Reggie Middleton's blog

Unemployment (real unemployment that is) is still rampant. The federal government is effectively funding and financing deficit state unemployment rolls (see below for more detail). With record bankruptcies, deleveraging consumers, and rampant unemployment combined with drastic drops in consumer expenditures, guess what retail stocks are doing??? Yep, you guessed it. Now, what happens when reality reasserts itself???

As I warned, Greece is ever closer to default (a default that is damn near guaranteed) while Ireland is probably in worse shape!!! Financial contagion begets economic contagion which breeds more financial contagion...

More divergence in opinions between our team and the reporting of the MSM! Failing to provision for loan losses is not the same as making money, is it???

Just this morning I posted an article describing how much of the mainstream media suffers from diminishing revenues due to the fact that they simply rubber stamp soundbites and produce reports that are simply cardboard cutouts of what is pushed out by Reuters and the AP.org. Well, JP Morgan’s latest quarterly earnings release is a perfect example.

This is where the mainstream media is failing. When the paradigm shift into distributed computing and the resultant frictionless media model occurred, MSM fought instead of embracing it. A typical old school reaction, it was inevitable and a fight that they were destined to lose. Instead of complaining about free content, produce something worth paying for!

I know I'll raise my hand to the aforementioned question. The issue is,
as I huffed and puffed about how overvalued GS is, particularly
considering the amount of risk that it faced, I got a lot of blow back. Goldman has a lot of risk surrounding it that no one wanted to recognize - until now!

How many ways can a Wall Street Banker bend over an institutional client before they scream "ouch"??? Let me count the ways (with a spreadsheet, may I add)...

Hmmm! Greek bonds and banks are getting battered after the Greek rescue package was announced. To think, some actually thought this would help. Giving a highly indebted country more debt at a rate that it can't afford while everybody lies about the state of its indebtedness does absolutely nothing to aid said country. See, I encapsulated this entire post in 1 sentence...

Prepaid legal gets an SEC update and offers a sneak peek at its quarterly results, most likely to help support its stock through more corporate buybacks.

Is is only me who sees absolutely non-sensical, bubblicious issues coming through the news wires at an increasingly quickening pace? Some of this stuff is ridiculous.

Add bad banks, high NPA to GDP ratios, dramatically overly optimistic growth assumptions, and unrealistic perspectives on taxation, and you get a capital "I" in the PIIGS acronym!

IMF says Italy is right on track. Okay, but which track would that be? More facts thrown at you that probably hurt if you believe the soundbites in the media..

Delinquency rates up, Cap rates up, Macro outlook down, CRE REIT equity prices up. Sounds about right!

Enter the announced Greek Bailout that doesn't bailout! Greece's problems are much, much deeper than the mainstream press is revealing. Let's walk through the latest bailout propaganda then step through a few facts that should embarrass anyone even considering buying those Greek bonds.

Banks are busted, all of the big guys were doing the Lehman thing, and it gets worse. I take a look under the hood of the big boys to see what they were hiding. On a side note, as I type this the story is breaking all over the place. Is this the return of true, investigative reporting? I hope so!