Reggie Middleton's blog

So, a bank that is insolvent nearly two times over is found to have passed the European bank stress tests. Exactly what does it take to fail!!! Let's dig in and find out, shall we.

Yes. You're being hoodwinked, Bamboozled, and Lied to. Let's take a common sense look at the parameters and criteria published concerning these (no) stress tests...

I don’t even think these guys bothered to read the results at all. They are comparing revenues pre-multi billion dollar acquisition with the post acquisition entity. Hey, I can double my revenues if I purchased a company that had 3x my revenues too! This is just sloppy! Yet, these euphoric headlines were all over the place as MS stock climbs nearly 10%. Yes, MS did relatively better than GS, but GS is a federally insured hedge fund (that’s right, I said it)...

Actually, I did tell you last quarter (and 2 years ago) that not only is Goldman basically the world's largest, federally insured hedge fund (with trading influenced earnings volatility to prove it), but that most pundits have forgotten their balance sheet threatens solvency in times of high volatility and rapidly declining prices. 2008, anyone? Anyone???

CNBC (the world’s biggest Goldman cheerleader) reports “Goldman Sachs’ Revenue Falls, but Profit Beats Views” even as Bloomberg reports “Goldman Sachs Profit Falls 82%, Misses Estimates on Trading-Revenue Drop”. Whoah… It’s hard to get a straight answer out of these news guys, ain’t it?

For the first two quarters of this year, we’ve been pounding the
pavement on the risks inherent throughout Europe. The 50+ article (and
counting) series known as the Pan-European Sovereign Debt Crisis is
rife with opinion, analysis, commentary (albeit rather smart ass
commentary), and data that is hard to come across from objective
sources.

JP Morgan kicks the bank earnings season off with a disquieting thud, as we suspected.

I'm not going to say I told you so, but Apple is on the verge of quickly losing its grip on what is, by far, its most profitable franchise…

As the MSM picks up on what we have been telling you for a year and a half now... All is not well in Euro-banking land, despite what the ECB has been telling you.

Don't be surprised if Microsoft is the one to pull to the lead of the smartphone wars! There's something to be said for being the de facto enterprise standard in productivity, a top server vender, the majority market share in browsers, and owning one of the top gaming platforms. Plus, now their motivated due to Apple and Google taking their lunch money.

The iPhone 4, arguably Apple's most important launch since the original iPhone in 2007, may very open the door to competition that Apple doesn't want and very well may have a problem pushing back if they get their foot in the door.

Why isn't the popular financial media reporting the fact that Greece's funding costs increased after the $1 trillion dollar bailout? Why isn't it pointed out the Portugal's credit rating has been dropped - post bailout? Exactly what is $1 trillion US dollars good for these days - trick question, but I dare 'ya to answer :-)

The overt-optimism in deficit forecasting and the wishful extrapolation of growing GDP may score a few points with voters in the near term, but you tend to pay for it in spades in the end. We gave explicit warnings concerning the optimism in the British forecasts, and those warnings have proven to be quite prescient.