Obama ashamed of Wall Street January 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Nabers in : Money, Personal Enjoyment, real estate, Self Directed IRA Solo 401k , add a comment$18,400,000,000.00
18.4 billion dollars. According the NY state comptroller, that’s what was paid out in bonuses on Wall Street last year as the American people lost nearly half of their investment portfolios… about the same amount in bonuses that were paid out in the supposed boom of 2004.
Obama is concerned because he thinks Wall Street’s greed may undermine the government’s plan to rally support for trillions more in “bailout” and “stimulus” packages. Read the whole story here.
I am thankful for… November 27, 2008
Posted by Jeff Nabers in : Health, Money, Personal Enjoyment, Personal Productivity, Self Directed IRA Solo 401k , add a comment
…our current circumstances. Rather than ignore the current economic problems, I choose to acknowledge this elephant in the living room during our Thanksgiving holiday.
We are bombarded with headlines like “What will fix our economic problems?” It is absolutely silly. The recession is the solution to the problem of the asinine acts of American government, corporations, and consumers. There is no galactic lottery that our country can win. We have to play by the rules of the game that we started. No person or government can perpetually spend more money than they earn. Such behavior can only be temporary and always leads to self inflicted unpleasantness.
I truly am thankful for our recession because it should help cleanse our government and society of self destructive behavior. We are now forced to (more…)
Our free(ish) market becomes less free with the ban of short selling October 2, 2008
Posted by Jeff Nabers in : Money, Self Directed IRA Solo 401k , add a comment
A couple of weeks ago, the SEC illegalized a type of investing that makes a market what it is – short selling. Simply put, a person can bet on the market going up by “going long” and buying securities in hopes of selling them for a higher price at a later date. Long positions can be leveraged by margin. A person can bet on certain stocks going down by selling them if he already owns them. The leveraged way to bet on the market going down is to “sell short” which is simply selling stock on margin.
Going long makes prices go up. Selling short makes prices go down. This is part of “price discovery”. Most people don’t even know about short selling or they’ve been convinced to not do it. Securities brokers don’t want people to know about investment strategies that will make market valuations go down because their commissions are tied to market valuations. Their entire system is a mechanism of inflating values to further inflate values.
SEC temporarily bans short selling of companies whose price will go down
Read the official SEC action here. They are, by force of law, inflating the value of the stock market. They are also prohibiting (more…)
Who will bail out the government? October 1, 2008
Posted by Jeff Nabers in : Money, Personal Enjoyment, Self Directed IRA Solo 401k , add a comment
Although the House rejected the recent $700 billion bailout, there is plenty of bailing out that has already happened, and there is more to come. Already:
- $80 billion injected into failed AIG
- IndyMac bank taken over by FDIC
- Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch for $50 billion – 70% over its September 12 closing price
- Bear Sterns was bought by JP Morgan Chase for $1.2 billion and the Fed then loaned JP Morgan Chase $29 billion (without recourse) to ensure that JP Morgan Chase didn’t actually have to suffer the consequences of buying a failed bank
- Washington Mutual failed – it is the largest bank failure in American history. In 2007, its share price was $45. By the time it was sold to JP Morgan Chase, it’s share price was 16 cents. The CEO stepped down on September 8, 2008 and a new CEO received a $7.5 million sign-on bonus. 17 days later, he received an $11.6 million severance package as WAMU filed for bankruptcy.
- Bank of America has become the nation’s largest mortgage lender by purchasing Countrywide & Interfirst
Hundreds of billions of dollars have already been injected into the system as seen on this timeline. It’s been happening every couple of months – 5, 10, or 20 billion dollars at a time. That kind of help hasn’t helped enough, and the $700 billion bailout is a sign that zeros will soon be added to the bailouts, and they will total in the trillions of dollars.
What happens to a company that gets bailed out?
- It becomes either under the control of whoever provided the money; and/or
- It becomes indebted to whoever provided the money.
How will our government pay for this?
Firstly, it’s important to understand that (more…)
Feedburner Subscribe
