Bailout News CNBC Videos: Congressman Barney Frank On The Uptick Rule And Mark To Market
Updated on Mar 10, 2009 at 11:46 PM by
DailyBail
Less than 2-minute clip from Barney Frank.
The uptick rule change will NOT work because trading happens too quickly on too many independent exchanges. I can't even imagine how it will be implemented and enforced. Does an uptick on ARCA satisfy the requirement if I'm trading on a different exchange?
I'll find the link later, but the reason this rule was overturned in 2007 was the problem I mentioned above. Modern stock trading occurs electronically on several large exchanges that operate independently of one another. In a nutshell, there is ALWAYS an uptick somehwere.
I suppose it's natural to look for a scapegoat when stocks are falling and 401Ks are shrinking, but focusing on short sellers is a mistake. Stock prices mirror profits and profits are falling. The S&P 500 combined earnings for 2009 will come in between $40-50 this year. Slap an appropriate recession PE of 10 onto those numbers and you'll see why the market has much further to fall.
I'm sorry to say it, but too many professional and retail investors are clueless. From Bill Miller and Ken Fisher to the guy down the street. Not enough people understand the massive destruction of corporate profits we are seeing and how this automatically translates into lower equity prices.
Do not fight the tape and do not under-estimate the trend of falling earnings. And most definitely, do not blame short sellers for our market declines. It's profits, people. And nothing else.
It's my birthday, so cut me some slack on posting today. Happy birthday to David Faber as well.
After the jump, we have a Fast Money market-close clip from CNBC with Dylan Ratigan and Jon Najarian.
Bailout News Congressional Video: Senator Jim Bunning Issues A Stern Warning To Fed Vice-Chairman Donald Kohn About AIG
Updated on Mar 10, 2009 at 3:36 PM by
DailyBail
Youtube Video: Senator Bunning And Fed Chairman B-52 Bernanke On AIG -- March 2009
Editor's Note: As often happens, the original youtube video has been pulled. I searched extensively and could not find the same clip anywhere else. I have replaced it with another clip. The text below refers to the original clip and is worth the read on its own.
**********
I will have more commentary on this post later, but for now enjoy this 5 minute clip of former major league pitcher and member of the baseball Hall of Fame, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky.
Fed Vice-Chairman Donald Kohn was squarely in the crosshairs last week as Bunning was throwing high and tight. (Bunning led the majors in hit-batters during the era that included Bob Gibson, so he's not likely afraid of knocking The Fed off the plate.)
Point of fact, here is the short description given of the Senator by the Wall Street Journal in one of the links below:
"Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), the Hall of Famer that he is, may hold an undisputed claim as the best pitcher in the United States Senate. He’d also win any competition as the leading agitator against the Federal Reserve and Treasury. You can always count on Mr. Bunning to lob grenades at a hearing with a central bank official, even if his fellow lawmakers (on both sides of the aisle) use decidedly different tones."
The golden moment occurs about 30 seconds into the clip as Bunning says:
“We have put in approximately $170 billion to $180 billion into one corporation. And you are telling us that the counterparties that got par for their bonds, or for whatever — the American taxpayer shouldn’t know who they are” Mr. Bunning said, growing more agitated. “And then you may come back to us and and ask for more money for more banks and more corporations. You will get the biggest ‘no’ you ever got. I will hold the bill. I will do anything possible to stop you from wasting the taxpayers’ money on a lost cause. And that’s what AIG is, it’s a lost cause.”
The look on Kohn's face is hilarious as he's being flailed.
Call it symbolic, I don't give a rat's ass. Bunning just threw some 98 mph heat straight at Bernanke's head. We celebrate the good moments here because they come not often, and this is one hell of a good moment.
Can You Say 'Fiduciary'?: GE Has No PE: Mark McHugh From Across The Street
Glance at this interesting post on the lies at GE.
Mark McHugh is the author and his blog is called Across The Street.
Anyone else have something to say?
Click the 'contact' tab just like Mark did.
We will put you in front of our 24,000 weekly readers.
Bailout News Video CNBC: Puff Daddies Jimmy Cayne And Charlie Gasparino: Laaaaaid Back
Can I be blunt.
Is everyone going green?
Cayne and Gasparino are chronic problems.
Gasparino reports Bear Stearns now trading at $420 per share.
There are links after the jump including Gasparino's article from The Daily Beast and Jimmy Cayne's very negative opinion of Tim Geithner.
Bailout News CNBC Video: TARP's Powerless Oversight Czar, Elizabeth Warren Criticizes Geithner, Obama, Bush And Paulson
Updated on Mar 10, 2009 at 4:52 PM by
DailyBail
For newcomers, Harvard's Elizabeth Warren is the top COP (Congressional Oversight Panel) of TARP. The problem is she has no real authority to do anything but make noise, write letters and issue updated reports.
Congress deserves our unrelenting disgust for having trusted criminal Hank Paulson so implicitly that they felt no need to attach powerful oversight to the greatest heist in our nation's history. The superficial variety suited everyone swimmingly, and so it should be no surprise that we're now drowning.
Nice work, Pelosi, Frank and Reid as well as plenty of scared Republicans. Paulson rolled onto the Hill last September and played you for the anxious lemmings that he knew you to be. He left with $700 billion, no oversight and a devilish smile on his crooked visage. Thanks for protecting taxpayers.
Warren issued her 3rd report last Friday and it was mostly un-noticed by the media. The link is to the 198 page PDF document in its entirely. For those looking for a great synopsis see this piece by Michael Crittenden of Dow Jones Newswires.
The most satisfying part of the report came in the appendix in an open letter to Treasury Secretary Geithner in which she again criticized TG and Obama for not answering even the most basic of questions related to the banking crisis. We have text of the letter plus more related links after the jump.
Bailout News: CBS 60 Minutes Video: Sheila Bair & The FDIC: Your Bank Has Failed. What Happens Next?
What would happen if your local bank failed? Scott Pelley and "60 Minutes" were given extraordinary access, as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation moves in to take over a failed bank in Chicago.
Video runs 13 minutes and was broadcast Sunday March 8th.
A thought on Sheila Bair. I appreciate that she has been an aggressive banking regulator since early last year. I appreciate that she tells the truth and doesn't mince words. I don't appreciate that she did little to stop the housing bubble along the way. She didn't open her mouth until 2006. She should have been screaming from the rooftops starting in 2003.
Banks should have been told by the FDIC to stop writing mortgages on any home that had more than doubled in value in the previous 5 years. If a house sold for $200k in 1998 then why the hell is some bank writing a $500k mortgage on the same property in 2003 and an $800k note on it in 2006.
Banking suicide by proxy. And Sheila watched it all happen, quietly in the corner, saying nothing.
For those who can't watch the video, I have the entire transcript inside.
Chrysler 1979: Bailout News From Back In The Day With Music By Bob Seger
For whatever reasons those old enough to remember (I was 12 and remember Lee Iacocca coming in from Ford to lead the way. Yeah, back then failout CEOs got fired and sangre nueva was brought in.) the government bailout of Chrysler corp. in 1979 generally think it was a massive rescue.
It was $1.5 billion. Triple that number to adjust for inflation and we're talking about $5 billion in today's dollars. Miniscule. Wouldn't even make the front page.
This above video is a report from AP Radio about bailout old school.
And inside we have an ancient favorite from Detroit legend Bob Seger, hat tip to reader Old Man.
Bailout Truth: Video: Hey Tim, Do Us All A Favor And Step Down Now
As I mentioned in the previous post, it has not been a good week for our tax-cheating Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
He was hammered all week in front of Congress and could only respond with jazz hands. His nominated deputies at Treasury have changed their minds and now want no part of Tim's Treasury. And SNL kicked off their show last night with a sketch subtly lambasting our failed keeper.
The Daily Bail friend and bank genius, Chris Whalen dropped a truth bomb on Geithner Friday afternoon and said TG is much better suited for the State Department than Treasury. He further charged that Tim knows nothing about financials and that his only purpose is to protect Goldman Sachs. And best of all he predicts TG will be gone by June. Whalen, a frequent guest host of CNBC's Squawk Box, is very measured and not inflammatory, so these are serious accuasations and should be examined as such. Let us be the first to start the countdown: 82 days until June 1st.
And now damningly, his seemingly positive work in the Asian Crisis of '97 has been exposed for the PR Shamwow that it was. Paul Keating, the former Prime Minister of Australia says Geithner screwed things up in Indonesia so gravely, that his IMF solution actually helped to create our current financial crisis.
Quoting from the Sydney Morning Herald: "Keating went on to argue that, by frightening the Chinese into building their vast $US2 trillion foreign reserves, Geithner was responsible for the build-up of tremendous imbalance in the world financial system. This imbalance, in turn, according to Keating, contributed to the global financial crisis which has since devastated the world economy."
A little background on TG: he has an Asian studies degree from Dartmouth (tough major Tim considering you grew up in Asia) and a Masters in Political Science and International Economics from Johns Hopkins.
He is the Treasury Secretary of the United Sates at the most critical time in our history, and he has no viable background in Economics. Nice call Obama.
Lastly, while he was President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he allowed the leverage factory of Wall Street to blossom on his watch. Jimmy Rogers has a few, beautiful words about the complete failure that is Tim Geithner.
Could there possibly have been a worse choice for Treasury Secretary. Surely. But not many.
After the jump we have the clip from Chris Whalen courtesy of thestreet.com TV.