Showing posts with label Wall Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wall Street. Show all posts

Saturday, August 22, 2015

One Of Obama's Few Economic Bragging Rights In Jeopardy?

One Of Obama's Few Economic Bragging Rights In Jeopardy?

August 22, 2015 000 , Buying Opportunity 0 Comments

DOW 5,000?!?


By Brett Arends, Aug 21, 2015 Market Watch

Don’t be surprised if stock markets stabilize or bounce back in the next couple of days. Markets are due at least a short-term rally after this week’s dramatic plunge. This usually happens after a sell-off, no matter what the next big move is going to be. It doesn’t mean anything.

But anyone who automatically assumes this is another easy “buying opportunity” is talking nonsense.

For the past couple of years, Wall Street’s perma-bulls have had it their way. They’ve been gloating openly as stocks went up and up and up, seemingly without pause.


It got to the point that those warning about valuations and danger signs had been mocked into silence — or were simply ignored.

Not now.

Read More: http://www.marketwatch.com

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Tuesday, June 9, 2015

What About Our Phony "Recovery"?

June 09, 2015 Associated Press , Wall Street 0 Comments
AP Analysis: More 'Phony Numbers' In Reports As Stocks Rise

By Associated Press, Jun. 8, 2015

NEW YORK (AP) -- Those record profits that companies are reporting may not be all they're cracked up to be.

As the stock market climbs ever higher, professional investors are warning that companies are presenting misleading versions of their results that ignore a wide variety of normal costs of running a business to make it seem like they're doing better than they really are.

What's worse, the financial analysts who are supposed to fight corporate spin are often playing along. Instead of challenging the companies, they're largely passing along the rosy numbers in reports recommending stocks to investors.

"Companies are tilting the results," says fund manager Tom Brown of Second Curve Capital, "and the analysts are buying it."

An analysis of results from 500 major companies by The Associated Press, based on data provided by S&P Capital IQ, a research firm, found that the gap between the "adjusted" profits that analysts cite and bottom-line earnings figures that companies are legally obliged to report, or net income, has widened dramatically over the past five years.

More: www.ap.org

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Monday, June 1, 2015

"excessive financialization"

June 01, 2015 Forbes , GDP 0 Comments
Wall Street Costs The Economy 2% Of GDP Each Year 

By Steve Denning, May 31, 2015, Forbes

“Wall Street is back,” says the New York Times, and the economic cost is high. The excessive financialization of the U.S. economy reduces GDP growth by 2% every year, according to a new study by International Monetary Fund. That’s a massive drag on the economy–some $320 billion per year. Wall Street has thus become, not just a moral problem with rampant illegality and outlandish compensation of executives and traders: Wall Street is a macro-economic problem of the first order.

How has this happened? Properly scaled, the financial sector is a good thing. The financial sector plays a healthy role in translating products and services into exchangeable financial instruments to facilitate trade in the real economy. Through deposits, banks channel citizens’ savings to businesses that can use them productively. Through mortgages, workers can trade their promise of future wages for a home. Through insurance, homeowners are able to share financial risks and avoid financial catastrophe.

Read the full story: www.forbes.com

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Truth="Hate mongering"

June 01, 2015 Amnesty , Ann Coulter 1 Comments
Ann Coulter: With Amnesty, Elites Conspire Against The Middle Class 

By Ann Coulter, May 31,2015, NYPost.com

Controversial firebrand Ann Coulter’s new book, “Adios, America,” argues that fettered immigration is destroying the country by driving down the salaries of the middle class while increasing their tax burden. And it’s the elites on both sides — right and left — who are making it happen. An excerpt:

This is “Goodbye,” America. Adios. Paalam Na. No further warning will be issued.

“Adios America” by Ann CoulterPhoto:

For 40 years, the people have tried to tell politicians they want less immigration, but the politicians won’t listen.

Every single elite group in America is aligned against the public — the media, ethnic activists, big campaign donors, Wall Street, multimillionaire farmers and liberal “churches.”

They all want mass immigration from the Third World to continue. Both political parties connive to grant illegal aliens citizenship and bring in millions more legally, and the media hide the evidence.

Their game plan is: Never allow an honest debate on immigration.

Only in the case of immigration is the public systematically lied to from every major news outlet. They tell us, for example:

Read the full story: www.nypost.com

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Saturday, December 6, 2014

Imagine if we had a pro-growth president

December 06, 2014 Economy , Financial Times 0 Comments
Party Like It's 1929, S&P Hits 49th Closing High

Fast FT, Dec. 5, 2014, Financial Times

The S&P 500 notched its 49th record closing high of the year on Friday, as the benchmark index climbed 0.2 per cent to 2,075.55. The gain takes the number of record closes above those set in 1929, fueled in part by a blow out payrolls report that far exceeded Wall Street expectations.

Read more: www.ft.com


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Monday, October 13, 2014

Fire from the left

October 13, 2014 Breitbart.com , President Barack Obama 0 Comments
Elizabeth Warren on Obama: 'They Protected Wall St-- Not Families Who Were Losing Their Homes'

Sen. Elizabeth Warren
By Wynton Hall, Oct. 13, 2014, Breitbart.com

On Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) blasted President Barack Obama for protecting big-money crony capitalists on Wall Street, instead of average families on Main Street.

"He picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street," said Warren in an interview with Salon. "They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. ... And it happened over and over and over."

Warren is hardly the first to highlight Obama's inaction on prosecuting Wall Street executives.

In May 2012, Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer and former Newsweek reporter Peter Boyer put the Obama administration's failure to prosecute Wall Street executives in the spotlight with their explosive Newsweek articletitled "Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?" The piece revealed that Attorney General Eric Holder and senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials were pursuing a "justice for sale" strategy that sidestepped prosecuting Wall Street executives at large financial institutions who were also clients of Holder's law firm, Covington & Burling.

Read the full story:  www.breitbart.com

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Thursday, July 10, 2014

DOW at 17,000 -- But You're Not Invited By Larry Elder

July 10, 2014 Articles by Larry Elder , CATO Institute 1 Comments
Larry Elder, Jul. 10, 2014

The stock market reached a record high last week, closing over 17,000 for the first time. Good news, of course. As President John F. Kennedy famously said, "A rising tide lifts all boats." But it sure helps if you own a boat.

In this case, the "boat" would be the dynamic American stock market.

But investors in the stock market disproportionately come from the top 1 percent, and they hold about 35 percent of all stocks and mutual funds. The next-richest 9 percent control about 45 percent. The remaining 90 percent have less than 20 percent. While nearly half of Americans have either direct or indirect investments in the stock market, half of Americans do not. And even for those who do, their home equity is still, by far, their largest investment.

President Obama wants to focus his remaining years in office on fighting "income inequality." To do so, he has proposed things like "promise zones" where federal grants and tax incentives is supposed to spark development. He has promoted silly income-transferring schemes like "cash for clunkers" and "cash for caulkers," and HAMP to help homeowners fight off foreclosure.

But there is something we could do immediately to help to increase the net worth of the bottom 99 percent -- allow private accounts for Social Security.

Chile recently celebrated its 33rd year of private retirement accounts. Its then-secretary of labor and Chilean pension system, Jose Pinera, went on television day after day to explain to cabdrivers, housewives and construction workers the benefits of allowing private savings accounts.

Pinera successfully persuaded 93 percent of Chilean workers to invest their "social security" contributions in one of several types of managed portfolios. Those who feared the "risk" of the stock market could continue as they did before. While U.S. workers pay 12.4 percent of their wages into Social Security, Chileans put 10 percent (or up to 20 percent) of their earnings into a private fund, earning compound interest. On retirement, workers can choose a life annuity or make programmed withdrawals. Heirs inherit what's left.

The result? Chilean workers averaged a near double-digit annual return on their money -- 9.23 percent above inflation -- over the first 30 years. In the U.S., Social Security nets a theoretical 1 to 2 percent return -- less for newer workers. Not only do they allow private accounts for "social security" in Chile, but also in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Columnist John Tierney, writing in The New York Times in 2005, calculated what his retirement benefits would be if he'd paid into the Chilean system instead of Social Security. He found he'd have three options: "(1) Retire in 10 years, at age 62, with an annual pension of $55,000. That would be more than triple the $18,000 I can expect from Social Security at that age. (2) Retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $70,000. That would be almost triple the $25,000 pension promised by Social Security starting a year later, at age 66. (3) Retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $53,000 and a one-time cash payment of $223,000."

Social Security is an especially bad deal for blacks.

CATO Institute's Michael Tanner writes: "The longer you live, the more money you get from Social Security. But African Americans have shorter life spans than whites. As a result, a black man or woman earning exactly the same lifetime wages, and paying exactly the same lifetime Social Security taxes as his or her white counterpart, will likely receive a far lower rate of return. A study by the nonpartisan RAND Corporation found that the rate of return for African-Americans was approximately one percent lower than that for whites. The result was a net lifetime transfer of wealth from blacks to whites averaging nearly $10,000 per person."

Worse, the Supreme Court ruled long ago that one does not have a proprietary interest in his Social Security contributions. In other words, when the recipient dies, the "contribution" goes "poof." With private accounts, the money can be bequeathed to a family member or to a charity.

So why not private Social Security accounts?

The late vice presidential candidate, Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, D-N.Y., opposed private accounts for Social Security. She said if one lacked the "knowledge and the wherewithal to manage your own private funds ... you're gonna be out of luck." Out of luck?

Legendary investor Warren Buffett quotes his mentor, Benjamin Graham, who said: "In the short run the stock market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine." For the long term, prices reflect actual value, and investors who prudently and patiently "invest" in the stock market will have a much greater net worth and therefore realize the resources to enhance their comfort in their retirement years.

Democrats think Americans too stupid, too irresponsible and too impatient to manage their own Social Security contributions. Chileans can. Australians do. Many European and Latin American citizens do. But Americans, at least the bottom 99 percent, well, they're just too stupid to join the party.

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Thursday, April 17, 2014

Bernie Madoff: 'JPMorgan Knew' --Hard to believe he could have pulled it off without more knowing

April 17, 2014 Bernie Madoff , JP Morgan Chase 0 Comments
By MJ Lee, Mar. 21, 2014, Politico.com

BUTNER, N.C. — The financial world was stunned to learn in 2008 of Bernard Madoff’s years-long, multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.

But according to Madoff, one Wall Street bank knew long before then that something was wrong — and chose not to do anything.

“JPMorgan knew it,” he said as part of a wide-ranging interview last week at a medium-security prison here, where Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence after pleading guilty in March 2009 to massive investment and securities fraud that devastated thousands of clients.

JPMorgan Chase served as Madoff’s bank for more than two decades and its role in his infamous Ponzi scheme has been the subject of intense interest to both federal authorities and investors who were victims of his fraud.

Read the full story: www.politico.com
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