Warren Buffett

The United States increasingly resembles a 3rd world country in terms of unemployment, lack of economic opportunity, falling wages, growing poverty and concentration of wealth, government debt, corporate influence over government and weakening rule of law. Federal Reserve monetary policies and federal government economic, regulatory and tax policies seem to favor the largest banks and corporations over the interests of small businesses or of the general population. The potential elimination of the middle class could reshape the socioeconomic strata of American society in the image of a 3rd world country. It seems only a matter of time before the devolution of the United States becomes more visible. As the U.S. economy continues to decline, public health, nutrition and education, as well as the country’s infrastructure, will visibly deteriorate. There is little evidence of political will or leadership for fundamental reforms. All other things being equal, the U.S. will become a post industrial neo-3rd-world country by 2032.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that Europe could be living through its toughest hour since World War Two as new leaders in Italy and Greece rushed to form governments and limit the damage from the euro zone debt crisis.

Financial markets on Monday took heart on relief that a key Italian bond auction drew decent demand from investors and hopes that new leaders in Greece and Italy would take decisive action to breathe new life into their sick economies.

And to think it was less than two months ago that Warren Buffett took a bath to provide the bank with capital it had "absolutely no need for" but was happy to take it anyway. Well, it turns out the firm is preparing to raise just a "little" more capital. From the just released 10Q: "During the third quarter, global economic uncertainty and volatility continued as described more fully in the Executive Summary – Third Quarter 2011 Economic and Business Environment discussion on page 7. Concerns over these and other issues contributed to a widening of credit spreads for many financial institutions, including the Corporation, resulting in lowering of market values of debt and preferred stock issued by financial institutions. The uncertainty in the market evidenced by, among other things, volatility in credit spread movements, makes it economically advantageous at this time to consider retirement of issued junior subordinated debt and preferred stock. As a result of these matters, we intend to explore the issuance of common stock and senior notes in exchange for shares of preferred stock and, subject to any required amendments to the applicable governing documents, certain trust preferred capital debt securities (Trust Securities) issued by unconsolidated trust companies, in privately negotiated transactions. If we pursue the exchange of Trust Securities, we would immediately use the purchased Trust Securities to retire a corresponding amount of our junior subordinated debt that we previously issued to the unconsolidated trust companies. These transactions would increase Tier 1 common capital and, on an after-tax basis, reduce the combined level of interest expense and dividends paid on the combined junior subordinated debt and preferred stock....We will not issue more than 400 million shares of common stock or $3 billion in new senior notes in connection with these exchanges."

There is no shortage of hatred for the biggest banks. Indeed, the Occupy Wall Street movement is leading a national revolution against these byzantine, powerful Goliaths for the economic devastation they have caused. This makes it difficult to choose the worst of the bunch. That said, a strong case can be made that Bank of America deserves the title of the nation's most despised bank. Here are ten reasons to take your money out of Bank of America - and park it at a credit union or community bank near you. (And yes, that may be near impossible if you have a mortgage with them, as refinancing away from any big bank nowadays is a nightmare.)

We have good reason to be waiting for Lehman—our current situation is simple and stark: Sovereign nations and individual citizens are over-indebted—to the point where they cannot pay back what they owe. We all know that this overindebtedness at the sovereign and individual level is going to end, and end badly: Worse than 2008.  So along with everyone else, I’ve been waiting for Lehman—and fruitlessly trying to guess which will be the Lehman-like event this time around. Will it be the bankruptcy of Dexia? BofA? UniCredit or SocGen or one of the Spanish banks? Will it be a war in the Middle East? Bad producer index numbers from China? A fart by a day-trader in Uzbekistan?

When will Lehman arrive!?!?

But lately, my thinking has changed: Like the characters in Godot, I think that we’re waiting in vain. The Lehman-like event will never arrive because it won’t be allowed to arrive. So this miserable slog we are going through will continue—indefinitely. (Yeah, I know: Sucks to be us.)

When it comes to reading the world's "tea leaves", few are as capable as Ray Dalio, head of the world's biggest (macro) hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. So when none other than Ray tells PBS' Charlie Rose that "there are no more tools in the tool kit" of fiscal and monetary policy to help America kick the can down the road, perhaps it would behoove the respective authorities to sit down and listen. Or not... and just to buy S&P futures in hopes that record career risk is big enough to force every other asset manager in the market to do the dumb thing and follow the crowd of lemmings right over the edge. Luckily, there are those who have the luxury of having both the capital and the time to not be drawn into the latest sucker's rally. More importantly, Dalio shares some truly unique perspectives on what it means to run the world's largest hedge fund, his perspective on Occupy Wall Street and demonizing wealth and success (in a way that does not imply crony capitalism unlike some others out of Omaha), his views on taxation, on China, on the markets, on Europe and its insolvent banks, most imporantly on the economy and why the much pained 2% growth (if that) will not be nowhere near enough to alleviate social tensions, such as those that have appeared over the past two months. Dalio's conclusion, in responding to whether he is optimsitic or pessimistic, to the current environment of broad delevaraging of the private sector, coupled with record releveraging of the public, is that he is "concerned." And that's why, unlike the recently unemployed David Biancos of the world, who never exhibit an ounce of skepticism, Dalio is among the wealthiest men in the world (and hence a prime target of the #OWS movement).

By now it is no surprise that Bill Gross has not exactly "caught the inflection points" in the market in the past year. Of recent note, as Zero Hedge first reported three days ago, in September he massively extended the duration of his holdings in an attempt to catch up with Operation Twist just in time for the 30 Year to have its biggest drop in quite a while. Which may explain why he has released a letter to investors titled, simply enough, "Mea Culpa" in which he essentially apologizes for underperforming the market, when he says "I am having a bad year". That's fine, and so are your clients. But what is far more troubling Bill, is that your corporate parent, Germany's Allianz, as is now well known is the entity pursuing the conversion of the EFSF into a multi-trillion "insurance" fund to backstop even greater trillions of corporate and sovereign fixed income exposure. Please tell us Bill that this is not your doing: that it is not your "influence" that has been upstreamed to corporate, and is forcing Europe's taxpayers to foot the bill for your, and others', "bad year." Because while everyone can make a mistake, those of us who are not too big to fail, read manage $1.2 trillion fixed income portfolios, get punished for said mistake. It is far more reprehensible when you come crawling to the same taxpayer and engage in the same activity you so loudly complain about in every single letter (there is a reason why the broader population has grown to loathe Warren Buffett). Anyway, with that aside, here is what Gross sees as happening in the future: "So where do we go from here? Our internal growth forecast for developed economies is now 0% over the coming several quarters and the portfolio more accurately reflects this posture." Well, while Pimco may have been spot on 10 days ago with this assessment, the subsequent 10%+ short covering squeeze has forced a dramatic sell off in the 10 Year (the 10s30s has flatten substantially in recent days). And naturally, in this world in which effect implies cause, the moves in the market now are taken to represent an avoidance of the recession. Granted that makes absolutely no sense, but such is bizarro world. So our only question is - did Gross just jinx the recession out of existence?

All you need to read.

Following a back and forth between Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp, we have now discovered what, according to Buffett, were the precise amounts of the Octogenarian Crony Capitalist of Omaha's 2010 gross income, taxable income and Federal tax respectively. These are as follows: $62,855,038, $39,814,784 and 6,923,494. This, apparently, was not enough for Huelskamp. The debate continues below.

Most of the time you hear the term “useful idiots” it is used in a totally pejorative sense. I think this is wrong. A “useful idiot” is actually not really an idiot, rather it is someone who is ignorant and therefore can be manipulated by those that are not ignorant to do as they desire. I mean who reading this was not a “useful idiot” at some point? I know I was. For most of my career on Wall Street that is exactly what I was. I worked in finance but had no idea how the system actually worked. As a result of my ignorance I was very susceptible to much of the propaganda that was blasted in my ear overtly and subliminally for much of my life. While I have always been cynical and never fell for the garbage either political party spewed, I was ignorant about how the world works and as such I could have been a danger to myself and others. Fortunately, I finally did dig further into the matrix, took the red pill and started writing about what I learned. Eventually I decided to leave Wall Street and pursue a different path. Ok, so is there a point to all this rambling? Of course. The point is that just because there are a lot of “useful idiots” at the Occupy Wall Street protests (just as there were at the Tea Party Protests) that doesn’t mean we should dismiss what is happening or belittle their frustrations. They are merely ships without anchors floating around aimlessly in a sea of ignorance. Rather that mock them right into the hands of bad guys that want to recreate feudalism like Michael Moore, George Soros and Warren Buffett we should educate them.

While Buffett hemmed and hewed in his usual populist rhetoric, discussing how multi-billionaires can afford to be generous with other people's tax rates, all of it completely unremarkable and highly hypocritical, the Octogenarian did release, whether by accident or on purpose, something quite critical, namely that European banks have approached him with requests for money.  From Bloomberg: "They need capital in their banks, in many of their banks," Buffett, Berkshire's chairman and chief executive officer, told Bloomberg Television's Betty Liu on "In the Loop" today. "We would not be a good prospect," he said in an interview from the New York Stock Exchange. He's received "very, very few" calls about putting capital into European banks. "Not quite none at all," he said, declining to name any institutions."And that, as they say, is a word out of place, because while one my pretend that borrowing $500MM from the ECBs Fed swap line is really just an (inverse) arb on Libor or some other useless excuse, a bank begging for Buffett to take a bath can not be explained away.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the banks squandered a year to improve their capital base. BAC wasn’t selling cheap options to Warren Buffett when their stock was at 13. The SocGen CEO wasn’t on TV trying to convince investors that they had no funding or capital problems when his stock was at 42. The banks are even worse off than most of the countries, but why should anyone assume that waiting will make it easier for them to digest a Greek default... It seems that a lot has already been priced in and that the contagion is occurring whether we want it to or not, so we may as well let Greece default now and figure out how much has already been priced in and how to really stop the contagion from spreading to Italy and Spain and to banks that deserve to be saved. Let’s just admit it is gangrene and that it has already spread farther than is safe, but it is still better to cut off an arm to save the body. If we keep waiting it may not be possible to save the patient. The patient is getting weaker by the day, and being blind to that is just as big and just as dangerous as letting Greece default now.

The only surprise in the speech so far is that he hasn't told Transatlantic Holding Inc., that they should accept Buffett's offer. Now we can get back to trying to figure out what new plan Greece and the Troika come up with to justify repeating the process again a few weeks from now.  And just how much QE is going to be announced Wednesday.