BRUCE E. W.

ING Shows How Bank Dismemberment Is Done

HEY...YO...YO...! Put DOWN the cocaine and pick up a reality check. Sign it and bring it in to your nearest C; they'll be glad to help you OUT.


On Oct 27 03:40 PM DonFurio wrote:

> Hey idiot author, the gov't is up big on C because they own the common
> at around 2.60 a share. C will pay the gov't back in full if they
> give them time. TARP was supposed to be for 3 years and then it got
> more punitive, but it's barely been 1 year and all you crazies are
> trying to blow up everything now in the name of "punishment" or in
> author's case because he's short. C is not expected to be profitable
> until the middle of next year, but once they get through this period
> they will be profitable, although smaller, but the asset sales will
> have helped them weather the storm and the stock will have risen
> from 4 now to 12-15 by 2012.
>
> There is a plan for AIG. Some of their strongest insurance companies
> will been spon-off and have an IPO. Others will be sold as the market
> comes back in a few years. In the end, the gov't will make a profit
> on the pref stock they bought in the financials which will be way
> more than they will be able to say about GM and Chr.

More Goldman Outrage

Apparently, if the big money isn't buying something out...it's selling them out in hot pursuit of total monopolistic dominion. They have essentially captured the market and competition is not optimistic about their opprtunites:
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com/apps...
by Elizabeth Hester and Zachary R. Mider
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg)

" JPMorgan, which posted net income of $8.45 billion for the nine months, and Goldman Sachs, with $8.44 billion, are the most profitable U.S. banks. "

– JPMorgan Chase & Co., navigated the financial crisis without a quarterly loss and is now making more money advising more corporate clients on mergers and acquisitions than Goldman Sachs Group Inc."
"The New York- based lender took in $1.26 billion in advisory fees in the first nine months of the year..., data compiled by Bloomberg show. The bank also extended its lead in underwriting equity and debt offerings, earning $4 billion in the same period, twice as much as Goldman Sachs."

"...JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs may make it harder for other banks, including boutique advisory firms, to compete, said Matthew McCormick, a banking-industry analyst at Bahl & Gaynor Inc. in Cincinnati, which manages $2.5 billion."

"... JPM has also taken considerable market share in investment banking throughout the crisis"

“They have captured share and will sustain a lead for a considerable period of time,” McCormick said. “It’s going to be very difficult for upstart or broad-based firms to come in and usurp what many believe are the insurmountable leads that Goldman and JPMorgan have over competitors.”

More Goldman Outrage

www.sourcewatch.org/in...

www.banksterusa.org/

www.prwatch.org/node/8628

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages... (top)

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages... (below)

One of the reasons these Financial megalomaniacs are too big to exist is that they have distorted both the scope and scale of finacial services. Finance is financing finance; that's it! What is supposed to faciltiate a means to a desireable end has now become the be all and end all onto itself; and to hell with the rest of the economy. In fact, after the lower strata is totally bankrupt, they will be there to buy it out (for pennys on the dollar of course).

The second reason is that we are now (all of us) capable of talking about billions and even trillions without gasping anymore; and they are actually growing depoendent upon such tran$actions to get their next bonus fix. Why are we feeding these puffed up junkies?

David Einhorn: Break Up Too Big to Fail Institutions

As I noted to your similar position in a recent blog:
" I question as to whether FRE/FNM are in the same category as Lehman/ Citi / Goldman / JP Morgan etc. since they are not intermediaries of the e-financials that have essentially printed their own electonic currencies in fanciful paper that ultimately diluted the economy and eluded legitimate accountability. The mortgages that are threatened and the government backed support of their security are not the same as the securities invented and then further insured as gambling stakes by AIG. I may be wrong, but the mortgage industry involves the only bottom/up restructuring that is actually based on real lives and peoples fundamental investments in necessities of life (housing) and surviving a crisis that was made from the top down."
Throwing the housing market to the wolves seems to be in vogue. I see it as the equivilent to selling it all short and creating a graveyard for many people who are trying to salvage their homes; a landfill garbage dump for scavengers in private equity; a waste treatment center for financials and a triage center for government agency. Meanwhile it is the most visable profile of existing misery which the financial sector would like to see go away (continually reminding us of the failures they conjured up with their derivitives markets...still being propagated and progressively extended to cover the same debt recovery process by way of more of the same).
Private equity interests have been trying to not just exploit but to destroy both FNM & FRE for decades, and there is some reason to believe subprime mortgage & its predator lending was partly fueled by this aggressive hostility to their specialized & underserved markets. It is an attack on the basic realizations of the American promise of fundamental "ownership" and another example of blind market raging and ranting while it takes everything down with it.
Meanwhile, just yesterday Reuters reported that FRE sold $3.5 billion in new two-year reference notes priced to yield 26 basis points over comparable U.S. Treasuries.
The joint lead managers on the sale were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley.
More of the same: only the brand names GAIN. It seems that there is an entire segment of the financial community that is dogging this into a corner and seeking to collapse all hope of recovery. Apparently their own homes are not on the butcher block of arbitraged indifference. But It is the height of folly to believe that America will allow its homes to be invaded by some bankers waving banners of free market ideology.

The best scenario for America would be if the American shareholders could be allowed to invest securely into these institutions and the capital foundation could expand normally the way the stock market was envisioned to work. A great deal of the taxpayers' burden would be eliminated if the capital could be raised on the market; again, the way it is supposed to work. Instead, we get nothing but the professional predator and parasites eating away at potentially healthy investments and a negative media coverage which tilts the game plan in that direction. The more exagerated the claims the more downward pressure upon the trading and with it any chance of a market based recovery. At this time these stocks should be trading for healing purposes, not to create more victims. Stocks are certainly rock bottom and affordable to the average American. Why not let it work instead of eviscerating the market

Too Big to Fail - Even Greenspan Is Speaking Out

I question as to whether FRE/FNM are in the same category as Lehman/ Citi / Goldman / JP Morgan etc. since they are not intermediaries of the e-financials that have essentially printed their own electonic currencies in fanciful paper that ultimately diluted the economy and eluded legitimate accountability. The mortgages that are threatened and the government backed support of their security are not the same as the securities invented and then further insured as gambling stakes by AIG. I may be wrong, but the mortgage industry involves the only bottom/up restructuring that is actually based on real lives and peoples fundamental investments in necessities of life (housing) and surviving a crisis that was made from the top down. If I recall correctly even Adam Smith noted under political economy that the first obligation of government was to provide assurance for their subbsistence and survival. While I wholeheartedly agree with you that the market should be allowed to play out with the oversized financial service sector (decentralizing will permit a vertical diversification and restore competitive health); I can't see how breaking the mortgages into vulnerable equity/assets for vulture capital will do anything more than intensify the crony capitalism and narrow elitism that is consigning our economy into regionally captured markets with no competitive diversity. At the bottom level, these mortgages are all privitized interests of the real demographic foundation of our society. It is a delusion to presume that busting the core agency that is protecting them from profiteering and privately centralized equity (acquisitions) would be a healthy primer for a free, open, and public market future inb America.

Trash Seems to Be King, As Lehman Shares Surge

An identical surge of greater proportion (.12 to over ..50) recently happened with BKUNQ which is still sitting above the 200% gain over .12. No explanation, It just took off. If this is a frequent flyer expectation these days then SIXFQ is in the soup kettle and we might then need to watch what GFG might do when it comes out of the wash. Can anyone explain what the actual expectaions should be for these particles of matter? Why do they continue to sell if the common stock is supposed to have been wiped out? I am very confused on this trolling for bottom fish entry positions. I would like to know if there is any merit at all in buying it .

Goldman Sachs: Still Arrogant and Unrepentant

URL: www.rollingstone.com/p...
Rollingstone.com
The Great American Bubble Machine
Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression
In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83
Pretty much says it all about these pirates in finance.

A Roadmap to Turn Around Problem Banks

www.milkeninstitute.or...
As a follow up to the above comment, it is interesting that a group of high ranking professionals at Milken Institute Global conference 2009
(finace citation hyperlink above), included the following:
"Robert Kelly of The Bank of New York Mellon emphasized a theme, echoed by the panel, that the U.S. regulatory regime is structurally challenged. In particular, panelists concurred that it is very difficult to navigate or understand the complex, bureaucratic U.S. regulatory structure. A single systemic regulator would, at least in theory, fix this problem by placing a single office in charge of (systemic) risk management. While panelists generally expressed confidence that the concept will be developed, they agreed that it is not clear who will have the authority to implement it (whether the Federal Reserve or a team of regulators).

Alan Boyce of Absalon and Adecoagro suggested that the current crisis stemmed from the complex, opaque way in which the U.S. banking system securitizes cash flows. He called for a new system, arguing that the current structure is designed primarily to benefit the middleman and not market participants.

Bo Lundgren of the Swedish National Debt Office and Robert Litan of the Kauffman Foundation emphasized the potential benefits that could be realized from carefully analyzing the best practices employed by other nations (e.g., Denmark and Canada)."

It would seem clear, then, that a consolidate regulator agency is not such a bad idea. The big question thereafter is whether it would be subject to easy manipulation and capture from BIG MONEY. The idea in the article is to float the best achievers and to sanction a team possibly from the regulators themselves based on merit. Unless it becomes a lifetime job (like the supreme court judgeship) the question of compromised integrity and duplicity will remain a prominent and perennial perplexing problem. A Banking and Finance Governor General with an associate working team (regional and proportionate to the job) seems more than an average pipedream. It should be separate but equal to the Fed; and recapitulate a Balance of Power Structure inherent to our
Executive/Congressiona... format.

A Roadmap to Turn Around Problem Banks

I am sure that the head bankers would retreat from being managed by public authority as they might if they wwere considered a primary utility, but perhaps there is a question as to whether a public health care system is needed in banking to run with the public interest. Certainly this article is asking the right questions and providing some constructive pathways; Maybe a Banker General position should be floating over all the banks as a ready to go orchestrator of supervision much the same way as the attorney general supervises the public interest. In any case, there is no doubt that Harry Long should be awarded a medal for starting to question the institutional framework as it exists for the "too big to be held accountable" con-artists who have been holding themselves to their own standards for much too long. POSITION: LONG ON HARRY