Backwardization is what depressions are all about. We see this increasing, not decreasing. In gold markets, in stocks, in interest rates offered by banks for holding funds, auto and wine sales: all are moving in negative numbers. Earnings are collapsing BELOW the Great Depression I’s levels! Also, England is thinking of putting health warnings on financial products. HAHAHA. ’Danger: Goldman Sachs gnomes infestation!’ is one possible sign we should see in Jersey City where their tower rises over all buildings there!
Financial products could come with “health warnings” saying how risky they are, under proposals being unveiled by the Treasury today. Chancellor Alistair Darling is to suggest using alerts, similar to those already employed on cigarettes and fatty food, for pensions and mortgages…. The document is expected to endorse recommendations on tougher capital and liquidity requirements for banks, put forward earlier this year by Financial Services Authority (FSA) chairman Lord Turner. It will also set out a range of options for curbing excessive lending – such as imposing tougher capital ratios for banks during boom times, and a “tax on size” to prevent balance sheets ballooning out of control. . HAHAHA. Yes, let’s have warnings on financial instruments! ’Danger! This is a Ponzi scheme,’ for example, is a good choice. Or, ‘Warning: Goldman Sachs Danger Zone! Do Not Trade In Stocks Or Commodities!’ Then, there is the ‘Do Not Feed The Bernanke’ signs we need in Congress. How about, ‘Rip Off Artists At Work’ signs on Wall Street? Before any Cramer show, ‘Watching This Monkey Scream Will Puncture Your Ear Drums’? We also need a sign that flashes on screen whenever cute, fluttery females in tight clothes come onto financial TV shows: ‘Prostitutes Are Dangerous For Your Health, Wealth and Sanity.’
A City stockbroker fell to his death from a rooftop restaurant two days after bosses investigating an IT-related matter sent him home early. Anjool Malde, 24, was found on the ground outside Coq d’Argent in London’s Square Mile at midday on Sunday. He left his Deutsche Bank office early on Friday afternoon after agreeing to “help” the bank with its inquiry. Police are continuing to investigate the death ahead of an inquest, but are not treating it as suspicious. ‘An inspiration’ Mr Malde had been expected to talk to his employer on the phone on Monday – the day after he died – then return to work to help with the inquiry later that week. A City of London police spokesman said: “Police have identified the man who fell to his death on Poultry on Sunday as Anjool Malde. Police continue to investigate the incident however it is not being treated as a suspicious death.”
It is odd that over the past 5 days the headlines have been dominated by computer-related events: from program trading fiascoes at Goldman over the weekend, to what seems to be a full scale assault against US governmental and market infrastructure. I have relished in the amusement of Sky Net derived jokes, but this is starting to get all too real. From Yahoo Finance: The powerful attack that overwhelmed computers at U.S. and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than realized, also targeting the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange. An early analysis of the malicious software used in the attack found its targets also included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post. Many of the organizations appeared to successfully blunt the sustained attacks.
“Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.” --Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President
“ . . . a serious depression seems improbable; [we expect] recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall.” --Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 10, 1929
“While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst -- and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us.” --President Herbert Hoover, May 1, 1930
“Under a paper money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.” --Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, in 2002
Many observers think that “prosperity is around the corner” and that this recession, like others since World War II, will end as soon as the stock market, as a leading indicator, recovers and people start spending again. This is a myopic view of the current economic big picture.
In fact, since the peak of the housing bubble (in the U.S.) in 2005, the onslaught of the subprime financial crisis in August 2007 and the beginning of the recession in December 2007, the U. S. economy, and to a certain extent, the world economy, have entered a period of protracted adjustments. For sure, there will be some quarters of positive economic growth ahead and the recession may be declared officially over in the coming months, but the radical economic reorganization that is taking place will go on for years to come.
Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale. Morgan Stanley is selling $87.1 million of securities that it expects to receive top AAA ratings and $42.9 million of notes graded Baa2, the second-lowest investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service, according to marketing documents obtained by Bloomberg News. The bonds were created from Greywolf CLO I Ltd., a CDO arranged in January 2007 by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and managed by Greywolf Capital Management LP, an investment firm based in Purchase, New York. Two years after the credit markets began to seize up, costing the world’s biggest financial institutions $1.47 trillion in writedowns and losses, banks are again taking so- called structured finance securities and turning them into new debt investments with top credit ratings.
The Manhattan real estate market fought like a champion, managing to stay buoyant while the national real estate market took it on the chin. When the real estate market first began to tumble lower, the Manhattan real estate market held firm and even managed to trend higher. When the subprime mortgage market started to collapse, the Manhattan real estate market held firm, refusing to give up any ground. When markets such as Nevada, California and Florida started to implode, the Manhattan real estate market did just the opposite. When the government started bailing out companies and the hedge fund industry collapsed, many expected the worst for the Manhattan real estate market, but nothing happened. After 12 rounds of sustained heavy body blows, the Manhattan real estate market has finally started to collapse.
Discussion of the 50% Retracement Rule,
potential future price levels, time studies, key dates, Fibonacci, Gann, Astro numbers, Robert Rhea's Great Depression analysis.
"If ya ain't cheatin', ya ain't tryin'."
Apparently, Goldman Sachs has been booted out from doing computerized quant trades at the New York Stock Exchange.
-- GS had been making $100,000,000 a day with computerized trades.
-- This diary outlines one spectacular and illegal way to succeed at that business.
Indeed, GS was "cornering the market" for machine trading as cited from Zero Hedge by bobswern at dkos. New York City's finance sector dropped 25,600 jobs in April. May be that GS charlie-hoteled every last one of them. Then, seems one Sergey Aleynikov got himself arrested. NYTimes says its about "secret sauce" Goldman Sachs quant math. We'll consider Mr. Aleynikov's STORM patent with distributed processing agents. Recalls Triple Hop's text indexing tools. Nothing to do with quant math. The big ticket, the magic wand for a rogue quant shop is technology to grab off FIX PROTOCOL, OCX, or SWIFT messages that precede every transaction_commit at the Exchanges. Grabbing information is way hotter for conquering Wall Street than owning a crystal ball. MoreBTF :::
Gerry Pasciucco stared out from his office on midtown Manhattan's 48th Street, weighing the riskiest trade of his life. Over a 26-year career, he had risen to managing director at investment bank Morgan Stanley and earned a seven-figure-plus pay package. DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG NEWSGerry Pasciucco, interim chief operating officer of American International Group, poses for a portrait in New York. His job is to extricate the company's subsidiary, AIG Financial Products, from tens of thousands of derivatives contracts. Now Edward Liddy, the new chief executive of insurer American International Group, had just asked Pasciucco to head the AIG subsidiary at the vortex of the world financial cataclysm: AIG Financial Products. The mission: unwind AIGFP's portfolio of 44,000 often complex, long-dated derivatives with a notional value of $2 trillion, close the unit, then fire what remained of its 428 employees and resign.
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