I-investor

I Left My Fat Paycheck in San Francisco

This salary survey highlights the issue of the significant political power of City and County employee unions in California. State salaries are generally not so generous. The problem has come about with the mandatory political donations in the union payroll deductions. Basically, the money is such that the unions can hand select candidates and fully finance campaigns. An example of this is Contra Costa County where the employees managed to gain control of the majority of the board of supervisors. They passed a huge pension increase. Now as the budget shrinks, the supervisors cut departments which are not unionized like the District Attorney. In the Bay Area, SF, Oakland, Berkeley, BART, Ebmud, etc. are all controlled by the employee unions. This conflict of interest results in highly inefficient delivery of government services.

America's Banks: Are They Really Insolvent?

This article hits the nail on the head! BTW, nationalization fans, the constitution of the USA requires just compensation in such cases. The courts would be inudated with lawsuits if such events took place. Ultimately, nationalization would likely shake the confidence in the financial system. It's way too problematic a solution.

But it does make for good fear-mongering, if you are banging on the SKF.

Pure Refiners in Play

OK Brad, you're right, no index is used. When trading crack spread options, a single options position results in two offsetting futures positions when the option is exercised. So the resulting crack spread is derived as the product of two separate speculative bets. It has little to do with what is really happening in the marketplace where physical gasoline and distillates are refined.

Whatever falls out of some traders in Chicago is not primary information.That's why I am the only one who commented on your article, and I got two positives, to your one. If you want to know how the refinery business is going, you got to talk to the people in the refinery business.

Pure Refiners in Play

The NYMEX refining margins are created by subtracting the oil futures index from the refined gasoline index. As such it is highly imperfect indicator and does not capture the prices achieved by market participants. Last quarter, SUN blew away all of the analysts estimates. The NYMEX refining margins actually went negative, when in fact the refiners were making good profits. SUN said it was because they were able to buy oil more cheaply than the analysts thought. Now the speculators at NYMEX are adjusting thier positions.

KKR's Double Whammy

KFN was underwritten with a combination of base and variable management fees to KKR. The fee's now ravage the company's cash flow. The affiliated loan at 15% will merely clean the table of any crumbs. This has been a very bad deal for the investors, underwritten by Bear Sterns of course. I can't see why any investor would put money up with KKR.