RecommendationsA
Matt Taibbi's "Wall Street's Naked Swindle," which ran in the October 15 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, is a terrific expose of the corruption at the highest levels. Briefly, it appears that, back in March 2008, someone who attended the closed-door meeting among Treasury officials, the Fed and certain anointed big banks immediately bought $1.7 million dollars of put options on Bear Stearns stock, then trading at $63, with strike prices 50 and 60 percent lower and which were due to expire in nine days. Bear Stearns stock crashed when it became clear that the Fed and the Treasury, contrary to its policy with other, favored banks, would not support the company. Its stock crashed, and within six days, the put position was worth $270 million, netting the put buyer 159 times his money on "insider information" at the highest level. A lawyer formerly serving as senior counsel for the SEC expressed dismay that the SEC has somehow been unable to follow the money trail: "I've seen the SEC send agents overseas in a simple insider-trading case to investigate profits of maybe $2,000." Taibbi didn't say it, but everyday bureaucratic incompetence can hardly explain the SEC's inability to track down this person after nearly two years, nor the lack of insistence by the Senate Banking Committee, Congress or any other governing body that the trail be followed and the culprit be caught. Influence of powerful people in government, however, would explain it just fine. You can read the article at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall streets naked swindle.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Criminals among us
The folks at Elliott Wave International have been solid advertisers and partners with this blog for several years now. I try to respect their intellectual property rights out of a strong sense of loyalty and ethics, but today, I will stretch the concept of fair use a bit with a verbatim quote from today's Elliott Wave Theorist. I think the nature and importance of what follows sufficiently explains my motivation and hopefully will excuse my momentary departure from an otherwise strict adherence to respecting their proprietary content.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
This kind of thing is infuriating, and ongoing. A monstrous transfer of wealth is occurring on money borrowed from the unborn two genrations away.
OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
Any chance of getting an updated 15 or 30 min chart of the ATR sys?
Alas, the question is....what would I do with insider info. if I thought that it was impossible for me to be caught?
Anon:
An old (lawyer) friend of mine told me a long time ago that he would NEVER sell-out for anything less than he could retire on. At the time he said it jokingly and almost as a catch-phrase but truth be told, he probably meant it. That is something I have always remembered and lived by in every aspect of my life. So far I have not encountered an opportunity so great and illegal that has tempted me. I likely won't either. But I understand human nature...which is probably why I like reading Allan's blog. Opportunistic is one thing but a blatant disregard for what's right and harmful is unforgiveable. Find and hang the bastards.
Hang the bastards? Sorry, you are a century too late with that kind of solution. Those "bastards" make the rules, son.
We have a constitution which delineates the powers of government, the remainder of which were reserved for the people. Or more accurately, we HAD one before FDR came along. That started the erosion. After 65 years of tinkering, we have nothing but toilet paper. The states are nothing but bankrupt junkies dependent on federal money, and completely impotent to effect meaningful change for the betterment of their people. There is absolutely no difference between an American peasant and a Russian peasant. Pay your taxes, Ooh and ahh at the shiny things on the TV, and shut the heck up, you powerless little peasants.
What you are really outraged at isn't the looting of the Treasury, it's the shattering of a lifetime of illusions. Only two years ago, it was hunky dory that your betters made your decisions for you, decisions like institutionalizing the shearing of shareholders and the impoverishment of future generations through deficit spending and unfunded programs. Now that you aren't getting the results you THOUGHT you were getting, only now, are you unhappy. I piss on my law degree. I piss on a lifetime of reading about history and politics. It was all a lie. You are slaves. Your children are slaves. Their children will be slaves.
Now shut the heck up and get back in the tank. The peasants aren't allowed to ask questions.
Allan? For what it's worth you aren't the only one pissing on his law degree.
You're right...and angry like so many. Societies like ours ALWAYS fail. It's just a matter of when.
Seems like anarchy isn't all that far away...
There's an excellent YouTube video explaining what happened that day in March 2008, when someone made that extraordinary bet against Bear Stearns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUKSU1qahgE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcjssQSthNU
its a great article,a must read, and one of my first thoughts was "why am I not surprized".
As a newcomer to 'investing in markets',from last year,I started studying the markets just as all this was beginning,wanting to figure out how our financial manager could fail to see the crash coming when others who were paying attention did see it.
Having fired him and beginning to manage the portfolio myself last year,it took me about one month of study to realize with certainty two things.... that our portfolio manager screwed up royally and with total negligence failed to see what should have been obvious,a train wreck coming down the track. There were many signs of warning and anyone closely watching the market,economy,elliott waves,etc should have seen it.
The second thing I saw after a few months,because it was so obvious,is that this stock market ,the whole thing,is a totally rigged game. it's nothing else.
and this article explains a good piece of the rigged game.
Is there anyone out there who still thinks the market is a 'free market' ? and that its not manipulated and controlled by the government?
At first,I thought it looked to be 'somewhat' manipulated and controlled. After a while longer watching it, I think it's totally or near totally controlled...every aspect of it. and the citizen investor knows almost nothing of what goes on behind closed doors among the elite controllers and their governments.
Everybody now is panicked about the dollar,and fear of its demise,buying gold,and waiting for the next wave of the crash.
But the elite controllers and deciders ,I'm sure, already have the next plan set up to go, whenever they are ready to enact it.... a new currency? or whatever developments in a global system,backroom deals and agreements between countries,whatever theyre doing to keep the rigged game going...we will know nothing of it until its too late to do what the elite have done to prepare and profit from it. Insider information is what they have. and we dont.If were fast and lucky,we might get a few crumbs.
For us,its all nothing but a guessing game. with a few indicator tools to help us guess. While the elite controllers are at the helm,exercising their plans.
Are we riding on the Titanic or the good ship lollipop.
Can you figure out their next step in this rigged game??
Did Ralph Elliott ever imagine 21st century super computers being driven by the government/goldman sachs to manipulate the market like this? government take over of the economic system like this?
I laugh when I see Prechter trying to espouse his 'socionomic' point of view.... that markets move according to "social mood " of the public.that the social mood drives the market. what a bunch of bull.
The markets are driven by the power and control of the government. and the 'public social mood',follows along like the sheeple we have become.
The public 'social mood' is even one of the things the government 'engineers' ...its called 'social engineering' psy-ops. creating the public mood. even as far as subliminal messages in t.v programs. chemtrail chemicals in the atmosphere, flouride and aspartame...research what those things do to the brain.
dumb down the sheeple and create the 'social mood' of passive compliance.
Prechter has it backward. He's very smart about elliott wave,and made a great career reviving it. bravo. But he keeps being wronger and wronger since his crash warning of Aug.3..and the socionomic theory just smells like b.s. to me.
I'd rather see him craft a "Rigged Game Market Theory"
Post a Comment