Lloyd Blankfein

One of the traditional characteristics of the financial media world in the last few days of any given year is the veritable cornucopia of next year "predictions" from those who believe their opinions are relevant/important/credible. Of course, with this whole process being nothing but an exercise in vanity, and resulting in pervasive ridicule by the rest of the media world 365 days later, unless of course one has immaculate luck, in which case playing the lottery has far better fringe benefits, Zero Hedge has no interest in actually predicting parallel outcomes, when event iterations are serial and just getting the one main thing right usually ends up paying off in droves (as such our one and only very vague prediction for the end of 2011 is that the Fed will be one year closer to completely losing control of its centrally planned schizophrenic reality, and the market will be ever closer to realizing this). That said, the following list of forecasts by Charles Hugh Smith is certainly worth reading. And with gems such as: Markets in precious metals, oil, commodities, stocks and bonds will rise and fall in an unpredictable fashion; The SNAP food stamp program will be expanded to include cable TV
access to a new U.S. government-sponsored channel, "Bread and Circuses, and QE3 will include issuing U.S. Treasury bonds directly to households you know this may well be the only set of predictions that gets the outcome right in our Bizarro world, TheOnion-style centrally planned reality.

Following the release of Bill Dudley's daily schedules from the beginning of 2009, through September 30, 2010, there have been some amusing, if not very surprising, disclosures. Among them: Dudley's penchant to meet with Jamie Dimon, Vik Pandit and, of course, former boss Lloyd Blankfein. Other meetings include Sullivan and Cromwell chairman, and the banking cartel's personal chief attorney H. Rodgin Cohen. Those are to be expected: after all Dudley has to conduct the New York Fed policy exactly in accordance with Wall Street's expectations, and per Wall Street's recommendations. What is a little more surprising is that on February 9, 2009, Bill Dudley hosted a lunch roundtable with hedge fund SAC Capital... Perhaps now Dudley knows almost as much about the chances of various Phase II/III drugs to make it to market as ole' Stevie himself. Additionally, on May 14 Dudley invited Ken Griffin and Adam Cooper from Citadel into his office at about 2:00 pm. One wonders just what the quid pro quo between the New York Fed and Citadel may have been, over and above of the traditional dark pool securities purchasing relationship between the two entities of course. Where it gets a little confusing is why Dudley had to have two informal meetings with the man who singlehandedly determines US fiscal and monetary policy: Goldman's Jan Hatzius, first on March 11, and then, less than a month later, on April 6, both times as the Pound and Pence. And where it gets downright bizarre, is trying to explain why Bill Dudley on June 11, 2009, had to bring over one still unknown Brian Sack, now pervasively known as the head of the Fed's Open Market Operations Committee, to not only walk over to Goldman Sachs for a meet and greet (as opposed to Goldman coming over to the NY Fed), but specifically "introducing Brian Sack to the Goldman FX Committee" between 4:00 and 4:30 PM on that day. Just which of Brian's myriad functions is the one that requires the participation of Goldman's FX team? Last time we checked, purchasing bonds and MBS in POMO operations had little if any impact on Goldman's FX trading flow...

The market continued to move sideways today as economic data was less relevant than Bernie Madoff's thoughts on the CAPM and fund managers...

For those who are concerned that the head executives of the bank that does god's work, and has repeatedly claimed it did not need taxpayer bailouts even though it borrowed from the Fed's Primary Dealer Credit Facility not once (that would be explainable), not twice (also), but 84 times, worry not: Bloomberg reports that in January, Lloyd Blankfein and his top deputies will receive $111.3 million in stock in a "payoff from last year and their record-setting 2007 bonuses." Specifically, Lloyd will get $24.3 million, $24 million will go to President Gary Cohn, $21.3 million to CFO David Viniar, $20.8 million to Jon Winkelried, and $14.3 million to Edward Frost, former co-head of investment management. And as Bloomberg reports: "The payouts, just a portion of the $67.9 million bonus awarded to Blankfein for 2007 and the $66.9 million paid to Cohn, reflect a 24 percent decline in the stock’s value since it was granted at $218.86." To be sure, this money was well-earned: "Within a year after the bonuses were approved, Goldman Sachs took $10 billion from the U.S. Treasury, converted to a bank and was borrowing as much as $35.4 billion a day from Federal Reserve emergency programs. This year the firm paid $550 million to settle U.S. regulators’ fraud charges related to a mortgage-security the company sold in 2007." Luckily, the violent images in the prior clip are from Athens, and not south Manhattan: after all Americans have so much to be grateful to their bankers for: for one, there are least 10% of the benefits in the recent tax extension left that have not been consumed by the recent spike in oil prices.

Have you noticed the latest sound bites coming from the punditry in the corporate mainstream media? Here is the latest wisdom flowing from the lying mouthpieces of the ruling oligarchy (Wall Street, Washington DC, Mega-corporations): "The economy is recovering and employment is growing", "Consumers are deleveraging, saving and using cash for purchases", Retailers are doing fantastic as consumers increase spending." These are the three themes being proclaimed simultaneously by the mainstream media. Every time I hear these themes proclaimed, I want to shout out like Joe Wilson – “YOU LIE!!!” How can consumers be deleveraging, saving and increasing spending at the same time? Let’s examine the facts to see who is lying.

A roundup of reports from around the Web ...

One thing I do not want this article to be is a giant bashfest of New York City. I love this place. It is where I was born and it has shaped my personality in every way. The energy is like nothing else on the planet and it will always hold a spot near and dear to my psyche. Who knows, maybe I will return. That said, the current leadership in this city, and by that I mean the financial services industry and the TBTF banks in particular are destroying the city to such a degree that I think it could take a generation to recover. I hope I am wrong on this, but the longer the paper ponzi pushers control this town the worse the devastation will be... I feel very uncomfortable in New York City right now. It and Washington D.C. are at the heart of the gulag state and I have chosen to physically remove myself from it. Even if none of this was happening, I still feel like I eventually would have found myself out West. It just feels like the journey I am meant to take. The lower taxes and open spaces aren’t so bad either.

As a disgusted and powerless nation (save for a few irrelevant, ex-Enron consultants) is drowning its post-QE2 monetary sorrows in Blue Label courtesy of a recently, if very temporarily, discovered wealth effect, we present a comedic interlude which presents (in proper chronological order for facility of reading) the email chain that culminated with the decision to embark on the QE2.

Pimpco has slashed their holding of US Government bonds from 63% of the fund in June to 33% in September and now, finally, Mr. Gross is telling all the suckers he dumped his paper onto over the past 3 months that the party is over in the bond market. Why would he do this? Well, aside from being an evil, manipulative, amoral bastard - it makes good business sense.

As if there was any doubt before which way the arrow of control, and particularly causality, points in America's financial system, the following stunner just released from Bloomberg confirms it once and for all. According to Rebecca Christie and Craig Torres, the New York Fed has issued a survey to Primary Dealers, which asks
for suggestions on the size of QE2 as well as the time over which it would be completed. It
also asks firms how often they anticipate the Fed will re-evaluate the program, and to estimate its ultimate size. This is nothing short of a stunning indication of three things: i) that the Fed is most likely completely paralyzed due to the escalating confrontation between the Hawks and the Doves, and that not even Bernanke believes has has sufficient clout to prevent what Time magazine has dubbed a potential opening salvo into a chain of events that could lead to civil war: in effect Bernanke will use the PD's decision as a trump card to the Hawks and say the market will plunge unless at least this much money is printed, ii) that the Fed is effectively asking the Primary Dealers to act as underwriters on whatever announcement the Fed will come up with, and thus prop the market, and, most importantly, iii) that the PDs will most likely demand the highest possible amount, using Goldman's $2-4 trillion as a benchmark, and not only frontrun the ultimate issuance knowing full well what the syndicate of 18 will decide in advance of what the final amount will be, but will also ramp stocks on November 3 to make the actual QE announcement seem like a surprise. This also means that the Primary Dealers of America, which include among them such hedge funds as Goldman Sachs, such mortgage frauds as Bank of America, such insolvent foreign banks as Deutsche, RBS, UBS and RBS, and such middle-market excuses for banks as Jefferies, are now in control of US monetary, and as we explain below fiscal, policy.

Amusingly, following up on earlier reports that the Clearing House Association (aka the banking oligarchy) will petition the SCOTUS to hide their oh so very secret insolvency which by now everyone knows about, the Fed has decided to amusingly distance itself from the kleptocratic crowd and will not seek court review. In other words, the public's anger when the SCOTUS sides with the bankers will fall squarely upon Lloyd Blankfein et al, and not Ben Bernanke, even though it is the Fed who is the defendant in the Pittman lawsuit. This is just plain ridiculous. And the reason provided by the banks: why more mutual assured destruction of course: "disclosure of the information threatens to harm the borrowing banks by allowing the public to observe their borrowing patterns during the recent financial crisis and draw inferences--whether justified or not--about their current financial conditions." Here is an inference about their current financial conditions: they are all insolvent. Does that matter? No. Because the only holders of bank stocks now are other banks. It is called a ponzi for a reason after all.

It was another quiet day in the market as the expectation of QE2 continues to dominate the headlines like Securities Analysis dominates the insomnia drug market or like Gabourey Sidibe dominates a doughnut (or box of doughnuts to be more precise). The market still can't figure out what to do as investors continue to oscillate between delusion and ecstasy over the Bernanke Put which seems primed to lower real rates until they drop further than Meg Ryan's boobs.

We continue with our series of artist renderings of various infamous desktops (previously Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Lloyd Blankfein). Today, we focus on that of administration straight shooter Rahm Emanuel.

As our economy hurtles towards its meeting with destiny, the political class seeks to assign blame on their enemies for this Greater Depression. The Republicans would like you to believe that Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, Chris Dodd, and Barney Frank and their Community Reinvest Act caused the collapse of our financial system. Democrats want you to believe that George Bush and his band of unregulated free market capitalists created a financial disaster of epic proportions. The truth is that America has been captured by a financial class that makes no distinction between parties. These barbarians have sucked the life out of a once productive nation by raping and pillaging with impunity while enriching only them. They live in 20,000 square foot $10 million mansions in Greenwich, CT and in $3 million dollar penthouses on Central Park West. These are the robber barons that represent the Age of Mammon

Continuing on the ever popular series of Artist Renderings of infamous desktops, which now includes Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Lloyd Blankfein, we present the most recent addition: that of dear leader himself.