Happy New Year

2009 be done.

Am working on some 2010 game changers...

That's fucking right. 2010 I am bringing a video series, vignettes really, because I love that word: vignettes, to the small screen.

They will be completely unrelated to finance, completely unrelated to the economy, completely unrelated to the external world, and will be focused exclusively, in totality on your inner world, your inside game, your internal locus, your heart center.

We will get that right or just a little bit righter, and from there, the other external stuff will fall into place, or just fall away, become irrelevant.

Opt in: inside. Opt out: outside. Opt in: optimism.

While you wait, see Avatar: message movie of the decade.

And here is a picture of Kali fucking Shiva.

Taleb Joins Me In Exile (via HuffPost)

I don't write Econ/Finance posts anymore, I can't stomach it, and my hero, Nassim Taleb feels the same way. I'll let him do the talking, from today's Huffington Post:

Good Bye! The Reappointment Of Bernanke Is Too Much To Bear

What I am seeing and hearing on the news -- the reappointment of Bernanke -- is too hard for me to bear. I cannot believe that we, in the 21st century, can accept living in such a society. I am not blaming Bernanke (he doesn't even know he doesn't understand how things work or that the tools he uses are not empirical); it is the Senators appointing him who are totally irresponsible -- as if we promoted every doctor who caused malpractice. The world has never, never been as fragile. Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.

No news, no press, no Davos, no suit-and-tie fraudsters, no fools. I need to withdraw as immediately as possible into the Platonic quiet of my library, work on my next book, find solace in science and philosophy, and mull the next step. I will also structure trades with my Universa friends to bet on the next mistake by Bernanke, Summers, and Geithner. I will only (briefly) emerge from my hiatus when the publishers force me to do so upon the publication of the paperback edition of The Black Swan.

Bye,
Nassim

Amen.

Inductive Reasoning Fallacy

A holiday lesson on thinking, straight from my idol Nassim Taleb:

A turkey lives 1000 days. Every day for 999 days the turkey is fed and fattened, eating a little more everyday.

Let's say for the sake of this piece that this turkey is a fantasy free-range turkey, not the traditional mass-produced, death-farmed, slaughterhouse, pig-boned, steroid special you will be eating this Thursday.

So from this turkey's perspective he is happier and happier every day, thinking to himself, "Wow, what a great life I have. Every day just gets better and better and every day I just get bigger and bigger!"

Day 1000. Chop. Thwack. Slaughter. Gutted.

Today has everything to do with yesterday, until it violently does not. Past performance is not indicative of future results. In other words, yesterday has nothing to do with the here and now.

And for that we can all be grateful!

Happy Thanksgiving all. Please keep the slaughterhouse product consumption to a minimum this year.

And don't be a turkey.

Pop.

I'm gonna do my best to explain what's going on here on earth, and then after this post, I really mean it this time, no more finance posts.

There's a lot more interesting stuff going on out there which I can't wait to write about. I do thank you so much for spending time here and in my gratitude, I do feel an obligation to explain this one more time and then let it all go.

So as my final reportage, here you go:

After 25+ years of misfeasance, easy money at the Fed, we're broke, and going broker, we are fighting two illegal/ immoral wars, on our way to a third.

Peace Prize!

So, we had absolutely no money last year when the Banks blew up due to the incompetence ethos, survival of the slimiest, etc. But the oligarchy needed to get paid, so we had the bailouts when said banks indicated it would be the end of world if they could not pay bonuses.

It was!! Only good call they made in 20 years.

Yes, so not only are we run by corporations, but by failed corporations -from Mr. Obama on down.

Sigh... He has not made any difference despite my false hopes.

This is NOT Capitalism despite Michael Moore's wishes. This is not Socialism nor Communism either. Those models would imply we are redistributing wealth from rich to poor.

It's the opposite here. This is straight up banana republic.

Okay you get it already, no money here, bananaland, our balance sheet has trillions in debt we simply, arithmetically cannot pay.

So we will print it. We will create it out of paper and ink. That was okay way back when we had something of worth backing it, like gold.

And it was still good for a while after that when we were a production-based, non-consumer-based nation, as it was backed by the full faith and credit of the taxing power of the US Congress.

That used to mean something. Now it does not. So the printing to pay debts, coupled with the lack of real demand for said dollars will only lead to one outcome:

Hyperinflation and the likely dissolution (or major restructuring) of the United States.

Look at the stock markets, look at gold and other commodities. I made a mistake when I told you to sell US stocks 1000 points ago. You can hold anything as long as it's not US dollars. Pet rocks will go up in price in dollar terms.

(*Except your house. That credit-based asset will continue to plummet and basically ruin your life -Enjoy!)

So, my mistake, although I was prettay, prettay clear about holding gold or foreign stocks which both way outperformed US stocks this year.

If you followed my blog and did what the fuck I told you for the past two years, you are basically crushing it.

You're welcome. Gravy fucking train is over. I"m too bored with all this. You can always call me...

No, you cannot.

I still think the US stock market is the biggest stock bubble in history, but it is competing with the biggest asset bubble in history, that which dwarfs the stock market.

The deflationists look at the US fundamentals and rightfully see awfulness and much lower prices going forward. Like me, they see bankrupt companies like AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, Fannie Mae, etc. lead the charge the higher, and shake their pointy heads.

They see the stock bubble but miss the biggest bubble of all time popping before their eyes.

And that bubble my friends, is the US Dollar.

Pop.

GOLD 100 OZ FUTR (USD/t oz.) $1050.90

Dear Ben Bernanke, Thank you for being you.

Dear Barrack Obama, Thank you for not understanding math.

Dear Wall Street TARP Bankers, Thank you for taking up all the last few hundred spots in hell.

Dear US Congress, Thank you for your awesome spending.

Dear America, Thank you for sleeping.

Thank You For Playing

Carry on, nothing to see here.

Please, no loud crying.

Gentle sobbing appropriate.

Manifest Volcker

I've said this before and not at all lived up to it, but no more posts on finance/ the economy.

Done.

I've warned everyone like ten times in the last month, do not buy US stocks or mutual funds even if you have a 100 year time horizon.

And do not hold US dollars either. You will be engulfed in flames as your portfolio will be incinerated and the dollar collapses.

So that's it! Closed. No more negative posts, I am delighting in the chaos to be televised this Fall. I hope you are as well.

I am also done crushing Obama. He can still turn it around, he is smart enough. I believe he is re-appointing Bernanke such that the captain can be onboard for the final iceberg.

He will reverse course soon enough, probably before the end of the year and dismantle his entire econ team post dollar crisis.

The really-not-that-smart Repubs will sweep in 2010, but they will F it up almost immediately with some xenophobic, culturally conservative idiocy, and be re-swept back out in 2012.

Barry will be re-elected to term 2 having fired his economic generals like Lincoln did his army captains.

Volcker will take over at age 100 and that is when you can get long US stocks again.

All is well. It's all vibration anyway. As Abraham Hicks says, become a vibrational match to that which you want. You will never attract what you want by focusing on the lack of it.

Become a vibrational match to Volcker.

Manifest Volcker.

Clunker Please Don't Go

We will look back at the Cash For Clunkers Era as the brief utopia before we were engulfed in flames.

Future history books will read as follows (in Mandarin):

Cash For Clunkers was a massive handout to the failing US car industry and lazy Americans that drove shit-boxes in response to Barack Obama's coddling of the US Banks.

As documented mostly in blogs of the era, the Banks (with the full backing of the Federal Reserve) successfully destroyed Capitalism while paying themselves enormous taxpayer funded bonuses.

Obama needed an opiate to dispel the notion that he was just another "Corporatist" (as coined by hard-core Republican Capitalist Frank Rich of the NYT). So he gave his obese citizens a $4500 voucher to buy a Toyota.

One of the first blogs to cover US Banker Satanism in 2007 was Yogatrader which went on to become the official blog of Communist California. Eventually the MSM caught wind of the rampant banker sociopathy. Here is right-wing extremist, Paul Krugman in the August 21, 2009 NYT:

"And then there’s the matter of the banks.

I don’t know if administration officials realize just how much damage they’ve done themselves with their kid-gloves treatment of the financial industry, just how badly the spectacle of government supported institutions paying giant bonuses is playing. But I’ve had many conversations with people who voted for Mr. Obama, yet dismiss the stimulus as a total waste of money. When I press them, it turns out that they’re really angry about the bailouts rather than the stimulus — but that’s a distinction lost on most voters."

This Banker Satanism torpedoed any chance of Obama achieving much needed US healthcare reform.

Obama lost the middle, and had to deal with death-panel crazies and 60 IQ US College graduates that wanted "government off their Medicare!"

So he doubled down on Clunkers until it ran out of money.

Of course, we all know Cash For Clunkers was the greatest fiddle performance of all time, as unbeknownst to the fiddler, Rome was completely engulfed in Dante's inferno.

And this of course is where glorious Communist China came to the rescue and saved the world.

As the second best US President of the 21rst century, Mr. Obama's legacy was complete.

Cash For Clunkers Is The New Internet!

I am looking to go deeper in debt, prop up a failing industry and ruin the environment in 3 weeks time.

So I am very excited for the Cash For Clunkers program. I hope you will share in my excitement and partake in this new economy dynamism.

This is a very popular program which speaks to it's brilliance. Our Senators are brave to pass this bill. Brave and brainy!

I know Cash for Clunkers will save us. Do not even think about denying me my fucking Clunker voucher!!

You are either with the Clunkers or you are with the Terrorists.

...At least we are going up in flames quickly.

Cash For Clunkers Will Save Us

The new economy pillar, Cash For Clunkers is the funniest economy- wrecking- scheme of all the new economy- wrecking- schemes!

Cash for Clunkers!! Just saying it makes me smile.

The Market, the S&P 500, meaning the biggest, bluest of blue chip American companies index is trading at a 700 earnings multiple.

The last time we had a multiple like this was dot.com mania Nasdaq 2000.

That ended well, I recall.

Speaking of bubbles, remember the new metrics being thrown around then, like "eyeballs" or "price to sales" ratio which eliminated the need for those companies to actually make money.

Same now, you'll hear the mainstream crazies talk about next year's "operating earnings" which equals projected earnings if we do not count all the bad stuff.

The good news is if you played ostrich-style financial management for the past 2 years and are just now able to look at your statements, you have the opportunity to extricate yourself from all US stocks at great prices.

It's conventional wisdom that the market is brutal and unfair.

That's not what I've seen however. At each pre-crash period, you had ample time to sell and get out if you were paying attention.

Subprime was in the news in 2006, you had over a year to figure out it was not "contained" per Ben Bernanke, before the first leg down, if you were curious.

Bear Stearns went down in March of 08, giving you 6 months to figure out every other investment bank was just like them, before the October crash, if you were curious.

The market gave you another shot to get out the first days of January this year, rallying because January means new beginnings!!

And here we are, August of 2009, S&P at 1000. Nothing fundamental has changed except trillions in taxpayer liability, even though the bad assets are still on the banks books, now marked to fantasy via new accounting rules.

Insiders are selling at a record clip, yet the same prognosticators who were bullish all the way down have declared victory over the Recession.

Hmmm... At the current job loss rate, everyone will be unemployed by 2011.

And our consumer credit economy is 70% dependent on us buying stupid shit we don't need.

But if you don't have a job, you can't get that bad-ass $2000 limit 18% APY Capital One card, so how the fuck we gonna borrow our way out of this debt mutha-fucking black-hole, bitch!

Hallelujah!!

Oh yes, the dollar continues it's collapse which temporarily props up all asset prices, so when you sell your US stocks, do not sit in US dollars. Buy gold, or sit in other currencies, or high yielding foreign shares.

Stay long US equities and the next leg down will wipe you out.

That's all. Enjoy your day.

CIT: Too Not-Goldman To Bail

US Markets have reached their highest level of 2009 absurdity.

We are completely out of US stocks and taking some profits abroad. Some of our clients are up enormously and we are strongly suggesting hedging to all of them.

How bizarro world have things become? How disconnected are Markets from reality? Well, I would suggest even more so than last year at this time.

And since I'm generally lazy, here is what I wrote 1 year ago today, word for word (with added visuals) and the market at 11,239.

Because, amazingly (or not) nothing fundamental has "CHANGED", besides a few trillion in US taxpayer liabilities.

In short, get out of US stocks.

And enjoy:

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Warning: This is a Finance Post
Yes, your eyes will surely glaze over, but here we go. Just a little FYI: Did anyone tell you we are in a full blown financial crisis. No, good, let me.

Background: We've had 25 years of massive, and I mean massive credit expansion, a raging bull market starting in roughly 1980 that went parabolic in '95 and is now reversing hard, unwinding in a major way.

What has prompted me to actually start writing about it is that we have people making it worse, thinking they're making it better. Barry Ritholtz explains it best here: If this fucking link doesn't work, Google his latest Seeking Alpha piece (Fed Fiddles as Rome Burns).

Anywells, our "officials" are now trying to somehow short circuit the short sellers, which prompted a massive rally today in the worst companies on the board -the banks. I can't go into how ridiculous this is, other than to say: government intervention rallies based on ending short selling are to be sold short, preferably naked.

And yes, "naked shorting" is actually a (great) finance term, Yeah, we're talking stocks here, I warned you already about that, did you look at the title? That said if you are sitting at home and decide to buy Puts with no pants on, more power to you. And if you're standing nude in the middle of your trading floor, you are way too cool to be reading this blog.

So the question is: do you want the band-aid off fast or would you like it to take 8 fucking years. We've chosen the latter, so guess what, you cannot be long stocks or buy a house for any reason other than wanting to light hundred dollar bills on fire until around 2012 which I think is when the world ends anyway.

Here it is. We need the market to clear. That means we need the indexes down hard, we need several of the dumbest banks to fail, we need Paul Volcker to come in and jack rates, end inflation and sure up the plummeting dollar.

The guys in charge now are so compromised, so lacking in credibility, yet they keep tinkering around trying to plug holes where there are none, because guess what?

THERE'S NO MORE DAM, it's gone baby gone, you (we) are so under water, and messing around with short sellers, trying to bail out another I-bank, socializing risk is both prolonging the pain and making it worse.

But they will continue to take asinine steps like they did today because it's in their DNA. It's the strand known as the: Let's Keep Fucking Around With This Hand-Grenade Gene.

So tinker on, play politics, help out your idiot banker friends, you might get few hundred more points, maybe even a thousand, hell anything's possible, you may even get another bubble. Tinker on my friends, you cannot help yourselves, I know.

But, one thing is certain. This tinkering. . .will end in tears.

Bank of America Accepts California IOUs As You Accept Bank Of America's IOUs In Never Ending Escher Economy Death Spiral

I'll be back, we gave you the California BK warning on October 14th which gave you 8+ months to sell your municipal bonds. If you did not, please go cry in the corner.

But good of BofA to accept worthless IOU paper from us, as the US taxpayer (which includes a few Californians) accepted the worthless mortgage paper they wrote in exchange for TARP funds -soon to be worthless.

Luckily we have the US Treasury printing presses running full speed printing what will soon be worthless paper such that BofA can pay their executives top dollar, such that we can finally form a Zimbabwe like economy, based on the three new US economic pillars of:

1) money printing
2) obesity
3) cash for clunkers

And thank you to TARP banks JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs for buying up spot oil and putting the barrels on tankers in storage to earn the spread between spot and futures, thereby squeezing supply and increasing the price of gasoline, taxing the US citizen twice, one enormous nation-killer tax called TARP and one just really fucking annoying tax called Exxon.

Thank goodness we saved you!

Carry on here, nothing to see.

Crush The Flies

Unemployment is skyrocketing yet we still have five too many banks, some that are paying enormous bonuses funded exclusively by the US taxpayer. The biggest heist in history.

Please, if you have any affiliation with a TARP bank, may you please commit hari kari or risk returning as a fly in your next lifetime.

This heist is common knowledge on the street and as the rest of humankind gets wind of it, Barry O. will have 2 choices. One, swat his Econ team of Geithner-Summers to their death like 2 giant bugs, or serve out his one term and join Jimmy Carter in the malaise hall of fame.

I voted for this guy?!

Fuck.

But, I still have hope he will come to his senses, and crush the flies.

Tyler Durden, Barry Ritholtz, Karl Denninger and a host of other bloggers have done a much better job on this meme, so I will direct you to them as I just don't have the energy to lay it all out here.

Bottom line: Barack Obama has been on the side of a small Wall Street oligarchy to the amazingly horrific detriment of the rest of the US population. Barack Obama is fucking the middle class, the poor, as well as the actual Capitalist hard working entrepreneur, to maintain the status quo gluttony of bankers like Ken Lewis, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein and Vikram Pandit.

It's a travesty, for the country and for the man himself, a total waste of talent.

But he's had enough time to figure it out, and guess what folks.

He's just not up to it.

What To Do, What To Do?

So you are not a market participant. Good for you, although we're all market participants even if we own no stock, but that's another post.

So what can you do now to navigate the current malaise?

Well, if you work for a big corporation that is credit dependent and/or mass consumer focused, get ready to be fired.

No, just playing with you, a little job anxiety humor to start your Monday morning, better than coffee!

This is a great opportunity, go do what you love, be pro-active, stop sitting on your TARP ass, collecting a check, waiting to be fired, the height of misery.

Be an entreprenuer! Open a yoga studio.

See, when my best of friends, Govindas asked me last year if now was a good time to open a donation based yoga studio, which was the exact same time I was calling for a massive stock market crash, I answered him with a resounding YES!!

How is that, you may ask?

Well, any other business, involving anything other than gold cyanide capsules, I would have send No F-ing Way, and it would have been good advice. Shops that sell "stuff" are shutting down all over town, there are store-front vacancies on Main Street Venice/Santa Monica which was unheard of even last year.

But, big BUT, there is a demand for authentic experience, there is a demand for deeper meaning that was all but snuffed out during the materialism-fueled 80s and 90s, and a yoga studio with an established roster of teachers is a no brainer here in the yoga mecca of the world (Yes, west-side LA trumps India, ask the Indians.)

Not a yogi? Great, go volunteer in the countries that need it, dump your house/rental, leave the country for a bit, get some perspective, leave the box. If you just started a family, get help from your boomer parents who just blew this shit up. Go work in Africa for a bit and you'll become a yogi pretty quickly.

See we're programmed to believe otherwise, but you can do whatever you want if you stop chasing the paper for a year or two, they'll be plenty of time to resume the rat wheel when you return.

Nobody, nobody, not one died saying they wish they'd spent more time at work. Get out there, take a hike, go to the beach, re-connect with nature, make the connection of reverence and respect for the land, and even find your true calling in the environmental or alternative energy space.

That and the yoga/ consciousness/ holistic industry are the new, new things that will work here, vocations that you make a lifetime out of.

That or if you still have that raging Capitalist animal spirit, move to India, move to Asia. These tigers will have your Gordon Gekko on in a Mumbai minute!

And if you're local, visit the Bhakti Yoga Shala, you will love it. Bhakti means devotion. Bhakti is service. Go be of service not just to your family, but to your community and the world at large. It's a new era, consciousness is raising, I know you can sense it, even the skeptics can see it, if not feel it.

Be of service, you'll be fine.

Long Gay Marriage

Oh yeah.

If you're against gay marriage, you're on the wrong side of the trade.

And in a few years you'll have to explain why you were on the same side as this maniac/ douchebag.

You don't want to have to explain that to your kid.

Live and let live.

Don't be a douche.

Hello Happy People

Happy with your 401k bounce from the abyss?

Me too.

See this chart? It's a chart of the US Dollar v. a basket of foreign currencies, most of which are in Europe, which is in even worse shape than here.

So basically whatever gains you've had in your US stock and bond holdings, subtract 10% and that's your real return.

If you want to compare your returns v. a strong commodity currency like the Australian Dollar subtract 20%.

Happy now?

Great. Carry on.

Humiliation Is The New Enlightenment!

Hello radiant earth beings. Are you enjoying the end of Capitalism? Congratulations to Karl Marx, I should have read you in high school.

You see, we think we know, we think we know, we think we know. . .

And we know nothing. Not a fucking thing. If we could just keep that straight, that we are more or less clueless as to basically everything, we maybe, just maybe, can prevent ourselves from paying $70 for a tomato in 2011.

And to those that still think they know what the fuck they are doing despite all evidence to the contrary, to the Federal Reserve, to the current and previous administrations, a special shout out to ya! Booyah!

And a special shout out to the TARP bank oligarchy for continuing to suck the lifeblood out of the free enterprise system. You'll be able to tell your grandchildren you ended it.

And by "it", I mean everything.

Humble. Humility. Humiliation.

One of the greatest life lessons ever is that every time, and I mean every single time I have become too big for my britches, I am swatted down and squashed like gnat on an elephant's ass.

What is it they say in China,"The nail that stands out gets hammered down?" Yes, something like that.

That's the new ethos. So un-American, so collectivist, yet so exactly of the moment, and China will overtake us in very short order because of it. And deservedly so.

The American ethos of consumer narcissism is fucking done.

Good riddance, we were gagging on it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go waterboard myself.

Long Crying

Greetings white earthlings.

WARNING: No, not swine flu. Although please be careful with your (non-vegan) bacon consumption from mass produced slaughterhouses this week. And please keep your usual animal flesh gorging to neanderthalic minimums until this blows over.

Warning regarding the following piece: It is about money, so move on to the Huffington Post or ramdass.org if you are already mid-yawn.

I promise my next piece will be a vegan cookie recipe or a sitar youtube.

This is how we are trading armageddon and why (with a style nod to the Gartman letter, and giving you the benefit of the doubt in knowing we are simply talking/pumping our positions).

We are still very long of gold. We gave you this trade at the beginning of the year in the low $800s, it has been way up at $1000, back down again, and is now at $917. You made money on this trade if you did it. If not, you still have time. We have a silver miner as well to ride this train. You want the rationale, please scroll back (Jan+Feb).

We are long of Canadian Energy Trusts some yielding over 20%. Do you believe the banker bailout money printing bonanza will not cause commodity price inflation? Do you believe that Nat Gas will stay below $3.50 and Crude will stay below $50 next year? Do you believe that the US is better run than Canada? If yes to any of the above, do not do this trade.

We are long of China domestic/non-export companies. We are long of Indian companies of the same ilk. Have you been to India? Have you been to China? If not, move there and do this trade. If yes, move there and do this trade.

We are short of US equities as a hedge via DXD. We are short the worst companies of all time, the banks via FAZ. We don't care how many trillions the USG puts in the black hole, every one of these banks should be trading below $5 like any other government entity with endless losses and gains derived from government supported Enron Accounting.

Endless trough feeding via TARP, and FDIC borrowing at the artificial rate, you'd think these firms would be money machines.

You'd be wrong. Raging executive incompetence and a general public that has the nerve to actually understand the fleecing, will render these firms nationalized and trading near zero. Liquidate the shareholders, liquidate the bondholders, goodnight Citi, goodnight BofA. We are short Goldman Sachs via puts. We believe Goldman Sachs, besides being amazingly tone deaf, is the biggest menace to this country since Dennis the Menace.

We are short Commercial Real Estate/Simon Property Group via puts. George Soros is in this trade (short CRE). We are short Real Estate in general through SRS. If you do not understand derivatives stay away from the short trades. But we can recommend you sell your house and rent.

We are long Brazil via EWZ and some calls. We are long BIDU via calls on earnings tomorrow but may sell them before. We are also long of grains (non-animal Ags) through Chinese and Australian Ag firms. All positions are trade-able based on circumstances, meaning we can change our mind any time. If we do, we'll let you know.

We understand everything is still connected and a big selloff here will ripple everywhere.

We are net long, here.

We don't like bonds, not enough yield. We love Apple and probably always will but have no position in it.

We are long of Gay Marriage with a short position in Marriage In General as a hedge.

We are short of Torture with a long position in Gentle Slapping as a hedge.

We are long of Crying, unhedged.
We wish you luck in your trading.

Equanimity

There is a Zen koan of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years.

One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” said the farmer. . .

All-Time Greatest Vid To Get Your Weekend ON!!

US Auto Worker v. Wall Street Douchebag. Obama Goes With The Douche.

That seems fair.

And very progressive.

My Usual Weekend Party

TARP II or Where The Fuck Is Volcker?

GD II was caused by bankers making ass-ton huge bets on housing with other people's money.

Bets with no downside, as they got paid at year end on paper profits. Heads they win, tails you lose.

THE GEITHNER SOLUTION: Let bankers make ass-ton huge bets on housing with other people's money.

Bets with no downside as the taxpayer will put up 85+% non-recourse style. Meaning heads they win tails you lose.

How this ends in non-crying is difficult to fathom. Even Krugman hates it.

This combined with last week's Bernanke-fest print-athon effectively ends the Obama administration.

Nice +500 though.

I've seen this movie before. . . like 18 times.

It's called Greater Fool.

Guess who the fool is?

Federales Buy Own Bonds In Greatest-Ever Money-Printing Escher-Extravaganza!!

Gold reverses +$60 in sixty seconds.

We should just do this forever.

Borrow fake money from ourselves until the end of time.

Just like magic!

But worse.

Revolutionary Road

Tom Friedman, who I enjoy, had a piece a few days ago about the severity of the economic crisis and how Barry O needed to focus on it to the exclusion of all else.

I agree.

He ended his piece however, with the following:

Which is why I wake up every morning hoping to read this story: “President Obama announced today that he had invited the country’s 20 leading bankers, 20 leading industrialists, 20 top market economists and the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate to join him and his team at Camp David. ‘We will not come down from the mountain until we have forged a common, transparent strategy for getting us out of this banking crisis,’ the president said, as he boarded his helicopter.”

Sometimes I comment on these things, I really do not know why. Here's what I said:

"great piece Tom, big fan but you lost us on the final paragraph:

20 leading bankers = oxymoron.

20 leading industrialists = not American

20 leading economists = did not see this coming and perpetuated it.

bring in outside the boxers: Roubini, Schiff, Taleb, Volcker, Soros, Steve Jobs and non-beltway Wall Street types and we can solve this, the guys he/ you would have in the room right now, just aren't up to it."

— Brian, Los Angeles

People liked it. As a matter of fact it was the second most Reader Recommended comment at 487 recommendations. #1 was the usual partisan "all Republicans are awful" job, so not bad.

And so I feel pretty good about popular sentiment here, the idea that we get it while the Washington Wall Steet axis, including the MSM still clearly does not.

Then a couple days ago, I was hearing about the Slow Money Movement on the radio. Yes, it was NPR. Go ahead, make your own joke about the NYT, yoga and NPR. I was however, not drinking a latte at the time.

Any way, the point is, I see a revolution coming, hopefully peaceful, hopefully with enough people getting it within the system that the machine is not completely upended.

If it is upended, well then, we'll deal with it.

More on Slow Money next time. Have a great weekend all.

I'm going off the grid.

Survivalist training.

Citi 1 Dolla, Dolla Bill or Panic Attacks are Useful

"Dick, it's Dubya, can I get borrow on a million shares of Citi? Yes, cool man, cool!!

Thanks man, you were the best Vice ever!

Okay, now take it and sell it.

Yeah, if Obama's buying here, I'm a seller.

And hey man, don't tell the Prince but, this Sucker's going down!!!"

Best 8 Minutes Ever

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Citi $1.50 (One Fiddy) or 'Don't Panic' Again or 'Stress Testing' is Stressful

Yes, once again if you had panicked and sold all your stock at any point in the last 12 years, you'd be richer than you are today holding the equities bag of death.

Our Government is 'Stress Testing' the banks using the same mathematical models and assumptions the banks used to destroy mankind.

Still, no one up there heard of Nassim Taleb?

Yes, of course not.
The difference is: the first time, banks borrowed private money and levered up 40 to 1, paid themselves bonuses, and then destroyed mankind.

Whereas now, We The People are giving the same bankers our children's money, so they can lever it 20 to 1, and destroy mankind twice.

Just this time, without the bonuses, please. . .okay, okay, 500k is fine.

The good money after bad trade.
So as the market meanders down to 6k, to 5k, what can one do?

Enjoy, bc if you've been reading this blog you're out at 12-13k DJIA. If you are new here, welcome and panic as soon as possible.

And when you're done freaking out, buy gold. Silver too. Looks like a double.

Double Bubble, Barney Rubble.