28
Jul
Here’s the story:
The ban didn’t cause the rise. By the time they enacted the ban, the shorts were gone. The damage had been done and they made their money and left. The only thing the ban did was keep them from coming back once the appreciation had occurred.
I hate short selling. The only thing I hate more is naked short selling. First of all, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. Short selling is selling something you don’t have at a high price, then buying it back at a lower price. Sound convoluted? Try this then, naked short selling is selling something you don’t have with no money and buying it back at a lower price so that you get more cash than you didn’t spend in the first place. Now, did that make sense? That folks is a huge element of stock trading these days. And, in my opinion, it should never have been legal in the first place.
Here’s why. The intent of any stock is to reflect the value of the company it represents. Pure and simple. When a person makes a decision to buy stock in a company, they are betting the value of that company will change. Most people speculate the value of the company will grow, shorts speculate the company’s value will fall in value. Simple enough. However, shorts are never bashful to push that process along. It’s illegal, but I don’t think it’s regulated at all. Nada. When Lehmen Brothers ran into some difficulty, it’s volume tripled in one day. Now, granted the news was bad, I can’t see 150 million shares worth being bought. They weren’t. As the shorts reached their profit margin, they began “selling” what they didn’t own and quite a few didn’t spend any money on not owning them. Those speculating on the future were ready to gobble up those shares at heavily discounted prices. Sounds great for both sides. However, the big picturs is Lehmen Brothers is now in a huge liquidity jam because of the huge discount of their value. This jam is reflected in difficulties their customers will face getting new loans and the like. Those toying with the stock are causing real world problems for people who have no control over the value of the stock.
How’s about we just level the playing field and eliminate short selling once and for all? My bet is if we did, these repetitive shock-value stories will greatly diminish. Their will be no reason, other than direct competition, to trash a company publicly. And, people like me won’t be so distrustful of being in the market. Once the game is perceived as fair, and stocks once again truly reflect the value of the company, then I think more people will put their money in the markets for the long term.
That in itself would solve this credit crunch.
That’s the teaser on CNN. Here’s some of the meat:
Now, Kent Conrad, as noted, is on the Senate Budget Committee. Legislation is controlled by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, two DEMOCRATS. The budgets come from committees, ALL CONTROLLED BY DEMOCRATS.
In simpler terms, if they don’t like the budget, they can change it. They can balance this budget right now if they so choose.
What are the chances Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are going to do anything about this fiscal irresponsibility other than blame the budgets they pass on someone else?
Zero.
When Nancy Pelosi took over the House, she promised to end this fiscal irresponsibility.
It’s only gotten much, much, worse.
However, if Harry and Nancy do dick around with the budget, which they say they’re trying to do, I imagine the economic downturn that coincides with their taking over the House and Senate will only get much, much, worse.
So, they’re kinda screwed. However, if CNN keeps ignoring them and instead focusing on people that recite the party line, Harry and Nancy will keep getting passes while things continue to get much, much, worse.
And if Obama does win, given his same rhetoric of fiscal irresponsibility, he will be so, so, screwed when he tries to stop Harry and Nancy from making things much, much, worse.
You heard it first folks. That’s really a shame too.
Scott Ott has been one of my favorite authors for quite some time. Here is yet another reason why:
Afghanistan is a convenient refuge for the moment for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. When our military secures it, and freedom’s song is finally sung among these long-tortured people, what then? Will the enemy surrender for lack of refuge? Is there nowhere else from which he can stage his attacks?
Our enemy is not constrained by geography or politics. His central command center is the human heart, so his places of refuge are legion. You can destroy his arms depots, level his training centers, interrupt his funding, pick off his lieutenants one by one. This we can, and must, do.
But to pretend that you can corner him in Afghanistan, and arrest him or snuff him out, is worse than naive. It’s a willful ignorance that will bring us into submission. This is the Obama Doctrine.
Now that is the heart of why I hate to hear the “Bush lied, people died” garbage. When John Kerry ran against Bush, it was the same argument. “There are no terrorists in Iraq”. It morphed to “There WERE no terrorists in Iraq until we got there”. Bottom line, there were terrorists in Iraq before we got there. IMO, that is a huge part of who we’ve been fighting since. Iraq was documented to have been involved with several terrorist organizations in 2000. Now, 200 is the year I picked because Bush wasn’t president yet. There was no overt political sentiment against Iraq even though Clinton bombed them. So, if there were all these terrorist groups operating IN Iraq and with Iraq’s support, why does Obama think Afghanistan is the central focus of the war on terror? Because there were no overt ties to Al Qaeda / Osama Bin Laden in Iraq. And, since Obama and Kerry were openly opposed to any military conflict, that was their out. We had no beef with the other terrorist organizations. So, Obama just needs to be more specific. In his words, the only terrorist organization we apparently have an issue with is Al Qaeda. The rest of the terrorist organizations get a pass.
That’s not very comforting to me. Now, Al Qaeda was basically a quiet bunch not doing too much since Russia collapsed in Afghanistan. We had helped Al Qaeda in their struggle with Russia. We were sort of friendly with Afghanistan. In very real terms, we should have been friends with these people. Then, for no real reason, and no real provocation, and with no warning whatsoever, our “friends” in Afghanistan decided to murder thousands of innocent “friends” just so they could say they could do it.
That, Obama, is what you are dealing with. My biggest fear if Obama is elected is that he captures Bin Laden and executes him. That terrifies me because I know what the message will be when it happens. “Mission Accomplished, the War with Terror is now over”.
And, then, we’ll be stunned and shocked when the next 9/11 happens.
28
Jul
An interesting case is developing in Iowa. Seems the local sheriff’s niece decided to get naked at an art facility. Problem is she was 17 at the time. So, the director got into a lot of trouble. His defense is that dancing naked in Iowa is not legal. Nevertheless a minor doing it. So, they went to court and he won because he claimed he was exempt because he was an art facility and dancing naked at an art facility in Iowa is OK. Well, it’s going to the higher courts there apparently.
Which begs the question, is stripping naked art?
I don’t think so. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good strip tease. I really, really, do. But, I don’t generally sit there and compare what the babe is doing to Van Gogh or Rembrandt. I’m thinking something completely different.
Stripping is a form of entertainment. That’s all.
Apparently the 20% or so that haven’t decided on either McCain or Obama are getting desperate. A friend just filled me in on a big secret:
Ya know, I might just ride along for this one and see what happens!
It’s one thing to go around shouting about how Nancy and Harry and the Democrat leadership are failing this country in a time of economic crisis. Now, I’ll show you exactly how it works:
Democratic defections, moreover, likely would spread beyond the Appropriations Committee. A careful analysis of previous floor votes on a wide array of energy production issues indicates that as many as 40 House Democrats would join the overwhelming majority of House Republicans in support of an agenda to increase American energy production dramatically…
Now, what has happened here is David Obey realizes that public demand for more drilling is prompting a movement within his own ranks. So, rather than risk the chance of allowing a bill to come out of his committee, he’s just not scheduling a vote on anything that would allow debate and voting on expanding drilling. Althought it states he’s doing this with Nancy Pelosi’s blessing, I am more likely to believe he’s doing this due to Nancy Pelosi’s instruction.
Now, although most people read news and see that nothing has changed, that’s not how the oil markets work. They watch these committees. By seeing that yet another attempt to expand drilling, which would increase production, has been stifled in this committee, they are guaranteed that nothing is going to be done for probably at least another six months. Now, from this post on, let’s see what happens to the price of oil. At the time of his post, crude was $125.49 and falling like a rock.
Now, if people really wanted to know what was going on and why, they’d realize very quickly how much damage Nancy and Harry have done to this country already by putting their personal politics above the welfare of the country. The only thing that can fight against them is George Bush.
Do you think this country needs a president that would allow Nancy and Harry unfettered reins of all our laws and policies? That’s what this November is about.
MSNBC did a fluff piece on a missing Obama “thesis” from 1984. Although Jim Popkin does a decent job presenting several sides to the “controversy”, he does the unthinkable and lets an Obama critic get the last word in.
Now, up until the last word, this story, as with a lot of Obama stories, gets muddled and confusing and leads to no answer. Here’s the gyst:
- Obama claimed he wrote a “thesis” in college on Russian nuclear relations.
- When pressed, he said he doesn’t have, or lost, said “thesis”.
- Columbia could not find a copy of said “thesis”. Mainly because,
- Undergraduate students did not write a “thesis” in 1983.
- Obama’s professor, after donating $1,250 to Obama’s campaign, said that Obama did indeed write a “thesis” for his class, as everyone else did. It was not spectacular in any way and apparently did not stand out from all the other students in his class that wrote the non-reuqired year-long non-thesis.
- So, when pressed, Obama’s campaign manager agreed that there never was a “thesis” that Obama claimed to have written and lost.
- David Bossie, who has nothing else to do with this story, claims that if Obama does not have the non-required non-thesis that no one claims to possess or ever required, then he must have lied when he said he wrote one.
- 90% of the reactions to the article attack David Bossie for pointing out the obvious.
Now, my personal take on this is Obama wrote a very big “report” in 1983 for his class. I wrote a lot of very big “reports” when I was in college. I however, was never required, and therefore never went out of my way, to claim I ever wrote a “thesis”. So, my take is Obama just stretched things just a tad to make them sound more educated. Who would have ever thought people would have cared if he substituted “thesis” for “report”? The bottom line is he attended, excelled, and graduated law school. The scond bottom line is, he keeps undermining his own credibility with stupid gaffes. The media is pretty much ignoring McCain completely. Right now I think that’s a good thing. As the media spotlight keeps getting hotter and hotter on Obama, he keeps giving people reason to suspect his credibility. Some are big, some are small. But, they just add up over time.
Now, the reason for the title of this post is I don’t necessarily think Obama is getting a free ride from the media. Although 90% of the comments attacked David Bossie for claiming Obama lied about the “thesis”, it wasn’t Bossie who printed the story, it was Jim Popkin via MSNBC. Not exactly your typical right-wing propeganda vehicle. Those commentors are completely ignoring the vehicle and attacking the content as if it was the content that presented the story.
That’s just bizarre to me.
If the media keeps “loving” Obama like this, I can’t see how those people writing those bizarre comments can keep ignoring the “love”.
That’s the headline on CNN. The headline NOT on CNN is:
And, the reason they decided to give up?
Director Don Burgin said the London-Laurel County “Y” struggled with $6,000 monthly utility bills and its budget was further stretched by an increase in the minimum wage.
And of course, who do some people blame for the failure of a non-profit due to an unfunded mandate?
Nancy Pelosi just LOVES ignorant voters.
Congressman Peter King is kinda upset.
Now, CNN’s running a poll on their homepage. So far, about 63% of the people agree with Congressman King. At first I didn’t. However, when reading further, the “those behind it” include Siraj Wahhaj, who was a character witness for the 1993 bombing. Now, I just see how anyone can be a character witness for someone who bombs innocent people. Sorry. Just can’t do it. However, I still have a problem with stepping all over The First Amendment. So, I propose this for the Transit Authority. They can allow Siraj Wahhaj and his cronies to run all the ads on those trains that they want. However, right next to each ad, an ad is also allowed to run showing the results of Islam in America and elsewhere.
Fair enough?
22
Jul
Apparently smarting from polls that put his Senate leadership in the single digits, Harry Reid decided to fight back starting with this letter to The Hill Blog:
When our country is in crisis, Congress must be ready to take immediate action. Democrats in Congress have tried to take action again and again. We have proposed both short- and long-term solutions: short-term solutions to bring down gas prices now, and long-term solutions to attack the root of the problem: our growing addiction to oil:
First – we end the billions of dollars in tax breaks for big oil companies whose executives have been hauling record profits while we pay record prices.
Second – we force the oil companies to do their part by investing some of their profits in clean and affordable alternative energy.
Third – we protect the American people from price gougers and greedy oil traders who manipulate the market.
And fourth – we stand up to OPEC and countries who are colluding together to keep oil prices sky-high.
He then goes on to assure everyone that increasing production to meet the increased demand is not a solution.
Just a few thoughts on this.
- How does he figure that increasing the expense and decreasing the profit margin for oil companies will make gas cheaper for the consumer?
- I’m all for eliminating an unnecessary middle man. I’m not sure how he’s going to do it though since a good number of those traders live outside of the US.
- I’m all for shaking down OPEC. However, unless he has an idea of how we can, none of his blue flames will amount to anything, ever. If we had a stick, like, say, the ability to NOT buy their oil, THEN OPEC has something to fear. However, Harry’s against that.
Bottom line, it’s up to Harry to see that the US Senate presents ideas to fix the problem. Republicans are the MINORITY party. Get it? To claim he, as the Senate MAJORITY Leader, can not get anything done because a hand full of MINORITY members don’t want to is absurd. And, I think it’s this absurd unreality that Harry keeps expecting people to swallow that is the reason the US Senate is nearing single digits in popularity. I’m not the first to question Harry’s excuse, hopefully I’m far from the last.
Quite frankly, I have said it before, and I’ll keep saying it. As long as Harry and Nancy keep whining about Republicans and accomplishing nothing, they will cost Obama the election.
