Archive - Jul 16, 2009

It doesn't get more surreal than this. In Federal Solicitation RFI-BPD-09-0028, the The Department Of The Treasury is seeking a contractor to provide... Humor in the Workplace. As there is $800 billion to be spent, what better way than for Tim Geithner to get himself a private court jester (with the market relying on the PPT every day at 3pm to prevent a complete and total meltdown we kinda sympathize with the morose, yet tax-troubled guy). Obama's stimulus doesn't get better than this - you, dear taxpayer, would indirectly fund some guy cracking bad jokes (most likely about the economy and politicians): now that is a way to get the economy started if there ever was one.

An interesting development in some recent bankruptcies has been § 1124 of the Bankruptcy Code, also known as the Debt Reinstatement provision. Recently used in the Spectrum Brands chapter 11, and presumably soon to be attempted in the Charter case, this approach allows "financially distressed companies seeking to use Chapter 11 to substantially delever their balance sheets by equitizing junior debt while “reinstating” existing senior debt on original terms that are more favorable to the borrower than those available in today’s financing market." In other words, this allows the best of all worlds for a bankrupt company: deleveraging due to unsecured debt equitization, while the secured debt continues paying interest at a 2005 Libor rate. With Libor soon to hit negative thanks to the US backstopping all the toxic assets in the universe, and some bufoonery by the ABA, you can bet your bottom dollar that bankruptcy lawyers and financial advisors are pitching default after default even to healthy companies, so they have screw all sorts of creditors.

Compliments of Muckety.

Spider-squid, spider-squid, does whatever a spider-squid does.

Big buck foreclosures trump green shoots.

Six takedown notices. Stop. Cause for celebration. Stop. Radio Zero to provide. Stop. 7:00 eastern. Stop. URL 15 minutes prior. Stop.

Chat up the DJ: here. Stop.

Find the feed here. End.

Does CNBC now have to pay back all those who bought stock after being pounded by this misquote over and over as an epilepsy inducing Breaking News box? That, of course, assumes the powers that be will allow the market to move down even 1 point from the most recent artificially high level.

SPY Out Of The Money Vol spiking relative to At The Money. Two days ahead of OPEX, market is gearing for some fireworks.

"They are literally stealing a hundred million dollars a day. Goldman Sachs is stealing every day on the floor of the exchange. They should be in the Hague, they should be taken on financial terrorism charges. They should all be thrown in jail"

Well, at least one person says what he thinks.

As if on cue, Blogger informed Zero Hedge today that it had received six takedown notices. Six.

Surprisingly this isn't the title of an alarmist book by an obscure author urging you to buy krugerrands and remote arable property. Instead it's a sober, substantive quantitative analysis series by Deutsche Bank's very smart Richard Parkus.

The HFRXEMN plotted since the time that Goldman Sachs barged on the liquidity provisioning scene with their SLP cover for PT domination. Maybe the NASDAQ should take a look at this and come up with some follow up complaints about what a scam the NYSE's program to gift 5 millisecond latency packet sniffing to 85 Broad truly is.

Update on the petition of "scholars" who believe the Fed's status quo is the only way to maintain their tenure. The full list for your convenience. Alas, Ben Dover from DeVry is nowhere to be found in the list. Also, #29 is not all that surprising. #33 and #215 were, of course, to be expected.

Many readers have queried how it is that investors could be so stupid to invest capital, either secured, mezzanine or heaven forbid, equity, in commercial real estate properties over the past several months. Zero Hedge would like to present some of the key pages from an investment solicitation book prepared by a major investment bank, which delineates just how it was that some of these very firms that now report massive profits, effectively took a complete piece of excrement and repackaged it as something that investors may actually generate returns on.

Spare yourself the commercial interruptions (and an artificially
inflated Nielsen score for you know who): here is the live webcast of
the Paulson hearing:

http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia-live/groc/16423/200_groc-110oversighthearings_070129.asx