Posts Tagged ‘Son Of A Bitch’
The US is Now a Corporate Monarchy (Barry Ritholtz)
Thursday, November 17th, 2011
This morning, the eloquent Barry Ritholtz (the godfather of financial blogging) has published an excellent post re: his thoughts on how America has been hijacked by a “Corporatocracy,” and wonders why we seem so sedate, and not outraged; A highly thought provoking must-read!
by Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture
I did an interview with a print reporter yesterday about what has been going on with lack of prosecutions, the banks, and Wall Street in general. We discussed the corrupt exchanges and HFT.
I dropped lots of F-Bombs, called out cowards and crooks and held nothing back. (“That fucker belongs in prison; this son of a bitch should hang“)
Afterwards, she commented that I seemed angry.
I wrote back suggesting that I am a happy dude, and its not Anger — its closer to an ineffable sadness that comes once you realize you have lost something dear. I am old enough to have grown up when this nation was a Democracy, but that era has passed. We now live in a nation no longer run by the citizens — it is a Corporatocracy — and that makes me sadder than angry . . .
She suggests perhaps a better word is outraged.
I wonder: Why have the Europeans figured out they are getting screwed, and we haven’t? Why are they taking to the streets en masse, while we seem to be watching our own control over our own futures slip from our hands almost as if from afar?
In America, we are too busy dropping the kids off at soccer, running around looking for sales and bargains, racing to keep our heads above water. We seem to forget to get outraged. Our control over our once Democracy — the one we had a revolution against a monarchy dictating decisions from afar — slips away from us. Not with a bang, not even with a whimper, but with a 1000s acts of gradual ceding of power to the new Monarch. We have given up hard won rights to a coordinated attack from all three branches of government; Our Congress has become the legislative branch of eBay — Congressmen are auctioned off to the highest bidder; they even have a Buy It Now button to get specific legislation passed. The executive branch has fallen under the sunk cost fallacy, afraid to prosecute banks because we spent so many billions bailing them out. It turns out that even our once venerable Supreme Court is just as corrupted, with lobbyists partying with Justices and backdooring ethics by hiring their wives.
In short, our new overlords are enormously well funded, well connected, relentless and perhaps most of all, patient. This new King was not appointed by primogeniture, or even Divine Right, but by acquiring enough profits in the free market that they can buy control over society, even as they thwart that free market ideal for their own ends. We have become, in short, a Corporate Monarchy.
The right question isn’t why am I angry, sad and outraged. The proper question is, why aren’t you?
Copyright © Barry Ritholtz
Tags: Barry Ritholtz The Big Picture, Bombs, Branches Of Government, Corporatocracy, Cowards, Crooks, Democracy, Ebay, Europeans, Futures, Godfather, Legislative Branch, Monarch, Monarchy, Print Reporter, Prosecutions, Sadness, Son Of A Bitch, Wall Street, Whimper
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Matt Taibbi: Wall Street’s Naked Swindle
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
In his latest feature, Matt Taibbi, who earlier this year authored of the brilliant “Giant Squid” article about Goldman Sachs, lights up another fire under Wall Street and regulators, about massive [conspiratorial] naked short selling activities designed to bring down Goldman Sachs. Taibbi’s investigative style is eye-opening, and this is a must-read.
Here are the opening paragraphs:
On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody – nobody knows who – made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness – “like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets,” according to one financial analyst.
But what’s even crazier is that the bet paid.
At the close of business that afternoon, Bear Stearns was trading at $62.97. At that point, whoever made the gamble owned the right to sell huge bundles of Bear stock, at $30 and $25, on or before March 20th. In order for the bet to pay, Bear would have to fall harder and faster than any Wall Street brokerage in history.
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The very next day, March 12th, Bear went into free fall. By the end of the week, the firm had lost virtually all of its cash and was clinging to promises of state aid; by the weekend, it was being knocked to its knees by the Fed and the Treasury, and forced at the barrel of a shotgun to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase (which had been given $29 billion in public money to marry its hunchbacked new bride) at the humiliating price of … $2 a share. Whoever bought those options on March 11th woke up on the morning of March 17th having made 159 times his money, or roughly $270 million. This trader was either the luckiest guy in the world, the smartest son of a bitch ever or…
Read the whole article here.
Tags: Bear Stearns, Bets, Brokerage, Financial Analyst, Giant Squid, Gold, Goldman Sachs, Investment Bank, Jpmorgan Chase, Luckiest Guy In The World, Matt Taibbi, Mystery Figure, Nine Days, Paragraphs, Public Money, Regulators, Shotgun, Son Of A Bitch, Squid, Swindle, Wall Street
Posted in Gold, Markets | 1 Comment »
