September 2008

Most New Jobs at Poverty Level, Do not Require a Degree

How many times have you heard the reason Americans are having their jobs offshore outsourced or displaced through insourcing is because....Americans need more Training and Education

Tell that to any PhD from one of the best schools in the United States (which means in the world), who just had their research position offshore outsourced and can't find a job. Right now you can probably dig up any Scientist in Pharmaceutical research and hear this story.

So, of all news organizations, Fox is pointing out this great lie. Please note both Obama and McCain claim the answer to our jobs being offshore outsourced is more training and education, McCain being the most oblivious to reality.

From Jobs Without a Degree Growing Fast: But Built to Last?

The Great Crash of 1929 vs. The Panic of 2008

There is no doubt that the weeks we are living through now will be remembered and studied in the decades to come. In this post I compare and contrast our crisis with the great crisis of 1929 and thereafter.

After it initially appeared that financial hemorrhaging had been staunched, in rapid succession long-standing titans of American finance -- Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and more likely than not Washington Mutual and Wachovia Bank -- all have failed in one way or another.

UPDATE 5: NEWSFLASH: RTC/RFC proposal, also new FDIC for MMFs

This just in, Treasury Secretary Paulson now confirming that the government is pursuing a plan similar to what happened to the savings and loan.

While the exact details haven't been released. I will be updating this as more news comes out. For those who aren't aware of what a Resolution Trust Corporation or RTC is, basically it's an outfit that buys the bad loans from failing banks to supply capital. Well, it's a lot more complicated than that. I will be posting a primer on this tonight. Anyways, below is an excerpt from CNBC's site.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is working on a plan that would set up a government facility to take on bad debts from financial institutions, preventing a worsening of the global credit crisis, Wall Street sources have told CNBC.

The facility would be similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation, which was set up in the late 1980s to take on all the failed thrift assets during the savings and loan crisis, these sources said.

Can America Get It's Groove Back?

I just got back from listening to Thomas Friedman do a lecture about his new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded. I left the lecture with a sense of disgust, but not for the obvious reasons. I'll give TomTom this, at least he's realized that that there limits to growth that at the very least must be overcome. This is a start.

What bothered me the most was they you had an articulate individual. Who I honestly believes wants to be constructive. Recognizing that there is a problem, but presenting an absolutely shitty solution. I left the lecture thinking about one of my childhood friends.

Dominoes - The latest Details on Financial Failures

financial dominoes

There are so many failures, mergers, sales going on, we're going to update them here.

Latest on the chopping block appears to be Morgan Stanley is considering a merger with Wachovia. I don't think this news is so bad, it appears they are simply trying to cover the possibility of a collapse, although it appears Wachovia would honor $494M of Lehman credits in it's Money market funds.

Morgan Stanley goes to China. Guess what they are doing, begging for funds.

hedge funds maybe next according to this article.

WaMu is now Junk - Update, Up on the Auction Block

This is updating news on a previous post. The waves just keep on coming like a tsunami. The fall out is happening so fast and furious it's difficult to keep up.

WaMu for Sale via Auction:

Washington Mutual, the nation's largest thrift, has put itself up for sale, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified people briefed on the matter.

This actually was started a few days ago, via Goldman Sachs.

Now an auction implies ...what someone can get it for nothing or ? Details unclear but clearly the next wave in the storm.

What is DeLeveraging?

swarmsAll of a sudden words are buzzing like flies over the carnage.   Swatted and flying in rapid succession from analysts everywhere is the term  DeLeveraging.   Now what kind of beige, innocuous glossing over term does that imply on what's really happening?    Seeking Alpha defines deleveraging as Feedback Loops Gone Wild.    Ok, so what does that mean?

Virtuous circles (and their accompanying animal spirits) give way to vicious cycles, in which lower prices beget write-downs, which beget lower prices

Zacks tells you it's when:

Money goes to money heaven

Yesterday AIG had a AAA Credit Rating

CNBC today absolutely ripped a Standards and Poors spokesman on why yesterday AIG had a AAA credit rating and today, after this deal, it is now A-. They said Standards and Poors is complicit in this disaster and asked the question, which was avoided, never answered on how AIG could have a AAA credit rating until today. Great job CNBC and that is a very good question on these credit ratings companies did not downgrade financial institutions much earlier. The S&P representative did not answer the questions. Watch this video clip and see the disgust upon their faces at the end. Question after question and they just don't get a straight answer.

Credit Rating Details:

The Plain Truth by Honest Politicians ???

Today, that is an oxymoron. We all know that politicians, even those who mean well, sometimes make promises they can't keep. It is a sad fact of life that, to get elected, they make promises that they just can't deliver on once elected. But we, as Americans, expect them to make promises: bigger this, better that, or more of everything. We expect our politicians to make our lives better than it was the last election cycle (this time, that won't be hard). But have they been misleading us just to get elected? Whose fault is it that they are forced to make promises that in reality we know can't be forefilled? Why can't politicians just be honest with us?

Why I'm a little worried about the drop in oil

Can't sleep, been thinking about the price of oil, worrying about it to be honest. Now you may be thinking "Venom, what are you crazy? A putz? A drop in the price of oil is a good thing!" And I would reply, yes, under normal circumstances it is. But these days, things ain't so normal. Actually, right now, oil is up since yesterday, but it's been in a slide for the past week or so.
A prophetic lunch

A couple years ago, I had lunch with a trading friend/mentor of mine at Hackney's on Harms Road. He was an older gentleman, made his money in options, in fact was one of the first to trade at the CBOE back in the 1970s. We had just gotten back from one of those sales seminars from Equis, a company that makes a product called Metastock. While gobbling down on Hackney's infamous onion loaf and later cheeseburgers, topics ranging from the software to commodities came up. This was around 2002, and Enron was still in the headlines.

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