dj10

The Global Oil Scam: 50 Times Bigger than Madoff

Re: Mark Anthony's responses.

Most crude oil sold by producers is transacted outside the futures market, but those sales are priced in accordance with the futures market. (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait e.g., sell directly to refiners and distributors) But If you can manipulate the futures market, you can price the actual commodity. The NYMEX or ICE can be a tremendous lever in this way.

Fannie Mae Plus Goldman Plus Tax Credits Plus U.S. Treasury Add Up to Big Mess

No Deal. Treasury nixed it.

How to Value Amazon?

Good point, but you omit the value of brand which conists of more than a one billion dollar ad campaign, but the value of a growing repeat customer base.

Caveat: Short AMZN as of close of Friday.


On Oct 26 07:36 AM logicalthought wrote:

> AMZN has continued to amaze me in that it has nothing truly proprietary
> (not even the Kindle) and is essentially just an extremely well-designed
> web site backed by fulfillment warehouses. In theory, one could replicate
> the entire company (currently valued at around $50 billion) for,
> say, $3 billion, consisting of $1 billion to replicate the web site
> and warehouses and $2 billion for an absolutely ubiquitous ad campaign
> to build instant name recognition. Requiring, then, a return on just
> $3 billion of invested capital (vs. AMZN's $50 billion valuation),
> one could then theoretically underprice AMZN on just about everything,
> and therefore massively steal its market share. I don't understand
> why no one has ever done this, so meanwhile, lol, I continue to shop
> at Amazon.

E*Trade: Expect a Takeover Any Day Now

I have a brokerage account with Etrade and would like to share a particular experience. I own a stock, CNinsure, symbol CISG. Last week, I put in an order to sell 500 shares at a limit price of
20.39. 300 shares were filled and I decided to cancel the remainder.
The next day, the stock gapped up 2 points and at around 10:30 that morning, my "platinum team" account officer called me and stated the following: "The trading room called me and said that you have an execution from yesterday due on CSIG for 200 shares at 20.39. Do you want the execution?" They offered to trade my shares at a 8% discount to the market. Such altruism!

Now, one wonders if this is just a rogue action out of the "trading room", or indicative of a wider desperation at the company to pull profits out of any target possible. I am inclined to think that latter.
Any thoughts?

A Radical Solution for America's Insolvent Financial System

After the cash transfer, can we transfer the bankers from thier brick and mortar positions into some kind of digital purgatory?

Auditing the Fed Is Economic Suicide

Current law forbids the Office of the Comptroller General to audit the following activities of the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Banks:

"1) transactions for or with a foreign central bank, government of a foreign country, or nonprivate international financing organization;
(2) deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, and open market operations;
(3) transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or
(4) a part of a discussion or communication among or between members of the Board of Governors and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to clauses (1)–(3) of this subsection.
(c)
(1) Except as provided in this subsection, an officer or employee of the Government Accountability Office may not disclose information identifying an open bank, an open bank holding company, or a customer of an open or closed bank or bank holding company. The Comptroller General may disclose information related to the affairs of a closed bank or closed bank holding company identifying a customer of the closed bank or closed bank holding company only if the Comptroller General believes the customer had a controlling influence in the management of the closed bank or closed bank holding company or was related to or affiliated with a person or group having a controlling influence.
(2) An officer or employee of the Office may discuss a customer, bank, or bank holding company with an official of an agency and may report an apparent criminal violation to an appropriate law enforcement authority of the United States Government or a State.
(3) This subsection does not authorize an officer or employee of an agency to withhold information from a committee of Congress authorized to have the information.
(d)
(1) To carry out this section, all records and property of or used by an agency, including samples of reports of examinations of a bank or bank holding company the Comptroller General considers statistically meaningful and workpapers and correspondence related to the reports shall be made available to the Comptroller General. The Comptroller General shall give an agency a current list of officers and employees to whom, with proper identification, records and property may be made available, and who may make notes or copies necessary to carry out an audit.
(2) The Comptroller General shall prevent unauthorized access to records or property of or used by an agency that the Comptroller General obtains during an audit."

Ron Paul's amendments strikes out all this language and permits the Comptroller General to make an unrestricted audit. What's wrong with this? The Federal reserve Board and its member banks retain all their powers and discretion; they merely will not be able to cloak them in secrecy under the Paul amendment.

Are Home Buyers Worried About Missing the Market Bottom?

Real Estate brokers spout any propaganda to goose buyers:

"There's such a frenzy to get in before prices go up again," he said. "Buyers are more concerned about that than about getting the first-time homebuyers tax credit."

Rather than assessing the public's mindset based on one broker's comment, Iacano might want to review the current housing sales numbers, which, while better than a few months ago, are still utterly dismal.

How Deep Will the Market Pullback Be? Sentiment Holds the Key

Strong positive sentiment is never a contrarian indicator when bullish investors continue to put money to work.

The July drop in sentiment was likely augmented by the post traumaticstress so many are suffering after the market meltdowns of the last year.

Buffett's Betrayal

Buffett on the whole has made sober and savvy investments many of which have blossomed over time, as we all know. He hates paying capital gains taxes and this aversion coupled with rising capital markets over the last 45 years has made Berkshire a great return.

But old Warren is not a nice man. He is a rapacious predatory player wearing the mask of a decent country boy. He is also fantastically narcissistic. He believes God has "invested" in him a gift for "capital allocation". It's true. He has said this.

The Fallacy of 'Money on the Sidelines'

Re: The $2.3 trillion gap between the listed market gain and the drop in MM funds, you don't need one dollar in for each dollar rise in gross market cap.

Cash for Clunkers May Cost Up to $45,354 Per Vehicle

Cal Worthington is now Colonel Clunk


On Jul 31 03:20 PM Big Bubbette wrote:

> This is BS. First we bail out the unions, GM and Chrysler. Now we
> are supplementing the purchase of vehicles, which likely will help
> out the Japanese auto makers. Meanwhile, we are borrowing more money
> to fund this program. So we keep borrowing money and buying cars
> and this is a good business model? More debt being piled on the backs
> of taxpayers. Enough already. I do not want to help my neighbors
> buy a car.
>
> Can anyone confirm that Cal Worthington has been named the new Clunker
> Czar?

Market Rally: Secular Bull or Cyclical?

You should broaden the investigation and look at absolute returns,
rather than returns relative to the 200 dma. Also, the context would be interesting, such as the direction of the 200 dma when the index experienced a -10% thrust from the average. And was the time interval between the two 10% occurences meaningfully different in the two groups, the 18 and the 3?

Was the AIG Bailout a Goldman Bailout by Proxy?

I have not seen one detailed cogent explanation by Geithner, Bernanke, Paulson, or anyone, on how a failure of AIG would have
led to "the collapse of the global financial system". The essential communication has beenlimited to: "We have to avert disaster, we are at the edge of a cliff" Is an elementary, lucid roadmap of the likely consequences, detailed for the average layman, that expected to occur with AIG's failure to pay off its policyholders too much for the taxpayer to ask for? That it has not been forthcoming is an indication that no one really understood exactly what was happening during the fall of 2008, and that a small group of private and public bankers, were able to ram a policy through an intimidated uninformed Congress. A wholesale frighten and plunder of the American public done with speed that surely arouses the envy of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and thier "war on terror" henchmen.

Why Microsoft and Apple's Market Caps Should Be Reversed

This is just more "talking his book" drivel. Why the comparison? It's silly.

You want to pump Apple, do so on its own terms.

Must be the summertime drought that had this junk article pass through the editors' screening process.

From Free Markets to Absolute Power: The Warped Views of 'Bank Speak'

If it is a given the Federal Reserve played a primary role in the creation of the Great Depression, then such a role would be acknowledged and affirmed by a general consensus. Accordingly, history books would then reflect the consensus view. So, Mr Kim is either proposing as fact a minority view or engaging in clever sophistry in citing this example as a proof of his thesis on mendacity and deception in the media.

Nonetheless, Mr. Kim is correct that they are all liars, the political honchos and Chief Executive twerps. It is a practice probably as old as human language itself, to beguile and deceive the tribe, the flock, the masses, the constituency, the shareholders, the blogosphere, whatever the case may be.