patrick.net

How about:

Free-Market-ism confuses what ought to be and what is. Such misalignment of reality will tear apart any society over time.

My point is, one should recognize that overly idealistic and naive persons come in all political flavors, and progressives have by no means "cornered that market" (so to speak :)) in that respect.

Eliza: no quibble with your other observation.

respectable sacred prostitutes, half high priestess and half counselor, finally free to practice their holy work in SF.

Wow, you get a great value for your $5 in SF!

Are you sure they would be priestess? I would presume most prostitutes in SF would be male.

And please, no "speaking from experience" cracks for Eliza or me.

SEC is lookingin to possibe ban on shorting of all stocks !

This will enable the rich guys to dump the shares slowly while the average joe will be holding the bag.

TOB : good pointer.

In a nutshell :

There is big casino ( Shadow banking System)
where big players like Morgan stanley and the likes bet ( credit default swaps, derivatives...other fancy words) with public money ( borrowed from FED). All the while making money when they win and if they lose , Tax payer bails them out.

This was the biggest scam of the century and still we can't do much about it or the people who played the game.

TOB : good pointer.

In a nutshell :

There is big c a s i n o ( Shadow banking System)
where big players like Morgan stanley and the likes bet ( credit default swaps, derivatives…other fancy words) with public money ( borrowed from FED). All the while making money when they win and if they lose , Tax payer bails them out.

This was the biggest scam of the century and still we can’t do much about it or the people who played the game.

Even the Wall Street Journal is admitting that the financial sector blew up because of a lack of regulation:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122161053317045669.html

I think this was the high tide for the whole Republican "drown government in a bathtub" movement. Good riddance.

I don’t know where HARM, RandyH, DinOR, PeterP, LiLLL, Skibum, Jimbo, SFWoman, et.al are……

Man, what a show.

Lurking. Schadenfreude is bittersweet. I mostly just post on Zillow now, riling up the masses. I'm 80% hated there, which is more comfortable for my style.

By the way, Ron Paul is an idiot too. He has been unable to answer the obvious question about his proposal to eliminate the Fed and the US central banking function. That is, would you unilaterally disarm the USA of all nuclear weapons? No? Well, why do we have to have a central bank. That's right, Paul. Because everyone else does. I hate nuclear weapons too. The thought of using one terrifies me. But I fully support having them, and keeping them ready to use because other countries do. Eliminate the Fed and watch what happens. It's pure insanity.

...returning to lurkdom...

God bless the group of people who created internet !

Without it , I am sure the only thing we would have known through newspaper and CNN would have been this : "We have a financial instability and Fed is trying to fix it"
I don't know how many fu*k ups would have gone unnoticed in the past.
If these guys can do these kind of things in this information age, imagine what they might have done in the past.We just don't know.

Ron Paul is head and shoulders above these other crooks.

I totally agree.

However, since humanity is idiotic any possible leader is an idiot by extension.

When I first found this site I though they were all WRONG about the housing situation…

Too bad, I did not profit from my own predictions. I am the biggest idiot ever. :(

I’m 80% hated there, which is more comfortable for my style.

If you also talk about Second Life, you will be 99.9% hated.

If short-selling is banned, just watch those Put IVs to explode.

What are the other ways to profit from such a move?

Not investment advice.

Friendly suggestion: can we open a channel to discuss trading in the financial markets?

what is a Put IV :-)

Implied volatilities of put options.

I can't think of anything except that it will slow downward movement of stocks. It will be factored in to stock market first thing in the morning

*not investment advice*

Without shorting, the put-call parity may be distorted.

Not investment advice

Is it just me? It seems that insane policies started rolling in since the Republican lost both houses in 2006.

If you don't like what the DOW is doing....change the DOW.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ts/080918/10438174.html?.v=2

AIG's replacement by Kraft is the second change to the Dow this year. On Feb. 19, Bank of America and Chevron took spots vacated by Honeywell and Altria. By comparison, only two changes were made to the component makeup of the Dow in the 10 years previous.

Perhaps soon DOW will have GLD? :roll:

Question: without short-sellers (and hence short-covering rallies), who/what is to stop a bear market of biblical magnitude?

I am depressed again. This is why I am here posting. :(

Short selling is banned but demand and supply is still alive.
Stocks in china still go down pretty fast.I believe there is no shorting there.
I think baninng short selling will reduce VIX a lot.

*not investment advice*

I spend most of my time on Socketsite, posting as Noe Valley Jim.

Is it just me? It seems that insane policies started rolling in since the Republican lost both houses in 2006.

Yeah, it's just you. The Executive branch is still Republican, and they are the ones nationalizing everything in sight.

Anyone know where Paulson's father is buried? I want to go piss on his grave, and yell at him for not using a condom.

Yeah, it’s just you. The Executive branch is still Republican, and they are the ones nationalizing everything in sight.

Congress will soon approve the latest bail-out plan, they can't let the Republicans steal the show. It's only half a trillion.

Its funny that the media/mccain and obama are aming wal street greed for all this mess. Human beings have been greedy for past millions of years.They didn't become greedy suddenly overnight.
Its not greed but giving greed a free pass which created this mess.
Greed was always there and will always be there. Its governments responsibility to have the right framework to control the beast for our own good.

Typo : Its funny that the media/mccain/obama are blaming wal street greed for all this mess

Forgot to add that Greed is one the pillars of capitalism.
One of our greatest success has been to channel greed into something productive though capitalism.How dare mccain/obama/media blame greed. Shame on them.
I can't think of any other reason for this mess except corruption and impotency of the govt.

finally had the "why the fuck do the boomers loves them sombama?"

Cuz he's not older than them!

Yes I to hoped you would die before you got old.

So if you like the gold paved BA sidewalks will the Au nanoparticles keep you from getting VD?

Hey Surfer-Dude, have I got a woman for you. Too bad she's a Limey.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2983652/Baroness-Warnock-Dementia-sufferers-may-have-a-duty-to-die.html?source=EMC-new_19092008

Lady Warnock said: "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service.

It is so weird seeing the market rally on bad news.

Lets use the good ol number of 30:1. (Hedgies are even higher). If Lehman used 20billion of bad capital to buy 600billion of bad paper, and the recapture is 30 cents o the dollar we get 480b loss. Now, do this for Fannie, Freddie, Bear, Meril, GS, MS. I can see this going to $3t easy.

Backing this by the taxpayer is a bad idea. It means were are printing our way out of this. The inflation implication and destruction of the value of the dollar is clear. This will discourage trade. For any who think Japan and Germany are solid - think again. Export driven economies are really going to be hurting.

Now imagine the US is not really a $14t economy. Suppose our real base is closer to $9t (or less). Taking on $3t at a time when we have $5t on the books means we are close to 1:1 for debt to GDP. Uhh - this is worse than the Depression.

Look, the great unwinding is HERE. Now. The delveraging will not stop no matter the heroic interventions.

So - is housing irrelevant? Yes.

People should not be thinking about even 3x income for homes when income may go to zero.

Its weird. For all of his studies on the GD, Bernanke seems to following in its footsteps almost exactly.

On the road right now and can't post much.

But this is SCARY. Fed and Treasury are indicating NO RESTRAINT, absolutely none, in their bailout. On top of this, we have SEC changing rules left and right on trading to suit the overall financial engineering purpose. Now you know how big the government can get.

I will say this, if you are buying gold as an insurance, do not dick around with the ultra long ultra short ultra light ultra ultra that are based on derivatives. Stop fiddling with the paper tool that the SEC can manipulate over a heart beat. Get as physical as possible. I used to think I would stop at certificate or stock in gold hoarding funds, oh boy, was I under-estimating the severity of the situation.

I really hope that Paulson is NOT serious about taking on the whole CDS toxic waste, that will be in the magnitude of $100s of T, I will be hoarding farmland and ammo if that is true. I used to believe that the US will never go through hyperinflation, we will just have a painful period of stagflation, now I am not so sure.

Massive printing doesn't stop us from reliving GD. It just ensures that all our savings will be wiped out before we get to GD to "level the playing field".

Greed was always there and will always be there. Its governments responsibility to have the right framework to control the beast for our own good.

A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned.
-- Someone

Why is ABC running this story at this moment?
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5835433&page=1

Hmmm, looks like a coordinated government PR to me.

The fact that the US stock market can change rules does not surprise me, but it surprises me that it can change rules so abruptly and apply a double standard - why ban shorting financials alone, how about banning shorting altogether?

This alarms me that when the credit crisis gets worse, the US can and will swiftly impose capital and exchange control just like a 3rd world country. That is how the middle class in these countries lose their lifetime savings, it is called government looting.

Short sale = getting money by selling stock that you borrowed
Buy on margin = getting stock by selling money that you borrowed

It is quite clear that if the SEC wants to ban short sales, it should also ban buying on margin,
even if it applies only to certain stock.

Yes, rampant double standards are again being imposed on the "free" markets.

why ban shorting financials alone, how about banning shorting altogether?

Because we most definitely need short-covering rallies in the coming times.

The funny thing is this: by changing the rules, who is gtting smashed right now?

The rumor is that the largerfinancial firms (who have every bit the same problem as the smaller firms) are using their might to sell short and crush the other firms. By changing the shorts rule, it is forcing them to cover their shorts and just creaming them.
Hedgies are shor selling behemoths are they are getting slapped around too. So, would say the rule is pretty cool in that it seems to be hurting the right people. Predators.
Recall that long ago I waned people not to engage in the markets as the deep pocket people will simply sweep you aisde on their momentum plays. That is truer than ever.
Small investors need to sit on the sidelines. As regularos and the govt change the rules to curb the big boys - who may or may not survive thos machinations - it can defintely crush the little guys.
Again, like I said the other day. We simply don't have informed guesses as to what kind of laws will e passed to fix this. Larger firms have much better guesses in that area. Their legislatative asymetric knowledge is jut too big an advantage.
So, for all trying to play in these waters. . .Don't

That is my two cents.

Duke,

Yeah, I'm sure that all the big wall st firms would all short-sell each other into oblivion, given half a chance. What we have now is sort of a armistice, but where the civilians are still getting hurt.

I think baninng short selling will reduce VIX a lot.

Perhaps in the short term. If the downward pressure is still there, the demand for Puts will increase and that alone will push up the VIX. Remember, shorting is just one way to obtain downside exposure.

Not investment advice

The Original Bankster @ September 18th, 2008 at 4:54 pm --

I am going to frame that post.

I wonder what kind of market we will return to on Monday?