There Is No Plan

One of the marketing tricks that Wall Street likes to pull these days is that they’re “experts”. The ballooning banks, ratings agency scumbags, and hedge fun hyenas front their operations with learned economists, know-it-all analysts and other sundry eggheads who ponce around on radio and TV just to give the world the impression that their company’s greed is backed up by, you know, hard facts.

Of course, it’s all just marketing BS. 99% of them don’t know shit from shinola.

After the debacle that was the ’08 financial meltdown you’d think we’d have got the message that they’re nothing but pump and dump guys in decent suits. But we haven’t.

Now Thereisnoplan doesn’t pretend to be an expert in IPOs and all that jazz but it seems to me that there’s something decidedly fishy about all these fabulous valuations that are flying around for tech companies these days. Read the rest of this entry »

AIG = Ask an Idiot and Get

The word du jour right now is “rathole”, a rather ugly expletive that equates to plughole, drain, succubus, and other such unpleasantries. It may however be too polite a phrase for what is going on right now with the bailout of AIG, the government’s new pet project that looks like it’s going to hand the downpayment on fixing the nation’s health care shambles to Goldman Sachs and their ilk.

Just like everyone else in this country, I’m spitting with fury at the idea that the government is handing over money to keep these clowns out of the poorhouse. The bonuses should have been blocked way before they went public, and the fact that the President is being exposed to ye olde “What did you know and when did you know it?” game only eight weeks into his administration does not bode well.

Then there’s the irksome question of whether the meeting where it was decided to keep AIG alive in September of last year was actually a little joke played on us by Goldman Sachs. (After all the key people around that table were Paulson, ex-boss of GS, Blankenfein, current boss of GS, and Tim “someone put me out of my misery now” Geithner). We’ve known for years that Goldmans was a class above every other investment bank, but their ability to game the system seems utterly unparalleled now.

Finally, there’s this little nugget. We were told that if we’d let AIG die the global banking system would have collapsed. That the $1.6 trillion in Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) that they sold to the world’s top financial institutions who’d sunk their dough into those toxic assets would suddenly go away, leaving them totally exposed, and toppling like dominoes. Makes sense, right? I mean, if the insurance company backing those toxic assets goes belly up then the world’s banks are left holding the bag. Stands to reason.

Or does it?  With the caveat that I really don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m not so sure. And here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

Another bumper day on the Street. The Government bails out another basket case bank. Everything’s right with the world. Hurrah! Yet again, Wall Street proves it’s an utterly amoral, self-interested, club that has nothing whatsoever to do with you and me.

panic on wall street. or not.

Massive market volatility, huge gains on the basis of nothing, followed by huge losses and back to gains. Is there a pattern to all this? Not on the surface, at least. The press loves reasons, and tacks on some or other reason for that day’s movements. Recession indicators, new appointment at Treasury, another baby for Angelina and Brad.

But maybe something else is in play too, something mysterious, something very, very fishy.

Traders either go “long” hoping a stock will rise, or they go “short” on borrowed stock hoping the stock will drop and they get to keep the difference on the sale. Long traders and short traders are not in competition, but supposing they were, even in some unspoken way, in collusion. Wall Street traders aren’t known for their mild-mannered approach to business, so could be…

Read the rest of this entry »

Man With Plan

After nationalizing Fannie and Freddie, then letting Lehman Brothers die for no apparent reason, then bailing out AIG to the tune of $85 billion (now around $150 billion but who’s counting), Hank Paulson sat back to watch the credit markets unfreeze. But instead they just froze up some more.

Hank was totally bummed. “This job totally sucks”.

“The credit freeze just keeps on freezing”, he said to his posse of former Goldman Sachs hacks. “What the frick do I do?”

“You need one big plan”, said Neel Cash and Carry, “not just a whole bunch of little plans stuck together”. Hank nodded furiously. “Yes, yes, that’s right”. After scribbling a few notes on the back of a dry cleaning bill he looked up. “I’ve got it”. Read the rest of this entry »