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Frontrunning: January 4

Marla Singer's picture




 
  • Martin Whitman to relinquish Third Avenue Chief Investment slot. (End of an era) [reuters]
  • Greece prepares fiscal plan for EU.  (Write "I will not forge GDP numbers" 200 times first) [bbc news]
  • Burj Dubai occupancy may reach 75 percent this year.  (And Dubai's GDP growth may reach 75 percent too)  [bloomberg]
  • Bernanke: "Low rates didn't inflate housing bubble." (Alan: "Check is in the mail Ben!") [bloomberg]
  • Total picks up Chesapeake Energy stake.  (Blue horseshoe loves shale gas) [bloomberg]
  • Novartis to grab Alcon control.  (Eye care needed to read the fine print) [bbc news]
  • World's second biggest copper mine on strike.  (Francisco d'Anconia smiles wryly to himself) [bbc news]
  • Japan Airlines to get larger government lifeline.  (Japan can stimulate too, see?) [wall street journal]
  • Obama returns from vacation. (You can relax now.  The boss is back) [ap]
 

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Mon, 01/04/2010 - 10:55 | 181919 Scooby Dooby Doo
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Two Guys Jumped Off the Burj Dubai and Lived to Tell About It
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pGp1LX8yZY

The rest of Dubai expected to jump sometime this year. Parachute optional.

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 10:55 | 181922 Rage of Odin
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Marla, I really enjoy the sarcasm in the front running headlines. Good stuff!!

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 10:57 | 181925 lsbumblebee
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Low rates didn't inflate the housing bubble. It was those people buying all those houses.

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 15:03 | 182184 JackTheOffer
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Or actually, people buying all those mortgages, whether they could afford to buy the house or not.  And whether they could afford the mortgage, or not.  And whether the bank could afford to write the mortgage, or not.  Often 'not.'

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 15:26 | 182225 DaveyJones
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low rates don't kill housing markets

people kill housing markets

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 16:26 | 182310 lsbumblebee
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I was kinda sorta making fun of Bernanke's statement. I don't believe the housing bubble could have occurred without the low interest rates. It was the low rates that ignited all the chicanery.

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 11:09 | 181935 Psquared
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Another example of, "how to lie with a straight face" so people will believe you; or, how to make an outlandishly false statement (low rates didn't inflate the housing bubble) and not blush.

It takes a lot of self-control, but any old poker player can tell. The pupils always dialate when viewing something pleasurable. (If Bernanke starts wearing sunglasses and a tinted visor cap in public we are really in trouble. :-))

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 11:24 | 181955 Scooby Dooby Doo
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The CIA made him special contact lenses. Nothing pleasurable in sight for the casino owner.

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 11:27 | 181957 mule65
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Ugh!

(-29) times _____ equals -435

fourteen times _____ equals 196

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 13:43 | 182083 sethstorm
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Pull out a piece of paper if it's that bad.

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 14:05 | 182107 Cognitive Dissonance
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Let' see, adding two negatives gives you a larger negative but when you multiple a negative times a negative (or should that be a positive times a negative) you get..................

I just call my 5 year old grandchild to figure it out. After I run out of fingers and toes (22) I'm lost.  :>)

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 19:45 | 182495 Anonymous
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Given that you're currently sitting in front of a computer (or a mobile device at the very least), an onscreen calculator shouldn't be too hard to find.

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 11:26 | 181958 Fish Gone Bad
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The United States has been at war with the banks within its borders since its inception.  Any information coming out of a bank should be considered mis-information.  Banks are vile creatures that eat their young (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_War).

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 11:52 | 181980 Careless Whisper
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Bernanke lies, but it's for our own good.

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 11:56 | 181985 Cognitive Dissonance
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ZH, Tyler Durden and the Trim Tabs article are discussed on ICH.com

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24311.htm

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 13:42 | 182079 sethstorm
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  • Burj Dubai occupancy may reach 75 percent this year.  (And Dubai's GDP growth may reach 75 percent too)

Yay. Dubai, where the developing world's worst practices meet the developed world's desire to implement them.

Not only can you evade, er, spite the nation from which you departed, you can freely engage in a form of slavery only seen in developing countries.

 

Not my kind of [company] town.

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 13:47 | 182087 john_connor
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Frontrunning the O presidency: higher energy and food prices and 20% + U 6 unemployment.  Everything will be destroyed except common share prices. 

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 16:03 | 182273 sethstorm
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Frontrunning the next administration: Increased offshoring and evasion despite Congress and the presidency held by another major party. More brazen sellouts to foreign countries occur in the name of 'globalization' with no marked decrease in U-6 unemployment.  The Manufacturing Belt experiences a PATCO-like precedent setting event with General Motors, all in the name of spite.

 

 

 

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 18:20 | 182419 john_connor
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Agree.  It doesn't matter who is in there.

O needs to understand, however, that his economic policies will cost his party dearly in the mid terms, and will likely cost him a second term in 2012.

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 13:49 | 182089 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Gee, there is one leader who seems to be immune from smokenmirrors (excerpt):

http://chedet.co.cc/chedetblog/2010/01/the-wealth-of-nations.html

...And so the financial market expanded until it became much bigger than the real market. The trade in currencies for example is twenty times bigger than total world trade. Hedge funds, through mysterious investments pay as much as 30% to their investors. Pyramid schemes gave huge returns and banks calculate their earnings on the amount of money they lent out, whether the borrowers were able to pay or not...

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 13:57 | 182095 Racer
Racer's picture

I was watching a programme on TV last night.. about the Real Full Monty... based on real men who had lost their jobs and couldn't get work and got together to form a stripper team (as in the film The Full Monty)

One man broke down in tears because he said how bad the job situation was for him and how he had never had such a problem getting work.. he said there was usually something but now there was nothing at all apart from trying to sell tickets to a strip show!

Reality for ordinary people ... no jobs, no money, no prospects and for many no homes either.

Reality for banksters, extremely well paid job, bigger bonus than ever before, more prospects of the same with even bigger bonus, thoughts of buying yet another house at knock down prices as well as that extra yacht and rooms full of antiques and jewellery.

 

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 14:29 | 182142 Deficient Market
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Has anyone noticed the 10-year rate is showing (very appropriately) at 38% today on Yahoo Finance?

Simple glitch or some sort of premonition?

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 16:18 | 182302 Anonymous
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Samsung, a subsidiary of which constructed Burj Khalifa ($40 billion gets you a name plate), knows how to do business, as do most Korean construction firms. When Saudi wanted to rebuild Mecca after the insurgency thrity years ago, Korean foremen greeted their worker drones in the early morning light with the words "Today you will all embrace Islam", thus allowing them to travel to the infidel-prohibited Holy City and carry out the contract.

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