When Stocks Fall

What's happening with your investment circle?

I invited them here for supper but they wont come. They want to go to Casey's one of the most expensive restaurants. They are rich. She has her own business. An idea business for Biotech.

Jeeze. That's a guarantee to lose money. But I guess they can collect a lot of investment capital from investors. Why don't you go?

I'm not going to spend my money on that! They should just go out and spend their own money. If they want to go out with me, I suggested the Fa place on the corner.

Are you kidding? They only meet once every six months they have people from out of town and you want them to meet for a 5$ bowl of soup in a place with a greasy table and a door that wont close?

I like that place. We always enjoyed it.

They must think you're a joke. That's great. The Vietnamese place! Why don't you dress up, invite the fancy out of town people to the Fa place. Then they'll really have something to complain about.

They said if i dont go then they're not going to meet at all.

Sell those shares in JetBlu that are worthless anyway. Spend it on a coffee and crackers at Casey's downtown. At least you'll get something out of all that investment.

Those are our shares! The club worked hard to get those shares!

All you ladies sitting around and all that talk about what to buy and all the charts and discussion and then finally you decide to buy the shares of a company where somebody's uncle or ex husband works. Its obviously not much of an inevstment group. These people want to go out and have tea and crackers with you.

Well I invited them over for supper.

Look there are people out there who are sitting around scratching their ass thinking "I wish i could go to Casey's" and here you have an invitation, so just go for god's sake. Bring some money, spend a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars and just go. Get drunk and take a cab home so you don't get arrested.

Freaks

Its a great time for freaks. The economists and evangelists for example are finding each other. They're sleeping together in large communal bomb shelters. But for everyone else who can't afford a personal bomb shelter, take heart. You are human capital and therefore not totally useless. You can be exploited and therefore will be saved. This is not as obvious as it may appear. Most people never ask themselves the basic question: "Why am I paid?" Most people assume that they generate value just by being alive and deserve to be compensated just for their presence on earth. These people are not freaks who fail to ask this question. These are normal, adjusted people. These are the people who make up our market. The surprise is that unlike the toxic waste in the mortgage market which no one will touch and, luckily for you, you can be exploited.. to buy cars or subway tokens, to pay mortgages or to pay rent, to dine at restaurants or hell even to just eat a slice of pizza or a bag of rice. for a long time i figured we were all just living off the fat of the land. but it turns out that technology and capital needs us. its a great feeling, a feeling of security, being needed. and its important in a time like this when without this security blanket you might freeze in the cold. If it weren't for your being so exploitable, you can kiss your ass goodbye. No one is more worried than the freaks. This is why they are making new alliances, living underground in bomb shelters.

Wanted: Bomb Shelter, Will trade WaMu Debt

Capitalism isn't all that ancient and inevitable. A little more than one hundred years ago Wall Street was just a block in Manhattan that ran between a church and a river. When things get tough people start asking fundamental questions.

Can we live without Lehman Brothers?
Should we start stockpiling guns and gold bullion?
What's your best recipe for shipbiscuit?

Six months ago we heard long tirades about peak oil, biofuels, enzymes that convert agricultural waste into fuel. Now that oil is back below $50 that's all gone. The biofuel vehicles are being reconverted and the peak oil advocates are safe in their bomb proof shelters and not taking interviews.

The will to a new paradigm is strong but to say capitalism is over or the market seems to need to be retired is outboxism, to coin a phrase. but then the collapse of Lehman was outboxism at one point too. Maybe these guys have a point. Any body with a colt automatic for sale? I've got some Lehman corporate paper and some GM debt for trade.

Das Krisis: What happend

Well let's face it, no single event caused this crisis. I guess it couldn't have happened without guys peddling mortgages to people who couldn't afford them. But blaming these people-- who were mostly pretty clueless and unsophisticated is a little like blaming the stokers for the wreck of the Titanic. On the opposite side of the spectrum: the people who want to deconstruct the market, undo capitalism and the market mechanism completely-- break it down to principles described by Marx in Das Kapital: exchange value and use value-- too many people on the exchange value side: too little people buying houses to live in and too many buying houses to re-sell. same with stocks, bonds and the rest. Nobody's an investor, everybody is a speculator-- hell of a way to run a market.

Deleveraging-- Watch this

Get long, get short, buy volatility, sell volatility. Buy corporates, sell treasuries, or just bury it in a coffee can-- there is so much fear-- and hype. No one knows-- that's the bottom line. Yale's Robert Schiller- remember the guy whose book Irrational Exuberance was credited for calling the top of the dot com bubble? His new book? Animal Vapors-- after Keynes' joke. Fact is Schiller like everybody else has no good explanation for what's happened and doubly no idea for what's going to happen. What's his explanation for the fact that everybody keeps selling? That's right.. Animal Vapors. Its a joke-- an honest joke, give him credit for that-- but a joke.

How to survive a worldwide financial crisis and panic

Look, we all know there is no real way to survive a worldwide financial crisis, meltdown, panic, and apocalypse. But, it also highlight an important aspect of the modern financial chaos: the benefits of the denial economy. Art and entertainment flourished, as the unemployed took to the streets during the great Depression, fighting over scraps and crumbs of bread. And the same is true today: movies, games, and other forms of escapism are some of the stronger economic sectors. (research not backed up by any actual statistics EDA TTA FTR and LDAN all apply).

WaMu Seized by Existential Doubt and FDIC

Ah, Caesar: We hardly knew ye! There was barely time to open a checking account to have the honour of having a bank account seized. This would truly be the souveneir of a lifetime: Washington Mutual (WaMU) was seized by the FDIC and Bought Up by JP Morgan (of Bear Sterns fame) Thursday Night. If only we had gotten the pencil cup for the money market fund, or the branded credit card.. ahhh, if Ebay were still accepting checks, who wouldnt want to create a run on such banking memorabilia?