Alexander_M

McClatchy's Greg Gordon goes to great lengths to document how Goldman Sachs (GS) peddled over $40B in new mortgage-backed securities even as it secretly placed bets on a collapse.

This is a scenario similar to purchasing Puts and Calls on the same strike of a stock option, I would think. The strategy can work well when implied volatility is high and it's right before an important announcement, i.e. earnings.

In a wide-ranging interview with Index Universe, Nouriel Roubini says he doesn't believe in commodities ("rising commodity prices are not justified by the fundamentals"), oil ("I worry that oil is going to go up above $100 for reasons that have nothing to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand"), or gold ("without inflation, or without a depression, there’s nowhere for gold to go").

Because the Government has properly addressed so many other problems...? I wish I had some of the stuff you were smoking.

On Oct 24 08:28 PM ronrag wrote:
> A regulatory solution to the speculation issue is needed now...

The government may have gone the wrong direction when it stopped printing bills bigger than $100, David Reilly says; the way things have gone, maybe a $1M bill is in order. But with whose face? Helicopter Ben? Bush? Nixon, who broke the link to gold?

How about a collage of each president from Hoover to Obama?

In the latest in a series of China-U.S. trade disputes, China's Ministry of Commerce took preliminary measures to impose tariffs on certain nylon imports from the U.S. The ruling affects imports of Nylon 6, used to manufacture a variety of products, including toothbrushes and chiffon. Affected U.S. firms include BASF's (BASFY.PK) U.S. arm and Honeywell (HON).

and the trade wars escalate...

Even if you're not forced to invest in GM, Chrysler, Citigroup (C) or Bank of America (BAC), your U.S. investments - like Ford (F) - have to compete with these propped-up zombies, says Martin Hutchinson. So why not look at countries relatively free of the undead: Germany, Korea and Canada?

A great example of this would be TD's, Toronto Dominion, entrance into the U.S. banking market early this year or late last. They had capital waiting for the right time to pounce.

Lawmakers who wanted big banks to match BofA's (BAC) pledge not to further hike credit-card rates got one answer from Wells Fargo (WFC), who expects to raise rates for most customers by 3 percentage points on Nov. 30 - the day before Rep. Barney Frank wants new curbs to become effective.

It's obvious that WFC wants to tighten their lending standards and purge the scum that put them into such a predicament. That's further compounded by their disagreement with Rep. Frank's wishes to "loosen their wallets" and lend money to the morons that vote for this clown.

Hopefully Capitalism will out-shine these slum-lords, i.e. Frank, in the near future and someone "accidentally" lets a suicide bomber into Franks bedroom.

The banking industry is mulling a "Harry and Louise"-style ad assault to sink Obama's proposed consumer financial products regulator. Joe Weisenthal anticipates an epic failure.

It's hard to believe such a poorly written commercial will help; the Communists in China are acting more like Capitalists, South American Communist are their normal corrupt selves, their leaders are welcoming the newly formed Communist States of America to their side although the U.S. Congress and the President are busy pretending not to be communists.

I said it before and I'll say it again, short the U.S. Dollar. Jim Rogers is.

Madoff sentenced to 150 years.

jhartz,

It won't happen. After all, we live in the United States of Goldman Sachs.

Got a little Captain in ya? There may be a bit of you invested in the Captain. Among the far-reaching effects of the U.S. bailout on nonfinancial firms: a $2.7B benefit for the British makers of Captain Morgan rum in the Virgin Islands.

Well, the Captain is a pirate, after all, just like most of our politicians. What's a few dollars among friends?

Clusterstock digs up a government publication that encourages banks to give loans to low-income borrowers, using strategies now considered irresponsible. Case-in-point: Giving a $70,000 home loan on just a $500 down deposit. Read it for yourself here.

President Hoover,

I am appealed to see that you fail to understand the difference between providing anyone and everyone with a pulse, or a semblance of one, a home loan and a WWII returning GI with one.

GEICO, Government Employee Insurance Co., for example, was founded to provide a portion of the population that had, statistically, fewer accidents than the general population with car insurance. The cash-flow in conjunction with a lower payout ratio allowed GEICO to become a monster in the insurance business and is why it was acquired by Warren Buffett.

Clusterstock digs up a government publication that encourages banks to give loans to low-income borrowers, using strategies now considered irresponsible. Case-in-point: Giving a $70,000 home loan on just a $500 down deposit. Read it for yourself here.

A healthy reminder of how politicians destroy wealth.

If you're 'a sucker for this stuff' like Paul Kedrosky, here's Tom Brokaw talking with Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt, circa 1994, about 'something called the Internet.'

The Inter-what? Never heard of it...

Megan McArdle on why the housing bubble has not yet bottomed: "They bought near the height of the bubble. Yet they think their house has appreciated by nearly 10% in the intervening four years."

Leave it to the dumb money to cling to their ignorant beliefs...

Monday's economic calendar: 12:30 PM Fed's Tarullo speaks on financial regulation

I agree that the American people need to move past Republican and Democrat. One can see the ignorance of lesser-educated individuals when viewing videos of the new Tea Parties by them chanting "Obama! Obama!" It's not him or the fact that he's African-American that people disagree with him, it's his communist principals IMHO.

Politicians are getting involved in and ruining what used to be a "good" financial system, not one where everyone is happy, one that applies Darwinian Natural Selection, one that is fair and weeds out the weakest and only leaves the strong to survive.

One can see that the appetite for risk is reigniting, no longer are U.S. Treasuries the place to go to preserve capital. Ben Bernanke said he would "Drop money from a helicopter" to reignite inflation and, I believe, he has done that. However, the Obama SPEND, SPEND, SPEND principal is contradicting the Bernanke principal of closing the Treasury's "force feeding" once inflation reignites.

However, this is what we have to work with. Trade based on that. My main trades are a Taiwan (NYSE: EWT) and Hong Kong (NYSE: EWH) Index Fund as well as small-cap commodity companies.

On Jun 08 12:11 AM diologar wrote:

>
>
> When folks finally see that they can’t just get someone else to pay
> for all this, there will
> likely be a huge tax rebellion which will cause more short term problems,
> but may in the
> long term (hopefully) have the effect of getting the government to
> manage our money better.
>
> In the meantime, let’s hope we don’t have too many large national
> disasters, military
> conflicts, pandemics or the like to deal with. This country is in
> a lot of trouble and we
> need to start thinking like Americans instead of Republicans or Democrats
> if we’re going to get through this mess……..
>
> good articles: fhurl.com/c9055 recommended reading

Death of an American Icon

Excellent article. Welcome to Ameika.