herbert hoover

AMD (AMD +4.1%) says its key chip design business should be profitable next year and expects no problems with its debt load of $3.2B. "We're going to turn into a cash-flow-generating machine," says CEO Dirk Meyer. "I can already hear the cash registers starting to ring, which is wonderful." The company wants to keep $1B cash on hand and otherwise retire debt.

Gee, I wonder what his excuse will be next year when none of this happens?

Wal-Mart (WMT +0.3%) says it expects a very difficult Christmas selling season.

If WalMart ain't selling it then who are the Chinese selling all that "increased production" to???? Could it be that there is no increased production?

Just three months after taking the job, AIG (AIG) CEO Robert Benmosche has told the board he's ready to quit. Insiders say Benmosche feels compensation restrictions imposed by pay czar Kenneth Feinberg have left him in an impossible situation, without the ability to retain talent.

Does this guy really believe anyone gives a shit if he resigns or not?

Defending the Fed's Independence, Part II

Since when does anyone get unlimited power to disburse trillions of dollars as it sees fit and without any accountability? Audit the Fed.

ETF money flowed out of U.S equities in October - and into every other major asset class, especially emerging market equities ($7.5B in inflows, to fixed income's $3.1B).

Well someone is ramping this market. I wonder who it could be? Beuller? Beuller?

S&P 500: Locking On a Future Target

Well, the Fed got the S&P up to 1100. And it only cost us 200 years of work to do it!

Wells Fargo (WFC) faces the payback dilemma: It wants to return $25B in bailout funds, but to do it while keeping its Tier 1 ratio up means either diluting shareholders or paying hefty government dividends. Daniel Indiviglio suggests diluting now with a commitment to repurchase over the two years it would have taken to repay the funds with profits.

Don't tell anyone because it's a secret: The banks are bankrupt. Shhhhhhhhhh

Three lunchtime reads: 1) The Fed is already transparent 2) Goldman Sachs doing "God's work"? 3) Five merger arbitrage opportunities

Oh wow. A "leave the Fed alone" article from a former Fed Governor. What's next, "GS is only making money because we're patriotic" from Lloyd Blankfein?

Laszlo Birinyi's high on Goldman Sachs (GS) ("they have a great ability to make money") and down on Wal-Mart (WMT) as consumers seem to be in better shape than we think - and he declines to make a new prediction for the S&P 500, after saying in May that a beginning bull market might juice the index 88% in 2-3 years.

GS has a great ability to make money = whores have a great opportunity to meet iteresting people

Despite Low Yields, Demand for U.S. Treasuries Remains High

The Fed gives the money to the foreign central banks who then buy our debt. It's a giant circle jerk. And it's going to end badly

IEA trims its global oil demand outlook to 105M b/d in 2030, down from 106M a year ago - but still 40% growth between now and then. Satisfying that projection puts the world on track for a worldwide temperature rise of up to 6°C, IEA says.

And that fixes the California real estate problem once and for all. Hurray for American ingenuity


On Nov 10 11:20 AM MarketGuy wrote:

> 6 deg??? I just called my realtor and bought beach front property
> in Nevada!!!

Boston Fed chief Eric Rosengren is speaking about a "particular irony": that even as we tackle the issue of too-big-to-fail banks, the biggest ones have gotten bigger in the crisis. "Living wills" are important to plan ahead for failure and resolution. He adds that narrow restrictions on banks' activities will just move the problem around; the focus should be on increasing reserves and capital in good times.

TBTF banks have gotten bigger - just like they planned it when the crisis began

"I am concerned about the potential impact of CRE on the broader economy," Fed's Lockhart says in a speech this morning. While noting there's no direct link between CRE and household wealth - unlike residential real-estate - Lockhart says "there could be an impact resulting from small banks' impaired ability to support the small business sector—a sector I expect will be critically important to job creation."

There's only one solution - sell all teh regionals to teh TBTF banks and makes us all slaves to the big boys. .. Oh wait, we're already doing that. Never mind.

Google: Setting Itself Up for Failure?

The author does know that APPL was the other bidder for AdMob, right? I suppose if APPL had been successful, he would have written an article extrolling Apple's "brilliance."

On the Relationship Between Worker Productivity and Layoffs

The bullshit government statistices on productivity were skewered in an article in today's NY Times. The government doen't know which industries have moved offshore so they ignore that information. They know that production is up and number of workers is lower and attribute that to "productivity gains" rather than product imports.

The entire unemployment, productivity and worker salary information is a shell game.