finanser – Modpress

Ordbog for aktiemarkedet

Opdateret efter de seneste ugers skærmydsler:

CEO –Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO– Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER — What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR — Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER — A guy whose phone ha s been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW– The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO — What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Past year investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT — An archaic word no longer in use.

‘… and the walls came tumblin’ down’

Dagens overskrift på BTs spiseseddel: Er din pension i fare?

Wall Street bløder, vores egen redningsplan redder spekulanterne og rammer de fattige, de britiske finansmarkeder er i frit fald.

Hvad betyder det alt sammen? Én konsekvens kan være, at der ryger nogle hoveder, når 300.000 danskere skal have genforhandlet deres flexlån til vinter. Folk, der har sat sig for hårdt eller har belånt friværdien i flexlån for at få til lidt forbrug, kan gå hen og få en meget grim overraskelse. I værste fald bliver der tvangsauktioner, tomme parcelhuskvarterer og bolignød i den almene sektor.

Hvad der egentlig stadig slår mig er den skræmmende enkelhed i BTs spiseseddel. Er din pension i fare? Hvis folk for alvor begynder at miste deres pensioner … kan den sidste rest af optimisme på markedets vegne vist snart lægges på hylden.

Bailout eller ej: Krisen kradser i Middle America

Det er endnu for tidligt at sige, om Bushs kriseplan går igennem.

Men hvordan er effekten af boblen krisen og ophedningen i Main Street, det Middle America, alle politikerne bejler til og alle er klar til at røvrende, så snart det får chancen? Hvad siger manden på gaden i Chattanooga, Tennessee, eller Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania?

Tjah. I dagens Guardian rapporter Paul Harris fra Yonkers, New York:

Yonkers residents are preparing grimly for hard times ahead. The effects of the credit crunch, the failed bail-out plan and the seemingly endless news about collapsing banks, has people on Yonkers’ Main Street deeply fearful for the future.

“I am really, really worried,” said Ellen Mittman, a retiree. She feared for her credit cards and her savings and was already cutting back on her spending. “I have been stopping doing things. I don’t go out to dinner anymore. I don’t spend any more money on buying clothes. I am cutting back. Everyone is cutting back,” she said. “They have to pass something. I know they have to. But I blame Bush. I blame the deregulation. All they cared about was the fat cats.”

With the cable news channels blaring out doom and gloom and newspaper headlines detailing the latest predictions of collapse, many ordinary Americans are simply tightening their belts. That might be a prudent step, but it will hurt small businesses as consumer spending falls. Those businesses will need even more credit to survive. Yet with bank lending virtually frozen, that credit will be much harder to find. Businesses will start to close, jobs will be lost and consumer spending will tighten further. The cycle will begin again.

Link: ‘I blame Bush … all they cared about was the fat cats’

Hvorfor lige 700 milliarder?

Mange af os har hørt det – den amerikanske regering skal bruge 700 milliarder dollars til at redde finansverdenen og den vestlige verdens økonomi fra kollaps. Selv Jyllands-Posten er begyndt at lyde skeptisk.

Men … hvor kommer de 700 milliarder fra? Hvorfor lige præcis 700 milliarder, hvorfor ikke kun 500 milliarder, eller hvorfor ikke en hel billion, nu hvor vi er ved det?

I Forbes Magazine forklarer en medarbejder ved finansministeriet, hvilke beregninger hvilken beregning, der ligger til grund:

Some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

Det er godt at se, at de tager det lovforberende arbejde alvorligt, derovre. Bwahaha, som Citizen ville have sagt.

The Big Bailout – et godt tilbud til dig

Apropos big shit pile – se, hvad der (ikke) lå i min mailbox i morges:

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Tror I, det er for real? Det minder meget om alle de andre venlige forretningstilbud, jeg altid reagerer på.

Læs også:

The big bailout – moderne tids største tyveri?

Det kan godt være, der er nogen, der er glade for amerikanernes store økonomiske “redningsaktion“, og det kan også godt være, den er nødvendig, men… er det virkelig godt at lade finansverdenen køre friløb i årevis, ophobe hidtil usete profitter, pumpe penge ud til dårlige lån baseret på en “boble” i form af boligprisernes himmelflugt, og så simpelt hen friholde dem, der har forårsaget miseren – på alle andres bekostning?

Glenn Greenwald er ikke tilfreds:

Whatever else is true, the events of the last week are the most momentous events of the Bush era in terms of defining what kind of country we are and how we function — and before this week, the last eight years have been quite momentous, so that is saying a lot. Again, regardless of whether this nationalization/bailout scheme is “necessary” or makes utilitarian sense, it is a crime of the highest order — not a “crime” in the legal sense but in a more meaningful sense.

What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism — where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We’ve retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded.

Måske det simpelt hen er Bush-regeringens grande finale: Efter en inkompetent ført krig i Irak, baseret på en løgn, efter at have gjort USA til krigsforbrydelsernes og torturens internationale bannerfører, efter skamløst at have gennemførst ulovlige aflytninger af tusinder af amerikanere, efter Guantanamo og Abu Ghraib, skulle der jo ligesom noget til, som de for alvor kan huskes for.

Mange havde frygtet, at det ville blive en krig mod Iran – en ulykke, som Bush-regeringen dog ikke har fundet for godt at påføre verden, og som den amerikanske hær næppe er klædt på til heller. Men … verdenshistoriens største tyveri, 700 milliarder dollars (ca. 4 trillioner kroner) hældt direkte fra skatteydernes lommer over til Bushs venner på Wall Street – det er vel et lige så godt bud?

Krakkede investeringsfirmaer blev fritaget for kontrol

SEC svarer vel nærmest til det danske Børstilsyn, og SEC har altså bevidst vendt øjnene væk fra de største firmaers excesser:

As we learn this morning via Julie Satow of the NY Sun, special exemptions from the SEC are in large part responsible for the huge build up in financial sector leverage over the past 4 years — as well as the massive current unwind

Satow interviews the above quoted former SEC director, and he spits out the blunt truth: The current excess leverage now unwinding was the result of a purposeful SEC exemption given to five firms.

You read that right — the events of the past year are not a mere accident, but are the results of a conscious and willful SEC decision to allow these firms to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1.

Instead, the 2004 exemption — given only to 5 firms — allowed them to lever up 30 and even 40 to 1.

Who were the five that received this special exemption? You won’t be surprised to learn that they were Goldman, ~~Merrill,~~ ~~Lehman,~~ ~~Bear Stearns,~~ and Morgan Stanley.

As Mr. Pickard points out that “The proof is in the pudding — three of the five broker-dealers have blown up.”

So while the SEC runs around reinstating short selling rules, and clueless pension fund managers mindlessly point to the wrong issue, we learn that it was the SEC who was in large part responsible for the reckless leverage that led to the current crisis.

You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.

Lad de store komme til fadet – skatteyderne tager skraldet, og fanden tager de bagerste. Sand risikovilje: Hvis jeg vinder, rydder jeg bordet, hvis jeg taber, kan vi dele i porten. Heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose, som Paul Krugman siger.

En passende mindesten over Bush-æraen. (Via Boing Boing)