Monday, May 10, 2010

Stock Market Collapse - More Goldman Rigging?

Last week, Goldman Sachs was on the congressional hot seat, grilled for fraud in its sale of complicated financial products called "synthetic CDOs." This week the heat was off, as all eyes turned to the attack of the shorts on Greek sovereign debt and the dire threat of a sovereign Greek default. By Thursday, Goldman's fraud had slipped from the headlines and Congress had been cowed into throwing in the towel on its campaign tobreak up the too-big-to-fail banks. On Friday, Goldman was in settlement talks with the SEC.
Goldman and Wall Street reign. Congress appears helpless to discipline the big banks, just as the European Central Bank appears helpless to prevent the collapse of the European Union. . . . Or are they?
Suspicious Market Maneuverings (more)

U.S. Debt Shock May Hit In 2018, Maybe As Soon As 2013: Moody's

Spiraling debt is Uncle Sam's shock collar, and its jolt may await like an invisible pet fence.

"Nobody knows when you bump up against the limit, but you know when it happens it will really hurt," said fiscal watchdog Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The great uncertainty about how much debt is too much has tended to make fiscal discipline seem less urgent, rather than more. There is no obvious threshold beyond which investors will demand higher real yields for holding U.S. debt. Vague warnings from ratings agencies about the loss of America's 'AAA' status haven't added much clarity — until recently. (more)

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Jim Rickards Tells CNBC's Joe Kernen Gold Is Going To $5,000

Ealier today Jim Rickards of Omnis, formerly LTCM's GC, was on CNBC and was subjected to some "probing" questions by Joe Kernen in which the anchor asks Rickards if he is a "conspiracy theorist" for his recent insights into the potential investigation of JP Morgan's market rigging behavior by the DOJ. Rickards replies that he isn't, and follows it up with some gold price target observations based on "8th grade math": the former LTCM man sees gold going up by at least 10 times, and hitting $5,000 rather easily. We wonder if to CNBC there is any uglier word than "conspiracy theory" even when the "theory" is backed 100% by facts. (more)

Weekly Financial Report, May 7, 2010


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MUST HEAR: Panic And Loathing From The S&P 500 Pits

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Business Week - May, 10 2010



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The IMF Destroys Iceland and Latvia

The International Monetary Fund operates primarily as a banker bailout machine. They cajole and tempt and confuse and threaten the leaders of governments worldwide to pay off the failed bets of the big bankers using the taxpayer funds of their countries. This has been going on a long time, at least since the early 1980s.

Thus, I am not in the teeniest bit surprised that the same thing is happening today in Iceland and Latvia. (more)