Archive - Aug 2009

"Are you stimulated yet? We hope you are, because we’ve just witnessed the largest
economic stimulus in the history of the world. Never before have so many government
dollars been thrown at the economy to prevent a depression. When added together, the
combined financial, monetary and fiscal stimuli in the US are more than the cost of the two
World Wars and “The New Deal” combined." - Eric Sprott

A couple of days ago Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism posted a comment, Who Is Tyler Durden? The post generated over 187 comments (and still counting), most of which were infantile swipes from morons claiming that one blog is better than the other one.

I got carried away too and used language that I shouldn't have, but after sleeping on it, I want to offer you some of my thoughts on these blogging brawls and bragging rights.

The challenge before regulators, politicians and anti-trust commissioners with regard to all these very salient issues is greater now than it has ever been in the history of a "free and fair" equity capital market. Whether the approach taken is one that will perpetuate the dominance and the increased profitability of a select few or will bring back a sense of democracy and remove the highly speculative element Mr. Merrin discusses, will be critical for the future of US capital markets, and the participation of retail investors in what was once the only way to reward success and punish failure. But then again, the last two seem to be no longer a key concern for the administration, which has taken a sharp detour from the primary tenets of the capitalist system that over the past 200 years managed to make America the greatest country in the world. We hope the right choice is made for the sake of continuing America's greatness, even if it means one quarter where a company like Goldman Sachs has more than 2 trading days of capital loss.

I sent this Op-Ed proposal to the New York Times on Friday. Perhaps they will print it. If so, I will donate the proceeds (don't they pay you $450?) to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

To spare you the trouble of having to waste your time reading and to spare me the embarrassment, there will be no comments this week. Just graphs.

China projects to the world a similar image as Japan did in the 1980s. Yet we know how that (Japanese) story played out: a bust of a major banking/real estate bubble, a contracting economy for almost two decades, accompanied by deflation, ballooning debt, etc.

Going through and sorting new music, as well as dumping old. Join us if you like. The Sunday morning dull music cull (and general audio tom-foolery), at Studio Zero

http://cdo.zerohedge.com:8000/listen.pls

Chat up the DJ (and send your .mp3 files) here: radiozh.

Always a unique and compelling perspective

The good old cash-for-favors system, known as lobbying, is in full swing again, with General Electric valiantly leading the pack of beltway brown-nosers, having spent $7.2 million in Q1 for various lobby purposes. This represents a 60% increase over the $4.5 million spent in Q1 and $1.8 million over Q2 of 2008. Ironically, General Electric, which with AIG, is at the forefront of hobbled companies who continue existing solely thanks to generous taxpayer bailouts in various forms, was by far the biggest lobbying contributor, with only Chveron spending over $6 million in Q2 of 2009. GE's $7.2 million represents a recycled taxpayer spend to promote private interests of $160,000 for every single day that Congress was in session.

Ok, ok.  Stop emailing already.  You talked me into it.  More Radio Zero, LIVE, tonight.  Come back for the URL, say,  7:30 ET?

Listen here: http://cdo.zerohedge.com:8000/listen.pls

Chat up the DJ (send your .mp3 files) here: radiozh.

Yet another good introduction for the novices in the field. Keep in mind the various participants have extensive interests so read between the lines.

A one hour program in which Ron Paul provides the basics of the Federal Reserve and why it is high time transparency was introduced to this most critical of institutions. Must watch.

I know you are always quite concerned about secrecy and so I thought you might want to know about what appears to be a real breach in your security veil. No, not for software. We're talking about reporting systems for product sales. You may or may not know of a company called Brightstar. This company is one of the largest distributors of mobile handsets in the world. And yes, they do distribute Apple iPhones, as well as phones from RIMM, Nokia and Samsung. One of my anayst colleagues in the hedge fund industry told me earlier this year that a senior Brightstar executive is or was in the employ of a company called DeMatteo Monness. This company is a close partner of LinkedIn and is one of the "expert networks" we've been writing about here on ZeroHedge.

As disclosed two days ago, German regulators staged a raid at the office of German carmaker Porsche to determine whether the car company had been manipulating Volkswagen stock prices, leading to a massive squeeze and the eventual suicide of Adolf Merckle who lost a fortune on what allegedly may have been a Porsche orchestrated act. It seems the investigation is taking a turn for the serious, with Bloomberg reporting that today former Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking and former CFO Holgar Haerter had their homes raided by investigators earlier in the day.

I break the first two rules of ZeroHedge and reveal Tyler Durden's hidden agenda.