally unable to get rid of.


On Aug 18 12:25 PM Atypical wrote:

> I have had one similar occurance. Never happened before last week.
> Would like to know what caused it.

Expecting a Sell-Off: 35 Ways to Protect for Less

There has been very little reason to put up with the immature cetin annoyances, but in and of itself it wasn't the end of the world, and so I have complained to management and then kept on posting.

Recently, however, I've been getting virus and spyware warning messages and actual screens popping up trying to hijack my PC and force it into doing virus scans. They appear randomly when I access different articles on this site. They've been happening off and on for a week or two, no rhyme or reason to when they occur. They do not occur on any other programs of the hundreds I access weekly.

I have no idea whether others are receiving similar stuff but I have no interest in subjecting my system and my records to crap like that.

Hence, I will not be contributing comments to this site anymore - its just not worth it.

I've enjoyed reading and participating in what have usually been serious subjects and discussions that have taken place here, and I've developed respect for a number of authors and commenters, like swashbuckler, john gordon and trader mark, etal.

I wish you all good fortune on your investing and personal lives... and as the sarge used to say in Hill Street Blues, "Be careful out there!" because we are far from home and there are many miles to go before we sleep.

Expecting a Sell-Off: 35 Ways to Protect for Less

Until Obama, Summers, Geithner and Bernanke relinquish control of the markets to the market participants, and take it away from Lloyd, Jamie, and Immelt (thru CNBC), shorting is just a death sentence. Fundamentals weaken daily in the broad economy, and those entities print vast amounts of money and cycle it into the equity markets daily.

Fundamentals don't matter, technicals don't matter, nothing matters in the least until they return the markets to the real participants, and they show no interest in doing so whatsoever.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

There has been very little reason to put up with the immature cetin annoyances, but in and of itself it wasn't the end of the world, and so I have complained to management and then kept on posting.

Recently, however, I've been getting virus and spyware warning messages and actual screens popping up trying to hijack my PC and force it into doing virus scans. They appear randomly when I access different articles on this site. They've been happening off and on for a week or two, no rhyme or reason to when they occur. They do not occur on any other programs of the hundreds I access weekly.

I have no idea whether others are receiving similar stuff but I have no interest in subjecting my system and my records to crap like that.

Hence, I will not be contributing comments to this site anymore - its just not worth it.

I've enjoyed reading and participating in what have usually been serious subjects and discussions that have taken place here, and I've developed respect for a number of authors and commenters, like swashbuckler, john gordon and trader mark, etal.

I wish you all good fortune on your investing and personal lives... and as the sarge used to say in Hill Street Blues, "Be careful out there!" because we are far from home and there are many miles to go before we sleep.

Capco: WTF?

Impossible! This couldn't happen in my home state of Vermont, NO WAY! Why, we're farmers, skiers, artisans, leftover 60's hippies! Our banks still lend, they're so old fashioned!

Damn, I KNEW we should have seceded to Canada while we had the chance!

Was the AIG Bailout a Goldman Bailout by Proxy?

I forwarded my above comments to my VT senior US Senator, Patrick Leahy, with a request that he call for an investigation of Paulson's actions for the period March 1, 2008 through January 20, 2009.

I suggest that if anybody wants to get to the bottom of this freaking mess, they consider doing likewise.

It would be about a 5 minute exercise in walking our talk. If you think you're too busy, copy and paste mine.

Was the AIG Bailout a Goldman Bailout by Proxy?

Take a look at the bigger picture... the actions that Paulson was involved in which led up to the meltdown in Fall 2008:

During that same time frame from March onward, Paulson oversaw and participated in the virtual elimination of Bear Sterns, one of Goldman's biggest competitors, and at the same time Goldman got access to the Fed Discount window... ca-ching... billions of taxpayer "liquidity" which they no doubt used to trade the markets with, rather aggressively and I will "guess" rather successfully in the post Bear rally to 13K +/-.

September, 2008. AIG. Enuff said.

Sept 2008 - Paulson oversaw the destruction of Lehman, another of Goldman's biggest competitors. We know how that turned out (for Main Street not so hot... but for Goldman... TARP money and bonuses anyone?).

Sept 2008 - Paulson oversees the forced marriage of Merrill to BAC, ANOTHER major competitor of Goldman... in a marriage that basically emasculates Merrill and causes a paralyzing clash of corprorate cultures with BAC.

3 of your biggest competitors dead or crippled in 6 months. You were involved right up to your eyeballs in the decisions leading up to these outcomes. Many of your Goldman colleagues were major players or at least "in the room" during these events.

Now Goldman sits virtually alone at the top of the pile of survivors, making vast profits, handing out vast bonuses, holding total, monopolistic control over key pieces of the market infrastructures such as the NYSE Supplemental Liquidity Provider (SLP) program, virtually admitting that it possesses programs designed to front-run the markets (but of course they would never actually use them for that purpose, right?).

You never even considered recusing yourself from these critical decisions despite clear conflicts of interest from a public policy standpoint.

Does anybody besides me see a pattern of behavior, a pattern that led to identical outcomes time after time after time, all centered around one man, a man who's immediately previous position had been CEO of the company that has benefitted more than any other company in the world by this chain of events?

I believe that there should be a full investigation of this entire period, and that it should be conducted at and by the highest levels of government immediately... US AG, Congress, SEC, state AG's and insurance regulators, I don't give a fuck who gets involved, just DO IT.

Ritholtz, Ratigan Take on the 'Giant Vampire Squid'

One wonders about the anger and sense of betrayal and abandonment that must be going through the minds of the many millions of unemployed, foreclosed, uninsured and devastated middle class Americans, many but of course not all of whom did no wrong except to "buy in" optimistically, and too late, to the great lie that was being perpetrated against them and the world at large.

And now they find themselves rapidly running out of assets, and jobs, and those two most important commodities of all, the drivers of all economic expansions - hope and faith in the future - as they watch Jon Stewart, or this interview between Ritholtz and Ratigan, and realize that they have been HAD, abandoned by their government, their bankers, the regulators, the ratings agencies, and the media who all conspired to perpetrate and conceal the nature and extent of this abomination for so long.

And who are still conspiring to do so, as they reap the twin windfalls of huge financial fortunes and virtually unlimited political power.

Never has our American society been so divided, between those with obscene riches and power, and those who have lost everything by those very same oligarchs' immoral, unethical and illegal actions.

The lose of hope by a large and vital segment of the population plays out in many forms, from economic to psychological, but it has a far more ominous potential impact, because when a society loses hope, it also loses many of the restraints that civilized activity depends upon to function properly.

Asking the Fed: Let's See the Transcript of the AIG Bankruptcy Negotiations

We have two "bank holding companies" controlling the markets lock stock and barrel thru their favored proxy status at the behest of a government they aided and abetted in the destruction of much of a certain former investment bank's competition in 2008 (and which former IB is one of the two proxies now). We know who they are... we see their footprints every day in the program trading activity that keeps a permanent bid under what would otherwise be a dead market.

We have an SEC that wouldn't help out the main street investor if a gun were placed at its head (if there even is such a creature as a main street investor anymore - look at reported volume on the major exchanges... altho I wonder just how much of the dark pool volume actually gets reported, and I wonder who would actually have the balls or the motive to make those guys report it if they don't want to, which by its very nature they obviously don't want to).

We have a FED that has gone so far beyond the acceptable bounds of its charter as to be laughable, as it builds its own self contained empire which is answerable to no one, and a Treasury run by a bureaucratic acolyte who is simply running interference for an administration that is using smoke and mirrors to keep the green shoot theory alive because that is their last hope of keeping the markets themselves alive.

In other words, we have a closed loop... a terminally closed loop.

Good luck getting those papers released.... I doubt even Daniel Ellsberg could pull that one off.

Goldman Sachs' AIG Collateral Demands Behind Company's Implosion

To be fair, I don't think we can place ALL the blame on the ensuing financial catastrophe with Goldman's risk management people... they've got a lot of talented people in that organization.

I seem to recall this nice grandfatherly type from Treasury sitting down to discuss matters of an important nature with the Bear Sterns folks one weekend in March, 2008, and then he had a nice chitchat with a couple of his competitors at Lehman one weekend in September, 2008 - when he got done t-t-t-talking it seems GS had 2 fewer major competitors, money market mutual funds were breaking the buck and the term "Armageddon trade" took on a whole new level of meaning.

I haven't heard much about that guy lately for some reason... wonder what CEO's emeritus get for bonuses at GS.

The Top 12 Brands Likely to Disappear

I'm hoping CNBC makes it a baker's dozen... they're pathetic shills for Immelt and the Street (with the exception of David Faber and perhaps one or two others).

No Market Gain Without Economic Pain

Another great article with good insights J.C. I'm afraid, however, that I do not see a nation that deals with pain too well... we are still in denial and we are still doing everything possible that addicts in denial can do to avoid the pain of true recovery... we will call ourselves optimists, we will tell the world that we have reformed our ways, we will convince ourselves of everything that addicts convince themselves of in order to forestall their terrible day of reckoning, and so we will continue to move along pumping the green shoots and rationalizing/minimizing the negative data until something or someone finally takes control and makes our decision for us... and that may be a sad day of reckoning for the American people.

My name is America, and I'm an addict...

Revisiting the MBS Debate (Which We Should Already Be Past)

Good article "John". I suppose with regard to Hoover, it might be suggested that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Wonder how much WS funding went into Hoover's coffers during the glory years so that when the debt came due they could act as the pathetic, rationalizing apologist they are now being paid to be?