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The Stock Room page 66
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(Continued from page 65) Where the hell was the SEC back then?? All this did today was to create unwarranted fear in the markets, pushed the volatility index .VIX up 15.9%, and boosted the profits of a bunch of short-term traders/traitors. NOTHING MORE! I’m no real fan of Goldman Sachs and they’ll get what they deserve, but we need to go after the real criminals and not some Obama punching bags so he can score some ‘Wright Points’. _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 04/15/2010 @5:00 pm EST:
OK people, you all scoffed at my 5% capital gains tax proposal! Most said that I was the only one who felt this way about promoting business and long term investing through a lower gains tax. Well, guess what: I’m not alone! William George, former Medtronic chairman & CEO thinks the same thing; he just doesn’t go far enough on the short side.
STOP THE INSANITY NOW! Revised Tax Rules: 1. Capital gains under <6 months - 55% tax on capital gains 2. Capital gains 6 > 12 months - 45% tax on capital gains 3. Capital gains 1 > 2 years - 35% tax on capital gains 4. Capital gains 2 > 5 years - 18% tax on capital gains 5. Capital gains 5+ years - 5% tax on capital gains 6. Most critical of all — Institute a capital gains tax of 55% on ALL short sales not directly tied to a long buy by a licensed hedge fund. _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 04/03/2010 @8:00 am EST:
Wait a minute! Wasn’t part of this health care reform supposed to force everyone who doesn’t have health insurance to buy it, SO that it will LOWER the cost for the rest of us?
Halfway through this video, the reporter from the Huffington Post reads directly from the part of the new health care law that says as he puts it, the part where there really is “NO PENALTY” for “NO INSURANCE”, just fancy wording to scare everyone into thinking there will be if you don’t buy it. Remember those 2 words shouted out, “You lie!” well who is lying to who NOW? Are we going to get savings due to increased coverage of others OR NOT? Is my #2 scenario in my 03/24/10 blog really going to come true? Is this better health insurance, or just some kind of ponzi scheme ego trip? _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 04/02/2010 @6:00 pm EST:
And the write off’s continue! I wonder just how many future jobs will be lost for each dollar of this?
Fri, Mar 26 3M sees 1Q charge of $85M-$90M for health reform AP Sat, Mar 27 AT&T to Take $1 Billion Charge for Health Care at The New York Times Mon, Mar 29 Prudential to take $100M health care charge in 1Q AP Mon, Mar 29 Allegheny Tech to take $5M health care charge AP Tue, Mar 30 ITW sees $22 mln charge due to healthcare reform at Reuters Wed, Mar 31 Boeing plans $150M charge from health care reform AP Thu April 1 Verizon to take $970M charge from health care bill AP Fri April 2 Kroger expects higher tax bill from healthcare act at Reuters
Running total: $2,339,000,000.00 That’s BILLIONS! _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 04/01/2010 @7:00 am EST:
Hedge Fund Managers’ Pay Roared Back Last Year
Take a long, hard look at those faces above. (Please note that several are missing that really were the true culprits.) These guys are the faces of everyone else’s misery! So how did they make all that money in 2009? Answer: they bought all the banks and other assets that these same guys almost forced out of business in 2008 and early 2009. What no one says, or even wants to admit, is that these same guys are the ones that naked shorted through rumorboarding the banks’ mortgages assets in the 1st place! Come on people… wake up! Stop blaming the banks and blame the real villains! The 4 Golden Rules 1. Immediately, reinstate the Up-Tick Rule. 2. Crack down on naked short selling. Require stock certificate #'s when a short sale needs to be covered, including ETF’s. 3. Institute some rules on how the media ’reports’ news in order to prevent rumor-boarding. Not censorship… just sensibility & responsibility. 4. Pass a Wind-Fall Capital Gains Tax of 65% on ALL short sales! _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 03/24/2010 @5:00 pm EST:
This may seem a little harsh and if I have gotten some technical’s wrong please correct me, but this ENTIRE pre-existing conditions thing is just NOT right.
Þ For sick adults – If you’re already sick and didn’t want to pay for insurance ,then isn’t this just a bailout? Þ For NON-sick adults – If you’re an adult and not sick, wouldn’t it be far better just to pay the small penalties proposed and wait to get sick before getting insurance? Why pay when you don’t have to? Þ For sick children – my heart & prayers go out to your entire family, and whatever changes that need to be made to ALL insurance policies Nationwide to cover these children… should be made immediately! Þ For CHILDREN NOT YET BORN, but who’s mother is on crack or heroine – This child is ALREADY sick and has pre-existing conditions before he or she is even born! NOW everyone else will be paying a lifetime of medical costs for this child instead of just getting an abortion, BECAUSE that’s NOT covered!
Now that’s really sick… that we all have to pay for something that didn’t need to occur in the 1st place, all because a few did not want to allow us to pay to have it stopped! Right to life! BS – right to getting everyone else to pay for this crack-baby is more like it. _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 03/23/2010 @5:00 pm EST:
I said I promised not to mention ‘The Shorting of America’ anymore; especially what happened to Lehman’s - WRONG! Now I understand that Rep. Barney Frank may call David Einhorn to appear and testify in the Lehman’s debacle. Boy, would I love to get Barney’s ear for just 5 minutes before, because I’m sure they’ll be calling him down to testify as some kind of hero instead of the villain and instigator he truly was. In this video: that gossip columnist Charlie Gassyparino (who seems to have been thrown off CNBS and moved to Fox) signals this possible appearance, and portrays Einhorn as the savior of the era. Hey Charlie, listen to some of your own videos in my prior blog where you were calling Lehman’s takedown a travesty at Einhorn’s hands. What a media hungry hypocrite! Again, they are letting Einhorn’s abuse of ‘mark to market’ against Lehman’s to be perverted into some sort of glorified achievement! I won’t rehash it! _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 03/13/2010 @10:00 am EST:
Last Man Standing
I guess I’m the last man standing on ‘The Shorting of America’. Since July 9, 2007 when the ‘up-tick rule’ was eliminated, I have been screaming that an upcoming storm by shorts was coming. The storm hit in October ’07 when ’mark-to-market’ M2M went into effect and Bill Ackman brought down Ambac Insurance. The storm broke the dikes in September ’08 when David Einhorn brought down Lehman’s; and the rest of us have been cleaning up the mess ever since. Well, now that a horribly biased report on the death of Lehman’s came out yesterday – I no longer can fight the fight. I believe that the narrator is still trying to get the message across with his ’Stock Shock’ movie, but I will give you your last look at what these shorts did to Lehman’s and then move on. Just remember that until we ALL resolve and face the truth behind what has occurred – nothing will change, and these swings and volatility in our markets and our lives will never cease, either. In context, let us all try to remember that Lehman’s takedown really went into earnest right after the shorts convinced everyone that Bear Sterns had to be destroyed in March ’08. Bear was the initial sacrificial lamb in this entire mess and once the shorts figured out their game plan, they set their sights on Lehman’s. At this time, MOST – even the biggest critics latter on – reported the truth about Lehman’s and how they were trying to fix things and lower their exposure to leverage and less quality assets. No one at the time thought this could happen OVERNIGHT and most were willing to give Lehman’s the appropriate time to do so. Thurs. Jun. 5 2008 | 12:16 PM[05:00] But this wasn’t good enough for the shorts that brought Lehman’s down. Even some of the CURRENT lists of ‘I told you so’ critics believed that Lehman’s was doing the best they could under trying circumstances. Mon. Jun. 9 2008 | 10:14 AM[05:02] But this wasn’t going to help David Einhorn and others, because Lehman’s was still trading around $30.00 and their short positions were possibly in jeopardy. Naked shorting and rumorboarding of M2M holdings was the deal of the day, and all that needed to be done was to batter everyone day after day about Lehman’s poor real estate holdings and CDO’s. I think I counted 8 pages of video links on CNBS alone, on the upcoming Lehman’s destruction. Mon. Jun. 9 2008 | 8:11 AM[10:36] Again, remember that M2M was being manipulated to prove whatever perspective you had, and whether those California properties that Einhorn said were worthless were actually worthless or not, well that was the obscure issue in play. Right now those very same properties are just worth_less and were actually never worthless, but that didn’t matter back then – the shorts had Lehman’s over a barrel. In 3 short months they succeeded to further batter the stock price and investor confidence down so far that a ‘run on the bank’ occurred and that was the end. The end of all of us, that is. NOW, we get this stupid report and everyone says it was accounting fraud and irregularities that caused this. Lehman’s was hiding this and Lehman’s was doing that. NOT one mention of how Einhorn manipulated this, or how Einhorn naked shorted that. Now the shorts have become the hero’s once again, and not the villains. Once again our bank CEO’s, like John Mack of Morgan Stanley are made out to be buffoons instead of the true hero's they are. Fri. Mar. 12 2010 | 7:45 PM[07:44] You don’t like some long standing financial regulations that are being employed—fine change them and give people time to adjust. What we allowed shorts to do was to FORCE IMMEDIATE DRASTIC changes down our throats and all for their own selfish greed, but with no regard to the effects it would have for everyone else. I never had any financial stake in Lehman’s. I also have fortunately been able to recover most, but not all of my post Lehman’s financial loses. One of the lucky ones I guess! But there are many out there still suffering because of the death of Lehman’s and what occurred afterwards. We are all still paying the consequences for this, and it galls the hell out of me that these shorts made billions from this, YES BILLIONS, and probably paid little to no taxes on those profits too boot! But what can I do anymore? Everyone seems hell bent on letting media hysteria and ratings determine how we view the past. Everyone seems hell bent on rewriting history to serve his or her own agenda and stock position. And, everyone is still hell bent on looking for blame in “... all the wrong places.” _______________________________________ Does this sound familiar?
Wall Street Journal March 8, 2010, 6:29 PM ET Greek Prime Minister: Traders are Conspiring Against Us _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 03/08/2010 @6:00 am EST:
I had a long conversation with a friend yesterday, which started out as an Obama bash, but quickly lead to his total acknowledgment and then acceptance that he did NOT appreciate the timeline of the past 10 years. After I asked him to stop JUST pointing blame he then, maybe saw the light.
Þ 9/11 Þ The FED lowers interest rates to almost 0%. Þ Fannie and Freddie are given a more explicit mandate to make sure everyone has a home of their own – no matter what! Þ 2004 the bank regulators (at someone’s urging) allows insurance companies, banks, investment banks, virtually anyone who wanted it to LEVERAGE their balance sheets up… up… and away to 30% > 40% > 50% based on assets on hand. Þ July, 2007 the SEC gives shorts a green flag to do whatever they want by eliminating a 70-year-old rule – the uptick rule. Þ Then the REAL CRIME in November, 2007 when FASB tells everyone to ‘Mark to Market’ all their leveraged assets virtually to zero. (I still ask where FASB got the insider technical’s for this short seller trillion-dollar payday!)
What occurred after this was an almost immediate take down of the monoline insurers. The stage was then set for all the rest. You want to blame Bush… yeah he sure started the ball rolling. You want to blame Obama… yeah he’s done nothing to fix the real issues. You want to blame the bank CEO’s who were “Just following orders!” Fine, blame all these people as long as you include YOURSELF and especially all those SHORTS that were the real reason we’re at this point.
Side Note: I am relinking the following site as a reminder to my above friend as to why his Prez is NOT a boomer. _______________________________________ apppro’s take for 03/06/2010 @10:00 am EST:
A couple of weeks ago I asked the question: “What have we learned?” As you may remember my conclusion was: (Continued on page 67) |
