bearfund

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    • Mon Sep 22nd 11:45 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Oppose the Treasury's Bailout Plan
      This plan should come with a constitutional amendment for consideration by the states (which I dub the Permanent Strength Amendment):

      1. Congress shall make no law, regulating the value of money, nor of foreign coin.

      2. Congress shall coin money, only in the form of metal coins and bars, whose content shall include one one-thousandth troy ounce pure gold and one one-hundredth troy ounce pure silver for every dollar of value. Congress shall cause to be made, no such coin or bar, but that is stamped with its value as defined herein.

      3. Within this article, the troy ounce shall be equal in mass to 1560912686214199606635... atoms of Carbon-12.

      4. Neither the United States, nor any State, shall accept as payment, nor issue in payment of debts, any thing other than such money as has been coined by Congress in accordance with this article, or demand draft for same, drawn upon a United States bank known to have in its possession at all times sufficient such money to satisfy all demand obligations to its depositors.

      5. Neither the President, nor Congress, nor the Supreme Court, nor any State, nor any person, shall alter, or suspend, this article, or any clause thereof. Any person, who attempts such alteration or suspension, shall commit an act of Treason against the United States.

      6. The United States shall accept, at face value, any demand note or bill, or its equivalent, issued not later than 21st September 2008 by the Federal Reserve Bank, and issue to its bearer, in exchange, money coined in accordance with this article; but no such notes or bills shall be accepted one year after this article has been ratified.

      8. No provision of this article may be altered, by any subsequent amendment, but with the direct consent of all persons, who at that time shall have attained to twenty years of age; and who shall be United States citizens, or should have been entitled to United States citizenship, had all United States laws in effect on 21st September 2008 remained in effect to that time.
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    • Mon Sep 22nd 00:29 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Precious Metals: Scapegoats to Skyrockets
      Gold is headed to $100,000 an ounce. Unfortunately that ounce will still buy you no more than a good men's suit. Get out of dollars, but don't expect to get rich owning gold. No one ever has.
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    • Sun Sep 21st 15:10 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Morgan Stanley: Exploding the Short-Seller Myth
      User237528, please explain the mechanism by which shorting drives a company into BK. Go ahead, I'm waiting.
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    • Sun Sep 21st 13:08 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Oppose the Treasury's Bailout Plan
      There are two ways to make an insolvent institution solvent: you can buy its assets at above-market prices, or you can walk up its capital structure converting debt to equity (at a haircut). The first results in nominally bigger books and higher leverage and puts the profits into the hands of the institutions' shareholders. The second results in nominally smaller and less leveraged books and losses borne by the more junior positions in the capital structure (i.e., those who took the most risk).

      Which is more fair? And which does more to get us where we need to be? Note also that the second of these costs taxpayers nothing and leaves noteholders with dramatic upside potential if the above-market prices that would have been paid in the first strategy turn out to be justified as the assets are held to maturity.
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    • Sun Sep 21st 12:57 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Morgan Stanley: Exploding the Short-Seller Myth
      Naked shorts by definition result in failure to deliver. Securities with significant fails are recorded on the Reg SHO list. MS is not, nor was at any time last week, on that list.

      But keep trying. Oh, and capitalist pig, USO has been on the Reg SHO list for over 300 days; the fact that no one complains about that is sufficient cause to assert that this has nothing to do with a desire for fairness in the markets or proper price discovery and everything to do with avoiding acknowledging that the banks are all insolvent and deserved to go to zero.
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    • Sun Sep 21st 06:06 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Now Is the Right Time to Buy Apple Option LEAPS
      Yes, the company has no debt. Great. But what is that $20b in cash for? They aren't paying dividends out of it. They aren't investing it in their business. It's just sitting there, losing value as the Washington Clown College inflates it away. If you buy AAPL, 1/6 of what you're getting is T-bills. How exciting.
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    • Sun Sep 21st 05:50 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      How Bernanke Stunned Congress with the Truth
      Anyone who defaults on his mortgage or any other loan should go to prison, regardless of whether the government owns it. If fraud was involved in obtaining the loan, the death penalty should be automatic. That would put a stop to leverage of all kinds, shut down most of the banking system, and justly reward those companies that are profitable and productive without needing much or any debt as well as those individuals who save for a rainy day rather than spend, spend, spend.

      These problems DO have solutions. But implementing them will mean the end of your way of life. Choose.
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    • Sun Sep 21st 05:37 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      SEC Retires 'Moron du Jour' Title
      jcollins, good companies cannot be destroyed by shorts because they have adequate capital. The fact that anyone whose share price is seen as being too low to raise more capital is in danger of losing access to credit only means that these are not in fact good companies because clearly the market knows that they do in fact need more capital to survive. And since they can all borrow from the Fed at ultra-low rates, if they did have adequate capital then the only people who will lose money are the shorts because the companies could operate indefinitely even with a share price of $0.01.

      Face facts, the banking system is insolvent and has been for a long time. You want to make a case for banning shorts, then acknowledge that it's an exercise in socialising risk at the expense of fairness, and make some kind of fuzzy leftist case for it. I won't buy it, but at least it will be honest. This argument is pure baloney.
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    • Sat Sep 20th 14:59 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      It's a Bull Market in Government Intervention
      4263mike, outrage? No way, baby. Don't get mad; get short. Short the dollar, short bonds (anyone else make a killing shorting the long bond at 4%?), short almost anything that suffers with issuance. Be sure you've got a nice pile of gold somewhere outside the US so you can get out when the capital controls come. Until then, save your outrage and focus your energies on profit.

      I've been saying it for months now: you want to own gold, and you want to be short Treasuries. There's still plenty of time to get in on this trade.
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    • Sat Sep 20th 11:55 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Forget About a V-Shaped Recovery. Maybe a W. Or L. And What About $?
      There is no way that the ban on shorting triggered a squeeze. It did not require covering existing positions, only that net short positions not be opened or grown. Surely the $500b gift that TARP brings is the compelling aspect of the plan. The markets are only beginning to understand the ramifications of this plan. Your assessment of the impact on the dollar seems reasonable to me and I would summarize it for those of us whose functional currency is gold by saying "The dollar is going over a cliff; short it now if you haven't already. Other paper may follow at slightly lower speed."
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    • Sat Sep 20th 02:52 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      If You Think the Dow Did Well Today, You're Wrong
      In real (i.e., gold) terms the DJIA was down over 11% on the week. Today's session was good but not terribly impressive all things considered. Comparison with other markets is instructive for asset allocation purposes if you invest that way, but in absolute terms this week was simply horrible and today was a fairly weak bounce. Do not price assets in dollars; you will be deceived.
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    • Fri Sep 19th 10:38 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Throw Bailout Money at the Causes, Not the Symptoms
      Won't happen. They only see a financial crisis because they cannot conceive of a world not financed by mountains of debt. In fact the poiwers that be would be puzzled to hear your message and would understand it no better than if you'd offered it in Cantonese. So we'll get the same tired response with the same lingering aftereffects until it's time to do it all again a few years later. It's just a matter of waiting until the lenders decide to stop lending and the Treasury goes bankrupt. Until then, it'll just be more of the same. It's all they know how to do.
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    • Fri Sep 19th 02:23 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Banning 'Terrorism'
      They may be able to stop us from shorting stocks, but they cannot stop us from shorting them. The market for Treasuries is global and deep, and there are plenty of places to sell that garbage short.
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    • Thu Sep 18th 09:30 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      A Trading Plan for Today's Crisis
      The printing presses are only getting warmed up. Cash now has no yield at all, and if you're not going to be paid you shouldn't take risks. The part of your portfolio you don't wish to put at risk should remain in gold. No one created $40b worth of gold yesterday with the push of a button, and you can bet that no one will do so tomorrow, either.

      The right risk to take is in shorting the back of the curve. Yields on the long bond are near all-time lows and the chart shows a spike top, a near-term triple top, and a 5-year double top. Fundamentals are horrible (Medicare, Social Security, $430b annual deficit, interminable warfare, Barack Obama and John McCain, printing press). If you feel compelled to take a risk, shorting these instruments is the closest you'll get to a sure thing.
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    • Thu Sep 18th 09:19 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      A Flight to Safety, But What's Safe Now?
      Even for those silly investors who count their assets in dollars rather than purchasing power, gold is safe in ways that no other asset can ever be. Specifically, it does not depend on anyone's ability to perform; 100% of the value in the metal was put there in the past when it was dug out of the ground and refined. Listen to what the market is telling you: there are two assets with zero yield that are both in high demand: T-bills and gold. Without any advance notice or good reason, another $40b worth of one of them sprang into existence from nothing yesterday. Small wonder the market found the other asset more comforting.
      View article »
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