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copperbaron
36 Comments
Ivanhoe Mines is a Bargain, But...
So...why not do the sensible thing, and buy Hecla Mining - HL?
It is on sale for an incredibly low price - and all the silver, lead, etc. are in the USA. It is down 90% in the past year - bargain time!
GE: Not-So-Good Things Come to Light
Ever heard of Lucent?
They went bust in a real hurry, as soon as the tech bubble started to burst.
Now, I'm not saying that GE has been as foolish as Carly Fiorina and the gang of idiots at Lucent. It is rare to see a company put a thoroughly unqualified person in as head of marketing - which is what Lucent did with Carly - and GE is known for having very good financial controls.
So it could go either way - but the clouds are a lot darker than they were six months ago.
Ackman's Sears Sale: An Expression of His Activism
Take a walk through the stores - I did. It's not pretty - traffic is poor (but that's true everywhere right now) and merchandise often looks cheap and shoddy. This is the slow-mo KMart-ization of Sears.
The tools and appliances are OK - Craftsman is still a strong brand. But other areas, like electronics, are poorly stocked, and there are few bargains, just a bunch of stuff that is not selling sitting on shelves. Softlines are a wall-to-wall disaster. Housewares and kitchen can't hope to compete with BBBY, or even Penney's for that matter.
Unless Lampert can keep borrowing to buy in shares, giving them a totally artificial boost, this thing could fall into the teens, IMO.
I think Ackman got disgusted and threw in the towel - maybe it is roughly the bottom for SHLD - but I doubt it. I seriously question the premise that because Ackman can't be "activist" enough, he bolted. Rather, I think he feared this would continue to drag down his returns for some time, and that there is no fix available.
General Electric: Genuine Risk of Collapse?
Yeah, Immelt took over from Welch, who is wrongly credited as some sort of management guru.
The truth is - GE amassed a HUGE amount of leverage under Jack Welch, almost like a hedge fund. Lots of risky loans and huge debts. But it was a big bull market, and it didn't blow up in his face.
Now it is ready to blow up, and Immelt gets blamed??
Puh-leeze! Jack Welch is perhaps the most overrated CEO in the history of American business. He is, without a doubt, one of THE most self-aggrandizing. The fact that this joker took about $1 BILLION of compensation out of GE is truly disgusting, and shows how very corrupt and distorted our business systems are here in the U.S. - from executive pay to a wildly distorted stock market that overvalued GE for the last twenty years, at least.
Prosecutors Going after Fraudulent Mortgage Borrowers
But as another poster said - let's be sure to get the Jimmy Caynes and the Dick Fulds and the John Macks who underwrote all of this crap, right along with the John Doe speculators and the creeps issuing the phony appraisals, OK ?
The End of Our Banking System?
The current crisis is one caused by recklessness, corruption, and a book a near-term profit at all costs mentality. It's the racketeering mentality, not inflation or too many regulations! What sheer nonsense.
I am surprised that people who think like you are gainfully employed. But I doubt that you will be for too much longer.
The Bubble Years and Beyond
Puts a fraud-job like Greenspan to shame, where he belongs. Ditto for most of the other whackjobs that we collectively refer to as the "Federal Reserve"
Time to Reform the Fed
Volcker did a great job 30 years ago - but the Fed is basically an albatross around the necks of the American economy, and it supports the totally corrupt status quo, which is to have the major Wall Street houses take a cut of everything, without adding any value.
This parasitic, racketeering based banking system must be shut down, pronto.
The Next Crisis Is on the Horizon
You are almost there. The Fed has screwed up - again. I know, it's really getting to be pretty tiresome, which is why we need to ABOLISH the hapless Fed ASAP and get some real talent working on this crisis.
The answer is to create a new commercial bank, run by bright, forward-thinking types and funded by the money-printing machine of the U.S. Govt. Call it FedBank. Let's face the facts - we need to inflate the money supply, and we need to provide credit and prime the economic pump - nobody in their right mind would argue with that.
The fact that we have given money to the "banks" whose management, in their corrupt and highly-self-interested way, have chosen NOT to lend (which of course is the desired goal) but instead to play the buyout game, should be - THE FINAL STRAW! The people who run our 'banking system' are a bunch of crooks, and should be removed from their posts ASAP by Presidential Order. Nothing less will stop the thievery and incompetence, IMO.
The new FedBank would lend where needed, un-freeze credit markets, and stimulate the economy. At this point, the utter jokers who used to be bankers are not even providing standard working capital loans. This is patently ridiculous.
We need a whole new paradigm in banking, and to fire about a thousand jokers who could provide the nation a bit of comic relief, standing in long unemployment lines, where they belong. Right along with the hundreds of thousands of hardworking (yet currently unemployed) Americans who are the unfortunate victims of the obviously flawed and highly corrupt Federal Reserve model we have suffered under for nearly a century.
Bond Expert: Friday Outlook
Bonds will get killed going forward.
EOM
The Shallowest Generation
I believe it may be. We are seeing the joints coming apart, the beams sagging and about to crack under the weight of massive debt and enormous corruption. Paulson is just trying to steal a few billion more for his beloved financial organized crime rings, before he retires to a life of wealth and luxury, under very heavy security.
Many hail Ron Paul as some sort of visionary, but I would argue differently. He espouses "Free markets" but made all of his money as a doctor. As anyone who bothers to examine the facts knows, doctors bill enormous fees to patients (and Medicare/Medicaid) in a system that in no way resembles a "free market."
Rather, it is a rigged market that controls the number of available doctors, and legislates their financial advantage, to an extraordinary degree. The A.M.A. is the most powerful and mercenary union in this nation's history, and is sucking the country dry.
I would never vote for Ron Paul on purely moral grounds - he was part of the problem, in my opinion. If you are a wealthy doctor (one of the limited number allowed to be 'licensed' that is) then it is easy to throw stones and criticize others for debt. These jokers live in a fantasy world, just like the IB types shuffling paper around and committing fraud for million-dollar bonuses. Their sense of true economics is deeply distorted by their own self-manipulated and outsized pay package.
CDS Clearing Houses Could Magnify the Market Disruptions
Look, if two idiots in a bar bet each other $25,000 on, say, the World Series, and when the loser can't pay, why should the Federal Government step in and pay the winner? That makes no sense.
In the case of the CDS racket (and believe me, that's exactly what it is) the loser is an idiot at Merrill Lynch, and the winner is an idiot at a hedge fund. Or vice versa, it makes no difference. Most of these 'contracts' are just gambling events - negotiated over the phone, often by people like the creep at AIG who was just trying to pump up his bonus, giving no thought to the legality of what he was doing, or how it just might destroy his company.
Many of these so-called "contracts" are just an agreement faxed back and forth, sometimes there is no signature, some of them are now being repudiated by the losers, as in "I never agreed to those terms" or 'Bob left six months ago - we have no idea what you're talking about.'
To ask the U.S. taxpayer to bail out these idiots is beyond any rationality - we are not "saving the financial system", instead we are underwriting crime and extreme recklessness and moral hazard by a bunch of adventurous con men.
CDS: The Less You Know, the Worse They Look
Sounds interesting, and I know Eisinger is a good, sound analyst.
Please provide a link or identify the source of the radio program, I'd like to hear the actual broadcast.
Thx
CopperBaron
Credit Suisse Expects Gold Miners to Disappoint
I'm really surprised that CSFB can't find better talent these days, especailly considering the massive layoffs all over the Street.
7 Steps To Restore Functioning Markets
A good way to control this is to severely limit the leverage of hedge funds, and restrict their trading activity. These financial parasites have engaged in predatory trading games, and if we had a justice dept. with an effective AG at the helm, we would have already had vigorous prosecution on this front, instead of what amounts to acquiescence. There are laws against racketeering on the books - let's enforce them.
Finally, I believe we should create one huge bank - call it FedBank - and have it run responsibly, not by the old guard that plays the typical banker's game of letting people borrow money during good times, then trying to seize their property during the temporary collapses. Banking is a really dirty business, and always has been - but with the right kind of people running it, it can be cleaned up to a degree.
The guys who ran the mortgage bubble up to absurd levels, and now are sitting back and taking govt. money but refusing to lend - well, maybe we can reopen Devil's Island and send all of them there for an extended stay.