Financial topics

[aedens]

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/hft-melt-back


No stretch of imagination where the non productive bots feed.

TD: "The market is melting straight up without interruption, and without any volume. Retail is now completely out of the market, and our advice to everyone is to stay out and let the computer blow themselves up again."

[thomasglee]

You know, a large part of our TARP money went into Europe and now we are again sending money into Europe to supposedly stave-off a collapse. What's interesting here, is that we all know we're doing it to keep OUR banks from collapsing if the Euro collapses so, in a sense, our participation in the European bailout is another "too big to fail" bailout. Our government is talking about reform and saying that under the "new rules", no entity will be "too big to fail" while at the same time they're okaying the bailout out an entity they believe is "too big to fail".

Don't you just love their double-talk!

It makes me angrier and angrier every day!!

[aedens]

The crocodiles are saying come on in the waters fine, but the wilderbeasts don't want to swim anymore. Their is no plunder without fresh meat.

Algo's and HFT are the market and yes Dark Pool's front runners care for the customer? Obama's Politics cannot live another term in omission. Main stream media says we have no clue what happened which is to scary.

Wonder who will be the Shoeless Joe Jackson?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 61084.html

Even before some individual stocks collapsed to just a penny a share, data from the NYSE Euronext's electronic Arca exchange started to appear questionable, say traders.

Gamed, same old song

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/b ... lanchester

[aedens]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 27058.html
Wed May 05, 2010 3:19 pm
Typical of the beltway bent of mind above.

On a local issue the amount of revenue is shrinking since there are less people paying since many have left the State seeking work but local services are holding
to there core function only to date only and repairs can be done when the coffers are balanced to fire services cost's and reflect priorority safety repairs in the township. The only thing noted was a few focused on themselves driving a point which entails not a benefit to others but themselves outside there elected responsibility outside
there Job title and summarily discharged given legal advise to protect the taxpayer as noted in public record. Reality looking forward is fix it looking forward in regard to there duties on the local front. Overall we are not moving forward as revenue for vital services maintain funding for public safety and work is not picking up.
Overall as the forums account the back wall the finanacial storm looms very large indeed. Last summer we assumed our Summer of discontent we forwarded, and this Summer I will wait in contemplation as events unfold to topical issues we trend in GD. Also I wish to thank the current posting as real news that all have been conveying given time
contraints and ideological contaminations we have to suffer from the networks.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us-mor ... ted-tax-re

April's tax deficit of $83 billion was the highest April deficit on record. America is now more bankrupt than ever. Income was $245.3 billion, 8% below the total recorded last April. Spending was $328.0 billion, up 14% year-over-year. A year ago in April the deficit was $20.9 billion. And here is the data: tax receipts down 7.9% YoY, Individual Income Tax down 21.5% YoY, and more importantly, spending: Total spending up 14.2%, National defense up 17%, Medicare up 39.4%, Social Security up 4.2% and General Government up 5.6%. At least interest payments were down 9.5%.

And now back to your regularly scheduled bankrupt country market melt up.

[aedens]

I think we are seeing consumer finally slowly walking out the door and as noted in the below link. Given the diverse feedback I have noted from the grassroots many have moved to preservation mode of thought. We are just seeing the bots eating themselves also. Now the Mexicans are trading interest swaps also. The lemmings seem to never end and the bots do not either.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/retail ... e-negative

TD: In fact, in the week ended May 5, retail investors had pulled a massive $2.235 billion out of the market, after the S&P had dropped a mere 5% or so from the prior week. We are positive that when the number for the current week comes out, the outflows will be stunning now that investors have no faith left in the rigged casino "capital markets."

After a few more comments like scared, unknowing and a few more unnessary comments from the Beltway the removal of encumbants to date you can rest assured we have checked the voting record's already. Words are pointless now since they have no ears to hear. I pity the idiots who vote for cap and trade scam. IMO

Context: http://generationaldynamics.com/forum/v ... dens#p4307

The Mom and Pop are devastated in a larger than regional scope and given the speed of decline the drift the market calls pause appears to be the last spasm since the debt parasitic effect killed and killing the host's in the staggering millions .
Double dip may turn out to be a good scenario considering the speed of cratering but we have the data and so do they and will do much for years
and I do mean years of pain. I think Mr. Market can assert a P/E to a decent nominal value but since Mr. Market is only a ZIFF card pick a number.



THOMAS JEFFERSON 1791 " first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

[MarshAviator]

From Zerohedge: GordonGekko
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/coming ... al-tsunami

What's happening now is just the beginning of the collapse of a multi-decade debt bubble. All the so-called "growth" since the 70's has been based on ever increasing amounts of debt - not just the US, but the entire world. Here is a US Debt (public and private) to GDP percentage graph:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/ ... ot/1_0.gif

Comment from the Author

This time, I think the whole world is f**ked. It's all one big s**thole.

Apart from no mention of Generational Root Causes the author seems to recognize we are headed to a global meltdown or worse.
It appears to me the difference is the boomers are willing to let the Gen-X continue with more of what got us here in the first place.
If Silents (or Greatest Generation) were still in charge then I have to believe they would have forced a restructure on Greek Bond holders (and all of the PIIGS).

This in fact was done and in some cases loans were forgiven as realistically there was no other choice (and still isn't).
In fact one of the other things he points out is just how complicit the Governments have been in this presently crony capitalism.

As aedens points out
Many articles are showing "retail" investors have left the market.
I wonder how long before they leave completely.
It will be really funny if the little guys get out before the professional guys get clobbered.
But then again, it may not make any difference as the whole circus could come crashing down.

Watching MSNBC this morning, it finally dawned on me there is barely a pretense of journalism.
Both the anchors and guest are just advertisement mechanisms.

Many classes on the market teach students "you can make money if the market goes up or down"
So it is curious that there is so much bias in the MSM towards the up direction, and only in the context of rising prices is
presented an opportunity to make money.

Never do you hear "this is going to tank and here is how to make a buck on it"
That would be anathema.

The MSM is just like so called product magazines for (you name it) cameras, cars, et cetra.
They pretend to have articles but are really seamless presentation of ads, some literally, some masquerading as reviews.

A couple of times they had a guest who used the term boomers, gen-x, gen-y and yet had no follow through with Generational concepts.
It it curious they, must have read at least S&H (maybe GD as well).
Certainly it seems strange they know the labels but not what they stand for.
Perhaps they know and are just getting as much as they can before it is all over.

One closing thought is just how difficult the regeneration phase may be.
I read a lot of Cold War books many years ago (was in the Military) and one of the recurring themes in "Thinking the Unthinkable" by Dr. Kahn was how long after a country suffered major damage does it take to get back to present GDP.
While it may not be due to Nuclear Weapons this time (but this is far from certain) it could be nearly as bad.
Peoples attitudes will of course never be restored, and going to the mall as a national pastime will likely be generations away.

John,
Could this cycle be different in the respect that re-generation is only able to restore us to a faint version of what we once were?
I hope not, but have this nagging feeling they higher you fall from the more terrible the bottom.

The one bright note is more and more a few good sites (like GD) are shedding light and increasingly the MSM is being seen for the shill it really is.

[freddyv]

Perhaps they know and are just getting as much as they can before it is all over.

Absolutely! Historically you will see a looting of the treasury before the final collapse. It is in their best interest to keep this all going as long as possible so they can continue to suck money out of the pockets of the suckers/citizens. Even the "disadvantaged" people who think they are being looked after by the government will be left high and dry.

I believe the collapse will be slow and segmented rather than just one big shock. The one big shock will be reconstituted at a later date by historians to use as a frame of reference. A perfect example is the crash of 1929, which didn't cause the Great Depression or put us into it right away, it simply was the opening salvo of a long period of economic misery leading to even worse miseries.

Richard Russell had some photos from the Depression on his website the other day and he wrote this about his own experience:

In the year 1938 during the Great Depression my father had a great job in NYC. He was making $18,000 a year, which was BIG money in those days. Then the full brunt of the Depression hit, and my dad lost his job. When he lost his job he suffered what they called "a nervous breakdown." My parents wanted to spare me the sight of my father's pain, so they signed me up for a youth hostel trip to the West Coast, much of it by bicycle. And off I went with my beautiful British bike with its Sturmey Archer "high tech" gear shifts.

We went across Canada (Banff and Lake Louise) to Calgary, stopped in at the great Calgary Stampede (the world's biggest rodeo), and then down the West Coast to LA. On the trip I saw the ravages of the Great Depression. I saw "The grapes of wrath." I saw men lying by the side of the road, I saw orchards with fruit rotting, I saw broken-down cars with dusty-faced children and exhausted parents. I saw Okies, lots of them, They were Oklahoma people who had packed up and driven north to California in the hopes of finding any kind of jobs.

A subscriber sent me the pictures below. These picture bring back painful memories. These are the people who fought and survived the Great Depression and later fought World War 11. Now they call them "The Greatest Generation." Take a look. They didn't appear that great when I saw them in the 1930s

Note his comment, "...the full brunt of the Depression hit..." in reference to 1938. Looking at stock charts won't tell us what was really going on, we need to research and listen to those who were there to find that out. 1938 is 8-9 years after the crash of 1929. The stock market didn't bottom for 3 years after the '29 crash and we didn't really come out of the Depression until the war ended some 15 years later. Even then there were serious bouts of inflation and deflation that kept people unsure about the economic outlook.

Fred
http://www.acclaiminvesting.com/

[freddyv]

THOMAS JEFFERSON 1791 " first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

I had to leave that Jefferson quote in there, he was such a wise man. But I just wanted to add a link to a website that offers real-time economic data that I have really come to rely on:

http://www.consumerindexes.com/


Fred
http://www.acclaiminvesting.com/

[OLD1953]

I know that the growth in the US economy has been fueled by willingness to add more and more debt, have said so many times. The illusion of growth was preferable to real growth, which would have required building new infrastructure to engage real national economies of scale, thereby returning the investment with actual growth and actual returns rather than paper returns that produce nothing when the paper pyramid collapses. But it surely looks good before the collapse.

Populism has found its way into the Senate, along with bipartisan support for curbing profits made by banks on "swipe fees".

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... theadlines

That's very important, as it is right on line with GD predictions of changing political winds. Wonder if they'll clawback on the bankruptcy credit card bill of a few years ago, that would be very popular?

In any event they also voted to remove the ability to pick and choose ratings agencies. Wow!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... AD9FM9Q280

Today was a home run day for GD.

The odds are good that either BP or the govt has been lying about the oil spill. Important again, as this will both continue to erode trust in the govt, and it also points up what I said a few days ago, that you can't really have a good Depression without some type of "dust bowl" environmental disaster helping things along. We've got volcanos in Europe (ok, Iceland) and oil spills in the US, the damage from either would have been absorbed easily 25 years ago. Now it's just added weight towards a breakdown.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/us/14oil.html

Shortly after the Valdez oil spill, oil companies were required to contribute to a fund to keep oil slick response crews in place all around the US coastline, with booms and so forth ready to deploy in case of a spill. Of course, that was all done away with by the late 90's, exactly in keeping with the GD schedule, again.

Asian markets are slipping on the strength of the YEN, the EURO took another beating and silly season stuff is getting in the news more and more, as desperate people lie about their accomplishments to make themselves feel better and make a little money. This week it's a guy running around claiming to be a yo yo champion.

http://deadspin.com/5535220/fake-yo+yo- ... everywhere

And just popping up in the news, Maj. Gen. Khattiya Sawatdiphol was shot in the head in Thailand, which has prompted the army to move in to face protestors. That's going to get really ugly fast.

[aedens]

Events are truly unfolding indeed as the backwall nears. The economics stagnation will linger as ideological fantasy's crumble to the simple realism of chastisment. English common law allowed parents and others who have “lawful control or charge” of a child to use “moderate and reasonable” chastisement or correction. Now scale that to nations who spend beyond ability to service debt. Innovation will continue as long as the why question is included since Americans will not tolerate this without consequences. I was always reminded Americans ability to help no matter what the odds. On a personal thought of conveyance I was asked to help my brothers in a situation. Given the reality of the question they always had the solution but walk another direction as we all do at times until the straight and narrow enters the mind. Labor has tradition and Capital has shown that lean and mean produces avenue's they do not even understand as unintended consequences. Nothing is new under the sun to responsibilty's of labor and capital.
Innovation will prevail given the advances when we choose to admit the direction in the proper framework of Capital formation. We can all provide context to progress and the consequences of waste we see all around us. Given the division of labor as reality conveys as ethics you cannot move forward when the plan of the day is another program to avoid what the nature is truly is, profit at cost to maximize it. To be direct, the inertia I see in my sphere is it could be better but that day is not here but long since passed smothered in ignorance to solution to preserve career and now some have retired but the painfull course of to trust has struggled since the policy is way to far removed from reality. The current formation of capital by whatever verbiage you pocess is subject to the disposition of the consumer and level of resolve they pocess good or bad. As we all know the predicated business cycle has renewed and slow progress will help some and and we have noted in the forums some will not make it back given the nature and length of the adversity. I was reminded of faith, hope and charity from a friend and smiled at his resolve for the future. As a forum reader again I thank all for providing context in these days of wasted politic's of avarice and hubris to ignore unsustainable models to the taxpayer.