Archive - Apr 29, 2010

If you look beyond the Greek crisis, you have to ask yourself where are we heading and will the current form of Casino Capitalism survive? Greece is the birthplace of democracy, will it also be the birthplace of a new form of capitalism?

All assets are going up, period. Fundamental research has become an irrelevance. Is Obama a moderate in liberal clothing? The Fed’s need to inflate new bubbles to rescue us from the old ones. Listen to the wakeup call, and adjust your risk controls accordingly. Keep a hair trigger on your mouse for when the dreaded “Risk Off” trade hits.

Gold, now?

I just saw an offering of the famous Screaming Eagle 1997 cab for $52,000 for the case. Parker gave it 100 points. I passed. I don't think anyone told the purveyors that the market has loosened up a bit. Wine prices are falling and vineyards are going into foreclosure.

In light of the fact that Goldman Sachs actively trades against its clients, it is now high time for the U.S. federal prosecutors probe into Goldman’s trading practice of Baidu IPOs as well.

"Too Big to Fail is Too Big to Regulate"

Where were you on March 4th? It was an important date in history. It might just have been a tipping point.

Moody's analyst Sarah Carlson, who by no means is a disgrace to her job, and is fully justified in keeping an A- rating on a country whose 2 Year debt was trading north of 20% until yesterday, when Europe decided to use US tapxayer money to bail out its own, finally finished the special olympics marathon (no pun intended), only a couple of years late. We wonder if any of the Moody's analyst corps will be offered as a (not so virgin) sacrifice to placate the angry gods of Berkshirehathawaya. We hear Buffett has a soft spot for the XX (chromosomes), even if it derives from companies in which he has already decided to liquidate his entire stock position (but slowly... slowly... don't forget uncle Warren is just the nicest guy in the world and would never take advantage of the market's stupidity).

Jan Hatzius, who along with Erik Nielsen, knows what the DOL and the IMF will announce and do about two weeks before the respective agencies do, has come out with his most recent preliminary NFP number. The verdict: +175,000, consisting of 125,000 from the Census. The unemployment rate will remain at 9.7%, unchanged from March's hilarious 9.749% (the gov't just like goldman rounds down the nearest trillion). Still, a bit off from VP Biden's prophecy of half a million jobs created each month "very soon."

The leaders of our industry have poured gasoline on the banking crisis and accelerated it completely out of control. It has gotten to the point where legislators and regulators seem to be doing their best to burn the industry down to the ground to rid it of the evils that caused the crisis in the first place. I put this squarely at the feet of our industry's leaders. They ignored common sense, signs, hints, nudges and flat out requests to curb their risk taking to the point where governments now are proposing rules that not only will force institutional break-ups and hurt our industry, but that very well may cripple the capital formulation engine Main Street needs to generate jobs. Talk about cutting off our proverbial nose to spite our face. All that our industry leaders needed to do was come together, highlight the major gaps that led to the subprime crisis and come up with a solution to solve the most egregious issues. Yes -- in order to keep the industry whole and the world sane, some profitable business would need to be eliminated, sacred cows slaughtered and sacrifices made to appease government leaders and stop the gathering hordes from marching down the Street with torches and pitchforks. - Larry Tabb, founder and CEO, TABB Group

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 29/04/10

These nominees are prominent members of the Washington-Wall Street-Academia Economics Complex, whose members shift between government, Wall Street, and academia. All of the nominees are Keynesian economists. They are known as regulators, technocrats, and inflationists.

If I'm going to carry around fiat money, this design is my choice.

Once again, the algospasms have turned many funds into dust as those attempting to short brokerage stocks, REITs, etc. in front of the European implosion are getting killed. Clearly, investors are voting that U.S. commercial real estate is the last bastion of safety, and the primary growth industry in 2011 will be stock trading.

Zero Hedge updates over the next 12 hours will be sporadic as we temporarily shift operations to Europe for closer coverage of the European bailout over the next week or two. We hope to conduct on the ground reporting from Central Europe and at least a few of the PIIGS countries, with Greece certainly playing a prominent role in the itinerary.Once situated, we will resume coverage of relevant events as usual. If readers have any specific focal issues that should be covered (Goldman-led Hedge Fund delegations trying to evaluate the fourth-lien value of the Parthenon, etc.) we are happy to consider and incorporate into our agenda. In the meantime enjoy the taxpayer subsidized, risk-free meltup.