Archive - Dec 28, 2009 - Story

True, the decade is not really over, but no one called 1930 the "last year of the 20's," and given the reflective mood that seems to grip all of Western society whenever a year ending in "9" draws to a close, well, we thought we'd better embrace the trend now so that when some idiot with a pair of glow-in-the-dark "2010" glasses with holes in the zeros for his eyes tries to convince us to watch Roy Scheider over and over again in a celebratory, all-day, marathon screening of "2010," well, we can say we gave at the blog.

Instead, and in conjunction with your many suggestions, we took the opportunity to go back over Zero Hedge's posts and see what moved you, with an eye towards getting a sense of what Zero Hedge wants to read. The results were quite interesting. We thought readers would find it engaging both as a sort of "year in review" post, and, perhaps, in finding old material missed the first time around (or before the discovery of Zero Hedge).

Happens every year end. The fund managers dress up their portfolios with the "must own" stocks for the year end statement print in order to avoid getting sacked for picking the wrong plays in 2009.

For some reason Zero Hedge is prone to take a great deal of heat (both directly radiated and reflected) whenever we opine on the (rather obvious to us) prospect that interest rates might actually (quelle surprise) rise in this environment.  Today, rather than engage in "we told you so" gloating, or endure the repetitive pleadings of commentators that this or that Treasury auction was really a success if you just look a little deeper at the figures, we'll just quote Bloomberg quoting other fixed income observers on today's auction of two years, in an article "ambiguously" titled "U.S. 2-Year Yields Highest Since October After $44 Billion Sale."

What was once considered a pipe-dream could become reality: after decades of dictatorship, war and international sanctions, Iraq's massive oil reserves are set to be tapped proper and the country once known for two overflowing rivers could be crowned oil king.

Well, you sort of knew it was coming in some form or another.  That form happened to be the Banking Integrity Act of 2009.  Think of it as "Glass-Steagall II."

For the unwashed, and among other things, the original act created the FDIC and separated the practice of "investment banking" and "commercial banking."  The concept was intended to avoid the conflicts of interest that purportedly arose when the same Wall Street shark was responsible for both the growth of your long-term savings and the sale of securities (underwritten by self-same shark's bank, most likely).  It's effect was, as might be imagined, debatable.

Bloomberg reports today that the concept is, once again, making the rounds and points us to a document on Thomas.

The administration sure is learning how to take advantage of the Ritalin addicted, holiday sales overbonanza'ed (1% increase over last year's gruesome December performance surely must be terrific news) public. Not only did Obama hope the whole Fannie/Freddie BS would slip by unnoticed even as he paid the failed public servants over at the nationalized-in-perpetuity GSEs an insane amount of money, but this week the Cottonelle experts over at 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue tried to sneak a $118 billion in coupons and another $57 billion in bills, a total of $175 billion pieces worth of one-ply bidet replacements, for the last weekly auctions of the "noughties" (yes, apparently that is the name to this most recent lost decade, set to end in a few days. But don't worry Ben Shalom will be around to make sure its bubblicious legacy persists for much, much longer).

For purists, we acknowledge that the decade does in fact not end until December 31, 2010, but we are sure the Senate will pass a provision in the final Financial Regulatory Reform bill adjusting the Gregorian calendar to seal all the "bad, bad financial stuff" deep under the rug of a past never to be repeated, with only hope, sweet smelling roses and manna from heaven remaining on deck.

• Morgan Stanley sees the 10 year at 5.5% in 2010, Goldman Sachs at 3.25% - someone's prop desk is going to get spanked (Bloomberg)
• Tanker freight rates to drop 25% as 26-mile long line of idled tankers runs out of fumes (Bloomberg)
• Deflationary side effects: Japan Finance Minister admitted to hospital (Bloomberg)
• Ferguson - The decade the world tilted east (FT)
• Summers - The man who blew up Harvard's portfolio, has set his sight on the US next (WSJ)
• Buffett doing the patriotic thing and firing 21,000 employees of companies that did not get taxpayer bailouts (Bloomberg)