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.