StMarc

Recent Comments

  1. 1
    Posted 2008-07-22 16:23:26 on And Marshmallows For Everyone!

    I hate it when people don't use capital letters to start sentences and mix ordinals with ordinary sequentials. #3 may be ignorant, but that's fixable. #6, you're just lazy. Oh, wait... #3 isn't ignorant. He's right, you're wrong. (His usage of "effect," as a noun, is correct in the sentence. Your substutition of "affect," as a noun, would be improper usage.) So you're ignorant *and* lazy. Nicely demonstrated. M

  2. 2
    Posted 2008-07-22 16:15:45 on Abu Dhabi Buying Into General Electric

    I view the matter of foreigners wanting to buy American companies in much the same way I view the matter of homosexuals wanting to get married. To wit: Let 'em, if they want to... why shouldn't they suffer like the rest of us? M

  3. 3

    Sell India. Sell NOW. M

  4. 4

    Back. Anyway, Brucie Boy said it best himself in his Congressional testimony: "Of course we're criminals. We've always been criminals. We HAVE to be criminals." There you go. M

  5. 5
    Posted 2008-07-19 10:41:25 on And Shut Down Goldman Too, Just For Good Measure

    It should be kept in mind that there is more than one reason why people with a little money might want to hide it offshore. Not everybody who wants a Swiss account (although I'm still holding out for Lichtenstein, because I'm guessing that everybody at the bank has now been fitted with a remote destruct collar) is trying to dodge taxes. For instance, in this day and age, it takes a lot of effort to effectively hide (as opposed to their just not noticing) from the IRS, but with a little ingenuity it's not too hard to keep things away from the MRS. And while the MRS can't throw you in jail (unless you miss your child support payments,) it can actually take MORE of your money than the IRS can under many circumstances. With enough pressure, the IRS can make life hard for His Highness Hans-Adams, but the NY County Supreme Court can go and whistle, for all he cares. M

  6. 6
    Posted 2008-07-18 09:25:24 on Opening Bell: 7.18.08

    It's a pity about those catfish farms, because captive fish farms are one of the greenest ways to create protein - it uses very little land, catfish are incredibly hardy and don't need all of the care that other livestock do, and they grow really fast. Unlike wild fishing, you don't have to worry about pollution, overfishing, or high-school dropouts making eighty grand a year needing million-dollar rescues from the Coast Guard. When regular non-Japanese beef is fifteen dollars the pound, I'm thinking fish farms will make a comeback. M

  7. 7
    Posted 2008-07-17 17:15:15 on Why Is The Market Rallying?

    Plunge Protection Team are GO! M

  8. 8
    Posted 2008-07-17 09:52:03 on Union Activists Plan Protests Against KKR

    9:37 - You mean "Marxist" beliefs. What Lenin believed in was Lenin, mostly. M

  9. 9
    Posted 2008-07-16 17:37:02 on Write-Offs: 07.16.08

    First the Swiss, then the Lichtensteiners. Is there nowhere a supervillain can hide his ill-gotten loot? I call it depressing. M

  10. 10

    Anal_yst: Well said. Going up may be the only thing the Fed wants to see, but the higher something goes, the harder it hits when it comes back down. M

  11. 11
    Posted 2008-07-16 13:51:30 on Spinning Class Fracas Keeps On Keeping On

    Here's the part I never understood: Carter, who I am soliciting funds to build a memorial to, *admitted* that he threw Sugarman and his bicycle into a wall. What difference does it make to a criminal complaint whether Carter caused Sugarman any *specific* injury? The minute he touched Sugarman, the deed was done and the crime was committed, under any set of criminal laws I ever studied. Everything else is just aggravating factors. Y'all got some weird laws in NY. And whether it's grandstanding or not it's a smart move. If he can get Sugarman indicted for perjury, much less convicted, there goes any credibility he might have had in the civil case. He can impeach that sissy like he did an intern in the Oval Office. M

  12. 12
    Posted 2008-07-16 12:41:12 on Give It To Him Straight

    No shot, especially with the weak economy. Anybody who can is hiding from the real world in grad school. M

  13. 13
    Posted 2008-07-16 11:02:16 on The Cox Rule: Weighing Down Shorts With Red Tape

    I love this plan. I'm excited to be a part of it. Let's do it! And next I would like the Government to ban all forms of advance deposits on the purchase of any kind of good or service. I mean, sure, Amazon can SAY they shipped me my softcore DVD's, but until I actually have them IN MY HANDS, how will I know they're telling the truth? And how do I know the car dealer will actually ORDER AND THEN DELIVER my new hybrid Hummer, and that they aren't just trying to drive the prices up by inflating orders they can't deliver on? Huh? Okay, failing that, I'd like the rule applied to all non-industrial users of commodities. No naked shorting ten thousand ounces of gold the day before the BOE decides to sell it, George Soros: you must HAVE ten thousand ounces of gold before you can so much as promise to sell a bangle. M

  14. 14
    Posted 2008-07-16 10:27:05 on Chris Cox And The SEC Back In The Spotlight

    9:48 - I am here to tell you (and, some unkind souls might say, serve as a living example) that nobody can do more damage than a really smart person* operating under a dumb set of parameters. The prosecution offers Enron and LCTM as Exhibits A and B. If that does not suffice, additional exhibits can be presented as required. M *You'll have to take my word for it.

  15. 15

    Dance, my puppets! Dance! M

  16. 16

    Okay, I qualify my other assertion that Congress will give the Fed whatever it wants to aid in blaming it later. Whatever it wants that does not involve actual money. That could be better spent building bridges in Alaska or making shrines out of Laurence Welk's boyhood home or something like that. Anything but that. M

  17. 17

    onetwo: That's not going to happen for the same reason that Congress isn't going to deny the Fed the additional power it's requesting. No government official, in the history of mankind, has ever come out and admitted that any problem was in any way related to failure to enforce existing regulations or exercise existing powers. No, the problem is ALWAYS that we need MORE rules and they need MORE power. As usual, this is total bullshit. Intentional failure to deliver is FRAUD. Fraud is already against the law. If you can't prove intent, then sue the bejeezus out of them and delicense them - a license to trade securities is a privilege, not a right, same as a gaming license or a liquor license. Hell, if a securities trading license was as hard to get as a gaming license or a liquor license, we wouldn't be having this discussion. M

  18. 18
    Posted 2008-07-15 23:10:16 on SEC Investigating Fifty Hedge Fund Advisers

    If my boss gets a subpoena, you can bet your sweet bippy I'm going to treat it as if it were Step One in a plan to send her personally to prison. Because regardless of where they were aiming that's where a lot of these things seem to end up. If anybody here can tell me what Martha Stewart did to morally justify her being in the big house for a spell, I'd like to know what it was. The phrase "pour encourager les autres" about sums it up. M

  19. 19

    2:12 - They don't think of them as "bubbles." However, they do, before they go to sleep and when they get up, say a little prayer which goes: "God, please make the equities markets go up today so I don't look like a fuckhead. Your pal, [Insert Name Here.]" If hammering the shorts is what it takes to make God's will manifest, they won't hesitate. However, I await with infinite patience their enforcing this rule in the commodities markets, notably silver and gold. The total world naked short position in silver, for instance, is far larger than the total amount of silver taken out of the ground since human civilization began. Nobody seems to care much. M M

  20. 20
    Posted 2008-07-15 22:55:27 on Bunning To Bernanke: You Are A Systemic Risk

    The last thing, the very last thing, that Congress is going to do is take power away from the Fed. They'll shovel it onto Bernanke's cranium like they're trying to regrow his hair. Why? Because *this is not going to work.* I'm not loading magazines just yet but there are too many plates on top of too many sticks and Benny Boy is getting tired and running out of uppers. (How's THAT for a hideous metaphor?) We are going to have a "hard landing," and it will only be a landing assuming any of us walk away. After that we'll pick up the pieces and get on with things - a few rich people will be broke and a few poor people will be rich but otherwise it'll come back together. But Congress is going to lay the whole thing on the Fed, the Treasury, and Wall Street, and to really get away with that they need to give Bernanke and Paulson every bloody inch of rope they ask for so they hang high, high in the trees and don't stink up Capitol Hill. M