Cohen

At last, a couple red pills find their way on the market.

First the 85 Broads roll one of them out at CNBC, depositing the permabullish dinosaur Abby Cohen to preach how the bull market has just restarted compliments of the mega squeeze in AIG, FNM and CIT (in finance you are as valuable if you bat 0.000 as if you bat 1.000), and now, hot on the hells of Hatzius' upgrade to Q2 GDP from 1% to 3%, they roll out another macro bullish piece, saying July nonfarm payrolls will be up to -250,000 from -300,000 (the question of whether the 50,000 actually matters in any scheme of things, is irrelevant). Ironically, it was yesterday that Jan thought projected employment assumptions wouldn't budge. So much has changed in 24 hours.

Let the CRE sales begin.

"Lots of feedback on the high frequency trading issue"

Abby Joseph Cohen must have threatened with retirement and David Kostin is here to pick up the Olympic torch. Goldman Sachs just raised its 2009 year end S&P target to 1060, "13% above the current level" meaning Goldman prop positions are full and the great offloading to marginal buyers has begun. The justification: "After trading in a 10% band for the past three months, our “Pop, Stall, & Sustained recovery” framework, sequential improvement in ex-Financials EPS, stabilization in profit margins, and higher forward EPS guidance all point to a rising market through 2009." More specifically, 85 Broad is raising its 2009 EPS to $52 from $40, and 2010 EPS to a patently absurd $75 from $63, a 45% increase in bottom line earnings, and almost 100% from the old $40 estimate. And just so it seems more credible, "measured on a pre-provision and pre-write-down basis our estimates are $69 and $81. S&P 500 trades at 12.5x our 2010 operating and 11.6x our pre-provision EPS." In other words, pure rose-colored glasses halcyon.

Over the past two weeks many banks issued press releases and opened up the PR spigot to indicate just how stable they all are now that a few have managed to pay down their TARP commitments. This of course, is nothing but a complete farce, and simply yet another chapter in the "consumer confidence" game played by the administration and its financial underlings. In order to see just how much the banking system depends on the continued unlimited wallet of taxpayers and Geithner's printing presses, and how much certain law firms continue to depend on the somewhat less limited wallet of Wall Street, I present an October 31, 2008 letter recently obtained by Zero Hedge, in which Sullivan & Cromwell, Wall Street's #2 favorite law firm (or is that #1: I am sure Wachtell Lipton would have a few choice words with regard to that particular league table rating, although it may be hard pressed to match S&C's $241,975 in donations to the Democratic National Convention), goes to town to make sure that its well-deserving clients including Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo get to not only have the taxpayers' cake (in perpetuity), but eat more and more of it each day.

Two odd press releases after the close today, both pertaining to our favorite REIT focused fund. According to the first, Cohen & Steers Advantage Income Realty Fund, Inc. ("RLF"), Cohen & Steers Worldwide Realty Income Fund, Inc. ("RWF"), Cohen and Steers Premium Income Realty Fund, Inc. ("RPF") and Cohen & Steers Quality Income Realty Fund, Inc. ("RQI") have all merged with and into RQI. It apeears that even despite the magical ramp of all REITs this quarter, those pesky "size matters" issues have reared their ugly heads for the 4 various closed-end funds.

Even as Six Flags' OCC (Official Credit Committee) was being formed in Delaware last Friday, with naive participants such as BoNY, HSBC, Esopus Creek Capital, Schottenfeld Associates, John Gorman, Whirley Drink Works and Coca-Cola (the last two must be royally pissed as all their advance profits on $9.95 small cups of soda have just become General Unsecured Claims) all hoping for some meager recoveries, and financial advisors (Broadpoint, Chanin, Moelis, Mesirow, BDO and Peter J Solomon, all of which are now overnight specialists in the amusement park business) trying to bedazzle the committee with their pretty charts and glass beads (and in the case of some, expansive dinners at Tao, where engagement letters were hoped to be signed on the naked backs of blonde, barely legal, Ukranian imports), the ad hocs were preparing for war according to Debtwire.

For a good example of just how worthless of a tool for investors (and useful for persuading follow on offering "participation") the Goldman Sachs Conviction Buy list is, look no further than the recent performance of REIT CBL & Associates, coupled with the recommendations on the stock by Goldman Sachs REIT analyst Jonathan Habermann.

For a good example of just how worthless of a tool for investors (and useful for persuading follow on offering "participation") the Goldman Sachs Conviction Buy list is, look no further than the recent performance of REIT CBL & Associates, coupled with the recommendations on the stock by Goldman Sachs REIT analyst Jonathan Habermann.

For a good example of just how worthless of a tool for investors (and useful for persuading follow on offering "participation") the Goldman Sachs Conviction Buy list is, look no further than the recent performance of REIT CBL & Associates, coupled with the recommendations on the stock by Goldman Sachs REIT analyst Jonathan Habermann.

Privately held group Extended Stay Hotels, which was acquired in June 2007 by NJ-based Lightstone Group LLC for an ungodly amount of money of which $7.4 billion was funded through debt (and the bulk of it was apparently securitized), has thrown in the towel and under the wise tutelage of Lazard and Harvey Miller (who is poised to become the best paid lawyer in the history of the world) - a dynamic duo putting bondholders in their place ever since Judge Peck decided to sell Lehman's brokerage group to Barclays for $0.69,

Privately held group Extended Stay Hotels, which was acquired in June 2007 by NJ-based Lightstone Group LLC for an ungodly amount of money of which $7.4 billion was funded through debt (and the bulk of it was apparently securitized), has thrown in the towel and under the wise tutelage of Lazard and Harvey Miller (who is poised to become the best paid lawyer in the history of the world) - a dynamic duo putting bondholders in their place ever since Judge Peck decided to sell Lehman's brokerage group to Barclays for $0.69,

Privately held group Extended Stay Hotels, which was acquired in June 2007 by NJ-based Lightstone Group LLC for an ungodly amount of money of which $7.4 billion was funded through debt (and the bulk of it was apparently securitized), has thrown in the towel and under the wise tutelage of Lazard and Harvey Miller (who is poised to become the best paid lawyer in the history of the world) - a dynamic duo putting bondholders in their place ever since Judge Peck decided to sell Lehman's brokerage group to Barclays for $0.69,

Maybe the administration will finally listen when one of their own potential bailout beneficiaries tells them the sad truth about the inevitable CRE implosion. Surprisingly, a very good summary of the CRE debacle straight out of CBRE Partners (with $36 Billion AUM, it is just 3x larger than Cohen And Steers). Speaking of... Where are those CMBS downgrades S&P: getting some phone calls from the administration lately?