STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 25 May 2012
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 25 May 2012[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 24 May 2012
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 24 May 2012
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Dow Jones 12,529.75 +33.60 (0.27%)
S&P 500 1,320.68 +1.82 (0.14%)
[font color=red]Nasdaq 2,839.38 -10.74 (-0.38%)
[font color=red]10 Year 1.78% +0.01 (0.56%)
30 Year 2.88% +0.03 (1.05%) [font color=black]
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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = [/font][font color=red]12[/font]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]
= new reply since forum marked as read
Angry birds? Well, fuck, they SHOULD be angry with the crap the human race is doing to them!
The rest, 
I haven't a clue beyond the fact that my sister and some of her friends on FB are always playing very stupid games and I keep thinking geez, louise, get a LIFE.
I'd like to see the whole FB thing really flop, and poor Zuckerfuckerberg have to give all the money back. Not that that will happen, but it's a pleasant thought.
Oxymoron intended.
I get a magazine called "Fast Company." I don't know why I get it -- it just shows up in the mailbox addressed to me and I have no idea where it comes from. The BF, who sometimes like to think of himself as a wheeler dealer, all tech savvy and market wise and so on and so forth, was spouting on and on about the Fast Company cover a few months ago that said FB was gonna take over Google and e-Bay and Amazon and everything else and rule the world. Zuckerfuckerberg was the greatest genius since Galileo, Copernicus, Edison and Einstein rolled into one. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were pikers in comparison. I said to the BF, "Yeah, so what does he make?"
"Oh, he's gonna make billions!" the BF crowed.
"No," I said, "what product that people actually can use does Facebook make?"
Blank stare. Crickets.
So I continued, "If FB doesn't produce anything and doesn't at least somehow facilitate the production of useful things, then it's just a scheme for moving money around, probably from the pockets and bank accounts of the people who DO make things and into the pockets of Mark Zuckerfuckerberg."
Blank stare. Crickets.
And Anne, if you get your own show on CNBC, I won't flip YOU off. 
"Anne, if you get your own show on CNBC, I won't flip YOU off."
This is why I want to be your running mate. 
I have flipped those idiots off so much, I have become doublejointed. I really don't watch TV but the hotel room had one so I watched more than I have in over 2 years. I was happy to get RT, but CNBC and the other business news channels were nothing but comic relief.
Loved the story.
Keep it real.
A little Road Trip?
http://www.roadtripphoto.com/
Not the Michael Jackson hacienda, although we could certainly peek in there...but the original!
This is Tansy's reaction to excessive Wall St. fairy dust, but I completely concur, it's a great idea:
There have been far too many film versions in the past decade or two, and films about the author, about people who believe in fairies, etc. So we shall not lack for escapist material for the opening of a halcyon summer.
So while the Eurozone crumbles, and Wall St. is set ablaze, we can bask in Mermaid lagoon, and pow-wow with the Indians, and feed the crocodile, and reflect on the meaning of it all (and there was a lot of meaning contained in those pages, even if one wasn't of a Freudian persuasion...)
The Antichrist and the Devil
If mainstream economics isn't to your liking, here's an alternative.
The New York Times' education column has an interesting article on "how [public] scholarship programs have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children." The lengthy piece, written by Stephanie Saul, had this interesting nugget about Georgia's private school system:
'Most of the private schools are religious...Many of those schools adhere to a fundamentalist brand of Christianity. A commonly used sixth-grade science text retells the creation story contained in Genesis, omitting any other explanation. An economics book used in some high schools holds that the Antichrist — a world ruler predicted in the New Testament — will one day control what is bought and sold.'
This sounds like a lot like the "beast" that appears in the book of Revelation.
Fortunately, according to Revelation 13:16-18, you can engage in commerce by wearing the "mark of the beast," or the number 666:
'And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive the mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.'
Some people worry about contagion. Some people worry about hyperinflation. Some people worry about the Antichrist.
If you know how to get a copy the economic s text referred to in the New York Times article, please email me at sro@businessinsider.com.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/economics-textbook-antichrist-2012-5#ixzz1vsNN2G4y
Looking at the latest data, media reports and what the government is doing, it might not be too far fetched to say that China is probably already in a so-called hard landing, if that is defined as sub-7% growth.
In fact, depending how you look at the GDP growth figure, the annualised growth rate for the first quarter of 2012 was a mere 7.4% with the reported seasonally adjusted quarter-on-quarter growth rate at 1.8%. A 0.1 percentage point drop in this quarter-on-quarter growth rate is enough to put China’s growth rate just at 7.0% (that is after rounding off to the closest one decimal place).
Of course, not all people believe such diagnosis. Indeed, there are still remarkably little people who appreciate the fact that the Chinese economy is running into a big trouble. Perhaps the recency effect of human memory is that the last stimulus was both implemented quickly and effectively, that brought the economy back from the brink.
However, it was that last massive stimulus which is sowed the seed for the problems facing China today.
In fact, one can view that as a gamble. A gamble that is going to be proven as failed.
Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AlsosprachAnalyst/full/~3/EQOCNFSZ5p8/chinas-failed-gamble-for-growth.html#ixzz1vsRYXdhV
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In the wake of the JP Morgan blow-up and the Facebook debacle, Americans are contemplating the stock market with a mixture of alarm and disgust. Both are justified. In world of high-speed trading and other manipulations, the ordinary investor who wants to make money over the long haul can easily get screwed by those playing a short-term game.
On May 18, Facebook went public to relentless mainstream media cheers. As of Thursday, May 24, the stock was down 15 percent of the initial offering of $38 per share. The Internet bubble of 1998-2000 gave us a brutal lesson in what happens when investors shell out gigantic sums for unproven companies. But never mind. Those “rational” creatures neoliberal economists are always going on about -- you know, the kind that operate on “perfect information” -- did what actual humans tend to do. They got overly excited, followed the herd and found out that their information was far from perfect.
Facebook is all about sharing. And rainbows! And unicorns! Actually, it looks as if Zuckerberg and the megabanks that managed the deal decided to share pertinent information about the value of the stock to their…friends. That select group of 1 percenters did not include the public. The Orwellian term bankers like to use for this kind of deception is “selective disclosure.” Shareholders have begun filing lawsuits against Facebook and Morgan Stanley over reports that they deliberately held back negative analyst reports before the company went public. U.S. regulators have launched an investigation to determine whether or not securities laws have been violated.
Why does this happen? Well, mostly because the public is playing a rigged insider game known as the stock market. Generally it goes like this: An IPO, especially one that has been hyped more than the Second Coming, makes a load of cash for a select group of inside investors, both those giving up their shares – people like the founders and the venture capitalists -- and the privileged group of banks that are underwriting the stock issue. When the ordinary investor gets to bid for shares on the stock market, the banks hope to get a big boost in the price, and sail away to their yachts with huge gains. Usually the stock market drops in a few days, and whoops! The ordinary investor is left holding the bag, finding that a big chunk of change has just been handed over to an elite circle of fatcats. The investor can hold on to the stock, gambling that maybe in a few months or years the stock price will go back up. And that’s a big maybe.
let the Grilling begin!
been hosed, thank you.
Haven't we all.
