Archive for June, 2009

  • Don’t Believe Everything You Read
    Posted by on June 26th, 2009 at 5:44 pm, Comments: 0

    One of the mantras my supervisors taught me on the trading desk was not to make other people smarter – if you hear someone say [...]

  • AIG Dumps Toxic Assets on the Fed
    Posted by on June 25th, 2009 at 4:09 pm, Comments: 0

    AIG, unable to sell its two “crown jewel” businesses to anyone for real money, has slapped theoretical values on them and transferred stakes to the [...]

  • Leverage Baby!
    Posted by on June 25th, 2009 at 4:07 pm, Comments: 0

    Presented without comment: “ProShares Launches First ETFs to Provide Triple Exposure to S&P 500® Press Release Source: ProFunds Group On Thursday June 25, 2009, 10:17 [...]

  • Eff You Vonage and Random Readings
    Posted by on June 24th, 2009 at 9:11 pm, Comments: 0

    I am a customer of Vonage – the VOIP phone service. I actually like them – they have some pretty cool features (like call forwarding, [...]

  • Entitlement Programs
    Posted by on June 22nd, 2009 at 6:46 pm, Comments: 0

    From AM New York – the free daily paper: “Straphangers, start bringing a broom on your commute. Because of budget constraints, the MTA has curtailed [...]

  • The Solution – Limit Leverage!
    Posted by on June 18th, 2009 at 1:19 pm, Comments: 0

    My friend Eric emailed me regarding my post “Skin in the Game,” noting that I made some good points, but asked me what my solution [...]

  • Unemployment Data – Improvement?
    Posted by on June 18th, 2009 at 1:00 pm, Comments: 0

    Two weeks ago I wrote about the increasing Unemployment Exhaustion Rate, which means more people are using up all of their unemployment benefits and will [...]

  • This Time It’s Different?
    Posted by on June 18th, 2009 at 2:31 am, Comments: 0

    I’ve previously addressed the topic of “why are we listening to the same pundits who have demonstrated a complete lack of ability to predict our [...]

  • Skin In the Game
    Posted by on June 17th, 2009 at 1:33 am, Comments: 0

    My friend Ted sent me comments from George Soros today, where the old man opined on the proposal I discussed weeks ago from Barney Frank [...]

  • Super Sized Claw Game
    Posted by on June 15th, 2009 at 3:56 pm, Comments: 0

    That’s right mofo’s – in another demonstration of my versatility, this weekend I operated the logging boom at the Dynamite In-Laws Mulch Empire in upstate [...]

  • Bajungi Tilt
    Posted by on June 11th, 2009 at 9:06 pm, Comments: 0

    There is really no other way to describe this video. BAJUNGI! As my friend Big Show put it eloquently, “Unreal. Just kill me if I [...]

  • Democracy at its Worst
    Posted by on June 10th, 2009 at 11:44 pm, Comments: 0

    The headline is “Senate Fails to Meet as Rebels Seek Support.” Oooh – what could we be talking about here? Rwanda? Pakistan? Darfur? Nope – [...]

  • Chart of the Year
    Posted by on June 10th, 2009 at 2:25 am, Comments: 0

    Kudos to Geoff at Innocent Bystanders for creating a chart that’s significantly better than my chart on the exhaustion rate. Geoff simply took the chart [...]

  • Quick Hits
    Posted by on June 9th, 2009 at 6:42 pm, Comments: 0

    1) Barney Frank GQ interview. It’s sad that the GQ interviewer spent more time asking about Barney Frank’s boyfriend than about Barney Franks financial hypocrisy. [...]

  • TARP Repayment
    Posted by on June 9th, 2009 at 4:14 pm, Comments: 0

    Today’s story is that a number of “banks” have been granted approval to repay TARP monies. What’s especially ironic is the several of these firms [...]

  • Must Read – "Do These Homeowners Deserve Help?"
    Posted by on June 7th, 2009 at 4:04 pm, Comments: 0

    From Matthew Padilla, via Calculated Risk, comes the article “Do These Homeowners Deserve Help?” “Homeowners who treated their houses like cash machines, tapping the equity [...]

  • More on Exhaustion Rate
    Posted by on June 6th, 2009 at 3:00 pm, Comments: 0

    So the folks at Seeking Alpha had the good sense to make my last post regarding the Unemployment Exhaustion Rate (KD’s World, Seeking Alpha) an [...]

  • Unemployment Data – Exhaustion Rate
    Posted by on June 4th, 2009 at 3:02 pm, Comments: 0

    I have a feeling that in the not too distant future the continuing jobless claims numbers are going to start “improving” due to a negative [...]

  • Zero Down! I Wish I Were Making This Up
    Posted by on June 4th, 2009 at 2:23 pm, Comments: 0

    I feel like I’m stuck in the movie “Groundhog Day.” A few weeks ago I read a piece about some state – I think it [...]

  • Quick Hits
    Posted by on June 4th, 2009 at 12:55 am, Comments: 0

    I loved this Karl Denninger critique of the NY Times article about homeowners having trouble getting help when they are not yet in default. “See, [...]