Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle by Matt Taibbi

Copy + Paste from Rolling Stone Magazine:

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy – they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash

MATT TAIBBI

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.

The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses — meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years. Still, the troops were worried: There were rumors that Dr. Ballsachs, bowing to political pressure, might be forced to scale the number back. After all, the country was broke, 14.8 million Americans were stranded on the unemployment line, and Barack Obama and the Democrats were trying to recover the populist high ground after their bitch-whipping in Massachusetts by calling for a “bailout tax” on banks. Maybe this wasn’t the right time for Goldman to be throwing its annual Roman bonus orgy.

Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. “In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines,” he said, “I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative.”

Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we’re so amazing at our jobs, so fuck all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses. … Continue Reading

Memo To Lloyd, the Morts Need Your Attention

$GS Trader (Michael Lewis) sends an email to the C.E.O., sharing 3 big ideas. HILARIOUS. LOL!

Copy + Paste from Bloomberg:

To: Lloyd Blankfein
Re: Winning the Public Relations War

Six months ago, with what I mistakenly took to be your tacit approval, I attempted to address ordinary Americans, almost as equals. (read it here)

They envied and resented our firm; I sought merely to correct their misunderstandings about Goldman Sachs and send them on their way, so that they might more briskly resume their quest for gainful employment.

In hindsight, I misjudged their ability to see the reality of their situation, and of ours. At the time I accepted your strong suggestion that I never again try to speak directly to mortals — or, as you referred to them, “The Morts.”

Now our predicament is suddenly more dire. Ordinary Americans wish to control not just our pay but our core values: We at Goldman have long stood for the right of every prop group to trade against its firm’s customers. If we abdicate that right, who are we, deep down?

In just the past few days many of us on the Goldman trading floor have wrestled with that question. We believe that rather than re-think our core values we should re-think our relations with the American public.

Hence this memo. Your recent non-verbal signals — your habit of passing directly behind my trading desk en route to the elevators, your selection of the urinal adjacent to my own — convince me that you continue to value my thoughts.
… Continue Reading

The Four Stages of the typical Secular Bear Market and its Aftermath

On forecasting 2010 Stock Market (DJIA)

 Copy + Paste:

Historically, the first few trading days of January have been among the strongest for stock performance, because this is when individuals and pension plans add big chunks of new money to retirement accounts. Whether people follow their normal pattern and pump money into stocks in January can be a sign of the market’s prospects for the coming weeks, and even for the entire year.

If stocks rise in January, they often finish the year strongly. If stocks are weak during this normally propitious time, stocks tend to do poorly…

…In years when the Dow has risen in the first month of the year, the median rise for the rest of the year is 10.4%. In years when the Dow has fallen, the median rise for the next 11 months is just 0.28%.

Because of the inflows of new cash, January has seen stock advances 62% of the time since 1900, well above the average of 57% for all months.

In fact, November, December and January typically are the market’s strongest three-month stretch, as investors position themselves for the new year. Early December often is soft, possibly because tax-conscious investors are selling losing stocks to generate tax losses that they can balance against taxable gains in other stocks. If things are on a normal footing, that weakness should be over by late December, and stocks should be rising ahead of a strong January…

Link:
As Goes January, So Goes the Year?, E.S. Browning, Wall Street Journal, 1/4/2010. (Read Full Article)

The Stock Market (Dow Jones Industrial Average) in 2009

Copy + Paste Excerpts:

The U.S. stock market is poised to end 2009 with a comeback of historic proportions, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 61% from its March nadir and 20% for the year.

But the history of such rebounds suggests the biggest gains may already be over, making it hard to expect a blockbuster 2010….

… Early in the rally, the gains were fueled by the realization that the financial system and the economy would escape total meltdown. But then signs of an improving economy and company earnings that consistently bettered expectations took hold, helping drive market gains.

The biggest worry for many investors is whether the rise in stocks reflects an overly optimistic view of what lies ahead for the economy.

For the stock rally to endure, investors say, the U.S. economy must avoid slipping back into recession — a “double-dip” scenario — and start adding jobs. Companies also will need to deliver earnings fueled by better sales, rather than by the aggressive cost-cutting that many undertook in 2009….

You can read the whole thing through the link below.

Last year around this time, I had a conversation with a Private Equity Director over dinner about the stock market. He was convinced that we would end this year lower. I was a bit more optimistic and convinced my argument was better than his. It looks like I win. =P

Link: 2009: Banner Year for Stocks, Joanne Slater, Wall Street Journal, 12/31/09.

Obama’s Big Sellout by Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone writer and the bane of Wall Street is at it again. Another great article (Issue 1093 — December 10, 2009) by Matt Taibbi.

Copy + Paste:

Obama’s Big Sellout

The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway.

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

… Continue Reading

What it means to have a weak U.S. Dollar

Have you ever wondered what it means when our currency depreciates in value? … No?…. Too bad.

Anyways, here’s a cool graphic from the New York Times explaining the consequences of a falling dollar. 

(Click picture to get edumacated)

Link:
Winners and Losers as the Dollar Falls, by Bill Marsh, New York Times, 12/6/2009.

Bailout Ben iPhone Game.

this application almost makes me want to get an iPhone… wait, i said almost.

another case of art imitating life.

… Continue Reading

Who is paying taxes?

i’m a sucker for cool and informative charts.

Link: Mint

Up, up, and away!

Cool cover on the current issue of The Economist. It reminds me of Astroboy.

Here’s a Copy+Paste of the article:

… Continue Reading