We used to not figure it that way. We do now to some extent, not much choice lately to be honest. Not so much part of any "wealth equation" as a "twist-tie used to knot a fraying rope" but I think that's in line with what you were asking about.

Anecdotal oddity here btw, since I knew most of what that article quoted about the shrinking credit lines already, we got a credit limit increase from Discover today out of the blue.

I'm annoyed with the credit score problem as we're likely going to be looking for a house about then, particularly with prices down a bit, and will have enough money saved up under today's rules.

SI

Ok, the timing on this is just eerie for me personally. I realize the NSS MSNBC story we were talking about maybe 50 posts ago has been out there a few months, but I just ran across it over the past week.

Well, now Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer have started up this little fued where Stewart makes Cramer look like a total ass for, well, recommending Bear Stearns a couple of weeks before it went from $60 to $2.

So, what does Cramer do? He goes on the Today show this morning to attack Stewart and, well, gets made to look like an ass with the clips of The Daily Show. (Then he goes on Morning Joe and Joe is a tool and makes fun of Stewart for not being able to predict the economy. Honestly, this looks a lot like the leadup to that Crossfire interview where he drops the line "The lead-in to my show is puppets making crank calls, what's your excuse?")

Cramer's handlers need to tell him this is a battle he can't win.

And, frankly, if this escalates any further- Cramer gets a real spotlight shown on him because, frankly, everyone loves giving free press to The Daily Show since it's a funny 2 minutes of news that they don't have to do anything with except ask CC for permission. (Secretly, I'd love to see the NSS story blow up on there, but, seriously, it's The Daily Show- news doesn't and shouldn't break there.)

SI

yeah Cramer should let this one go, Like Santelli did. no win sitch.

What's odd is that he wasn't even that harsh on Cramer. Unless there was another segment I missed? I mean, other people in the same segment got hit much worse, I thought.

And also, Cramer is an ass to people who are wrong. The last time I watched the show he was making fun of people that told him Washington Mutual was going to be fine. I'd expect him to be a guy who could take it and dish it out.

Jim Cramer is going to be a guest on The Daily Show Thursday night.

That should clear up why they are doing this now.. :)

That was the original segment. Cramer made some comments in an online editorial so Stewart put on that mean hat tonight and hit hard last night and then again tonight. Check the intro segments from today and yesterday on TheDailyShow.com.

SI

I don't think it was particularly mean. Cramer said that he never told people to buy Bear Stearns 6 days before it collapsed (technically, he told people not to sell Bear Stearns at this point), so Stewart conceded the point. And then showed clips of Cramer telling people to buy Bear Stearns anywhere from 1 week to several months prior to Bear's collapse. :D

I'm not saying it wasn't deserved. I'm just saying, there are a few days where Stewart hits harder than others. He gets a little mean edge to his commentary and this was one of those times (check out his stuff about Limbaugh last week- same thing- but I hadn't seen him really do that for a few weeks before)

SI

damn, GE's rating got cut this morning. Im still wading through all the info and hope that this is priced in over the last 3 weeks where I swam against the current.

Looks like preliminarily the markets like the 'stable' comment that came with it.

if cramer can't take what he dishes out than he should stfu

According to one blogger I read, he shouldn't take it from Jon Stewart because Jon Stewart was wrong about the surge!

You guys are taking this Cramer-Stewart thing serious. He's a comedian, Stewart, that always stages fights with other people.

Right. Cramer has been a guest on the Daily Show (and Colbert Report) several times in the past, and if Cramer "couldn't take what he dishes out", he wouldn't be going on the Daily Show tonight. It's not like this is some talking head on TV that Stewart doesn't know and suddenly decided to pick a fight with.

looks like the nice timing of the 'better than expected' news plus the ratings cut leads to anice upside on GE today along with the broader markets. Ive been fairly busy so I havnt seen what Gold's been doing and the credit markets so Im not sure if this is showing up in other markets but perhsp, just perhaps, I might be right about a nice relief rally. although I'd be shocked if we didnt end some pretty substantial upsides with a big fat retest of the lows here in April.

When it comes to the media and GE, just plug your ears, again they are just spouting noise to try and explain things after the fact, have not had heard one who adequately explained how it can go up after a downgrade, but plenty try.

The correct answer is: it doesn't matter, don't even try to explain it. Prices fluctuate because they are prices, thats just what they do! Underneath everything, GE has plenty of financing, plenty of outright cash... so the debt rating is hardly going to sink them.

In other news, evil short monster tried a speculative BUY last week Friday, trading SDS and SKF for BAC and JPM, you can probably guess what I'm doing tommorrow (it rhymes with hell). I don't trust banks farther than I can throw them. But a one week play for 50%+++ (if there is no downtick tommorrow it could be 65%) is nothing to sneeze at. Citigroup was similarly low and risen, but they have been in the news too much.

I've had lucky timing with the speculation, but am backing away from it at the moment and focusing on long buildup. I remember this time in 2008 was a tricky one (fiscal years do matter in day-trading I swears, although I do not understand exactly how, and the average fiscal year ends in December-February...).

My god. Stewart ripped him a new one. That was no softball- that was an ambush

SI

Stewart get dismissed many times as a comedian, but when he decides to go serious, he can really get his point across.

Like I said earlier in the week- this feels a hell of a lot like the Crossfire incident.

SI

Did you notice how defensive Cramer got when Stewart brought up the point about the media pundits being in cahoots with some traders? Straight out of the Deep Capture accusations.

Wow.

Stewart absolutely destroyed Cramer. I figured he'd get a few jabs in, but that was incredible. I actually felt sorry for Cramer at the end.

That was one of the videos features on the Deep Capture site:

Jim Cramer Channels DeepCapture | Deep Capture

SI

Well, not a bad week at all. Around a 10% rebound, lets hope this continues.

Any bets for next week?

FUN (Cedar Point) is up from its low by about 43%, still only at 8.63... after they announce what they are going to do with the dividend (cut in half). Like I said in Top 5 Stocks, uncertainty over dividend is one major factor, debt from acquisition is another.

Put my money where my mouth is (about even cutting the dividend in half being a good deal) and bought at 6.20 Monday, still a net loser for me overall after that one week 40%.

Lets try a new pick, hmmm....

Eh, don't laugh too hard, but I'm digging for oil again. They are already up on the week, not part of my Monday buys.... but throwing some bets that way.

XOM
PCZ
BP

Will be grabbing up bits of all three on Monday.

Likely split the positions in half.

50% to sell in 3 months or at 30% up.

Other 50% selling on any spikes, and buying when deep under my 'line'.

We'll make a game out of it, I'll announce what I get it at and where I sell.

Overall I expect the trend to be going up for these companies, but it involves enough assumptions that I strongly suggest (as with all my inane blathering) that you do not consider this investment advice and purely an entertainment value scenario! It really does have a great deal of gambling involved.

Mostly the underlying premise relies on my thoughts on production, the bloodbath of a fourth quarter, and which companies I think are going to have some lucky timing (lucky in certain actions and consequences, of their bad and good decisions will be lined up so overall this fickle market won't go to far out of my guess). Any one or all of these presumptions can be completely and absolutely terrible (such as my thought of oil being good for 70 a barrel)... so I rate this as pure speculative asshattery although it is taking the form of a buy. I may very well make more off the volatility trading portion than the 3 month long bet.

This is only vaguely connected to the thread, I know, but it slightly relates to the notions of oil demand curve being tied to 'recession fear'. My earlier statements along the lines of 'you can panic cut the price down all you want, but eventually its time to either stop selling oil entirely or getting back to business' are pretty much reflected in this little stock game.

I'll throw out my uninformed and completely useless speculation of the market in general.

I think the market might actually hit 8000 sometime this spring/early summer, but likely drops back into the low 6000 range by October again.

As far as the next week? Geez...who knows...I'll say it approaches 7400 early in the week and drops to 6900 by the end of the week.

+1

I'm sensing a joke at my expense! Fine I'll stop speculating particulars, and keep to general theories on the recession. Probably safer that way anyway.

Liquidated my GE trade today while I liked it Long term simply for solvency sake it's hard to not take a 20% gain in 10 days or so...lucky yes but it feels good to see green at the end of a trade so I took it. Not because I dont think it could go higher but simply to take an actual profit on something, anything, this year. I actually would like to reload some cash here and then in about 2 weeks start averaging into the SDS as I would expect us to crack back towards the lows we set about 2 weeks ago. I also need to be ready to average again into GOOG since Iw as way too high on that one and like the beta on it to perhaps be able to recoup on it and maybe even break even on it.

Bear market rally. Woohoo. Just be really, really, careful whenever it loses steam (and it could be weeks/months before that happens, obv. no one knows), because the drop will probably be stupidly large and quick.

Well, Flasch- AIG basically fessed up to doing what we were talking about in the other thread. They're the intermediary paying out big taxpayer bucks as insurance on credit default swaps.

A.I.G. Lists Banks It Paid With U.S. Bailout Funds - NYTimes.com

I don't know if I can possibly put to words how angry a lot of this makes me. Again, we're still trying to reward the companies that put us in this mess and all they are doing is taking that cash and hoarding it, trying to grab their share while the ship goes down.

I don't give a damn about the $1B in bonuses. Just like everything else during this whole process- people get distracted by the absolute stupidest things- flying corporate jets, $400M for the Mall as part of a $700B bailout - stupid ass windowdressing. This outrage should be focused on the big picture, not on the stupid little things. I mean, we're pissing and moaning about less than $1B on an ill conceived plan that's already over $150B and is going to go up.

SI

For game purposes:

In XOM at 67.2
In PCZ at 23.0
In BP at 38.2

First spike sell on all three is autoset for 10% gain (i.e. half my shares in XOM will be sold at 74, and so on).

I'll admit, its tempting to take a net 35% on my GE plays (averaged) today, however, I'm trying to stoke up a real long portfolio so I'll bet it all on Contra-Flasch I guess! :) Obviously this is subject to change if I know news is coming and want to lock in returns before a down-bump (particularly if it goes over 13 short term and any news is coming). Can always get back in for the long position, all I lose is a little bit of the upswing... gotta pick the risk I want to take.

I'm out of banks for a while, cleaned up BAC and JPM on Friday, technically would still be making money on them... oh well, I like locking in one week gains. That is why I can't fault your GE move, never a dumb thing to lock up sure gains really, all you are losing is opportunity cost (which is worth its weight in nothing!).

I personally still have it out for the banks, more likely to hit up SKF than SDS... maybe later this week after 120. I'm touchy with shorts in rallies and no bad news to rely on coming soon.

Login required. :(

AIG is a candidate for completely wipe out and replace with government control until the business can be parcelled out to competitors. We are literally paying billions for them to redistribute millions to their owners and 'excellent employees that must be retained even though they don't understand how risk works'. Ya they are covering the insurance they sold with vast portions of the money, but we could have done that without the actual company itself, and cheaper.

Yeah. That's why I personally am holding out until the fundamentals start to get better. This is all speculative, sentiment-driven peaks and troughs.

In other news - Barclays is looking to sell iShares.

http://www.pionline.com/apps/pbcs.dl...YREG/903169997

But you're missing value if you do that. I knew we were in a bubble in 2000, but that didn't keep me from dumping money in and riding the wave. The trick is to hop off early, not late ;)

Outside of the bonuses which I think we can all agree are retarded I am not against this bad bank play. It is the orderly unwinding I had been talking about.

you're right i am. i just need to basically take the plunge back in and get my feet wet.

honestly right now i'd prolly just go staples+healthcare overweight with solid names, a couple plays on commodoties (maybe a commodoties ETF), and short the broad index.

frankly, for all that I work in finance now and I understand the markets, I have never personally been a big investor, so part of it is a commitment of time necessary to get things up and running and the time needed to follow it daily.

Oh goodie. Yet another example of massive government spending benefiting the relative few. To the typical nuthouse AFL-CIO executive - the point of the middle class (and the stimulus) is to get/retain as many people as possible into that class - not to reward fewer number of workers when unemployment is so high. So how is Obama going to get 3 million people working with this stimulus when there is already significant restrictions on who can get the job and the timing of getting the jobs (there are only so many big contractors of highway and energy projects). Fuck the labor unions and their elitist, feudalistic ways.

The problem is I have:

1) Doesn't the government due any homework? Handing over billions to billions of dollars without any strings? You can't turn around and blame them for being greedy, when your stupid enough to allow it to happen?

2) The contracts are binding (before the bailout, I believe)? So how does the government overturn those contracts in the court of law?

I believe what I heard the AG of NY say today was that by taking the bailout $ the company was admitting to insolvency and therefore the contracts from before became non-binding....who knows, its ridiculous though.

put enough lawyers into a room and they'll come up with a way out of the contracts

Chuck Grassley is my new BFF.

fricking idiot.

+1

This is an insurance company, right? Take the same lawyers who figure out how to not pay for someone's fully-covered emergency brain surgery, put the in a room, and I guarantee you they'll find a way to make these contracts non-binding.

In other news, this is pretty awesome:

that's a cool idea

Honest question: what has you so riled up here? If it is the fact AIG was bailed out at all, then I understand the general point--we shouldn't bail out poorly run businesses etc.

But, if your complaint is specifically that they used the money to pay some bills due to other banks, I'm not sure I follow. Isn't that what the bail out was for? To prevent them from defaulting, cross-defaulting, and defaulting again on all sorts of derivative and other financial contracts?

Now, maybe the argument is that they should have done a better job negotiating reduced payments to these other banks. Put yourself in Goldman's shoes, now. You're aware that your counterparty just got a very large cash injection. Why do you have any incentive to settle for less than 100 cents on the dollar?

AIG filing for bankruptcy would have been an absolute disaster. You have the complexity of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy because they were a counterparty in addition to the fun of sorting through all sorts of insurance regulations. That said, I think it's a viable argument that that sort of "medicine" is what a failing economy needed--and that takes me back to the first question. If your beef is with the bail out of AIG in general, fine. I respect that. I just disagree with the outrage that portions of the money ended up going to other banks.


As an aside, the bonus issue is a bit of a side show. The financial services industry has made its own bed here. Salaries for traders and others in the industry are relatively low and the bulk of individual compensation usually comes from the bonus. Payment of a "bonus" is always going to generate outrage in times such as this, even if it is someone's salary by another name. (Not defending AIG here, as I have no insight into their comp structure. Just noting that this may be a red herring.)

i don't think it's a sideshow at all.

Equity Derivatives Trader Salaries in New York City, NY | SimplyHired

The average salary for a derivatives trader (as an example) in NYC is $160k. That's doing quite alright, even in New York City (let alone the fact that many of them live out in the burbs where real estate may cost more but the cost-of-living is less and their real estate appreciated considerably). The argument that they merit any type of additional payment, call it a bonus or a retention award or whatever, let alone one paid for by the taxpayers, after the devestation caused by their mess has destroyed so much taxpayer equity, is ridiculous.

Really, is anyone going to shed a tear for the poor derivatives trader who has to "scrape by" on 160k a year and all of a sudden has to send his kid to public school in the suburbs instead of private school?

Frankly they should feel thankful that they still have jobs given their ineptitude.

Note: I have no problem with them receiving bonuses when the firms are doing well and bringing in revenue. But to give them million-dollar bonuses with taxpayer money when the firms have been bleeding money and seeking government bailouts for months is patently ridiculous.

Three quick points...

1. You sort of made my first one. Side show may have been the wrong word, but I think red herring applies. Bonuses are an easy target for public outrage.

2. And the financial industry has made its bed by paying folks largely in the form of a bonus. Sure, you'd still be a little ticked if a guy made a $500,000 salary, but it doesn't carry the same sting of learning that someone made $250,000 in salary and GOT A QUARTER MILLION DOLLAR BONUS. (Whether they deserve jobs, salary, bonus, etc. is a different debate entirely.)

3. You're talking about one tenth of one percent of their bailout money. Again--it's symbolism. Plain and simple. As I think about it more, it's probably a good spot to vent and take out frustration, but it really is a penny down the wishing well.