coolhand's Account Talk

[Elgallo]

Jiminy cricket, that would make a great movie or documentary. That kinda sounds like it might be illegal, but we wouldn't want to see anyone in particular do the perp walk.

There already one out. It's called the "Obama Deception" by Alex Cook.


I know, I know, he's a conspiracy theorist par excellant,and that alone in some folks minds negates most if not all of his points. The title should really be "The GREAT Deception" because we are beginning to see the inside working of our "System" whether they want us to or not. If half of this is true then Houston we DO have a problem.

So take your partisine hats off for a moment (I know ya can do it) and give it your full view and attention to what really is the under lying theme which is the rich bankers/brokers and a select few run this show.

It was an eye opener for me to be sure.

 

[jdphx]

High Frequency Terrorism: How the Big Banks and Federal Reserve Maintained Their Death Grip Over the United States

http://ampedstatus.com/high-frequen...ained-their-death-grip-over-the-united-states

This is an absolute MUST READ!!

Freaking crooks... and the little guys/gals can't do
a damn thing about it. I am so beyond pissed!!!

 

[coolhand]

There already one out. It's called the "Obama Deception" by Alex Cook.


I know, I know, he's a conspiracy theorist par excellant,and that alone in some folks minds negates most if not all of his points. The title should really be "The GREAT Deception" because we are beginning to see the inside working of our "System" whether they want us to or not. If half of this is true then Houston we DO have a problem.

So take your partisine hats off for a moment (I know ya can do it) and give it your full view and attention to what really is the under lying theme which is the rich bankers/brokers and a select few run this show.

It was an eye opener for me to be sure.

Now you know why my avatar is from the Matrix.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.thedailybell.com/1039/Ron-Paul-Fed-Audit-Under-Fire.html

It doesn't come as too much of a surprise that the measure to audit the Federal Reserve is coming under continuous fire from the central bank and its cronies. For the first time since the Federal Reserve was created nearly a century ago, they have hired an actual lobbyist to pound the pavement on Capitol Hill. This is a desperate effort to hang on to the privilege of secrecy and lack of accountability they have enjoyed for so long. Last week showed they are getting their money's worth in the Senate.

At the very last minute on the floor of the Senate, supposed compromise language was agreed to and substituted in the Sanders Amendment to the Financial Reform Bill. This language was acceptable to the administration, committee leadership, and to the Fed. The trouble is, while it is better than no audit at all, it guts the spirit of a truly meaningful audit of the most crucial transactions of the Fed. In fact, rather than still calling the Sanders Amendment an audit, maybe it should instead be called more of a disclosure at this point.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRxtTjMpoQAc

One of the proudest achievements of the euro project was ensuring government borrowing costs converged at the lower levels enjoyed by Germany rather than the higher yields paid by its less fiscally disciplined neighbors.

That’s over. Done. Finished. Just as the bailout of the banking system produced a plethora of unintended consequences, so the European Union’s decision to pledge almost $1 trillion to defend the single-currency project will unleash a series of undesirable aftershocks. Here are some that are inevitable.

It’s Solvency, Stupid, Not Liquidity.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a7l_nqGsIMOs

Japan may lose its ability to domestically finance its debt “in a few years” because of a surge of retirees in 2012, according to an analyst at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute.

“The key year for public finances will be 2012, as the baby boomers retire and begin collecting their pensions en masse,” Toshihiro Nagahama, chief economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute, said yesterday in an interview in Tokyo. “That may be when Japan’s sovereign risk becomes evident.”

 

[coolhand]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-analyst-sees-unfolding-credit-bust-2010-05-10

China's economy is teetering on the edge of a major slowdown, though it's not a shakeout in the property market that's about to spark the distress, according to a noted China strategist.

David Roche, an economic and political analyst who manages the Hong Kong-based hedge fund Independent Strategy, says the world's third-largest economy is now on the brink, faced with the inevitable reckoning that follows an extended bank-lending binge.

"We've got the beginnings of a credit-bubble collapse in China," said Roche, predicting the economy will likely cool from its stellar double-digit growth rate to a 6% annual expansion as a result.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.businessinsider.com/bubble-derivatives-otc-2010-5

Economic bubbles are not recognized by those inside of them, and the entire Western world has become quietly trapped inside the largest economic bubble in history. The global financial crisis that began in 2008 has been attributed to sub-prime mortgage lending and mortgage backed securities (MBSs), such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which were revealed as toxic assets. While the root cause of the financial crisis is assumed to have been the residential real estate asset price bubble, the underlying systemic risk, and the primary reason for the “too big to fail” doctrine whereby governments were compelled to save financial institutions at any cost, lies in over the counter (OTC) derivatives. The suspension of the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) mark-to-market rule in 2009 preserved the value of bank balance sheets, i.e., of their mortgage portfolios, but what was of far greater importance was that it prevented triggering the conditions of thousands of OTC derivatives contracts, such as credit default swaps (CDS), that would have wiped out virtually all of the largest banking institutions in the world.

 

[coolhand]

http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/11/news/sigtarp.fortune/index.htm

Whose side is Treasury on, anyway?

A new report from a federal bailout watchdog reveals that a top Treasury official told executives at Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) how much it would cost the giant bank to repurchase the warrants it issued to the government following its October 2008 rescue.

Did Herb Allison unwittingly hand Morgan Stanley $375 million?
Herb Allison, an assistant Treasury secretary in charge of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, apparently provided the number as Treasury was squeezing Morgan Stanley to pay more after a series of lowball bids.

Yet Allison may have unwittingly cost taxpayers some $375 million, says a finance professor who has been tracking the government bailout. Linus Wilson, an assistant professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette says regulators vastly underestimated the price the Morgan Stanley warrants would have fetched at auction.

"It seems that the millionaires' club at the U.S. Treasury put investment bankers' interests ahead of taxpayers," said Wilson, who predicted Treasury would reap billion-dollar warrant paydays at Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and other big banks. "They shouldn't be sharing prices. You certainly wouldn't do this when you were selling your car."

 

[coolhand]

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-b...se-to-rein-in-fannie-a-freddie-sen-jim-demint

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are more overleveraged and more underwater than any of the banks in trouble, but the Dodd bill doesn’t even mention them in its hundreds of pages.

Senator McCain has offered an amendment that would repeal their liberal housing goals that encouraged more risky lending and fueled the housing crisis, as well as end their dominance of the mortgage market and let the private sector back in. While more needs to be done to quickly end the permanent bailout of these mortgage giants, the McCain amendment is an important first step.

True financial reform must include Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Congress cannot pretend to have ended “too big to fail” without ending these out of control institutions.

 

[coolhand]

http://blogs.forbes.com/streettalk/2010/05/10/will-goldmans-perfect-quarter-hurt-them/

Goldman Sachs certainly won at trading in the first quarter, with zero losses out of 63 days, its first perfect quarter. Not only that, Goldman notched trading revenue gains of $100 million or more on more than half of the days in the period.

Question is whether such a stellar performance will help or hurt Goldman's tarnished public image. Goldman's previous best showings, in the third quarter last year and the first quarter of 2007, came when it lost on only one trading day in the quarter. Some view this quarter's slam dunk as further proof that Goldman stacks the cards in favor of itself. Goldman most certainly sees it differently. "We believe it shows the strength of our customer franchise and risk management," says spokesman Samuel Robinson.

But it's growing tough for Goldman to convince a jaundiced public it isn't unfairly benefiting at the expense of others. Trading is propelling the firm to record profits, seemingly quarter after quarter. Meanwhile Goldman is taking heat for betting against the housing market starting in 2006 even while it was helping customers invest in complex mortgage securities. It was already battling a long-held perception its trading desks seem unusually adept at making winning bets, like maybe they know something.

Ya think.

 

[Bullitt]

Coolhand, NONE of the majors had a losing day in the quarter.

In baseball, a perfect game comes once along every few years and it includes membership in a very small fraternity. On Wall Street- rape, pillage, burn the village. How many of these banks were on life support a year ago and are now turning billion dollar paper profits buy churning a dead economy higher. Who has ethics anymore?

Is anybody paying attention to reality here or is everybody just so drunk off credit and borrowing that they really believe they'll be the first plan out of Saigon ahead of every other millions of traders when it falls? Well, last Thursday showed what happens when everybody stares dismally at the AD Line and sets 'safety stops' which proves that dancing while the music is playing is a dismal failure.

 

[coolhand]

Coolhand, NONE of the majors had a losing day in the quarter.

In baseball, a perfect game comes once along every few years and it includes membership in a very small fraternity. On Wall Street- rape, pillage, burn the village. How many of these banks were on life support a year ago and are now turning billion dollar paper profits buy churning a dead economy higher. Who has ethics anymore?

Is anybody paying attention to reality here or is everybody just so drunk off credit and borrowing that they really believe they'll be the first plan out of Saigon ahead of every other millions of traders when it falls? Well, last Thursday showed what happens when everybody stares dismally at the AD Line and sets 'safety stops' which proves that dancing while the music is playing is a dismal failure.

Did you happen to see this from yesterday?

http://ampedstatus.com/high-frequen...ained-their-death-grip-over-the-united-states

 

[markmars]

Very interesting read.

Did you happen to see this from yesterday?

http://ampedstatus.com/high-frequen...ained-their-death-grip-over-the-united-states

 

[coolhand]

This market appears to be doing what it's been doing for some time now. Generate a fast, scary decline and then go back to a longer term bull mode.

Sentiment is definitely driving this train.

If we continue higher today I think we could trigger a SS buy signal. I don't like it, but it is what it is. We'll see how it plays out first though.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aibXZbSaR2Nw

Spain and Portugal may be getting the message as they try to stop their economies from becoming infected by the Greek crisis.

Two days after other European governments told them to fix their budgets in return for a $1 trillion backstop, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero yesterday announced the biggest round of budget reductions in 30 years. In Portugal, Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos says he’s prepared for “social tension” after announcing additional cuts.

Policy makers are running the risk of union opposition as they force through austerity measures to convince investors they won’t join Greece in asking for an international bailout. While some economists said the European Union lifeline could take pressure off deficit-laden nations to act, it was enough to prompt Zapatero to announce a 5 percent cut in public wages.

 

[coolhand]

You want to know who really pulls the strings? At least we have the option of voting out bad politicians, but what about these crooks?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aIusyCkbg8XA


The Federal Reserve beat back two of the biggest threats in decades to its political independence and bank-oversight powers, surmounting congressional anger over its role in the financial crisis.

U.S. senators voted 90-9 yesterday to void a provision in regulatory-overhaul legislation that would have stripped the Fed of oversight of 5,000 banks with less than $50 billion in assets. A day earlier, senators rejected a measure to allow continuous congressional audits of Fed policies.

The wins mark a shift in favor of Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who in January won a second term by a 70-30 vote in the chamber, the most opposition in history. Fed officials and banks lobbied lawmakers over concerns about potential political interference with monetary policy and a diminished role for the regional Fed banks, which directly supervise firms and help set interest rates.

“They pack a hell of a punch, and they know it,” said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics Inc., a Washington consulting firm specializing in financial regulation, whose clients include the biggest U.S. banks. “The Fed’s institutional gravitas is profound, including the depth of staff it has. It is unique among the financial regulators.”

 

[coolhand]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aDP0_24WQPg4

When U.S. authorities faced financial panic in 2008, their first response was to pump liquidity into the system. It was access to credit, not the quality of credit, that was the issue, they thought.

It turned out they were wrong. U.S. banks were facing a full-fledged solvency crisis. They owned assets that weren’t worth the paper their financial statements were printed on. Congress appropriated $700 billion to recapitalize the banks.

Fast forward 19 months and travel east across the Atlantic where Europe’s leaders confronted a home-grown sovereign debt crisis, a rout in financial markets and a loss of confidence in the euro. Their solution? Lend more money to already indebted countries.

Europe’s leaders must have been snoozing in the back row when the teacher conducted the TARP review class. (TARP stands for Troubled Asset Relief Program.) You can’t recapitalize a sovereign nation by issuing more debt. In the same way that more lending couldn’t enhance U.S. banks’ capital adequacy, “extending more credit to (European) nations that can’t service their accumulated debt won’t make them more creditworthy,” says Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York.

 

[coolhand]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...91350076252.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

One of the constant criticisms of Barack Obama's first year is that he's making us "more like Europe." But that's hard to define and lacks broad political appeal. Until now.

Any U.S. politician purporting to run the presidency of the United States should be asked why the economic policies he or she is proposing won't take us where Europe arrived this week.

In an astounding moment, to avoid the failure of little, indulgent, profligate Greece, the European Union this week pledged nearly $1 trillion to inject green blood into Europe's economic vampires.

For Americans, this has been a two-week cram course in what not to be if you hope to have a vibrant future. What was once an unfocused criticism of Mr. Obama and the Democrats, that they are nudging America toward a European-style social-market economy, came to awful life in the panicked, stricken faces of Europe's leadership: Merkel, Sarkozy, Brown, Papandreou. They look like that because Europe has just seen the bond-market devil.

 

[coolhand]

Here's a great example of why equities continue to march higher.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37116803