"We'll never let Tebow beat us passing the ball" - Fabled Pittsburgh Steeler defensive coordinator, Dick LeBeau, before the Denver Bronco/Pittsburgh Steeler playoff gameI'm having a bit of trouble focusing on something interesting and informative to write about today, not that I'm saying my posts in general are interesting and informative, as I'm still basking in the warmth of Denver's huge upset win yesterday over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Needless to say it was Tim Tebow's passing heroics that proved to be what beat the Steelers...keep the faith.
Having said that, I wanted to throw out here that while everyone is watching the day to day vicissitudes of the situation in Europe, the U.S. leaders are quietly putting together a gameplan for rolling out a massive fiscal and monetary stimulus program. "Fedwire," a Wall Street rag that puts out gossip about the goings on at the Fed reports that one of the newest voting members of the FOMC is going to push hard for more QE: Fedwire says keep an eye on Williams, who is handy with a printer - here's a the report from FT Alphaville, the handy blog of London's Financial Times: LINK
Second, head of the NY Fed, William Dudley, who also happens to be a former Goldman Sachs partner, has been promoting policy that calls for the Government - i.e. the Taxpayer - to pay for a massive subsidization of the housing industry. Not sure that you'll read about this in the U.S. mainstream media, but the Financial Times has written a detailed article: LINK (you may need to sign up for free login to access the entire article).
The fact of the matter is that the first round of massive bank bailouts - TARP - was a de facto massive Taxpayer bailout of the housing industry via the monetization of all of the fraudulent and bad loans made by the likes of Countrywide, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, Citibank, Lehman, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America. Needless to say - and as predicted by this blog and others - the first few trillion served no purpose other than to fund the continued issuance of huge Wall Street bonuses. So now Wall Street, led by Bill Dudley, is back for more. I would bet my last gold eagle that sometime before this summer we will see both Obama-sponsored legislation that transfers several billion from the Taxpayers to the banks and a massive program by the Fed to buy mortgage paper from the Too Big To Fail Banks. This program, like the previous bad asset purchase program by the Fed, will be back-stopped by the Treasury. After-all, Tim Geithner is of course Wall Street's (and Bill Dudley's) official fluffer.
You can look up the definition of "fluffer" HERE - Definition of Fluffer I was actually surprised that Tim Geithner's picture was not part of the definition. But keep the faith, Dick Le Beau and everyone else, that's why we play the game and one day Geithner's picture will be the poster definition of "fluffer"...
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as a Steeler fan and taxpayer..ARRRAGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteFaith in what?
ReplyDeleteForbes: Regulators and Trustees Suppressing Details on MF Global
When the trustees, the regulators, and the FBI finally stop looking under sofa cushions for the missing customer funds, they’ll have to start preparing lawsuits against third-parties. These potential “deep-pockets” include directors, JP Morgan, Jeffries, who underwrote the bond issue in August, and auditor PwC.
The Department of Justice will be forced to file criminal charges against someone.
What evidence will they base these lawsuits and criminal complaints on? Typically, a bankruptcy trustee hires a bankruptcy examiner to develop the theories and uncover the evidence used to hold executives, directors, bankers, underwriters, auditors and attorneys responsible for the failure of the firm and any fraud.
That hasn’t happened here. Why not?
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/01/forbes-regulators-and-trustees.html
Dave...great call yesterday. I was a doubter (1st up) but I'm actually HAPPY for you because 1)Your blog is the nuts,as we say on the green felt, and B) 'cause Tebow befuddles the Left. So, "methoughtwrong"...P.S. did u notice yds pass =16, yds/compl was 31.6....and the overnite rating was 31.6....spooky
ReplyDeleteGotta love the heart Tebow has, if Cutler only had 1/2 that heart..
ReplyDeleteQuestion about PSLV. You agree w Jesse? I would think with the shelf rumors the premium should go down, not up. Or is silver IN SIZE really 30% over spot?? Or is Sprott pushing on a short fund which maybe was gaming that shelf registration?
Either way, funny behavior. Thanks for all your efforts in the PM and Econ realm!
Faith meter just went lower...
ReplyDeleteConviction Reversed in Refco Case
The spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment on whether it would retry the case.
A retrial of Mr. Collins could be complicated by the death of Santo Maggio. The former president of Refco’s capital markets unit, Mr. Maggio died last week at the age of 60. Scott Hershman, his former lawyer, confirmed his death.
Mr. Maggio, known as Sandy, was the government’s top cooperating witness in the Refco case. He testified in the trials of Mr. Collins and Tone N. Grant, a former senior Refco executive. He also wore a wire to help ensnare Phillip R. Bennett, Refco’s chief executive, who pleaded guilty to hiding about $430 million in bad debt from the company’s auditors and investors. Mr. Grant and Mr. Bennett are both in prison. In exchange for his cooperation, Mr. Maggio was not sentenced to jail time.
Refcok, a New York brokerage firm, which facilitated trades in commodities and futures contracts, collapsed in October 2005 after disclosing Mr. Bennett’s fraud. Much of Refco’s assets were acquired in bankruptcy by the Man Group, which later spun out the business and renamed it MF Global. Late last year, MF Global filed for bankruptcy after failed bets on the debt of European countries and a series of credit downgrades.
The Refco case has also haunted Mr. Collins, a former corporate lawyer at Mayer Brown, a large Chicago-based firm. He was charged in 2007 with helping Refco’s executives manipulate its balance and hide losses from its investors. It was an unusual white-collar prosecution, as outside corporate lawyers are rarely indicted alongside their clients in accounting fraud cases. The outside lawyers at Enron, for example, did not face criminal charges.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/conviction-reversed-in-refco-case/?
When asked about people losing faith in the system, McEwen responded, “Absolutely, they are looking at the numbers that are coming out, being issued by governments around the world and they are wondering if they are correct. We have low rates of inflation, but you can see the price of food has gone up, the price of fuel has gone up, energy. They aren’t jiving. People are saying, ‘Someone is not telling me the truth and so I better take matters into my own hands and look out for myself because my government isn’t.’ That’s true throughout the Western world.”
ReplyDeletehttp://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/1/9_McEwen_-_Gold_to_hit_$2,000_%26_Accelerate,_Silver_$150_-_$300.html
Cavoli, una vittoria ai playoff ai supplementari (OT) ?!?!
ReplyDeleteComplimenti ai Broncos ... ma questo tizio vi lascia poche speranze per sabato: http://espn.go.com/blog/afceast/post/_/id/36789/quick-take-broncos-at-patriots
Ciao e ... FORZA BRONCOS !!!
Marco
P.S.: e anche forza Inter !!! Ahahahahaha
Okay. I'm from Cleveland so I enjoyed that as much as you Dave. Congrats to the Broncos. But how in the world can Timmy Tebow have a QB rating of 20.6 vs the Chiefs, and the following week shred the number one defense in the NFL? It makes about as much sense as the Comex. Don't give me that divine intervention stuff either, because I know the Good Lord is definitely a Steelers fan. He gives them all the luck in the world.
ReplyDeleteI watched a little of a Maria Bartiromo interview today with Jamie Dimon.
ReplyDeleteDimon is a dangerous, self-entitled piece of shit. Maria brought up the MF Global issue, and Dimon said, "The only money we got was payment for a draft MF Global owed us from the day before they went under."
The cocksucker should be in prison with the other TBTF bank heads.
And Corzine is shopping around for an office. Are you shitting me? That cocksucker should be getting fudge-packed in Pelican Bay every day for the rest of his life.
Fuck Dimon, Geithner, Paulson, Bernanke, Corzine, and the rest of those shit-eating corrupt bastards.
“The Secret To How Our Society’s Owners Get Away With Everything” – M.O.C. #106
ReplyDeletehttp://sgtreport.com/2012/01/the-secret-to-how-our-societys-owners-get-away-with-everything-m-o-c-106/
Ciao e buona sera il mio amico, Marco! Cavoli? Non sono d'accordo con rispetto. I Broncos vinceranno Sabato sera!
ReplyDeleteConservare la fede!
Prox - Your list is just getting warmed up.
ReplyDeleteThe number of dishonest lowlife pricks are in the hundreds?, thousands?
There should be a way to deal with the scum who sold out they're right to be an American!
re PSLV. The only thing that makes sense to me that there is a vicious short squeeze that is going on where hedge funds are trying to hang to an arb on the premium spread between PSLV and SLV. I remember I looked into short CEF vs. going long GLD a long time ago when CEF had a 20% premium but there was no borrow on CEF. Hedge funds maybe be shorting PSLV in the hopes of catching it when Sprott announces a new deal and then get caught in a squeeze when they can't settle the borrow.
ReplyDeleteThe premium will get spanked once Sprott announces a deal, but only to the extent that it alleviates the squeeze.
Who the hell would pay a 34% premium for something you can buy from coin dealers for a small premium to spot or take delivery from the Comex at spot?
Two thousand prosecutions in the S& L crisis in the nineties.
ReplyDeleteThis shit is SEVENTY times larger (subprime etc.) and there has not been a single fucking prosecution. Cocksucking thieves like Corzine walking around laughing at the people they fucked over.
That's why this mother fucker goes down in the next three years. Get ready for capital controls.
Break-Up of CME on the Table...implications of?
ReplyDeletehttp://sgtreport.com/2012/01/gasparino-break-up-of-cme-on-the-table/
Thanks for input about PSLV. HF arb/short squeeze is all I could really figure, Midas last night had some babble about it that made no sense...
ReplyDeletePlease forward this video.
ReplyDeleteWhat, exactly, did these "protesters" do to deserve arrest?
When will this happen to me or to you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg6ayc-w3bE&feature=player_embedded
More Banks in India to Import Gold, Silver
ReplyDeleteIn a major fillip to the world's biggest consumer of precious metals, India's central bank, the Reserve Bank, has allowed four more banks to import gold and silver in the country. This brings the total number of banks allowed to import bullion to 35 in India. Bankers say the ensuing heavy competition is all set to bring on heavier discounts for consumers.
"Competition creates transparency in the price and could result in lower premiums. Ultimately, the customer gets the benefit, since each bank will try and woo them to their offered price,'' said Prateek Vyas, senior official with bullion importing IndusInd Bank in Mumbai. As if in tandem, silver spot prices on the Bombay bullion market jumped by $6.31 to touch $994.55 in the early hours of Tuesday.
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page31?oid=142833&sn=Detail&pid=31
Aren't Quayle and Snow at Cerebust?...my god
ReplyDeleteOn Mitt Romney's Defense Of Bain Capital And The Private Equity Industry - Here Are Some Facts
Lately, Bain founder and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has found himself in a spirited defense of the private equity industry, doing all he can to spin decades of data which confirm, without failure, that PE Leveraged Buy Outs are nothing but "efficiency maximizing" transactions whose only goal is the "maximization" of EBITDA in the pursuit of dividend recap deals, IPOs or outright sales, while loading up the company with untenable amounts of leverage. All this with a 3-5 year investment horizon, which ignores the long-term viability of a company and seeks to streamline (read fire as many as possible) operations as quickly as possible in the goal of maximizing short-term returns. We wish him luck in his endeavor. As for the other side of the equation, we recreate a post we penned back in November 2009 which analyzes just how effective the mega-LBOs have been for the economy, and the workers involved. In other words - the facts. In a nutshell, here they are: "The Disastrous Performance Of Private Equity: Of The Top 10 LBOs, 6 Are In Distress, 4 Have Defaulted." Read on for the full details.
For those who are interested in more information, Moody's has compiled a useful report, entitled "$640 billion & 640 days later: how companies sponsored by big private equity have performed during the U.S. recession." The track record is simply abysmal: Of the top 10 deals, only Hertz, HCA and First Data are considered "stable" which is actually saying a lot ("stable" by Moody's means these firms are likely about to have an alien burst out of their ribcage)
And while these companies life expectations are limited at best, regardless of how Hertz' lawsuit against anyone who has a sell rating against the firm goes, the biggest threat is to the entire PE industry, which just like the CRE space, will be facing a massive refi threat into 2014. Between 2011 and 2014, there is roughly half a trillion in LBO debt maturing. Add that to the $1.5 trillion in bank debt due for rolling, and the roughly $3 trillion in CRE debt that is also supposed to be refinanced, and one can see how the next president will have his arms full as he/she will need to find a way to roll about $5 trillion in debt without the benefit of securitizations. Furthermore, since the economy will be on stimulus #10 by then courtesy of a drunk with power Obama, America will be on fast track to sovereign and corporate Armageddon.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/mitt-romneys-defense-bain-capital-and-private-equity-industry-here-are-some-facts?
Judge Napolitano: What If Mainstream Politicians Are All The Same?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bearishnews.com/
Use your imagination....hmmm...
ReplyDeleteRothstein: Bankers 'in my pocket'
For fraudster Scott Rothstein, nothing was more important to carrying out his $1.4 billion Ponzi scheme than his close relationships with his bankers.
Rothstein outlined numerous precautions he took to prevent red flags involving his banking activity from ever reaching federal regulators who ferret out money laundering, suspicious account activity and fraud. Part of that, he said, involved methodically compromising bank officials who then protected him.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-rothstein-speaks-banks-20120109,0,3149315.story