StMarc's Profile
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Entry: Give It To Him Straight
posted by StMarc
Jul 16, 2008 12:41PM
No shot, especially with the weak economy. Anybody who can is hiding from the real world in grad school.
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Entry: Spinning Class Fracas Keeps On Keeping On
posted by StMarc
Jul 16, 2008 1:51PM
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.
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Entry: Chris Cox: The Old Uptick Rule Isn't Coming Back But A New One Might Be Put In Place
posted by StMarc
Jul 16, 2008 5:17PM
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.
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Entry: Write-Offs: 07.16.08
posted by StMarc
Jul 16, 2008 5:37PM
First the Swiss, then the Lichtensteiners. Is there nowhere a supervillain can hide his ill-gotten loot?
I call it depressing.
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Entry: Write-Offs: 07.16.08
posted by StMarc
Jul 16, 2008 11:20PM
Screw Serbia. They throw some hellacious parties, but those Balkan types are all nuts. Kill you as soon as look at you. You ask me, it'd be like putting your money in a Panamanian bank right before pineapple-face lost his grip. You end up like that guy from "Blow." No thanks. Besides, I really liked the idea of a secret lair in Lichtenstein. Even the NAME sounds cool.
Prince Hans-Adams: Your Highness, if you're listening, you have one chance to retain future supervillain wealth transfers. Heinrich Keiber must die spectacularly, under the very eyes of his guards. Preferably by blowfish poison or some cool shit like that. Otherwise, those Johnny-come-lately Serbs are going to walk off with it.
Or worse, Dubai. You know how hot it is in Dubai? And what they do to you if they catch you with porn on your iPod? Rise up for the honor of the Stuarts, man!
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Entry: Write-Offs: 07.16.08
posted by StMarc
Jul 17, 2008 8:29AM
I'd rather try my luck in Singapore than in Dubai. I don't do drugs and I rarely chew gum. But I have lots of habits that make it unlikely I'd ever be able to relax in a Muslim country.
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Entry: Union Activists Plan Protests Against KKR
posted by StMarc
Jul 17, 2008 9:52AM
9:37 - You mean "Marxist" beliefs. What Lenin believed in was Lenin, mostly.
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Entry: Why Is The Market Rallying?
posted by StMarc
Jul 17, 2008 5:15PM
Plunge Protection Team are GO!
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Entry: Opening Bell: 7.18.08
posted by StMarc
Jul 18, 2008 9:25AM
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.
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Entry: Why Is The Market Rallying?
posted by StMarc
Jul 18, 2008 9:32AM
First Baby Boomers born in 1946.
First Baby Boomers reach non-penalized SS retirement age of 66 in 2012. (Same year Mayan calendar ends. Coincidence? I think not. Mayan seers knew what assholes BB would be and redlined Universe in disgust.)
Until then - and for some time after until main "wave" of Boomers retires - markets can drop and correct all they want but will always start to recover (or at least regain equilibrium) because idiot Boomers keep pouring money into IRA's (mostly equity-fund MF) and 401(k)'s (mostly equity-fund MF or direct equities.) All that money has to go somewhere.
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Entry: Opening Bell: 7.18.08
posted by StMarc
Jul 18, 2008 9:36AM
BTW, while it's true that FRE's market cap is 5.4B or thereabouts and therefore a 10B offer seems ambitious, remember that within the last twelve months their stock has experienced an 8x drop. It sounds a LITTLE less silly if you think about a 45B cap and a 10B offer. Not exactly *normal,* but not a 200% stock water, either.
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Entry: Opening Bell: 7.18.08
posted by StMarc
Jul 18, 2008 10:22AM
9:50 - I didn't say *I* would buy it. :)
I was more saying that the people setting up the offer may still be living in the relatively recent past, where $10B was chump change and not twice their entire market cap. That would only have been a 100% dilution (I know that's vastly oversimplifying, but as is often the case when I vastly oversimplify, I don't care) less than a month ago and a 50% dilution not much further back than that.
M
Entry: And Shut Down Goldman Too, Just For Good Measure
posted by StMarc
Jul 19, 2008 10:41AM
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
Entry: Bruce Wayne: Your Typical Self-Dealing Corporate Chieftain Lionized By Wall Street
posted by StMarc
Jul 22, 2008 10:33AM
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.
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Entry: Bruce Wayne: Your Typical Self-Dealing Corporate Chieftain Lionized By Wall Street
posted by StMarc
Jul 22, 2008 10:36AM
Oh, and re: damages... there has been at least one Marvel comic miniseries dedicated to the people who clean up after super-battles, which explains why New York, etc, are not just huge piles of debris. They're like Servicemaster, only with hyper-tech. IIRC the outfit is called... wait for it... "Damage Control." I'm sure they have something similar in the DC comics.
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Entry: Baby Donald Trump Launching An Indian Real Estate Fund
posted by StMarc
Jul 22, 2008 4:12PM
Sell India. Sell NOW.
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Entry: Abu Dhabi Buying Into General Electric
posted by StMarc
Jul 22, 2008 4:15PM
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?
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Entry: And Marshmallows For Everyone!
posted by StMarc
Jul 22, 2008 4:23PM
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.
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Entry: And Marshmallows For Everyone!
posted by StMarc
Jul 22, 2008 4:25PM
Oh, crap. I fell victim to the Correction Rule.
All corrections will contain at least one error.
Fuck.
I give up.
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Entry: Indymac Customers Line Up For Withdrawals
posted by StMarc
Jul 16, 2008 11:02AM
@7:39 - 5:46 does have a point. IndyMac Federal only HAS the deposits which are after-made or which were transferred as insured payment/transfers by the FDIC. They're quite safe, and there's no withdrawl limits on cumulative deposits.
Say I had an account at the old IndyMac (OIM.) The way this works, if I understand it correctly, is that I now have an account at IndyMac Federal (NIM) with the same account numbers and so forth. Say also that I had exactly a hundred grand in one demand deposit account (a fancy way to say a checking account) at OIM. That got transferred by the FDIC to my NIM account last Friday or over the weekend or whatever.
Now assume I got paid by direct deposit yesterday, and my $10K salary was deposited to my account at NIM. (I'm assuming they've autoforwarded OIM's ACH numbers to NIM.) I now have $110K in my NIM account. I can withdraw any or all of that at any time. That money's perfectly safe.
If I'd had $150K in my OIM account, I'd be in exactly the same condition regarding my salary, but I'd be light the $50K overage until they get it straightened out, and I'll probably lose some of it. (Right now they're paying 50% in advance and will pay the rest with proceeds of sale.)
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