redwine44

Whitney Gets Bearish: Will She Be Right Again?

Wow, lots of comments. But my favorite line, to which I am sure Guy and most of you all are hip: the market can be overvalued for a lot longer than you can stay solvent (if you are shorting it). I am more curious as to why M. Whitney quit her job to start her own firm. Didn't anyone tell her that when you are self-employed, you have to spend 50% or more of your time marketing yourself instead of actually doing the work you really want to do? That is why division of labor is one of the iron rules of real economic activity, why companies with at least a handful of employees will do better than a 1 man or 1 woman shop. I am not just long BAC, HBAN, JPM, and GS, in small amounts, I even stay long overnight sometimes on the FAS. Oooooohhhhh, that is so scary! I am not in the business, just manage my own small IRA.

Why Won't Obama Just Create the Jobs?

Ah Bob 123. A cogent, well thought out, articulate, understanding of how wealth is created by entrepenuers, written in the spirit of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton. The country, with all its people and wealth, built by screw anyone mentality? Oh, give it a rest, Bob. Jobs are created by one entity with enough revenue and profit to hire the next guy. Have you created any jobs? Where does your profit come from in order to hire the addition to your company? Childish hatred of conservatives or Republicans does not constitute an economic tour de force.

Health care in the US is the highest yet created by human science. Quit paying for scientists, skip the new lightweight plaster casts, trash MRI and CAT scans, dump out all your cholestoral drugs, and then watch costs go down. Along with life spans. The Obama plan is not going to do anything to lower costs, it is just another welfare plan. You will pay my Doctor bills. Thank you. I can then go and buy an nice bottle of wine instead of saving up my money to pay my own bills.

Why Won't Obama Just Create the Jobs?

I agree with enigmaman: the Obama admin., like most communist-trained folk, are opposed to letting people run their own lives and their own economic fortunes. They want govt. dependence, not independence. A few years ago, even Democrat Moynihan, I believe, called the welfare state a slave state in more or less words.

Leftist ideology only sees wealth after it is created and says, hey, I want what the other guy has. Obamaism rejects the foundation of our nation, a nation where everybody who chooses can engage in whatever legal self-benefiting econ. activty they choose.

Don't expect the Demo. party to line up with private sector job creation. Only with govt. sector job creation. If you strip out govt. jobs, SEIU and so forth, the unionization rate is probably under 10%, thanks to wrong-headed Democrat party/left wing foolishness.

Now, what was that about jobs? Productivity? The US is a mighty strong country and will survive and even prosper despite Obama, not because of any policy he has espoused so far.

Wall Street: Dumb as It Ever Was

Re: CNBC. It is better than watching daytime soaps. I watch, listen, and usually wait 1-2 weeks to see for myself how reality intersects with the babbling. You pays your money and takes your chances, your own choices. For those who just want to bash CNBC, do take into account, that on any given day, there may be 30 or 40 buy (or short) recommendations. As an investor, my job, your job, is to distill out from all that stuff down to handful of data points that become information. Or remember one piece from Ben Graham and Warren Buffet: invest in companies that you understand. I don't invest in retailers because I know that I don't enjoy fad-retailing and thus don't have a clue why one clothier is better than the next. True Religion Jeans? Huh? Give me a highly volatile chipmaker with unbelievable nan-tech that none of us can "see", and nevermind Gap vs. Aeropostale. And at least CNBC is a tad better than MSNBC. Now that network is a pile.

Using the Direxion 3X Daily ETFs, All 22 of Them

I am confused by one thing the author said, I would appreciate some help/explanation. "The funds are designed to depreciate a bit overnight", in proportion to their volatility. I don't get it. Other than the expenses which are legally published, what depreciation are you referring to? I know that the prices supposedly reset each day. But that is not different than stocks, is it, which can open the next day at a price very different than the prev. day close? The ETF price on the new day is set based on the underlying index, which is the sum of the items in the index, no?

Would appreciate any/all answers, thanks.

What Cramer Knew About Ceragon

I just love it when the comments pile on against Cramer. Tee hee hee. To the bank, Alice.

Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Charlie Gasparino Bash Finance Blogs

Do any of you critics really think that you are better off if CNBC goes off the air?

Do professional money managers pay much attention to what anonymous bloggers write?

Would you trust your company or union pension plan, which is maybe in the billions of dollars, to the hands of amateur bloggers?

So what if CNBC is 10 minutes of useful news in a 50 minute hour?

Go ahead, take your shots at me.

Did We Nationalize Banks, Or Did They Nationalize Us?

We voted in those Congressmen, and they voted to give Paulson the blank check. Our brave 5th estate of reporters & journalists did not have a clue what any of this was all about or what the un-intended consequences are, since they mostly come from colleges that still teach from the view of Marx, Engels, & Lenin. The general maistream news media of today is so far behind the curve they don't even know what road the world is driving on. Totally out of touch with economic reality, they mostly have never studied any real US history such as the fight between Hamilton and Jefferson over things like founding the 1st Bank of the United States, Pres. Jackson who killed it off, and the various recurring financial panics and so forth. (See Frank Baum, the Wizard of Oz, yellow brick gold road vs. the paper money crowd.)


The alternative to a well informed citizenry and Congress is either this, a recurring bank melt where we all get taken for a few $ to restore liquidity, or, we can go back to a monarchy where the same thing happens but the King IS the decider, communism with no incentive to create any wealth, or dictatorship, a la Stalin or Hitler. I would like to choose the option of cleaning out the colleges but I don't think I have the power to do that.


My favorite snippet from the testimony was when Paulson was accused of selling his GS stock when entering govt. service and deferring paying any income or cap gain tax on the gains. Well, did Paulson write the tax law, or did the Congress?

Dennis Kneale: The Ultimate Contrarian Indicator

Geez, there are a lot of personal attacks here. What if Dennis is right? By definition, recessions are 2 consecutive quarters of shrinking GNP. We won't know until 3-6 months after the fact when the recession ended. So, it is premature to call him wrong, and not very usefull to call him an idiot. But, I guess that is what the blogosphere is for. He, like Kuddles, is just an outpsoken believer in the FREE part of Free enterprise. Can any of you tell what the role of the Federal govt. in our economic life actually is supposed to be as per Founding Fathers? Have any of you insult slingers read or studied the Constitution? Is this panic any different than the panics suffered in the 1800s? Was Alan Greenspan any different than just a flip-side reverse of the Fed errors that took our great country into the depression? Did anybody hear a few weeks ago, even the Democrat booster Keith Boykin, admit that Roosevelt's policies did not get the country out of the depression, it was only war spending that did the trick? Can you contributors offer some constructive writing, or just fling around a bunch of wisecracks that we would have been proud of back in 10th grade? Oh, it is time for me to turn back into a pumpkin. Goodbye, Rumplestiltskin.

Why the Dow Is Headed to 6000

I disagree with his #3, depressed wages: other than govt. employees here in Calif., employers are not forcing wage cuts, and union teachers are accepting contracts with no wage changes.

4, demographic disaster: the baby boom generation is very talented and productive, and if they have to work a few more years than intended before they retire, that is not going to drag the econ. down, as many are entrepreneurial and will be self-employed etc.

5. Catch 22 is not as bad as he makes it out to be. Most of us are still working and paying loans, and enough people are buying up the foreclosed real estate that banks are not frozen in place.


And most important, Bernanke listened to Cramer, and opened up credit lines to unfreeze the mess, and he seems to be carefully monitoring flows and is erring more toward inflation and away from the 1930s Fed huge mistake of punishing America by shrinkng the money supply.

I may be a fool, maybe not, but this financial collapse WAS NOT ANY DIFFERENT than previous money panics, except that more and fancier technology was involved. Most of us are not employed in the financial sector, we just need it to be around for us when we need loans.

5 are either not not sufficient or truecauses

Ken Lewis and BAC's Shareholders Got Hosed by the Feds

After sifting and sorting through a lot of comments , and having worked in a low-mid level job at the old, pre tobacco Bof A (I've been gone since 1998), all of this makes a good case for investing in the tech sector, not banks, and wishing that the Community Re-investment Act, Sarb-Ox, and Mark-to Market had all been just a bad dream. Once govt. starts intervening, we as taxpayers get hurt and some of us as shareholders get hurt worse and others get a slight benefit. (Better yet, go all the way back to ERISA in 1974 for how The Law of Unintended Consequences always trumps whatever an interventionist Congress or President does to manipulate economic outcomes.)

Strictly to the point of BAC & ML & The Fed, I believe that Ken Lewis failed his fiduciary duties in favor of macro-stability, and we need to hear more from Paulson and the VA Fed guy. Ben B. seems too mild to have actually administered a threat, maybe he just articulated the likely reality, which is that if Lewis had publicly said there was a MAC, then that amounted to announcing to the world that Merrill was toast and not worth much. That would have pushed the Dow down another 1000 points probably. (And at that point, the nutcase in Iran might have sent a missile into Tel Aviv or the nutcase in North Korea into South Korea while the rest of the world was distracted. ) So BofA shareholders paid the price for maintaining macro stability. I sold my last shares way back when it dropped into the low 40s years ago. Anybody who kept holding on in 2007 and 2008 was a bit sleepy.

Before people invest in banks that are running exotic credits, be reminded of Wil Rogers: I am more concerned with the return OF my principal than the return ON my principal.

Why Marc Faber Is Wrong About the CPI

My issue with the doom & gloom feeling from Mr. Faber: inflation of items that we use now that did not exist 10 or 20 yrs ago. For instance, how do measure medical costs that may inflate, but advanced scanning devices make high risk invasive surgery unnecessary and save lives. Is phone service more or less expensive than 20 years ago? The economic benefits of science and tech advances are hard to factor into such formulas. Frost free refrigerators with ice makers vs. old fashion 4 door built in ice boxes or hand-defrost versions. Lighter & better insulation than that used in same device from 40 years ago. Quieter appliances that make the house quieter for better standard of living.

Anna Schwartz: The Fed's Performance 'Has Been Disappointing'

I am confused or else can't find the new news from Schwartz. Is this a new interview or a rehash of her interview last year? I can't find anything new on the web. The WSJ article by Carey (?) refers to her comments last year???

Blodget Blasts Ballmer: 'Face Reality'

MSFT is still a one-trick pony, and eventually, buggy whips, and now their successor, General Motors, go by the wayside. Gates was a very successful businessman, not an engineer or designer.

It would do Ballmer well to look at the names of the Dow 30 in 1980, in 1960, in 1920. Giants don't live forever, they just make a bigger dust cloud when they fall over.