Like many Americans, we'll have a new Congressman in January. The last guy got voted out, so it isn’t like this one got voted in. If he’d been in, he’d be out and the other guy would be in, which may happen two years from now when we get to do it all over again, if most of us want to, which we probably do.
Anyway, now The Post has to present its position on short-selling to another Representative. That means unleashing Queezhis on him. Queezhis Nadsoff, prominent litigator for some of the wealthiest serial connubializers in St. Paul, is our lobbyist. Woman knows what to go after when dealing with men. Has a knack for it.
Rub was freshly ensconced in his just-availed Capital Hill offices when Queezhis grabbed him by the sconces one day last week. Rub BerDucky is the new guy we were just telling you about.
“What’s your stand on short-sellers, BerDucky?” Queezhis inquired, putting the squeeze on real good.
“What’s yours?” Rub managed to kind of squeak out.
“$#&! ‘em.” Her Prominence was eyeball to eyeball now.
“That’s mine too,” Berducky whispered, nodding in agreement. Carefully.
“All of ‘em?”
“Oh, yeah.”
People think lobbying is about money, and most is, but there’s this other side too. Rub Berducky should be grateful he found out what that’s all about before the first actual day on the job.
Anyway, you can understand the soon-to-be Congressman’s relief to find himself on the right side of this one, and all of us at The MacDougal Post join our valued readers in welcoming him aboard.
You can also understand why we hired a lobbyist living 800 miles away. Article One in the Nadsoff employment contract is a restraining order stipulating that Queezhis never comes within 750 miles of Worldwide Headquarters down home here in Logano, Tennessee, especially when negotiating fees.
Haven’t actually met Her Prominence up close and personal yet, and we’re more than delighted to keep it that way.
December 28, 2010
December 25, 2010
With Revelation in Mind
Revelation is different. There’s no other Book like it in The Holy Bible. Equity compensation’s that way too. We can’t stop thinking of the two together whenever either subject comes up.
I, John, was on the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord‘s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia.
Short-selling’s been the number one financial swindle since 1609. After events of the past 30 years, however, this wizened racket is no longer capitalism’s main con. That notoriety now belongs to the equity compensation rip-off, inappropriately dubbed “stock options“ by the perpetrators, presumably to confuse us all.
And I turned to see the voice that spake with me, and being turned, saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of them, one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, girt with a golden waistcloth. His head and his hairs were like wool as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire. And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength, and clenched between his teeth he held a sharp double-edged sword.
Washington enabled this mathematical deviltry in 1980, effective January 1, 1981, the day Main Street corporate elites began to skim your shares into their pockets. The public buys stock with its savings, which has nothing to do with a company’s cash flow. Nothing whatsoever. Yet through bribes to Congressmen, CEOs and them were granted the power to draw far more pay through their equity compensation rackets than corporate funds provide, and for thirty years now wise guys have been pilfering a little family savings away from us each and every single year.
And he had in his right hand seven stars, and when I saw him, I fell at his feet, and he laid his hand upon me, saying, Fear not, I am the first and the last. The seven candlesticks thou sawest are the seven churches, and the seven stars in my right hand are the angels of the seven churches.
Look at this as a tax, redistributing middle and upper class net worth upward, creating a brand new societal tier of superrich corporate executives, and you’ll understand why 75% of the nation’s wealth is now held by the top bracket, up from 35% a short time ago. And why the apex includes the pack of them, middle-tier management and all, for the first time in history, a category of financial overabundance that did not even exist before they started stealing your intangible property on Jan 1, 1981.
Unto the angel of the church in Ephesus, write: These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee. Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of this place. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
And why? Your money is now theirs.
And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna, write: These things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive. I know thy works and tribulation and poverty (but thou art rich), and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
Don’t look for any coverage from the media. To keep the con under wraps, corporate Crime Lords bought those hacks off decades ago. The public had a first tiny peek when the wife of GE’s former CEO placed his net worth at several hundred million dollars, all snatched from GE shareholders, in court papers filed during their divorce proceedings. Once that fuss went away, GE TV and the rest never brought the nitty gritty up again.
And unto the angel in the church in Pergamos, write: These things saith he who hath the sharp double-edged sword. I know thy works and where thou dwellest, where Satan also dwelleth, and thou holdest fast my name. But I have a few things against thee. Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly with my sword. Him that hath an ear, hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and a white stone, and in the stone a name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it.
Staff at The MacDougal Post spent the better part of a quarter century pointing all this out, and got nothing but deaf ears. The New York Times wrote an editorial stating that people like us were complaining because we “weren’t in on it".
And unto the angel in the church in Thyatira, write: These things saith the Son of God, who hath eyes like unto a flame and his feet are like fine brass. I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience. Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, and I will give unto every one of you according to your works. But unto you which have not known the depths of Satan, I say I will put unto you none other burden but that which ye have already. Hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
Oh, we were in on it all right. We were all in on it. Only we were in on the part about getting our savings looted by Mob rule under the wing of media complicity.
And unto the angel in the church in Sardis, write: These things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars. I know thy works, and I have not found thy works perfect before God. Thou hast a few names in Sardis who shall walk with me, for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name in the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
Lets take a look at the swindle’s starting trail of tears. We’ll come back some other day and show how the scheme evolved from here, but step number one will be enough for now. More than enough, as you‘re about to see.
And unto the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David. I know thy works. Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation. Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
The numbers below show what happened when Crime Lords skimmed off 4% of the public’s shares in an illustrative company every year starting in 1981, slipped them into their wealth management accounts, and hung on to that stock all the way through to 1998.
And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans, write: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness. I know thy works, that thou are neither cold nor hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, behold I stand at the door. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
.................. Shares Owned by ..................
....... CEO and Them ...….
Total Shares Public Skimmed Held at
Year Outstanding Investors Each Year Year End
1980 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 (none) (none)
1981 1,040,000,000 1,000,000,000 40,000,000 40,000,000
1982 1,081,600,000 1,000,000,000 41,600,000 81,600,000
1983 1,124,864,000 1,000,000,000 43,264,000 124,864,560
1984 1,169.858.560 1,000,000,000 44,994,560 169,858,560
1985 1,216,652,902 1,000,000,000 46,794,342 216,652,902
1986 1,265,319,018 1,000,000,000 48,666,116 265,319,018
1987 1,315,931,779 1,000,000,000 50,612,761 315,931,779
1988 1,368,569,050 1,000,000,000 52,637,271 368,569,050
1989 1,423,311,812 1,000,000,000 54,742,762 423,311,812
1990 1,480,244,285 1,000,000,000 56,932,472 480,244,285
1991 1,539,454,056 1,000,000,000 59,209,771 539,454,056
1992 1,601,032,219 1,000,000,000 61,578,162 601,032,219
1993 1,665,073,507 1,000,000,000 64,041,289 665,073,507
1994 1,731,676,448 1,000,000,000 66,602,940 731,676,448
1995 1,800,943,506 1,000,000,000 69,267,058 800,943,506
1996 1,872,981,246 1,000,000,000 72,037,740 872,981,246
1997 1,947,900,496 1,000,000,000 74,919,250 947,900,496
1998 2,025,816,515 1,000,000,000 77,916,020 1,025,816,515
After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in Heaven, and the first voice I heard was as if it were a trumpet talking with me: Come up hither, and I will show you things, and I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne was set in Heaven, and one sat on the throne, and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. And round about the throne were four and twenty seats, and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, and they had on their heads crowns of gold.
As you can see, wise guys grabbed all the Dec 31, 1980 shares within 18 years, ending up with the public’s entire starting stock certificates - and then some, if the market price went up. In effect, what shareholders began with was filched by 1998. Transferred to bloodsucking thieves slowly over time. At the end, all the public got left with was the increase in the corporation’s capital generated by company growth.
And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thundering and voices and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal, and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.
By 1998 CEOs and them here had siphoned off the 1 billion shares their investors held at the end of 1980, and now exercised voting control.
And the first beast was like a lion, and the second, a calf, and the third had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him, and they were full of eyes within, and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.
Let’s say your own total investments consisted entirely of stocks, and CEO’s and them did the 4% number at every company you owned.
And when those beasts give glory to Him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before Him and worship Him and cast their crowns before the throne, sayng Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
They snatched slightly more than half of what should have been your net worth. If you were worth $50 million in 1998, it would have been $100 Million without the equity compensation swindle. And truly would’ve if corporate wise guys hadn’t been paying Washington off with “campaign contributions“ to make the con happen.
And I saw in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the deals thereof? And no man in Heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.
$5 million should’ve been $10 million. $1 million, $2 million. $250 thousand, $500 thousand. Stick your own number in and double it. That’s what these monsters did to you and your family.
And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.
And we’re only up to 1998, and by 2010 their sort has copped three-quarters of the nation‘s wealth.
And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not, behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.
Think long and hard on the impact from equity compensation, personal and societal. Your grandchildren need you on this one. It’s already too late to help your kids. This example shows what happens if 4% of the shares are skimmed each year, but the rate differs from company to company and year to year, though they diligently avoid reporting the numbers as your intangible property, the only way the rip-off can be understood.
And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
Next time we’ll see what happened to the numbers when the bloodsucking thieves saw they had to cover up the audit trail to their theft of intangible proprty as shown above, and decided to do so by making your company buy their “optioned” shares back.
And he came and took the book out of the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne.
I, John, was on the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord‘s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia.
Short-selling’s been the number one financial swindle since 1609. After events of the past 30 years, however, this wizened racket is no longer capitalism’s main con. That notoriety now belongs to the equity compensation rip-off, inappropriately dubbed “stock options“ by the perpetrators, presumably to confuse us all.
And I turned to see the voice that spake with me, and being turned, saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of them, one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, girt with a golden waistcloth. His head and his hairs were like wool as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire. And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength, and clenched between his teeth he held a sharp double-edged sword.
Washington enabled this mathematical deviltry in 1980, effective January 1, 1981, the day Main Street corporate elites began to skim your shares into their pockets. The public buys stock with its savings, which has nothing to do with a company’s cash flow. Nothing whatsoever. Yet through bribes to Congressmen, CEOs and them were granted the power to draw far more pay through their equity compensation rackets than corporate funds provide, and for thirty years now wise guys have been pilfering a little family savings away from us each and every single year.
And he had in his right hand seven stars, and when I saw him, I fell at his feet, and he laid his hand upon me, saying, Fear not, I am the first and the last. The seven candlesticks thou sawest are the seven churches, and the seven stars in my right hand are the angels of the seven churches.
Look at this as a tax, redistributing middle and upper class net worth upward, creating a brand new societal tier of superrich corporate executives, and you’ll understand why 75% of the nation’s wealth is now held by the top bracket, up from 35% a short time ago. And why the apex includes the pack of them, middle-tier management and all, for the first time in history, a category of financial overabundance that did not even exist before they started stealing your intangible property on Jan 1, 1981.
Unto the angel of the church in Ephesus, write: These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee. Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of this place. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
And why? Your money is now theirs.
And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna, write: These things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive. I know thy works and tribulation and poverty (but thou art rich), and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
Don’t look for any coverage from the media. To keep the con under wraps, corporate Crime Lords bought those hacks off decades ago. The public had a first tiny peek when the wife of GE’s former CEO placed his net worth at several hundred million dollars, all snatched from GE shareholders, in court papers filed during their divorce proceedings. Once that fuss went away, GE TV and the rest never brought the nitty gritty up again.
And unto the angel in the church in Pergamos, write: These things saith he who hath the sharp double-edged sword. I know thy works and where thou dwellest, where Satan also dwelleth, and thou holdest fast my name. But I have a few things against thee. Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly with my sword. Him that hath an ear, hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and a white stone, and in the stone a name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it.
Staff at The MacDougal Post spent the better part of a quarter century pointing all this out, and got nothing but deaf ears. The New York Times wrote an editorial stating that people like us were complaining because we “weren’t in on it".
And unto the angel in the church in Thyatira, write: These things saith the Son of God, who hath eyes like unto a flame and his feet are like fine brass. I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience. Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, and I will give unto every one of you according to your works. But unto you which have not known the depths of Satan, I say I will put unto you none other burden but that which ye have already. Hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
Oh, we were in on it all right. We were all in on it. Only we were in on the part about getting our savings looted by Mob rule under the wing of media complicity.
And unto the angel in the church in Sardis, write: These things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars. I know thy works, and I have not found thy works perfect before God. Thou hast a few names in Sardis who shall walk with me, for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name in the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
Lets take a look at the swindle’s starting trail of tears. We’ll come back some other day and show how the scheme evolved from here, but step number one will be enough for now. More than enough, as you‘re about to see.
And unto the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David. I know thy works. Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation. Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
The numbers below show what happened when Crime Lords skimmed off 4% of the public’s shares in an illustrative company every year starting in 1981, slipped them into their wealth management accounts, and hung on to that stock all the way through to 1998.
And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans, write: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness. I know thy works, that thou are neither cold nor hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, behold I stand at the door. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
.................. Shares Owned by ..................
....... CEO and Them ...….
Total Shares Public Skimmed Held at
Year Outstanding Investors Each Year Year End
1980 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 (none) (none)
1981 1,040,000,000 1,000,000,000 40,000,000 40,000,000
1982 1,081,600,000 1,000,000,000 41,600,000 81,600,000
1983 1,124,864,000 1,000,000,000 43,264,000 124,864,560
1984 1,169.858.560 1,000,000,000 44,994,560 169,858,560
1985 1,216,652,902 1,000,000,000 46,794,342 216,652,902
1986 1,265,319,018 1,000,000,000 48,666,116 265,319,018
1987 1,315,931,779 1,000,000,000 50,612,761 315,931,779
1988 1,368,569,050 1,000,000,000 52,637,271 368,569,050
1989 1,423,311,812 1,000,000,000 54,742,762 423,311,812
1990 1,480,244,285 1,000,000,000 56,932,472 480,244,285
1991 1,539,454,056 1,000,000,000 59,209,771 539,454,056
1992 1,601,032,219 1,000,000,000 61,578,162 601,032,219
1993 1,665,073,507 1,000,000,000 64,041,289 665,073,507
1994 1,731,676,448 1,000,000,000 66,602,940 731,676,448
1995 1,800,943,506 1,000,000,000 69,267,058 800,943,506
1996 1,872,981,246 1,000,000,000 72,037,740 872,981,246
1997 1,947,900,496 1,000,000,000 74,919,250 947,900,496
1998 2,025,816,515 1,000,000,000 77,916,020 1,025,816,515
After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in Heaven, and the first voice I heard was as if it were a trumpet talking with me: Come up hither, and I will show you things, and I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne was set in Heaven, and one sat on the throne, and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. And round about the throne were four and twenty seats, and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, and they had on their heads crowns of gold.
As you can see, wise guys grabbed all the Dec 31, 1980 shares within 18 years, ending up with the public’s entire starting stock certificates - and then some, if the market price went up. In effect, what shareholders began with was filched by 1998. Transferred to bloodsucking thieves slowly over time. At the end, all the public got left with was the increase in the corporation’s capital generated by company growth.
And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thundering and voices and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal, and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.
By 1998 CEOs and them here had siphoned off the 1 billion shares their investors held at the end of 1980, and now exercised voting control.
And the first beast was like a lion, and the second, a calf, and the third had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him, and they were full of eyes within, and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.
Let’s say your own total investments consisted entirely of stocks, and CEO’s and them did the 4% number at every company you owned.
And when those beasts give glory to Him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before Him and worship Him and cast their crowns before the throne, sayng Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
They snatched slightly more than half of what should have been your net worth. If you were worth $50 million in 1998, it would have been $100 Million without the equity compensation swindle. And truly would’ve if corporate wise guys hadn’t been paying Washington off with “campaign contributions“ to make the con happen.
And I saw in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the deals thereof? And no man in Heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.
$5 million should’ve been $10 million. $1 million, $2 million. $250 thousand, $500 thousand. Stick your own number in and double it. That’s what these monsters did to you and your family.
And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.
And we’re only up to 1998, and by 2010 their sort has copped three-quarters of the nation‘s wealth.
And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not, behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.
Think long and hard on the impact from equity compensation, personal and societal. Your grandchildren need you on this one. It’s already too late to help your kids. This example shows what happens if 4% of the shares are skimmed each year, but the rate differs from company to company and year to year, though they diligently avoid reporting the numbers as your intangible property, the only way the rip-off can be understood.
And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
Next time we’ll see what happened to the numbers when the bloodsucking thieves saw they had to cover up the audit trail to their theft of intangible proprty as shown above, and decided to do so by making your company buy their “optioned” shares back.
And he came and took the book out of the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne.
December 22, 2010
Oops
It was a hippie fairy tale. Straight out of the Age of Aquarius.
Matrimonially speaking, Pastor Rainbow was the one who screwed up. Things did not work out as promised in the nuptials. Not even close, so the party of the dude’s part went his way, and the party of the flower child’s part hers, and they both found somebody elses and bedded them in unwedded bliss happily ever after, or until one or both cohabiter(s) there got transferred or bored or something, and whoever we‘re talking about now just moved on to more significant others, and dudes and flower children everywhere sat around toking tokes and munching munchies and didn‘t even know what the problem here was, and then ….. Oops, there were kids.
Oh, wait a minute. That’s something else we’re writing. This breakdown in judgment morality piece. You’re gonna love it. Anyway …
Greece.
Bloomberg News is suing the European Central Bank to disclose “how Greece used credit default swaps to hide its fiscal deficit and helped trigger the region‘s sovereign debt crisis“. None of the wise guys who actually invented, designed, sweet-talked Greeks into using, sold, made markets in, traded, and subsequently shorted Greek credit default swaps, actually fingering the trigger, are being sued to disclose diddley.
European Central Bank lawsuits involve passports, shots, airplanes, smelly hotels, funny languages, tiny portions, pat-downs, courts that hate us, lawyers who hate us even more, European central bankers who must really hate us now, and you don’t want to bring credit default swaps up when everybody else over there really, really hates us because of credit default swaps. In the real world, which Bloomberg does not cover, mobsters a taxi ride away from Bloomberg Tower have been working this con pretty much everywhere in the civilized world and Iceland, including Greece, for years now, so we’re having a WTF moment here.
Off-balance sheet financing provided by these very same racketeers got great press in the Enron smack down, among others, then added banner headlines to the Financial Apocalypse. Thugs in the Big Apple pulled that caper off with credit default swaps too, readers who do their homework assignments will confirm.
What is Bloomberg News going out of town for? And where’s the U.S. Cavalry been all this time, right freaking now for starters? Doesn’t anybody even care who the real bad guys are? Or who they do? Like, oh I don’t know, Greece maybe.
WTF is going on?
And when is it going to end? Like, how many oops does it take, Man?
Matrimonially speaking, Pastor Rainbow was the one who screwed up. Things did not work out as promised in the nuptials. Not even close, so the party of the dude’s part went his way, and the party of the flower child’s part hers, and they both found somebody elses and bedded them in unwedded bliss happily ever after, or until one or both cohabiter(s) there got transferred or bored or something, and whoever we‘re talking about now just moved on to more significant others, and dudes and flower children everywhere sat around toking tokes and munching munchies and didn‘t even know what the problem here was, and then ….. Oops, there were kids.
Oh, wait a minute. That’s something else we’re writing. This breakdown in judgment morality piece. You’re gonna love it. Anyway …
Greece.
Bloomberg News is suing the European Central Bank to disclose “how Greece used credit default swaps to hide its fiscal deficit and helped trigger the region‘s sovereign debt crisis“. None of the wise guys who actually invented, designed, sweet-talked Greeks into using, sold, made markets in, traded, and subsequently shorted Greek credit default swaps, actually fingering the trigger, are being sued to disclose diddley.
European Central Bank lawsuits involve passports, shots, airplanes, smelly hotels, funny languages, tiny portions, pat-downs, courts that hate us, lawyers who hate us even more, European central bankers who must really hate us now, and you don’t want to bring credit default swaps up when everybody else over there really, really hates us because of credit default swaps. In the real world, which Bloomberg does not cover, mobsters a taxi ride away from Bloomberg Tower have been working this con pretty much everywhere in the civilized world and Iceland, including Greece, for years now, so we’re having a WTF moment here.
Off-balance sheet financing provided by these very same racketeers got great press in the Enron smack down, among others, then added banner headlines to the Financial Apocalypse. Thugs in the Big Apple pulled that caper off with credit default swaps too, readers who do their homework assignments will confirm.
What is Bloomberg News going out of town for? And where’s the U.S. Cavalry been all this time, right freaking now for starters? Doesn’t anybody even care who the real bad guys are? Or who they do? Like, oh I don’t know, Greece maybe.
WTF is going on?
And when is it going to end? Like, how many oops does it take, Man?
December 20, 2010
The Big Short
By 2004, we had experienced a countrywide collapse in home mortgage credit standards, and industry heavies had already failed once a few years back. Many loans were structured around first-time homebuyers who couldn’t make the interest, and "flipped” properties to cash in on home prices going up. Incredibly, to allow that to happen, these speculators were charged teaser rates for two years, often no initial monthly payments at all. Lenders now made their profits from origination fees, not interest, and passed the loans off on Wall Street, making room for more originations. Wall Street did its thing, holding some product, but unloading most onto institutional customers, deceiving them and the rating agencies about the bad, or “sub-prime“ loans thrown into the mix.
Then home prices topped out and started going down, a thing hardly anyone thought possible. That’s where Michael Lewis steps in with his extraordinary book, The Big Short.
It’s a reality check spun around 1) thugs securitizing bundles of individual sub-prime home mortgage loans into a single bond issue, the toxic asset that unleashed financial Armageddon upon the civilized world and Iceland, and 2) wise guys creating two brand new financial derivatives allowing bets to be placed against that toxic asset: a) the credit default swap (CDS) specifically for home mortgage-backed bonds and b) the synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO), a nuclear option, famously rated AAA and A++ in error, allowing hedge fund managers to short whichever mortgage loans defaulted first. Or last, or blew up at various levels in between, called tranches in Wall Street newspeak.
The writer works much of his magic through the eyes of a few short-sellers who, foreseeing a highly improbable future, placed those bets and cashed in. Our regulatory hotshots didn’t seem to fathom what was going on, which is barely mentioned, and appropriately so, as again they deigned to step in and prevent a cataclysmic securities fraud from crippling its unprotected victims.
Chillingly, whistleblowers here, as in the Madoff freak show, warned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that an outsized financial catastrophe was looming. Actually went to their offices this time and laid out the whole kit and kaboodle, and …
Nothing. Not a thing.
The Big Short, recommended to us by an original subscriber, is mandatory reading for MacDougal Post regulars, and we almost never hand out homework. The author’s surreal view includes Wall Street racketeers screwing first their customers, then Düsseldorf, hideous jargon for the overseas investment community, and finally us. His compelling take encompasses the arrogance, blind stupidity, and unfettered greed that greased this doomsday machine. Michael names names, painting real faces on real people, while chronicling the flagrant criminality that accompanied the “originate and sell” adjustable rate sub-prime home mortgage loan from issuance through securitization and distribution right up to its ultimate demolition of life as we then knew it. The story lays out precisely how the financial community’s winners won, and their losers lost, and indulges our morbid fascination with this, delving unflinchingly into every remarkable twist and turn along the way.
His hero is the foresighted short seller, and there were almost that few of them around, and the author has no problem with these guys, and neither will you. If one or two had hooked up with the Crime Families in the past, no one can fault them on their part in this one. Not even us. A crooked financial system offered up unimaginable riches to anyone with the mettle to back right against overwhelming forces of wrong, and they puzzled out the map to the mine.
There’s no law enforcement to turn to, the SEC a cheerleading squad for market gamers, so short-sellers grabbed what lawlessness set before them.
In 2004 you could spot a decline in sub-prime mortgage lending standards from reported numbers, and at least one hedge fund manager did, and by the second half of 2005 the deterioration drew more managers in, and the 2004 guy got investment bankers to create the appropriate CDS, and one of the 2005 guys had them work up the synthetic CDO so the worst tranches of bonds backed by these now-toxic assets could be shorted. Ultimate returns of 50 to 1, or higher, were virtually guaranteed in the stats that popped up on computer screens the twenty-fifth of every month.
For those who knew to look for them.
Teaser interest rates underlying the toxicity of these assets expired after two years, and by 2007, as forewarned back in 2005, home owners en mass couldn’t meet the real monthly payments kicking in. For the longest time investment bankers on the wrong end of the bet tried to convince the shorts this wasn’t happening, blatantly marking fraudulent prices to hold up a collapsing market, and we’re forever indebted to Michael for putting this kind of criminal activity in print. One day law enforcement might even notice. Suddenly one morning, the market makers switched sides, found suckers of their own, and went short themselves. Started quoting real values for a change, the reason why markets seemed to crater overnight.
That part probably took Michael two sentences to write, but is the core of the book’s message to us. Market makers marking not to markets but to their own positions. When they’re long, prices are supposed to go up, and only when a firm is short will its con artists even think about taking prices down. The angst our heroes were forced to endure throughout this phase is all too familiar to the investment novice who jumps all over the right trend, only to see his dreams dashed while bloodsucking thieves scare his naive a$$ out of the market with a deep swoon and then take prices up where everyone knew they should be.
Upon finishing the book, readers should have no trouble parsing Wall Street’s role from that of the banking system that originated the doomed paper. You’ll have lived it through Gangland eyes, and come away feeling you know who and what they are.
That Crime Families used characters like the second smartest guy in China to come up with financial products even they themselves couldn’t understand serves to draw readers in to take a virtual part in the financial bloodbath. There’s the almost comically successful asocial hedge fund manager/neurologist living his life by email, stock picker extraordinaire lambasted by his investors for throwing their money away on esoteric bond derivatives helping generate what proved to be a total portfolio return of 489.34 % over 8 years. And the brash, bigger-than-life genius bullying CEO’s every time he runs into one because, as a class, they have no idea what’s going on, and we meet the CEO’s too, and they don’t. Everybody’s a crook on our lovable bully’s Street, and crooks here won’t even tell the boss how they really scam out a living. These pages are riveting.
Michael “is the finest storyteller of our generation“, according to one critic on the jacket. That may be. Certainly, The Big Short is far and away the finest business book we’ve run into. The kind of narration you don’t read. You experience this colorful adventure.
That said, we rush to note that a financial accountant is writing your review. If the business exotica overwhelms, skip over that gobbledygook, arcane even to the nosiest of CPA‘s, but hang tight with the characters and do not miss the last couple of chapters. Nobody goes to jail, most everyone lands on their feet, and even the biggest losers on Wall Street walk away after a brobdingnagian personal payday. A miserably unhappy ending to be sure, given what these vicious hoodlums did to the gentle peoples of the world.
The way a malignant Crime Family culture gets bailed out pretty much intact while all those bondholders and home buyers go under is spellbinding, and we’re confident that nobody has covered that side of this epic tragedy better than Michael Lewis, or more succinctly.
Get your hands on The Big Short. We read it twice ourselves last week.
Then home prices topped out and started going down, a thing hardly anyone thought possible. That’s where Michael Lewis steps in with his extraordinary book, The Big Short.
It’s a reality check spun around 1) thugs securitizing bundles of individual sub-prime home mortgage loans into a single bond issue, the toxic asset that unleashed financial Armageddon upon the civilized world and Iceland, and 2) wise guys creating two brand new financial derivatives allowing bets to be placed against that toxic asset: a) the credit default swap (CDS) specifically for home mortgage-backed bonds and b) the synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO), a nuclear option, famously rated AAA and A++ in error, allowing hedge fund managers to short whichever mortgage loans defaulted first. Or last, or blew up at various levels in between, called tranches in Wall Street newspeak.
The writer works much of his magic through the eyes of a few short-sellers who, foreseeing a highly improbable future, placed those bets and cashed in. Our regulatory hotshots didn’t seem to fathom what was going on, which is barely mentioned, and appropriately so, as again they deigned to step in and prevent a cataclysmic securities fraud from crippling its unprotected victims.
Chillingly, whistleblowers here, as in the Madoff freak show, warned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that an outsized financial catastrophe was looming. Actually went to their offices this time and laid out the whole kit and kaboodle, and …
Nothing. Not a thing.
The Big Short, recommended to us by an original subscriber, is mandatory reading for MacDougal Post regulars, and we almost never hand out homework. The author’s surreal view includes Wall Street racketeers screwing first their customers, then Düsseldorf, hideous jargon for the overseas investment community, and finally us. His compelling take encompasses the arrogance, blind stupidity, and unfettered greed that greased this doomsday machine. Michael names names, painting real faces on real people, while chronicling the flagrant criminality that accompanied the “originate and sell” adjustable rate sub-prime home mortgage loan from issuance through securitization and distribution right up to its ultimate demolition of life as we then knew it. The story lays out precisely how the financial community’s winners won, and their losers lost, and indulges our morbid fascination with this, delving unflinchingly into every remarkable twist and turn along the way.
His hero is the foresighted short seller, and there were almost that few of them around, and the author has no problem with these guys, and neither will you. If one or two had hooked up with the Crime Families in the past, no one can fault them on their part in this one. Not even us. A crooked financial system offered up unimaginable riches to anyone with the mettle to back right against overwhelming forces of wrong, and they puzzled out the map to the mine.
There’s no law enforcement to turn to, the SEC a cheerleading squad for market gamers, so short-sellers grabbed what lawlessness set before them.
In 2004 you could spot a decline in sub-prime mortgage lending standards from reported numbers, and at least one hedge fund manager did, and by the second half of 2005 the deterioration drew more managers in, and the 2004 guy got investment bankers to create the appropriate CDS, and one of the 2005 guys had them work up the synthetic CDO so the worst tranches of bonds backed by these now-toxic assets could be shorted. Ultimate returns of 50 to 1, or higher, were virtually guaranteed in the stats that popped up on computer screens the twenty-fifth of every month.
For those who knew to look for them.
Teaser interest rates underlying the toxicity of these assets expired after two years, and by 2007, as forewarned back in 2005, home owners en mass couldn’t meet the real monthly payments kicking in. For the longest time investment bankers on the wrong end of the bet tried to convince the shorts this wasn’t happening, blatantly marking fraudulent prices to hold up a collapsing market, and we’re forever indebted to Michael for putting this kind of criminal activity in print. One day law enforcement might even notice. Suddenly one morning, the market makers switched sides, found suckers of their own, and went short themselves. Started quoting real values for a change, the reason why markets seemed to crater overnight.
That part probably took Michael two sentences to write, but is the core of the book’s message to us. Market makers marking not to markets but to their own positions. When they’re long, prices are supposed to go up, and only when a firm is short will its con artists even think about taking prices down. The angst our heroes were forced to endure throughout this phase is all too familiar to the investment novice who jumps all over the right trend, only to see his dreams dashed while bloodsucking thieves scare his naive a$$ out of the market with a deep swoon and then take prices up where everyone knew they should be.
Upon finishing the book, readers should have no trouble parsing Wall Street’s role from that of the banking system that originated the doomed paper. You’ll have lived it through Gangland eyes, and come away feeling you know who and what they are.
That Crime Families used characters like the second smartest guy in China to come up with financial products even they themselves couldn’t understand serves to draw readers in to take a virtual part in the financial bloodbath. There’s the almost comically successful asocial hedge fund manager/neurologist living his life by email, stock picker extraordinaire lambasted by his investors for throwing their money away on esoteric bond derivatives helping generate what proved to be a total portfolio return of 489.34 % over 8 years. And the brash, bigger-than-life genius bullying CEO’s every time he runs into one because, as a class, they have no idea what’s going on, and we meet the CEO’s too, and they don’t. Everybody’s a crook on our lovable bully’s Street, and crooks here won’t even tell the boss how they really scam out a living. These pages are riveting.
Michael “is the finest storyteller of our generation“, according to one critic on the jacket. That may be. Certainly, The Big Short is far and away the finest business book we’ve run into. The kind of narration you don’t read. You experience this colorful adventure.
That said, we rush to note that a financial accountant is writing your review. If the business exotica overwhelms, skip over that gobbledygook, arcane even to the nosiest of CPA‘s, but hang tight with the characters and do not miss the last couple of chapters. Nobody goes to jail, most everyone lands on their feet, and even the biggest losers on Wall Street walk away after a brobdingnagian personal payday. A miserably unhappy ending to be sure, given what these vicious hoodlums did to the gentle peoples of the world.
The way a malignant Crime Family culture gets bailed out pretty much intact while all those bondholders and home buyers go under is spellbinding, and we’re confident that nobody has covered that side of this epic tragedy better than Michael Lewis, or more succinctly.
Get your hands on The Big Short. We read it twice ourselves last week.
December 18, 2010
RICO
The following press release was issued day before yesterday. It can be found on the Overstock.com website:
Overstock Adding Racketeering Allegations to Ongoing Lawsuit vs. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Subsidiary Merrill Lynch
Company Files Motion to Amend its Lawsuit to Add Claims of Civil RICO
SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ --
Overstock.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: OSTK) today announced that as a result of evidence gathered through discovery in its prime brokerage lawsuit, Overstock.com has filed a motion in California State Court to amend that suit to include claims under New Jersey's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Civil RICO claims carry the possibility of treble damages. See www.overstock.com/Patrick-Byrne/7371/static.html for a redacted version of the motion and a declaration, filed conditionally under seal to protect information designated by the defendants as 'confidential' or 'highly confidential' under a court protective order.
The San Francisco action, first filed in February 2007, alleged prime broker defendants engaged in "naked short selling" and similar manipulative practices designed to profit from failing to deliver shares required to close trades, and that this resulted in downward pressure on Overstock.com's share price.
Jonathan Johnson, President of Overstock.com, stated, "Recently discovered revelations of concerted action among certain market makers and these two brokerages necessitate that we amend our complaint to include additional claims. We expect that this conduct of Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch is fully actionable under anti-racketeering laws."
In documents filed with the court yesterday, the company alleges "Merrill, Goldman and certain of their market maker clients agreed to and created a scheme to effect the naked short selling in Overstock securities that is the subject of this action, in order to perpetuate short selling and drive down the price of Overstock, to their mutual profit."
End of press release.
We seem to recall that BankofAmerica stock got shorted from the 50’s to 3 back in 2008/09 along with the pack of them. Why don’t they sue anybody under the Rico Act?
Because racketeering is where their bonuses come from. It’s more profitable for investment banking CEO’s and them destroying America than financing it.
A few thousand of these lawsuits would be appropriate, and it’s time somebody threw our regulatory hotshots on the industry cheerleading squad over at the Securities & Exchange Commission in these suits too.
Shutting down hearings on short-selling because the crash caused by short-selling wasn’t caused by short-selling. What a piece of work.
Overstock Adding Racketeering Allegations to Ongoing Lawsuit vs. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Subsidiary Merrill Lynch
Company Files Motion to Amend its Lawsuit to Add Claims of Civil RICO
SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ --
Overstock.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: OSTK) today announced that as a result of evidence gathered through discovery in its prime brokerage lawsuit, Overstock.com has filed a motion in California State Court to amend that suit to include claims under New Jersey's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Civil RICO claims carry the possibility of treble damages. See www.overstock.com/Patrick-Byrne/7371/static.html for a redacted version of the motion and a declaration, filed conditionally under seal to protect information designated by the defendants as 'confidential' or 'highly confidential' under a court protective order.
The San Francisco action, first filed in February 2007, alleged prime broker defendants engaged in "naked short selling" and similar manipulative practices designed to profit from failing to deliver shares required to close trades, and that this resulted in downward pressure on Overstock.com's share price.
Jonathan Johnson, President of Overstock.com, stated, "Recently discovered revelations of concerted action among certain market makers and these two brokerages necessitate that we amend our complaint to include additional claims. We expect that this conduct of Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch is fully actionable under anti-racketeering laws."
In documents filed with the court yesterday, the company alleges "Merrill, Goldman and certain of their market maker clients agreed to and created a scheme to effect the naked short selling in Overstock securities that is the subject of this action, in order to perpetuate short selling and drive down the price of Overstock, to their mutual profit."
End of press release.
We seem to recall that BankofAmerica stock got shorted from the 50’s to 3 back in 2008/09 along with the pack of them. Why don’t they sue anybody under the Rico Act?
Because racketeering is where their bonuses come from. It’s more profitable for investment banking CEO’s and them destroying America than financing it.
A few thousand of these lawsuits would be appropriate, and it’s time somebody threw our regulatory hotshots on the industry cheerleading squad over at the Securities & Exchange Commission in these suits too.
Shutting down hearings on short-selling because the crash caused by short-selling wasn’t caused by short-selling. What a piece of work.
December 15, 2010
Cowgirl Up
As poverty spreads across Ireland this yuletide season, Wall Street Crime Families celebrate the joyous trading profits that took that human toll.
At the Post we’re looking ahead to mid-January when Gangland financials come out. In times past, the mob has seen reason to cover up their more satanic activities, so we’re wondering whether Crime Lords will muster the arrogance to report record trading results for the final quarter of 2010 in view of the suffering that short-selling brought to the Emerald Isle, or stash the numbers deep inside those blatantly deceptive accounting statements where no one can possibly look.
Unwarranted suffering across the length and breadth of that agonized nation, as we noted earlier. The rating agencies saw no reason to call attention to the kind of problems crashing bond prices foretold until short-sellers stepped in, and one scorekeeper’s explanation indicated that Irish bond ratings were lowered specifically because shorts had launched a bear attack.
You’d think mob scribes would bury their record-shattering numbers and pretend this windfall didn’t happen, but our political climate is totally off the wall, and one wonders whether truth even matters here any more, so wise guys may see no reason to net their Irish bounty against mortgage loan write-offs caused by prior unspeakable behavior, or maybe something else we don‘t even know about embarrassing them in the books.
Makes us wonder whether we should bother nosing into Wall Street racketeering at all. Payola-soaked politicians protect them everywhere you turn. And the media’s got mob wise guys shooting their mouths off right inside our living room every trading session of the year. Or so we were telling Rowdi Bonebender, DC, the other day.
“Cowgirl up, Hoss” America’s favorite chiropractic healer was looking at us kind of funny. “Do whatcha gotta do.”
“It’s a tough life, Musculoskeletal Doc,” we offered, feeling a tad sorry for ourselves.
“Tough? You want tough, I’ll schedule you an appointment with Roomfulla.” Office Amazon, Roomfulla Grones, is the world’s leading practitioner of the ancient, dark, and, at least back then, deadly, Mongolian bludgeoning arts.
Valued readers, we’re already back at the PC, going after Gangland pukes with renewed vigor and pace.
No way does any citizen of this proud nation of ours, the United States of America, have to submit to that kind of pounding in the absence of some bona fide medical emergency. Never, ever again, Obamacare or not.
And don’t get us strted on that one.
At the Post we’re looking ahead to mid-January when Gangland financials come out. In times past, the mob has seen reason to cover up their more satanic activities, so we’re wondering whether Crime Lords will muster the arrogance to report record trading results for the final quarter of 2010 in view of the suffering that short-selling brought to the Emerald Isle, or stash the numbers deep inside those blatantly deceptive accounting statements where no one can possibly look.
Unwarranted suffering across the length and breadth of that agonized nation, as we noted earlier. The rating agencies saw no reason to call attention to the kind of problems crashing bond prices foretold until short-sellers stepped in, and one scorekeeper’s explanation indicated that Irish bond ratings were lowered specifically because shorts had launched a bear attack.
You’d think mob scribes would bury their record-shattering numbers and pretend this windfall didn’t happen, but our political climate is totally off the wall, and one wonders whether truth even matters here any more, so wise guys may see no reason to net their Irish bounty against mortgage loan write-offs caused by prior unspeakable behavior, or maybe something else we don‘t even know about embarrassing them in the books.
Makes us wonder whether we should bother nosing into Wall Street racketeering at all. Payola-soaked politicians protect them everywhere you turn. And the media’s got mob wise guys shooting their mouths off right inside our living room every trading session of the year. Or so we were telling Rowdi Bonebender, DC, the other day.
“Cowgirl up, Hoss” America’s favorite chiropractic healer was looking at us kind of funny. “Do whatcha gotta do.”
“It’s a tough life, Musculoskeletal Doc,” we offered, feeling a tad sorry for ourselves.
“Tough? You want tough, I’ll schedule you an appointment with Roomfulla.” Office Amazon, Roomfulla Grones, is the world’s leading practitioner of the ancient, dark, and, at least back then, deadly, Mongolian bludgeoning arts.
Valued readers, we’re already back at the PC, going after Gangland pukes with renewed vigor and pace.
No way does any citizen of this proud nation of ours, the United States of America, have to submit to that kind of pounding in the absence of some bona fide medical emergency. Never, ever again, Obamacare or not.
And don’t get us strted on that one.
December 12, 2010
Upside Down People
As everybody knows, Upside Down People aren’t like us. For one thing, their toes are up top and their haircut is down on the bottom. Way down on the bottom. You get all stooped over talking to one, and when he stops to think, he always scratches his feet. It’s all very irregular, I’m afraid.
Money just drops out of their pockets, so Upside Down People don’t carry any. You have to pay for his too if you ever go out to lunch with one. Or hers. Upside Down People women have really short hair.
Just looking at Upside Down People is particularly hard to take, and you can’t even make an Upside Down Person a right side up person again with hand mirrors, though that’s what everybody does. Looks at them in hand mirrors. Upside Down People become very small that way, if you do it properly, and all of them is right there in the same place so you don‘t have to wonder what their feet are doing when you bend down to speak with their faces. Fortunately, Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, invented the hand mirror for herself, otherwise we probably wouldn‘t look at Upside Down People at all.
Now, Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, sat in front of her hand mirror all day long, preening and stuff, unless Mark Antony came up with something better to do, which only took care of Friday nights due to pressing military obligations on his part, which is why the siren had to invent the hand mirror for herself in the first place. But Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, never met the Upside Down People, or Queenie would’ve invented the hand mirror for them instead of her cutesy-pie self, I’m sure.
Carrying on a conversation and dangling hand mirrors at the same time is no fun at all, and what you get is a serious case of the wiggles, and that’s what prompted Leonardo Da Vinci to turn Upside Down People right side up again during the Dark Ages in 1492 AC, or DC, or whenever it was.
Anyway, our tale takes place years after that.
In 1609, the Dutch moved stock trading indoors, and Upside Down people started pouring out of the woodwork, where they‘d been hiding since that Da Vinci business up above. They took one look at stock charts, and didn’t like what they saw.
Everything in the whole stock trading place was going down.
See, when the Dutch finally put their stock trading place under a roof, traders got so excited to be getting in out of the rain they bought up stocks like crazy, and prices shot higher and higher and higher. But Upside Down People see stock charts upside down, logically enough, and it didn’t look like that to them at all. They huddled and saw what had to be done, and sold like crazy, and prices went up, up, up for them, which is, of course, lower and lower and lower from our point of view, but since they’d just poured out of the woodwork the Upside Down People didn’t have any shares to sell and had to make some up.
And that’s how short-selling was born.
So when you hear of short-selling going on and ever catch a short-seller in the act of actually doing it, it’s okay to go ahead and give the irregular $%#!&^%*^() a piece of your mind. They’re just Upside Down People, and aren’t at all like us, and they didn’t do what Leonardo Da Vinci told them to, and if it weren’t for Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, they’d probably be speared dead by Romans or somebody anyway. So just do it.
And help spare the planet all this financial bereavement and sorrow.
Careful though. You’ll probably want to plug them right between the eyes, but that could get wiggly and you don’t want to shoot yourself in the shoes.
Ouch. A good piece of one’s mind will be fine.
Money just drops out of their pockets, so Upside Down People don’t carry any. You have to pay for his too if you ever go out to lunch with one. Or hers. Upside Down People women have really short hair.
Just looking at Upside Down People is particularly hard to take, and you can’t even make an Upside Down Person a right side up person again with hand mirrors, though that’s what everybody does. Looks at them in hand mirrors. Upside Down People become very small that way, if you do it properly, and all of them is right there in the same place so you don‘t have to wonder what their feet are doing when you bend down to speak with their faces. Fortunately, Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, invented the hand mirror for herself, otherwise we probably wouldn‘t look at Upside Down People at all.
Now, Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, sat in front of her hand mirror all day long, preening and stuff, unless Mark Antony came up with something better to do, which only took care of Friday nights due to pressing military obligations on his part, which is why the siren had to invent the hand mirror for herself in the first place. But Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, never met the Upside Down People, or Queenie would’ve invented the hand mirror for them instead of her cutesy-pie self, I’m sure.
Carrying on a conversation and dangling hand mirrors at the same time is no fun at all, and what you get is a serious case of the wiggles, and that’s what prompted Leonardo Da Vinci to turn Upside Down People right side up again during the Dark Ages in 1492 AC, or DC, or whenever it was.
Anyway, our tale takes place years after that.
In 1609, the Dutch moved stock trading indoors, and Upside Down people started pouring out of the woodwork, where they‘d been hiding since that Da Vinci business up above. They took one look at stock charts, and didn’t like what they saw.
Everything in the whole stock trading place was going down.
See, when the Dutch finally put their stock trading place under a roof, traders got so excited to be getting in out of the rain they bought up stocks like crazy, and prices shot higher and higher and higher. But Upside Down People see stock charts upside down, logically enough, and it didn’t look like that to them at all. They huddled and saw what had to be done, and sold like crazy, and prices went up, up, up for them, which is, of course, lower and lower and lower from our point of view, but since they’d just poured out of the woodwork the Upside Down People didn’t have any shares to sell and had to make some up.
And that’s how short-selling was born.
So when you hear of short-selling going on and ever catch a short-seller in the act of actually doing it, it’s okay to go ahead and give the irregular $%#!&^%*^() a piece of your mind. They’re just Upside Down People, and aren’t at all like us, and they didn’t do what Leonardo Da Vinci told them to, and if it weren’t for Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, they’d probably be speared dead by Romans or somebody anyway. So just do it.
And help spare the planet all this financial bereavement and sorrow.
Careful though. You’ll probably want to plug them right between the eyes, but that could get wiggly and you don’t want to shoot yourself in the shoes.
Ouch. A good piece of one’s mind will be fine.
December 11, 2010
The Inflators
Forget all the jawboning. Fact is, over the long term mob stooges in Washington always spend more than they rake in. Always have, always will. Viewed across the span of a typical political lifetime, tax revenues never foot the whole outrageous bill.
This means Treasury has to borrow that money from somebody. To do so, the Department issues paper IOU‘s, and lawmakers pass convenient legislation forcing financial institutions to buy these bonds, notes, and bills. Foreigners selling more Wal-Mart stuff to us than Boeing and Caterpillar do to them end up with dollars left over and reason to keep that rip-off going, so their governments buy our IOU’s too. As does conservative money, and there’s all kinds of that around, domestic and foreign, institutional and individual, smart and dumb.
Yet all this does is make politicians want to spend more. That part is kind of cyclical, however the cyclicality itself appears permanent, meaning there will always be a need to cover massive Government boondoggles, just not every single year throughout the nation‘s history. Sort of now and then, but with more now’s than then’s once a body gets to counting.
And that’s where inflation steps in. After Congressmen and the occasional Chief Executive have run amuck.
Among other things, the Federal Reserve Bank is Washington’s financier of last resort. When we can’t even borrow enough money to cover all the pork barrel spending, Greenspan Bernanke, or whatever his name is, gooses price levels up across the economic spectrum.
Double tax revenues by doubling prices, and Washington brings in twice as much core dough, meaning loot they don‘t have to borrow. Triple them, and you’ve got three times as much. Quadruple, and … well somewhere in here your debts shrink to half or a third or a quarter of what they used to look like way back before Greenspan Bernanke started screwing with the prices, and ….
Voila. Pork barrels paid for. Comfortably so.
All right, comfortable for everyone except the suckers whose incomes can’t keep up with the price hikes, including marks stuck with all those Treasury bonds purchased back there under Phase 2. Their lives get ravaged to the same extent Washington is bailed out. Savers, financial institutions, retirees, anyone locked into a fixed income stream, all lose big time. Salaried workers too.
Many paper investments get torn to shreds while this is happening, then some return to sort of normal. It’s a Hell of a thing to go through, runaway inflation.
Now go and read Greenspan Bernanke’s position. Okay, that’s a joke. They’re a slippery bunch over at the central bank, charged with something about inflation, but won’t tell us what. I‘ll quote Wikipedia for you. “The ability to maintain a low inflation rate is a long-term measure of the Fed’s success“.
Low? What Wikipedia thinks Greenspan Bernanke is telling you there, or would if he’d let us wrap our fingers around his greasy butt, is that Washington will never rein in exorbitant spending. Phase 3 (beyond what they can even borrow for) spending. He has to finance it, and let politicians go ahead and bleed us dry, and take some families down - just collateral damage, you understand - by revaluing our currency through inflation.
Low rates of maybe 1-2% let him coddle us into accepting a tad more than low, say 3-5%, and not completely freak out when he brings back the totally not low 6-13% that his brother, Greenspan Volker-Bernanke, or whatever, decimated our parents’ savings with in 1973-1981.
Bella Abzug is the only politician we ever heard of who admitted to this in public, and if her personality, political philosophy, bizarre name, delicious New York accent, physical presence, and all those goofy hats didn’t make Abzug a Monty Python character, we‘d credit Bella with the corroborating role she otherwise deserves in any piece on inflation actually explaining inflation.
The day History turns kind for the former Congresswoman, The Post will go ahead and throw Bella Abzug into the fray about here too.
As it is, we’ll just go with what we’ve got. Low regard, a tad more than low indulgence, and totally not low contempt for Greenspan Bernanke and his cronies, and the whole flatulent mess they’ve got us in down there in Washington, DC. Or is that inflatable mess? No, inflation mess maybe….
Oh, forget it. Like we said, we’re just going with what we’ve got. Today anyway.
These liars are too ridiculous for words.
Note: Everyone talks about tax dollars, but those run out fast. What we’ve spent on the wars are borrowed dollars, and the nation will have to cover Obamacare with inflatables. No way does our current projected National Debt get paid without Greenspan Bernanke spiraling prices out of control. If Washington reduces spending, we’ll consider rephrasing this note.
This means Treasury has to borrow that money from somebody. To do so, the Department issues paper IOU‘s, and lawmakers pass convenient legislation forcing financial institutions to buy these bonds, notes, and bills. Foreigners selling more Wal-Mart stuff to us than Boeing and Caterpillar do to them end up with dollars left over and reason to keep that rip-off going, so their governments buy our IOU’s too. As does conservative money, and there’s all kinds of that around, domestic and foreign, institutional and individual, smart and dumb.
Yet all this does is make politicians want to spend more. That part is kind of cyclical, however the cyclicality itself appears permanent, meaning there will always be a need to cover massive Government boondoggles, just not every single year throughout the nation‘s history. Sort of now and then, but with more now’s than then’s once a body gets to counting.
And that’s where inflation steps in. After Congressmen and the occasional Chief Executive have run amuck.
Among other things, the Federal Reserve Bank is Washington’s financier of last resort. When we can’t even borrow enough money to cover all the pork barrel spending, Greenspan Bernanke, or whatever his name is, gooses price levels up across the economic spectrum.
Double tax revenues by doubling prices, and Washington brings in twice as much core dough, meaning loot they don‘t have to borrow. Triple them, and you’ve got three times as much. Quadruple, and … well somewhere in here your debts shrink to half or a third or a quarter of what they used to look like way back before Greenspan Bernanke started screwing with the prices, and ….
Voila. Pork barrels paid for. Comfortably so.
All right, comfortable for everyone except the suckers whose incomes can’t keep up with the price hikes, including marks stuck with all those Treasury bonds purchased back there under Phase 2. Their lives get ravaged to the same extent Washington is bailed out. Savers, financial institutions, retirees, anyone locked into a fixed income stream, all lose big time. Salaried workers too.
Many paper investments get torn to shreds while this is happening, then some return to sort of normal. It’s a Hell of a thing to go through, runaway inflation.
Now go and read Greenspan Bernanke’s position. Okay, that’s a joke. They’re a slippery bunch over at the central bank, charged with something about inflation, but won’t tell us what. I‘ll quote Wikipedia for you. “The ability to maintain a low inflation rate is a long-term measure of the Fed’s success“.
Low? What Wikipedia thinks Greenspan Bernanke is telling you there, or would if he’d let us wrap our fingers around his greasy butt, is that Washington will never rein in exorbitant spending. Phase 3 (beyond what they can even borrow for) spending. He has to finance it, and let politicians go ahead and bleed us dry, and take some families down - just collateral damage, you understand - by revaluing our currency through inflation.
Low rates of maybe 1-2% let him coddle us into accepting a tad more than low, say 3-5%, and not completely freak out when he brings back the totally not low 6-13% that his brother, Greenspan Volker-Bernanke, or whatever, decimated our parents’ savings with in 1973-1981.
Bella Abzug is the only politician we ever heard of who admitted to this in public, and if her personality, political philosophy, bizarre name, delicious New York accent, physical presence, and all those goofy hats didn’t make Abzug a Monty Python character, we‘d credit Bella with the corroborating role she otherwise deserves in any piece on inflation actually explaining inflation.
The day History turns kind for the former Congresswoman, The Post will go ahead and throw Bella Abzug into the fray about here too.
As it is, we’ll just go with what we’ve got. Low regard, a tad more than low indulgence, and totally not low contempt for Greenspan Bernanke and his cronies, and the whole flatulent mess they’ve got us in down there in Washington, DC. Or is that inflatable mess? No, inflation mess maybe….
Oh, forget it. Like we said, we’re just going with what we’ve got. Today anyway.
These liars are too ridiculous for words.
Note: Everyone talks about tax dollars, but those run out fast. What we’ve spent on the wars are borrowed dollars, and the nation will have to cover Obamacare with inflatables. No way does our current projected National Debt get paid without Greenspan Bernanke spiraling prices out of control. If Washington reduces spending, we’ll consider rephrasing this note.
December 10, 2010
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist circa 1968. Guns and butter galore. Only one guy in the bank foresees the approaching tidal wave of inflation, then the Kid signs on and there are two. By 1969 a few more voices also cry out, but elsewhere in the financial community.
Zeitgeist 2010. Guns and butter déjà vu. The guy is long dead, but the Kid spots a gathering storm, and The NY Times cries out thrice in one week.
Valued readers, what happened then could happen here. Short-sellers, having long spotted this ginormous opportunity, are simply waiting on a Crime Lord for the day and the hour. When has always been impossible for outsiders to forecast because the mob strikes way too early. Their attacks come without warning, overwhelm demand, and continue on and on and on until prices have been crippled, pressuring, in this case, all financial assets. As in any inflationary scenario, commodity prices rally.
(Stocks tied more to commodity prices than interest rates outperform. These included integrated oil stocks and mining shares back in the 70’s. When that one was all over, valuations returned to normal, and investors riding blue chips, though badly bruised in the bear attack, got rewarded for their perseverance. Long term bondholders eventually saw their purchasing power cut to about one third of 1968 levels, while the owner of dividend-paying, high-quality stocks had his income tripled.)
All it would take for us to return to the 70’s, or worse, is continued dysfunction over Government spending and tax revenues on top of a business turnaround placing typically huge demands on the credit markets now in anticipation of big returns later.
Lets hope Washington acts first. And soon.
Zeitgeist 2010. Guns and butter déjà vu. The guy is long dead, but the Kid spots a gathering storm, and The NY Times cries out thrice in one week.
Valued readers, what happened then could happen here. Short-sellers, having long spotted this ginormous opportunity, are simply waiting on a Crime Lord for the day and the hour. When has always been impossible for outsiders to forecast because the mob strikes way too early. Their attacks come without warning, overwhelm demand, and continue on and on and on until prices have been crippled, pressuring, in this case, all financial assets. As in any inflationary scenario, commodity prices rally.
(Stocks tied more to commodity prices than interest rates outperform. These included integrated oil stocks and mining shares back in the 70’s. When that one was all over, valuations returned to normal, and investors riding blue chips, though badly bruised in the bear attack, got rewarded for their perseverance. Long term bondholders eventually saw their purchasing power cut to about one third of 1968 levels, while the owner of dividend-paying, high-quality stocks had his income tripled.)
All it would take for us to return to the 70’s, or worse, is continued dysfunction over Government spending and tax revenues on top of a business turnaround placing typically huge demands on the credit markets now in anticipation of big returns later.
Lets hope Washington acts first. And soon.
December 8, 2010
Going Hyper
“It’s always something.”
Market guru Roseanna Roseannadanna hit the nail on the head. Wise guys make more money from your transactions than you do, so Wall Street claptrap is designed to get you buying and selling.
Being right has no place here. Marks would be able to stand pat, shutting the whole money machine down, so getting it wrong, generating portfolio turnover, is handsomely rewarded inside the Crime Family.
Much of today’s talk - tax cuts, overspending, Government repurchasing its own bonds - swirls around a central issue, the ominous threat of hyperinflation, in ways that aren’t exactly helpful. Media dunderheads even point to possible deflation in the short run, a very real possibility, as reason to ignore how the economy is going to pull out of the depression when it eventually does.
One assumes it’s too profitable going round and round for Gangland economists to even try and get to the point.
After a decade, or whatever, of financing wars and costly social programs on truly huge tax cuts, today's dollar can't go much further. Hyperinflation is just around the bend. The guns vs. butter thing. An economy can only produce one or the other comfortably. Try both and prices shoot up. Try both for decades and cut your revenues too, and madness happens.
That’s it. What we’re facing. There’s nothing else to this. Whatever politicians are going on about, it’s left to you and I to figure out where their actions fit in. Most of the time, nobody even mentions hyperinflation. As if we're not accountable for what happens next.
Bond prices got belted yesterday because Obama announced that Washington has agreed to make the problem worse. Politicians aren't reducing spending, domestic or military, nor raising tax rates, nor juicing up the economy to produce more tax revenue. Hyperinflation just got closer. A lot closer.
It’s always something, and that something right now is hyperinflation, and it’s bearing down on us, and will be Roseanna Roseannadanna’s something as long as Crime Lords see they can go and whack prices some day soon.
Market guru Roseanna Roseannadanna hit the nail on the head. Wise guys make more money from your transactions than you do, so Wall Street claptrap is designed to get you buying and selling.
Being right has no place here. Marks would be able to stand pat, shutting the whole money machine down, so getting it wrong, generating portfolio turnover, is handsomely rewarded inside the Crime Family.
Much of today’s talk - tax cuts, overspending, Government repurchasing its own bonds - swirls around a central issue, the ominous threat of hyperinflation, in ways that aren’t exactly helpful. Media dunderheads even point to possible deflation in the short run, a very real possibility, as reason to ignore how the economy is going to pull out of the depression when it eventually does.
One assumes it’s too profitable going round and round for Gangland economists to even try and get to the point.
After a decade, or whatever, of financing wars and costly social programs on truly huge tax cuts, today's dollar can't go much further. Hyperinflation is just around the bend. The guns vs. butter thing. An economy can only produce one or the other comfortably. Try both and prices shoot up. Try both for decades and cut your revenues too, and madness happens.
That’s it. What we’re facing. There’s nothing else to this. Whatever politicians are going on about, it’s left to you and I to figure out where their actions fit in. Most of the time, nobody even mentions hyperinflation. As if we're not accountable for what happens next.
Bond prices got belted yesterday because Obama announced that Washington has agreed to make the problem worse. Politicians aren't reducing spending, domestic or military, nor raising tax rates, nor juicing up the economy to produce more tax revenue. Hyperinflation just got closer. A lot closer.
It’s always something, and that something right now is hyperinflation, and it’s bearing down on us, and will be Roseanna Roseannadanna’s something as long as Crime Lords see they can go and whack prices some day soon.
December 5, 2010
Watershed Moment
“And hedge funds are already seeking out ways to place bets against the debts of some states, with the help of their investment banks.”
So write Michael Cooper and Mary Williams Walsh in today’s New York Times piece about fears of a looming crisis in the state and municipal bond market, current conditions in that arena recalling the recent sub-prime mortgage apocalypse and ongoing EuroZone catastrophe to seasoned observers referenced in the article.
The above allusion to short-selling is a watershed moment for us, the first time we can remember anyone in the media coming this close to actually reporting on the racket, especially while it happens. Though somehow equating the economic destruction recently wrought on the civilized world and Iceland to a trip to an off track betting parlor, it wouldn’t take much for The Times to go the distance and call these gangsters out for who they really are. Shuttering our meager effort at The MacDougal Post because the media has finally jumped in is our fondest wish, and best hope for the country they run around watchdogging in.
Maybe we’ll get there. Meanwhile, read the article knowing that we’re living the 1930’s right now whenever they mention that state and municipal defaults haven’t been a problem since the 1930’s, and you’ll come away with a fuller understanding of what’s impending here.
Buckle up if you’re invested in any. The shorts may hit the fan with this one next.
So write Michael Cooper and Mary Williams Walsh in today’s New York Times piece about fears of a looming crisis in the state and municipal bond market, current conditions in that arena recalling the recent sub-prime mortgage apocalypse and ongoing EuroZone catastrophe to seasoned observers referenced in the article.
The above allusion to short-selling is a watershed moment for us, the first time we can remember anyone in the media coming this close to actually reporting on the racket, especially while it happens. Though somehow equating the economic destruction recently wrought on the civilized world and Iceland to a trip to an off track betting parlor, it wouldn’t take much for The Times to go the distance and call these gangsters out for who they really are. Shuttering our meager effort at The MacDougal Post because the media has finally jumped in is our fondest wish, and best hope for the country they run around watchdogging in.
Maybe we’ll get there. Meanwhile, read the article knowing that we’re living the 1930’s right now whenever they mention that state and municipal defaults haven’t been a problem since the 1930’s, and you’ll come away with a fuller understanding of what’s impending here.
Buckle up if you’re invested in any. The shorts may hit the fan with this one next.
December 2, 2010
Pithy Observations
1) Media-fingered culprits morph from “speculators” to “investors” in the latest Gangland swindle as pundits on camera and keyboard struggle to ID short-sellers in a way that won’t bring mob wise guys down on anybody’s CEO. Financial paparazzi now have to blabber/input that authorities in besieged eurozone countries are trying to appease somebody, but won’t say who.
Reporting on a mob sting and the wise guys behind it would let viewers/readers judge the effectiveness of official action, a side of the story left untold, and flabbergastingly so.
Coverage like this illustrates why we feel History should hold journalists largely accountable for the likely demise of capitalism.
Gamed markets topple the whole shebang if you don’t call out the gamers. Given their noisily-proclaimed mission as our Holy Watchdogs of Government, how hard is that for blowhards/fish wrappers to understand?
2) More importantly, to market-savvy Post readers anyway, that rapidly growing disturbance in Jupiter’s atmosphere, so big that an amateur observer can spot it in the eyepiece of his backyard telescope, now stretches almost halfway around the giant gas planet. Thought to herald the return of the missing Jovian stripe, we look to that possible event for a sign that all is normal within Sol’s ethereal grasp once again, portending nothing but stratosphere for the Dow Jones Industrial Average when it happens.
Reporting on a mob sting and the wise guys behind it would let viewers/readers judge the effectiveness of official action, a side of the story left untold, and flabbergastingly so.
Coverage like this illustrates why we feel History should hold journalists largely accountable for the likely demise of capitalism.
Gamed markets topple the whole shebang if you don’t call out the gamers. Given their noisily-proclaimed mission as our Holy Watchdogs of Government, how hard is that for blowhards/fish wrappers to understand?
2) More importantly, to market-savvy Post readers anyway, that rapidly growing disturbance in Jupiter’s atmosphere, so big that an amateur observer can spot it in the eyepiece of his backyard telescope, now stretches almost halfway around the giant gas planet. Thought to herald the return of the missing Jovian stripe, we look to that possible event for a sign that all is normal within Sol’s ethereal grasp once again, portending nothing but stratosphere for the Dow Jones Industrial Average when it happens.
December 1, 2010
Santa Claus Rally
Rowdi Bonebender eyed the goings-on with that wily smile of hers. Things looked normal out by the Diamond DC corral. Noisy was all.
Roomfulla Grones fragmented yet another beer can with precision hits from a handcrafted Mongol bow. The office Amazon reveled in her skills at horde warfare, delving into everything there was on the Khan, barbarian family values, and continental invasion, particularly that neighborhood genocide stuff.
Already one scary bowperson, Roomfulla had recently mastered the dark Mongol bludgeoning arts as well, which explained the blood-soaked hambone dangling from her waist chain. Too, the office Amazon’s knowledge of 12th century steppe table manners helped liven meals up when the girls were out on the trail.
Uzi, off a two-fisted quick draw out of twin Gucci holsters strapped to her chaps, pulled on those shiny pearl-handled irons of hers, plugging alcoholic beverage container fragments sky high. Shiny bits sprayed everywhere, twirling through the morning air. Rowdi’s life sidekick wasn’t into the Genghis thing so much.
Uzi just liked kicking a$$.
As for the trail boss herself, America’s favorite chiropractic healer had heard the stock market might not get a Santa Claus Rally this year, and that didn’t set well with Rowdi Bonebender. The Musculoskeletal Doc knew all about short-selling sidewinders from her subscription to The MacDougal Post, and figured this had something to do with them. Up yonder in the badlands folks call New York City, things had gotten way out of hand, taking Ireland down and all, menacing the Portuguese, but messing with Santy was a tad beyond tolerable. The cowgirl had told the gunslingers and Roomfulla, and all the girls agreed, and the healer and her posse were itching to ride on into Hellhole Town and settle the score, if the jolly old man didn‘t get his year-end bounce this go-around.
Head-‘em-up was starting the moment the Dow-Jones Industrial Average turned down, ride-’em-out to follow soon as the hoss trailer could get offloaded at their Holland Tunnel base camp.
Then it'd be shoot-’em-up time.
“Hold on, Cowgirl.” That would be yours truly. We had a situation on our hands. “Santa Claus Rally don’t go up every day.”
“It don’t.” Healer sounded real disappointed at that news.
“Nope. Goes up some, then down some, but not as much. At the end your Dow Industrials are ahead pretty good.”
“Shucks.”
“Gotta take a wait-and-see, Cowgirl. Give it to the end of the month.”
“Well, if you say so.” Crestfallen, the healer holstered her .44 Magnum with a great big sigh.
“Sorry.”
“Aw, that’s all right, Hoss. Month ain’t long to wait. We got plenty of ammunition.”
“Bye.”
“Bye. Come on, girls. We gotta throw down. Corral’s gonna be running outta empties soon.”
God help us, the Dow don’t end this month higher than she starts today, and it’s gonna be a different kind of New Year‘s Eve up there in New York City.
Might think about avoiding Times Square for sure. 42nd Street hoedown sounds like a party magnet for the Bonebender Bunch. Probably be popping that poor balloon to the ground with slugs from them old .44’s. And that’s just for starters.
Nope, I wouldn’t want to be anywheres near them badlands, rally don’t rally this year. Messing with Santy.
That just ain’t right.
Roomfulla Grones fragmented yet another beer can with precision hits from a handcrafted Mongol bow. The office Amazon reveled in her skills at horde warfare, delving into everything there was on the Khan, barbarian family values, and continental invasion, particularly that neighborhood genocide stuff.
Already one scary bowperson, Roomfulla had recently mastered the dark Mongol bludgeoning arts as well, which explained the blood-soaked hambone dangling from her waist chain. Too, the office Amazon’s knowledge of 12th century steppe table manners helped liven meals up when the girls were out on the trail.
Uzi, off a two-fisted quick draw out of twin Gucci holsters strapped to her chaps, pulled on those shiny pearl-handled irons of hers, plugging alcoholic beverage container fragments sky high. Shiny bits sprayed everywhere, twirling through the morning air. Rowdi’s life sidekick wasn’t into the Genghis thing so much.
Uzi just liked kicking a$$.
As for the trail boss herself, America’s favorite chiropractic healer had heard the stock market might not get a Santa Claus Rally this year, and that didn’t set well with Rowdi Bonebender. The Musculoskeletal Doc knew all about short-selling sidewinders from her subscription to The MacDougal Post, and figured this had something to do with them. Up yonder in the badlands folks call New York City, things had gotten way out of hand, taking Ireland down and all, menacing the Portuguese, but messing with Santy was a tad beyond tolerable. The cowgirl had told the gunslingers and Roomfulla, and all the girls agreed, and the healer and her posse were itching to ride on into Hellhole Town and settle the score, if the jolly old man didn‘t get his year-end bounce this go-around.
Head-‘em-up was starting the moment the Dow-Jones Industrial Average turned down, ride-’em-out to follow soon as the hoss trailer could get offloaded at their Holland Tunnel base camp.
Then it'd be shoot-’em-up time.
“Hold on, Cowgirl.” That would be yours truly. We had a situation on our hands. “Santa Claus Rally don’t go up every day.”
“It don’t.” Healer sounded real disappointed at that news.
“Nope. Goes up some, then down some, but not as much. At the end your Dow Industrials are ahead pretty good.”
“Shucks.”
“Gotta take a wait-and-see, Cowgirl. Give it to the end of the month.”
“Well, if you say so.” Crestfallen, the healer holstered her .44 Magnum with a great big sigh.
“Sorry.”
“Aw, that’s all right, Hoss. Month ain’t long to wait. We got plenty of ammunition.”
“Bye.”
“Bye. Come on, girls. We gotta throw down. Corral’s gonna be running outta empties soon.”
God help us, the Dow don’t end this month higher than she starts today, and it’s gonna be a different kind of New Year‘s Eve up there in New York City.
Might think about avoiding Times Square for sure. 42nd Street hoedown sounds like a party magnet for the Bonebender Bunch. Probably be popping that poor balloon to the ground with slugs from them old .44’s. And that’s just for starters.
Nope, I wouldn’t want to be anywheres near them badlands, rally don’t rally this year. Messing with Santy.
That just ain’t right.
November 29, 2010
Speculators
We can’t figure out who threw Ireland under the bus: the media or Bloodbath Mary. Bloodbath, primary person of interest over at the Securities and Exchange Commission, certainly took her best shot. Dutiful readers will recall that, maybe a year ago, the regulatory hotshot called off hearings on short-selling, explaining that short-selling had nothing to do with the 2008/09 financial apocalypse caused by short-selling.
Shorts, the worst kind of Crime Family Maggots, have been on the loose ever since.
Well, difficult as it is to believe, hacks from rag and tube may have done her one better this catastrophe. Those geniuses are blaming the Emerald Isle debacle on “speculators”. Oh, it isn’t the first time. Short-sellers don’t exist in the Land of the Blithering Idiot. Maybe it’s the hyphen. Tough to remember whether to put one in or not, easier to stop using the term. Okay, probably not.
Whatever, with an IQ about matching your typical market news babe’s bra size, the average financial journalist clearly blabbers/scribbles in mob code, an encryption omitting the purveyor of bogus securities lurking atop every market reversal price chart.
I don’t think members of the modern financial press corps actually buy stocks. They snort their paychecks away. It would explain a lot.
To anyone who’s opened an account at my Crime Family, the difference between “speculator” and “short-seller” is crystal clear. A speculator is one of hundreds of thousands of plundered clients who listened to their storefront grifter, and a “short-seller” is the a$$hole in the New York office who pulled the rug out from under them once the sting got set up.
Recent media reports tell us “speculators” bashed Irish bond prices into the bog, and are now tongue-lashing anyone stalwart enough to hold the course in the freefalling Portuguese and Spanish markets. Stalwart or daft, only time will tell. All Europe appears to be tumbling downhill in sympathy, albeit at slower rates of decline than the Iberians, at least last week, as are U.S. multinationals with major stakes in the mob-fingered economic crisis of the month.
Problem with that classic piece of media disinformation is found at the root of this wildly inappropriate label. Speculate, implying you lose money, and lose money a lot, has no place here. Gangland racketeers operate one obscenely profitable money machine, churning out Lordly fortunes by shorting their casualties’ life savings into smithereens.
Speculators, balderdash. Like it was last time, and the dance before that, like it always has been, and always will be, at least until Bloodbath and/or the hacks step up, what you have here, folks, are SHORT-SELLERS run amuck.
Did you hear me, Bloodbath?
SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS.
And Teflon short-sellers at that.
Scourge of the planet in the Post Apocalyptic Era, these rampaging Gangland fiends set upon entire populations like some kind of malignancy, metastasizing pathological rot on a scale heretofore unseen, ravaging billions of innocent victims two years ago, then inexplicably left alone to inflict their lifestyle-draining contagion again at a rate of tens of millions upon tens of millions at a time. If all Europe follows, make that hundreds of millions. What does The MacDougal Post have to do to show sick people how to stay well?
It’s a horrid disease borne by a psychotic Presbyterian Mafia, rendered untouchable through political bribery, but the cure is obvious - excoriation - and it can start with stripping the short-seller’s mystique away.
Hyphen and all, we‘re afraid.
Shorts, the worst kind of Crime Family Maggots, have been on the loose ever since.
Well, difficult as it is to believe, hacks from rag and tube may have done her one better this catastrophe. Those geniuses are blaming the Emerald Isle debacle on “speculators”. Oh, it isn’t the first time. Short-sellers don’t exist in the Land of the Blithering Idiot. Maybe it’s the hyphen. Tough to remember whether to put one in or not, easier to stop using the term. Okay, probably not.
Whatever, with an IQ about matching your typical market news babe’s bra size, the average financial journalist clearly blabbers/scribbles in mob code, an encryption omitting the purveyor of bogus securities lurking atop every market reversal price chart.
I don’t think members of the modern financial press corps actually buy stocks. They snort their paychecks away. It would explain a lot.
To anyone who’s opened an account at my Crime Family, the difference between “speculator” and “short-seller” is crystal clear. A speculator is one of hundreds of thousands of plundered clients who listened to their storefront grifter, and a “short-seller” is the a$$hole in the New York office who pulled the rug out from under them once the sting got set up.
Recent media reports tell us “speculators” bashed Irish bond prices into the bog, and are now tongue-lashing anyone stalwart enough to hold the course in the freefalling Portuguese and Spanish markets. Stalwart or daft, only time will tell. All Europe appears to be tumbling downhill in sympathy, albeit at slower rates of decline than the Iberians, at least last week, as are U.S. multinationals with major stakes in the mob-fingered economic crisis of the month.
Problem with that classic piece of media disinformation is found at the root of this wildly inappropriate label. Speculate, implying you lose money, and lose money a lot, has no place here. Gangland racketeers operate one obscenely profitable money machine, churning out Lordly fortunes by shorting their casualties’ life savings into smithereens.
Speculators, balderdash. Like it was last time, and the dance before that, like it always has been, and always will be, at least until Bloodbath and/or the hacks step up, what you have here, folks, are SHORT-SELLERS run amuck.
Did you hear me, Bloodbath?
SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS, SHORT-SELLERS.
And Teflon short-sellers at that.
Scourge of the planet in the Post Apocalyptic Era, these rampaging Gangland fiends set upon entire populations like some kind of malignancy, metastasizing pathological rot on a scale heretofore unseen, ravaging billions of innocent victims two years ago, then inexplicably left alone to inflict their lifestyle-draining contagion again at a rate of tens of millions upon tens of millions at a time. If all Europe follows, make that hundreds of millions. What does The MacDougal Post have to do to show sick people how to stay well?
It’s a horrid disease borne by a psychotic Presbyterian Mafia, rendered untouchable through political bribery, but the cure is obvious - excoriation - and it can start with stripping the short-seller’s mystique away.
Hyphen and all, we‘re afraid.
November 25, 2010
Networking
While covering the initial FBI hedge fund raids, the New York Times added the following quote: “We have begun increasingly to rely, in white-collar cases, on undercover investigative techniques that have perhaps been more commonly associated with the investigation of organized and violent crime,” said Lanny A. Breuer, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, in a speech this month.
What on earth are the requirements for financial crime to be considered organized by Justice? Or violent, for that matter.
Maybe it’s the collars.
Okay, Lanny and the boys are finally starting to sniff out those nefarious white collars, but what we’ve always had on Wall Street has been mostly striped collars, with some nice pastels and maybe a pink or two now and again. Yellow as well, and I feel I should apologize for that one even after all these years. So there’s really a pack of striped collars and like that on the loose, and it reads like we‘ll have to wait for Lanny Breuer’s crime busting Untouchables to catch up with them now.
Meanwhile back in the real world, one notes yet another Goldberg, Styx connection to a Federal sting, and remembers that their former CEO, while Treasury Secretary, threw Letterman Brothers under the bus at the same time Goldberg’s exposure to the toxic Wall Street bond underwriting apocalypse got covered under the table when AIG was bailed out. Could a Letterman informant be afoot in here somewhere seeking payback?
Furthermore, as we learned from our mob connection, a man with close matrimonial ties to our mother, who was a saint, Mob traders rip us off through 1) short selling, 2) mining our orders, and 3) concerted action, throwing the entire weight of all the Families into targeted securities and sustaining the attack until the public’s savings are looted in full.
Keep an eye peeled on how carefully Gangland stooges at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) avoid those three areas. Insider trading has long been used to draw attention away from the central rackets, turning up peripheral scapegoats with no direct connection to the Crime Lords themselves.
Policing any one of the three would lead to the other two and put an end to Wall Street racketeering forever, so look for that to happen never.
Lastly, using the yuppie term, “network”, to describe Gangland racketeering is a pathetic stab at sugar-coating organized financial crime, the kind of mob-serving touch our regulatory hotshots always add to show underworld observers whose side they’re really on. Wall Street grifters are yuppies, you see, not mobsters at all. Market crashes don’t mass-murder anybody, or psychologically cripple their immediate victims, or loot nations, or cause worldwide catastrophic economic devastation that lingers for decade after decade across generations of stricken families.
One only hopes that someday FBI agents will be raiding SEC offices as well.
What on earth are the requirements for financial crime to be considered organized by Justice? Or violent, for that matter.
Maybe it’s the collars.
Okay, Lanny and the boys are finally starting to sniff out those nefarious white collars, but what we’ve always had on Wall Street has been mostly striped collars, with some nice pastels and maybe a pink or two now and again. Yellow as well, and I feel I should apologize for that one even after all these years. So there’s really a pack of striped collars and like that on the loose, and it reads like we‘ll have to wait for Lanny Breuer’s crime busting Untouchables to catch up with them now.
Meanwhile back in the real world, one notes yet another Goldberg, Styx connection to a Federal sting, and remembers that their former CEO, while Treasury Secretary, threw Letterman Brothers under the bus at the same time Goldberg’s exposure to the toxic Wall Street bond underwriting apocalypse got covered under the table when AIG was bailed out. Could a Letterman informant be afoot in here somewhere seeking payback?
Furthermore, as we learned from our mob connection, a man with close matrimonial ties to our mother, who was a saint, Mob traders rip us off through 1) short selling, 2) mining our orders, and 3) concerted action, throwing the entire weight of all the Families into targeted securities and sustaining the attack until the public’s savings are looted in full.
Keep an eye peeled on how carefully Gangland stooges at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) avoid those three areas. Insider trading has long been used to draw attention away from the central rackets, turning up peripheral scapegoats with no direct connection to the Crime Lords themselves.
Policing any one of the three would lead to the other two and put an end to Wall Street racketeering forever, so look for that to happen never.
Lastly, using the yuppie term, “network”, to describe Gangland racketeering is a pathetic stab at sugar-coating organized financial crime, the kind of mob-serving touch our regulatory hotshots always add to show underworld observers whose side they’re really on. Wall Street grifters are yuppies, you see, not mobsters at all. Market crashes don’t mass-murder anybody, or psychologically cripple their immediate victims, or loot nations, or cause worldwide catastrophic economic devastation that lingers for decade after decade across generations of stricken families.
One only hopes that someday FBI agents will be raiding SEC offices as well.
November 24, 2010
Ireland Goes Down
Two years ago it was Iceland. Now the same Financial Crime Maggots have destroyed Ireland‘s ability to borrow by short-selling that country's bond prices into the ground.
Agencies responsible for evaluating credit risks rushed to drop their ratings on Ireland’s debt. When asked why he was caught by surprise, a fellow at one of the rating houses replied that market conditions changed faster than anyone could’ve anticipated, and he thought that unwarranted. Repeat, market conditions.
In case you don’t understand code, he was telling us that wise guys from the Wall Street Crime Families, acting together as they always do, wrought fire and brimstone down upon the Emerald Isle on a felonious whim.
Mob spokespersons fingered Portugal as next, then Spain, the kind of disinformation we've come to accept because the Securities and Exchange Commission allows these crooks to shoot their mouths off all over the tube.
Two years ago the civilized world and Iceland were brutally attacked. Now another sovereign nation has been mugged by racketeering hoodlums, and two more placed under the gun. In every case, Gangland thugs have “surprised” the globe’s credit analysts with their bloody handiwork.
The great mortgage scam buried Iceland, but we’ll side with the experts on the Emerald Isle debacle. Debt there has not reached the point where this criminal outrage should have happened. Listen carefully to what the Irish themselves have been saying. And talk about Portugal is a case of bullies trying to muscle girly boys out of the way by warning the Nancies off.
Why doesn’t anyone but the perps themselves see what’s going on?
One can only note China’s burgeoning world influence, and look for the day when somebody with the reason, will, and wherewithal will line some of these punks up and start shooting them for egregious market manipulation, which, by any rational standard, has been a capital crime all along.
Agencies responsible for evaluating credit risks rushed to drop their ratings on Ireland’s debt. When asked why he was caught by surprise, a fellow at one of the rating houses replied that market conditions changed faster than anyone could’ve anticipated, and he thought that unwarranted. Repeat, market conditions.
In case you don’t understand code, he was telling us that wise guys from the Wall Street Crime Families, acting together as they always do, wrought fire and brimstone down upon the Emerald Isle on a felonious whim.
Mob spokespersons fingered Portugal as next, then Spain, the kind of disinformation we've come to accept because the Securities and Exchange Commission allows these crooks to shoot their mouths off all over the tube.
Two years ago the civilized world and Iceland were brutally attacked. Now another sovereign nation has been mugged by racketeering hoodlums, and two more placed under the gun. In every case, Gangland thugs have “surprised” the globe’s credit analysts with their bloody handiwork.
The great mortgage scam buried Iceland, but we’ll side with the experts on the Emerald Isle debacle. Debt there has not reached the point where this criminal outrage should have happened. Listen carefully to what the Irish themselves have been saying. And talk about Portugal is a case of bullies trying to muscle girly boys out of the way by warning the Nancies off.
Why doesn’t anyone but the perps themselves see what’s going on?
One can only note China’s burgeoning world influence, and look for the day when somebody with the reason, will, and wherewithal will line some of these punks up and start shooting them for egregious market manipulation, which, by any rational standard, has been a capital crime all along.
November 21, 2010
Smell Test
We learned about the short-selling con from our mob connection, a man with close matrimonial ties to our mother, who was a saint, but what about everybody else? How do you know it’s a big fat swindle? Well, lets go back and look at what’s been covered so far, checking this stuff out like an auditor would. Maybe it’s the best our readers should be expected to do.
By definition, a deception is designed to fool. In auditing, this often means you’re given a misleading view, told it’s something else, and never shown the true picture, which can’t be seen from the vantage point deliberately set up for you.
If, somewhere along the way, something just doesn‘t smell right, you have to grab onto that. There’s nothing else. The perps have made sure of it.
From there, you dig into things as best you can, tracking down the stench, or trying to. If that awful odor never goes away, you keep at it. Eventually, the auditor can get to a point where he has to inform someone they’ve got an odor on their hands. The message can sound that silly. So you pass along what amounts to suspicions to a comptroller, a board of directors, or even the police.
Sometimes law enforcement is implicated, and then you’ve got a dilly of a deception on your hands.
Anyway, all you can do is give the appropriate party what you’ve got. May not be much, but the nature of deception means you go with it anyway. But who on earth do you tell when the authorities are involved?
Which brings us to short-selling. Financial Crime Maggots try to tell us that once in a while short sellers “borrow” the shares they sell. As in sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Otherwise, we’re told, short-sellers “locate” shares, but not always. Lastly, you read some short-sellers do neither, and that’s called “naked” short-selling. On top of that, there’s a whole industry of securities “lenders” operating in the dark which would seem to exist only to give credibility to the “borrowing” alibi. When its even used, that is.
Last time we checked short-selling at wikipedia.com, the piece pretty much read like the above.
Stinky. Real stinky. Face it, we’ve got a smell test to apply with this one.
For starters, three explanations is two explanations too many. Regrettably, all of them come from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) spokespersons as well as various perps. One too many would appear odiferous. We’ve got two, and law enforcement bandying all three about.
Basically, nothing smells right. Disappointed in the human race, we look at the transactions themselves.
1) “Borrowing” shares: Here, start with, say, 100 shares, all owned by the “lender“. But after all is said and done, there are 200 shares left. The “lender” gets his 100 shares “returned” to him, and the owner of the shares sold short in the marketplace now holds 100 shares too. What kind of loan is this? Where did the new 100 come from, and what in the world are they? Why does anybody need a loan if he‘s creating brand new shares for nothing and getting paid to sell them? Most important, how is this not a public offering, with the proceeds going to the short-seller instead of the company, making the so-called loan explanation a total lie?
2) “Locating” shares: Short-sellers calling up to see if a broker holds as many shares as the short-seller wants to sell and selling short if there are enough sounds like “borrowing” where somebody neglected to actually borrow and got caught and came up with a “my dog ate my homework” excuse, particularly when preceded by a regulatory apology regretting that not everybody is “borrowing” after they said they would. How is “locating” even relevant to a transaction? You might as well add a memo entry showing what you ate for breakfast that morning. Maybe it tasted really good and we haven’t tried any yet, so the breakfast entry would at least pertain to something.
3) Naked short-selling: This is a paper swindle. The short-seller simply issues himself bogus shares and sells them to a buyer who thinks they’re real, meaning, as any reasonable party would conclude, the short-seller makes his side of whole transaction up. Here we start with zero shares, create, say, 100 phony, and sell them to a buyer deceived into believing they’re real. All shares are put in the same bin at the brokerage house handling his account, mixing the 100 phony in with all their real. Eventually the short-seller buys back his 100 phony from someone selling 100 real, conning a second sucker, so over time the real share count gets netted out between the two people he duped, meaning the phony shares only exist while the short-seller’s position is open. You have no idea how difficult it is to explain that to normal people. We just hope it’s intelligible now.
Here at the MacDougal Post, we never use the term, naked short-selling. It’s part of the deception. All short-sales are paper swindles. Buyers are sold phony transactions, not securities. The purported securities never exist so you can‘t make a distinction between “borrowed“, “located“, and “naked“ shares. They’re one and the same actual transaction. A crook issuing shares to himself, dumping them on marks believing them to be real, then retiring his phony shares when he buys himself out.
Next our smell test turns to valuations, and that means earnings per share (EPS). If these are bogus shares, and we aren’t informed about them, then EPS is less than we’re told. Investors base their market decisions on EPS, making this a clear case of securities fraud.
If the SEC is misinforming us about short-selling, it’s involved. The regulatory hotshots are charged with prosecuting securities fraud, not committing it.
That’s what we’ve got, a real stinker of a smell test, at least 97.9% on the sniff-o-meter. So who do we tell? Congress? The White House? We already tried, and that’s a total joke. Bribes from Financial Crime Maggots, a.k.a. campaign contributions, finance politics in Washington. And the media is owned by corporate America, so forget them. The New York Times editorial staff gave America this opinion of stock option crime some years ago: people who complain only do so because they aren’t in on it, (like they are).
So we tell you.
And hope our valued readers pass the knowledge along to a million of their closest friends at cocktail parties, which actually gives us a shot in a couple of cases.
Oh yeah, that securities lending to short-sellers thing. Guy at a union pension fund says banks extort institutional investors into whatever that is by charging higher fees if they don’t lend. Internet sources say the business is run by huge banks and appears to be fairly recent. Sounds like somebody found a way to charge more fees. The lending part is just a sham, as it always has been. What intrigues us most is the cloak of darkness here. We’d love to see what they’re hiding, and hope it all comes out some day.
By definition, a deception is designed to fool. In auditing, this often means you’re given a misleading view, told it’s something else, and never shown the true picture, which can’t be seen from the vantage point deliberately set up for you.
If, somewhere along the way, something just doesn‘t smell right, you have to grab onto that. There’s nothing else. The perps have made sure of it.
From there, you dig into things as best you can, tracking down the stench, or trying to. If that awful odor never goes away, you keep at it. Eventually, the auditor can get to a point where he has to inform someone they’ve got an odor on their hands. The message can sound that silly. So you pass along what amounts to suspicions to a comptroller, a board of directors, or even the police.
Sometimes law enforcement is implicated, and then you’ve got a dilly of a deception on your hands.
Anyway, all you can do is give the appropriate party what you’ve got. May not be much, but the nature of deception means you go with it anyway. But who on earth do you tell when the authorities are involved?
Which brings us to short-selling. Financial Crime Maggots try to tell us that once in a while short sellers “borrow” the shares they sell. As in sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Otherwise, we’re told, short-sellers “locate” shares, but not always. Lastly, you read some short-sellers do neither, and that’s called “naked” short-selling. On top of that, there’s a whole industry of securities “lenders” operating in the dark which would seem to exist only to give credibility to the “borrowing” alibi. When its even used, that is.
Last time we checked short-selling at wikipedia.com, the piece pretty much read like the above.
Stinky. Real stinky. Face it, we’ve got a smell test to apply with this one.
For starters, three explanations is two explanations too many. Regrettably, all of them come from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) spokespersons as well as various perps. One too many would appear odiferous. We’ve got two, and law enforcement bandying all three about.
Basically, nothing smells right. Disappointed in the human race, we look at the transactions themselves.
1) “Borrowing” shares: Here, start with, say, 100 shares, all owned by the “lender“. But after all is said and done, there are 200 shares left. The “lender” gets his 100 shares “returned” to him, and the owner of the shares sold short in the marketplace now holds 100 shares too. What kind of loan is this? Where did the new 100 come from, and what in the world are they? Why does anybody need a loan if he‘s creating brand new shares for nothing and getting paid to sell them? Most important, how is this not a public offering, with the proceeds going to the short-seller instead of the company, making the so-called loan explanation a total lie?
2) “Locating” shares: Short-sellers calling up to see if a broker holds as many shares as the short-seller wants to sell and selling short if there are enough sounds like “borrowing” where somebody neglected to actually borrow and got caught and came up with a “my dog ate my homework” excuse, particularly when preceded by a regulatory apology regretting that not everybody is “borrowing” after they said they would. How is “locating” even relevant to a transaction? You might as well add a memo entry showing what you ate for breakfast that morning. Maybe it tasted really good and we haven’t tried any yet, so the breakfast entry would at least pertain to something.
3) Naked short-selling: This is a paper swindle. The short-seller simply issues himself bogus shares and sells them to a buyer who thinks they’re real, meaning, as any reasonable party would conclude, the short-seller makes his side of whole transaction up. Here we start with zero shares, create, say, 100 phony, and sell them to a buyer deceived into believing they’re real. All shares are put in the same bin at the brokerage house handling his account, mixing the 100 phony in with all their real. Eventually the short-seller buys back his 100 phony from someone selling 100 real, conning a second sucker, so over time the real share count gets netted out between the two people he duped, meaning the phony shares only exist while the short-seller’s position is open. You have no idea how difficult it is to explain that to normal people. We just hope it’s intelligible now.
Here at the MacDougal Post, we never use the term, naked short-selling. It’s part of the deception. All short-sales are paper swindles. Buyers are sold phony transactions, not securities. The purported securities never exist so you can‘t make a distinction between “borrowed“, “located“, and “naked“ shares. They’re one and the same actual transaction. A crook issuing shares to himself, dumping them on marks believing them to be real, then retiring his phony shares when he buys himself out.
Next our smell test turns to valuations, and that means earnings per share (EPS). If these are bogus shares, and we aren’t informed about them, then EPS is less than we’re told. Investors base their market decisions on EPS, making this a clear case of securities fraud.
If the SEC is misinforming us about short-selling, it’s involved. The regulatory hotshots are charged with prosecuting securities fraud, not committing it.
That’s what we’ve got, a real stinker of a smell test, at least 97.9% on the sniff-o-meter. So who do we tell? Congress? The White House? We already tried, and that’s a total joke. Bribes from Financial Crime Maggots, a.k.a. campaign contributions, finance politics in Washington. And the media is owned by corporate America, so forget them. The New York Times editorial staff gave America this opinion of stock option crime some years ago: people who complain only do so because they aren’t in on it, (like they are).
So we tell you.
And hope our valued readers pass the knowledge along to a million of their closest friends at cocktail parties, which actually gives us a shot in a couple of cases.
Oh yeah, that securities lending to short-sellers thing. Guy at a union pension fund says banks extort institutional investors into whatever that is by charging higher fees if they don’t lend. Internet sources say the business is run by huge banks and appears to be fairly recent. Sounds like somebody found a way to charge more fees. The lending part is just a sham, as it always has been. What intrigues us most is the cloak of darkness here. We’d love to see what they’re hiding, and hope it all comes out some day.
November 18, 2010
The Hypocrites and the Horrors
Once upon a time in a kingdom beset by Horrors, the royal village had rather dark and spooky markets. So dark and spooky, the markets were always having problems with the Horrors. After one particularly horrifying problem, the King ordered bureaucratic functionaries to shine light upon the markets, and poke lanterns everywhere Horrors might be lurking, so that none of the villagers would ever run into the awful creatures again, but that never happened.
It doesn’t take long for Horrors to bribe their way into bureaucratic functions and staff them full of Horrors, Hypocrites who look and sound and even scribble like bureaucratic functionaries, but aren’t because they’re Horrors like I said.
Hypocrites are very good at disguises and fool everyone, you know.
And so, light never really came to shine upon the markets. Oh, the Hypocrites brought lanterns all right, but hardly ever lit them and then only poked in silly places no self-respecting Horror would deign to beset. Some villagers tried complaining to the King, but his bureaucratic functionaries wouldn’t let the emails through, and other villagers tried blabbing to the media, but all the talking heads in the village were owned by Horrors, and more’s the pity, nothing ever got done.
How could it? The kingdom was beset by Horrors.
On a day when Horrors were lurking up in the rafters of the markets, tossing phony beans and carrots and rutabagas in with the real beans and carrots and rutabagas, vegetable prices were plummeting. If people actually bought all the beans and carrots and rutabagas you kind of saw in those rather dark and spooky bins, they’d never be able to eat them all, and would have to throw tons out, so villagers saw no reason to pay a lot of hard-earned royal flibbertigibbets for trash, thus vegetable prices went down and down and down.
Villagers are funny that way.
Alas, Horrors were trashing the markets, or so one might be excused for saying, because there was no light there, and also because they’d made bets against vegetable prices at the derivatives casino next door, and the casino was even darker and spookier than the markets and nobody in the royal village knew what was up with that place at all. The Hypocrites had meetings all day, so zero bureaucratic functionaries were poking about with lanterns, is what was going on with them during this particular trading session, alas again.
Eventually, farmers rose a clamor over the plummeting vegetable prices, and so it eventually transpired that the talking heads got called in after all. Somebody found a lantern and a Hypocrite with matches, and a spokesperson for the Horrors called this press conference, and said, “vegetable prices plummeted today on fears over inflation in Asia and debt in Europe.”
And the Horrors watched the talking heads saying this goofy thing on TV and had a good laugh, and went back to tossing phony beans and carrots and rutabagas into the bins again because that's what was really going on with the vegetable prices.
Market manipulation. Bean and carrot and rurabaga market manipulation.
Right under everybody's nose. Or noses. I never get that one right.
Thereupon, as fate would have it, when vegetable prices finally got low enough to suit the awful creatures, Horrors bought up everything in the bins at big fat bargains, making oodles next door too, then took out all their phony beans and carrots and rutabagas and marked up the real beans and carrots and rutabagas over the next few trading sessions and sold them for yet more oodles.
And the spokesperson for the Horrors called another press conference and explained, “fears over inflation in Asia and debt in Europe were overblown,” and the talking heads certainly saw the logic there, and the Horrors had a good laugh over that one too when it came on the TV, but they were all partying down on South Beach now, so no one had to go back and toss beans and carrots and rutabagas into bins this time.
And so it came to pass that in this kingdom, light stopped shining altogether on the rather dark and spooky markets, and government functionaries stayed in their government function building and had meetings and enjoyed glazed breakfast pastries with their lattes, and the farmers sold their beans and carrots and rutabagas at horribly low prices, and were poor, and the people bought their beans and carrots and maybe 3 rutabagas because 3 of those God awful things are enough for any people, at horribly high prices and were poor too, and the Horrors reported trading profits every day but maybe 8 and partied in cabanas on weekends and market holidays and drank umbrella drinks and stuffed itchy powders up their noses and hired boy bands and got out on that dance floor and did the hoochie coochie all night long.
And the Hypocrites quit their jobs and went to work for the Horrors, and lived happily ever after with stock options and obscene year-end bonuses.
Rather horribly obscene year-end bonuses, if you want to know what I think.
November 14, 2010
Perspective
Keep buying stocks and pay us our commissions, or we’ll bury you in a rockslide of short-sales. That’s how that racket works.
Some fun, investing.
But there’s a bright side to this too. Short-sellers afford their foils deep insight into the darker forces of Evil.
By shorting, mob armies from Hell lay a demonic overhang of bogus securities atop authentic issues owned by righteous Gangland customers, and then rain this faux paper down upon them. As long as honest, salt of the Earth types keep accumulating enough real stock, market prices kind of zigzag upwards through gaps in the archenemy’s infernal barrage. Once righteous souls start for cover, however, the pummeling intensifies, battering quotes downward, crushing markets if Satan’s ruthless minions scare the Lord’s flock away, as so often happens, otherwise pinning God’s lambs down while Crime Family hit men flank out in the darkness of SEC oversight to slaughter them with blades. It’s a prolonged battle then. Session after session after session. Torture by endless string of down days.
A bleeding, a.k.a. the death of a thousand cuts, and we‘re taking those kinds of hits right now, crimestopper fans. It was brutal out there last week.
The Holy Bible views the primal struggle between Good and Evil as mortal hand-to-hand combat, and clearly you and I enter the fray ourselves forking the hard-earned family savings over to Crime Lords. Good Book also says we lose.
But win upon finally reaching Heaven, making everything just hunky-dory, at least then anyway, though kind of rendering you a stone cold loser at the end, it would otherwise seem.
What gives our tormentors the right?
Bribing Washington, plain and simple. Now and again corporate types get busted for slipping payola to foreign officials, but making “campaign contributions” here is somehow okay. Our justice system, already rendered unabashedly unjust by assuming that all its citizens know all its laws, totally breaks down when enabling systemic political corruption. The Financial Crime Maggot is domestic officialdom’s most generous benefactor.
What kind of people are we? Doesn’t anybody care?
Maybe, but the media’s owned by the corporations too, and voices of dissent are drowned out by “journalists” who can’t possibly fail to see what’s going on, but are willing, if not eager, to puff their feathers for blue chip perps paying them to jabber on about something else. Anything else it would seem, to listen to them.
The type who find that part amusing, we’ve observed.
That Gangland’s Hell-bent aristocracy can flourish taking God’s law-abiding victims down with what amounts to highway robbery at the intersection of buyer v. seller is hilarious to those who make words say whatever The Man wants, and not think twice about it.
Which brings us to perspective. The working Joe cannot support his family here. His job is overseas, his wages fractionalized to yuans and rupees on the dollar. American Dreamholders are technically bankrupt. Collapsed home prices cratered their personal net worth, exacerbated by corrosive home equity loan racketeering.
Investors and the outfits they invest in are pouring money offshore hand over fist. Things are peachy there.
Meanwhile, an imminent financial apocalypse threatens to stomp what’s left of our humbled existence and squish it underfoot. Without material tax hikes or dismantled boondoggles, probably both, Government soon won’t be able to find anyone to buy its debt at anything remotely close to par. When that happens, the Ship of State sinks, her fuel lines fatally severed by an explosion in the engine room. Mismanaging extravagant military escapades with tax cuts, W and Bam have placed a fiscal IED inside our nautical metaphor, primed to go off some years out but perilously close given the timeframe our bomb squad will need to do something about it whenever they can schedule that in.
Particularly in the midst of economic depression. Forget what you read elsewhere. Those pens get paid to say it isn’t, just like they ignore our un-and-under-employment rate of maybe 40% these days. Come to Tennessee and try telling these long faces this is just recession. Or that now-vanished jobs inside empty factories will come back ever.
Or Ohio, or pretty much anywhere outside your metropolitan coastal shoreline communities.
If you haven’t studied economics, and for some who tried, we’re getting at hyperinflation here, now a chilling tad closer than just over the horizon, thanks to the new fiscal adolescents enrolling in Congress on January 3rd. Picture your life sidekick headed for the grocery store behind a wheelbarrow full of dollar bills, where she/he finds prices 50% higher than they were last week, a bargain at half what they‘ll be 7 days from now. That’s the most likely scenario as dangers loom today.
Understand, the country’s beyond the point where traditional spending cuts will work. Unless tax revenues get unplugged and/or whole Government programs are rent asunder, the budget’s toast. It truly is all about 1) tax hikes, and you know where mindless posturing puts Republicans on that limb, and/or 2) downsizing bureaucracy and the Democratic propensity to stuff its big fat voting underbelly with social pork.
So why worry about short-sellers or financial racketeering?
We’re not sure The Post has an answer for that one. But the country’s got a Satan-spawned pack of Wall Street thugs out there, basically un-policed, the same black-hearted sort who buried various peoples in the civilized world and Iceland in 1720 (twice), 1769, 1796/97, 1819, 1837, 1847, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1882, 1884, 1893, 1896, 1901, 1907, 1929, 1937/38, 1973/74, 1980, 1982, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1997 (twice), 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007 (twice), 2008/09, 2009, April 27, 2010, and May 6, 2010, not to mention all the clever little issue-specific plummets, freefalls, plops, splats, downdrafts, and tailspins victimizing population segments at every mob bloodletting in between, and if you have to go around fixing things anyway, you might as well start with demons.
Who knows, somebody might finally go to jail.
Investor Aside: Long ago, a German survivor of their notorious Weimar Republic's struggle with hyperinflation in 1922/23 told us he would go into it holding industrial assets like non-financial common stocks and businesses themselves if anything like that ever threatened him again. Half a century had passed, and he was still wary of fixed income securities. In what we'd allocated as the bond portion of his portfolio, he made us take a modest position in gold bars instead.
Some fun, investing.
But there’s a bright side to this too. Short-sellers afford their foils deep insight into the darker forces of Evil.
By shorting, mob armies from Hell lay a demonic overhang of bogus securities atop authentic issues owned by righteous Gangland customers, and then rain this faux paper down upon them. As long as honest, salt of the Earth types keep accumulating enough real stock, market prices kind of zigzag upwards through gaps in the archenemy’s infernal barrage. Once righteous souls start for cover, however, the pummeling intensifies, battering quotes downward, crushing markets if Satan’s ruthless minions scare the Lord’s flock away, as so often happens, otherwise pinning God’s lambs down while Crime Family hit men flank out in the darkness of SEC oversight to slaughter them with blades. It’s a prolonged battle then. Session after session after session. Torture by endless string of down days.
A bleeding, a.k.a. the death of a thousand cuts, and we‘re taking those kinds of hits right now, crimestopper fans. It was brutal out there last week.
The Holy Bible views the primal struggle between Good and Evil as mortal hand-to-hand combat, and clearly you and I enter the fray ourselves forking the hard-earned family savings over to Crime Lords. Good Book also says we lose.
But win upon finally reaching Heaven, making everything just hunky-dory, at least then anyway, though kind of rendering you a stone cold loser at the end, it would otherwise seem.
What gives our tormentors the right?
Bribing Washington, plain and simple. Now and again corporate types get busted for slipping payola to foreign officials, but making “campaign contributions” here is somehow okay. Our justice system, already rendered unabashedly unjust by assuming that all its citizens know all its laws, totally breaks down when enabling systemic political corruption. The Financial Crime Maggot is domestic officialdom’s most generous benefactor.
What kind of people are we? Doesn’t anybody care?
Maybe, but the media’s owned by the corporations too, and voices of dissent are drowned out by “journalists” who can’t possibly fail to see what’s going on, but are willing, if not eager, to puff their feathers for blue chip perps paying them to jabber on about something else. Anything else it would seem, to listen to them.
The type who find that part amusing, we’ve observed.
That Gangland’s Hell-bent aristocracy can flourish taking God’s law-abiding victims down with what amounts to highway robbery at the intersection of buyer v. seller is hilarious to those who make words say whatever The Man wants, and not think twice about it.
Which brings us to perspective. The working Joe cannot support his family here. His job is overseas, his wages fractionalized to yuans and rupees on the dollar. American Dreamholders are technically bankrupt. Collapsed home prices cratered their personal net worth, exacerbated by corrosive home equity loan racketeering.
Investors and the outfits they invest in are pouring money offshore hand over fist. Things are peachy there.
Meanwhile, an imminent financial apocalypse threatens to stomp what’s left of our humbled existence and squish it underfoot. Without material tax hikes or dismantled boondoggles, probably both, Government soon won’t be able to find anyone to buy its debt at anything remotely close to par. When that happens, the Ship of State sinks, her fuel lines fatally severed by an explosion in the engine room. Mismanaging extravagant military escapades with tax cuts, W and Bam have placed a fiscal IED inside our nautical metaphor, primed to go off some years out but perilously close given the timeframe our bomb squad will need to do something about it whenever they can schedule that in.
Particularly in the midst of economic depression. Forget what you read elsewhere. Those pens get paid to say it isn’t, just like they ignore our un-and-under-employment rate of maybe 40% these days. Come to Tennessee and try telling these long faces this is just recession. Or that now-vanished jobs inside empty factories will come back ever.
Or Ohio, or pretty much anywhere outside your metropolitan coastal shoreline communities.
If you haven’t studied economics, and for some who tried, we’re getting at hyperinflation here, now a chilling tad closer than just over the horizon, thanks to the new fiscal adolescents enrolling in Congress on January 3rd. Picture your life sidekick headed for the grocery store behind a wheelbarrow full of dollar bills, where she/he finds prices 50% higher than they were last week, a bargain at half what they‘ll be 7 days from now. That’s the most likely scenario as dangers loom today.
Understand, the country’s beyond the point where traditional spending cuts will work. Unless tax revenues get unplugged and/or whole Government programs are rent asunder, the budget’s toast. It truly is all about 1) tax hikes, and you know where mindless posturing puts Republicans on that limb, and/or 2) downsizing bureaucracy and the Democratic propensity to stuff its big fat voting underbelly with social pork.
So why worry about short-sellers or financial racketeering?
We’re not sure The Post has an answer for that one. But the country’s got a Satan-spawned pack of Wall Street thugs out there, basically un-policed, the same black-hearted sort who buried various peoples in the civilized world and Iceland in 1720 (twice), 1769, 1796/97, 1819, 1837, 1847, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1882, 1884, 1893, 1896, 1901, 1907, 1929, 1937/38, 1973/74, 1980, 1982, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1997 (twice), 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007 (twice), 2008/09, 2009, April 27, 2010, and May 6, 2010, not to mention all the clever little issue-specific plummets, freefalls, plops, splats, downdrafts, and tailspins victimizing population segments at every mob bloodletting in between, and if you have to go around fixing things anyway, you might as well start with demons.
Who knows, somebody might finally go to jail.
Investor Aside: Long ago, a German survivor of their notorious Weimar Republic's struggle with hyperinflation in 1922/23 told us he would go into it holding industrial assets like non-financial common stocks and businesses themselves if anything like that ever threatened him again. Half a century had passed, and he was still wary of fixed income securities. In what we'd allocated as the bond portion of his portfolio, he made us take a modest position in gold bars instead.
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