The SEC continued its quest to eliminate short-selling entirely from U.S. markets by investigating whether traders actually spread rumors. I also heard that the FBI might be checking into the accusation that teenagers are having sex in cars or even in their parents’ bedrooms while adults are elsewhere. Like the parents of those kids, snooping through email and MySpace comments is the most effective discovery device to uncover these nefarious acts. No word yet on how long hedge funds will be grounded, or if they can go to prom.
According to a Wall Street Journal article today:
The [disclosure] order is akin to a subpoena and requires information to be handed over with a sworn statement attesting to its accuracy. It seeks a wide range of trading data and email communications over a period of three weeks involving American International Group Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Morgan Stanley, Washington Mutual Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co.,
And, maybe it is just me, but is anyone else getting tired of the obligatory short sale description paragraph that some cabal of financial press editors seems to have mandated for any article on this topic? Can’t we just put “Obligatory short-sale description is hereby incorporated by reference” in the footnotes or something?
In a regular short sale, a trader sells borrowed stock in hopes that it drops and can be bought at a lower price.
If you don’t know that yet, the Journal should be locking you on the other side of their paywall.
SEC Presses Hedge Funds [Wall Street Journal]
If the ban on shorts hadn’t happened, then by Friday morning both GS and MS would have been comatose and on life support. WTF is the matter with you idiots?
Ambac was in deep trouble well before last week anyway. Idiots.
If the ban on shorts hadn’t happened, then by Friday morning both GS and MS would have been comatose and on life support. WTF is the matter with you idiots?
Ambac was in deep trouble well before last week anyway.
Idiots.
As long as members of Congress are asking questions like:
“I just found out about this thing called margin…why is it that these banks are charging this?”
(Maxine Waters, yesterday)
… I’d say we need the short definition.
Show us you knockers?
I’m from main st, and I don’t like hedge funds anyway. Go SEC. Go FBI. F*k their lights out.
Clay Aikens rules!
@1/2,
Live by the short, die by the short.
Although it’s easy for Wall Street pros to pooh-pooh the concerns about short selling, the fact that you can get “short” basically an unlimited amount of a company’s enterprise value through the unregulated and opaque CDS market, coupled with the fact that rating agencies now factor in the CDS price when determining whether to do a downgrade, makes this a legitimate issue.
- Anon4Life
@ #8
CDS market is about to be regulated up the a$$…
@ 5
To the best of your knowledge what do hedge funds do?
Maxine Waters provides the best comic relief of this whole shit show. The fact that she does not understand basic finance is indicative of why this mess is such a shock to so many people in the USA.
Shorts down! Cox up!
Shorts down! Cox up!
Haha… funny.
@10,
Hedge funds increase wealth of already-rich bastards by stealing wealth from hard-working people who live on main st.
Anybody in convert-arb on here??
Probably not… too busy puking inventory into nearly non-existent bids.
Where is this main street? I think you actually mean people who work hard physically (v. mentally) as penance for having the mental capacity of my Siamese cat.
Stealing wealth my ass…In 2006, the top 5% of U.S. taxpayers, those with gross annual incomes of at least $153,500, paid about 60% of all income tax collected. In contrast, the 50% of taxpayers with incomes under $32,000, paid less than 3% of the total taxes collected.
Thanks for kicking in your 3% main street, you guys are really keeping this thing humming.
Thanks @ 15.
I am going to guess that your Siamese cat is smarter than Maxine Waters.
@ 15 LOL
I am shocked at how ignorant “main st” and their elected representatives are when it comes to our financial system
Thankfully Paulson, Frank, and Bernanke are running this show instead of the likes of Maxine Waters…
@ merkin
So, if you don’t mind me taking your point out to the next step, if “main street” insists that this is a taxpayer bailout of the rich guys on wall street, ipso facto, this is a simple matter of the rich bailing out themselves, and “main street” should stop its bitching and whining
@ 15 exactly.
This is just the top 5% getting their fair share of “stimulus” money main street got 6 months ago.
@18
Thanks for spelling it out for the Main St’ers
This comment stream should be posted on the jumbo-tron at the next NASCAR race to help them understand
What kills me is that right now, Obama is making some sort of speech or whatnot saying that we “cannot bail out wall street excess and risk taking”, while also saying that we must act now on the “bailout”.
What a F&cking pandering clown. Maybe we should make everyone watch Jack Welsch from this AM’s CNBC gig “its not a freaking bailout you ‘tards (sic)”
@ Anal_yst
As i said yesterday both candidates are pathetic. At this point both are pandering clowns
Yesterday, McCain cancelled Letterman to go back to Washington because of the economic crisis. So what does he do, at the same time he was suppossed to be on Letterman he shows up 3 blocks away being interviewed by Katie Couric. Oh yes and this morning spoke @ Clintons whatever initative, all in NYC. Basically his “campaign suspension” was because he wants to get out of the debate tomorrow night.
At this point in the history of the USA when we needed someone to distinguish him/her self we end up with the remedial class of presidential/VP candidates.
Congragulations to all – and i didn’t think we could do worse the Bush.
Bloomberg where are you!!!!
@ 22
Agreed, where’s Romney (or someone? Anyone?) else when ya need ‘em?
:-(
@1/2 here. What would have happened then to GS/MS had not the shorts been stopped?
@25 well shoot why don’t we just fix the price of every stock on the market? that would solve all our problems wouldn’t it?
1. Acquired like MER
2. BK (i.e., weakness leaving the system)
@27, Good then, because when you get laid off, we’ll all just say, “weakness leaving the system.”