03.06.09
It’s unfolding exactly according to TCM’s plan
The Dow went to 6484.13 this afternoon.
Ruminations on music, culture, America and the world stage
Posted in Ideology, Law dhimmitude, Multiculturalism and diversity at 8:48 pm by Administrator
The Dow went to 6484.13 this afternoon.
MR. Dings said,
March 6, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Yes, but why? From the mismanagement of Obama or others? The Dow is puking all over itself over the mess many made. And nothing’s good, the news is bad every day…
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 6, 2009 at 11:45 pm
No faith in his determination to tax everything in the known universe, his desire for the government to run banking and manufacturing, his preoccuopation with goofy-ass diversions like socialized health care, green energy and centralized education, or his utter ignorance of how businesses are run.
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 1:42 pm
No faith in corporate honesty either. 2 articles in NYT recently bring that to the fore. GE, yes GE (as the article says “if G.E. is in trouble, God help us all”)
http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/is-general-electric-next/?hp
But the truth is, nobody knows for sure whether G.E. is in trouble — not even the bears who are shouting it from the rafters. G.E.’s numbers are the proverbial enigma wrapped inside a riddle. If it wants to end the storm swirling around it, the company is going to have to offer the kind of detailed disclosure of the portfolio of assets carried on the books of G.E. Capital.
And Undisclosed losses at Merrill Lynch http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/business/06wall.html?em
One Merrill Lynch trader apparently gambled away more than $120 million in the currency markets. Others seemingly lost hundreds of millions on tricky credit derivatives But somehow all this red ink did not spill into plain view until after Merrill earmarked billions for bonuses and staggered into the arms of Bank of America.
But you gotta have faith, eh bloggie? You are blaming the wrong people for this economic catastrophe. 9/11 exposed fraud, but it didn’t stop it.
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 1:56 pm
More on corporate disonesty:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/business/06layoffs.html?em
Big companies also routinely carry out scattered layoffs that are small enough to stay under the radar, contributing to an unemployment rate that keeps climbing, as Friday’s monthly jobs report is likely to show.
I.B.M. is one such company. It reported surprisingly strong quarterly profits in January, and in an e-mail message to employees, Samuel J. Palmisano, the chief executive, said that while other companies were cutting back, his would not. “Most importantly, we will invest in our people,” he wrote.
But the next day, more than 1,400 employees in I.B.M.’s sales and distribution division in the United States and Canada were told their jobs would be eliminated in a month. More cuts followed, and over all, I.B.M. has told about 4,600 North American employees in recent weeks that their jobs are vanishing.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 7, 2009 at 2:06 pm
So it would be better for IBM to financially suffer just so these people could keep jobs? And how long would they continue to have their jobs if IBM continued to suffer?
You routinely deny being a socialist, yet you have quite a zeal for sniffing out “corporate dishonesty.” So you’re nor a socialist. What are you?
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Gimme a break.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 7, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I read your NYT links. I don’t see anything in them that proves free-market economics to be bad or wrong. Quite the contrary. the market gives people who make dumb choices or do immoral things a comeuppance like nothing else. Your Merrill Lynch trader is a case in point. If we don’t bail his ass out, he’s out on the curb, correct?
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 2:16 pm
This corporate fraud goes on and on. It is so out of control, nay, has significantly contributed to the economic downfall of this country and globe that expecting individual perpetrators to meet justice doesn’t cut it anymore. The corps (and of course those who work for them) got socialistic bail-outs before anyone else. If we get socialism, it’s because we blew the free market thing. Not because it’s necessarily on the agenda of free peoples here. The country’s still split, the winners lost. We’re moving on.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 7, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Here’s a real, real basic question for you: Why does a business organization make the decision to lay off emplyees?
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 3:24 pm
The issue in the linked article about IBM’s “questionable” PR and accounting practices does not criticize their decision to lay off employees. A month ago they said they would invest in their employees. They should have added “remaining.”
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 7, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I could ask you to cite specifics for your asstertion of “corporate fraud go[ing] on and on” and you’d no doubt be able to list examples, maybe starting with Enron or some such company and going on up to – hell, I don’t know, you’re the one who thinks it’s a big deal. What I don’t think would be possible to do is draw a connection between that and the acceleration of the slides we’ve seen in the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq since November, or the climb in the unemployment rate, or the closings of businesses ranging from manufacturing firms to jazz clubs.
To say that corporate fraud is the biggie and TCM’s policies are barely of consequence is to throw up a smokescreen that’s pretty obvious. The question is, as I’ve been asking in several recent posts, why the left would be motivated to do this.
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Notable accounting scandals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals
Company ↓ Year ↓ Audit Firm ↓ Country ↓ Notes ↓
Nugan Hand Bank 1980[1] Australia
ZZZZ Best 1986[2] United States
MiniScribe 1989[3] United States
Polly Peck 1990[4] United Kingdom
Bank of Credit and Commerce International 1991[5] United Kingdom
Phar-Mor 1992[6] United States
Cendant 1998[7] Ernst & Young United States
Waste Management, Inc. 1999[8] United States Financial mistatements
Microstrategy 2000[9] PricewaterhouseCoopers United States Michael Saylor
Unify Corporation 2000[10] United States
Computer Associates 2000[11] KPMG United States Sanjay Kumar
Xerox 2000[12] KPMG United States Falsifying financial results
One.Tel 2001[13] Ernst & Young Australia
Enron 2001[14] Arthur Andersen United States Jeffrey Skilling, Kenneth Lay, Andrew Fastow
Adelphia 2002[15] Deloitte & Touche United States John Rigas
AOL 2002[12] Ernst & Young United States Inflated sales
Bristol-Myers Squibb 2002[16][12] PricewaterhouseCoopers United States Inflated revenues
CMS Energy 2002[17][12] Arthur Andersen United States Round trip trades
Duke Energy 2002[12] Deloitte & Touche United States Round trip trades
Dynegy 2002[12] Arthur Andersen United States Round trip trades
El Paso Corporation 2002[12] Deloitte & Touche United States Round trip trades
Freddie Mac 2002[18] United States Understated earnings
Global Crossing 2002[12] Arthur Andersen Bermuda Network capacity swaps to inflate revenues
Halliburton 2002[12] Arthur Andersen United States Improper booking of cost overruns
Homestore.com 2002[19][12] United States Improper booking of sales
ImClone Systems 2002[20] KPMG United States Samuel D. Waksal
Kmart 2002[12][21] PricewaterhouseCoopers United States Misleading accounting practices
Merck & Co. 2002[12] United States Recorded co-payments that were not collected
Merrill Lynch 2002[22] Deloitte & Touche United States Conflict of interest
Mirant 2002[12] United States Overstated assets and liabilities
Nicor 2002[12] United States Overstated assets, understated liabilities
Peregrine Systems 2002[12] KPMG United States Overstated sales
Qwest Communications 2002[12] United States Inflated revenues
Reliant Energy 2002[12] Deloitte & Touche United States Round trip trades
Sunbeam 2002[23] United States
Tyco International 2002[12] PricewaterhouseCoopers Bermuda Improper accounting, Dennis Kozlowski
WorldCom 2002[12] Arthur Andersen United States Overstated cash flows, Bernard Ebbers
Royal Ahold 2003[24] Netherlands Inflating promotional allowances
Parmalat 2003[25][26] Italy Falsified accounting documents, Calisto Tanzi
HealthSouth Corporation 2003[27] Ernst & Young United States Richard M. Scrushy
Chiquita Brands International 2004[28] United States Illegal payments
AIG 2004[29] United States Accounting of structured financial deals
Satyam Computer Services 2009[30] PricewaterhouseCoopers India Falsified accounts
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 8:20 pm
And you have no faith in Obama’s plan to wreck this economy.
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 8:40 pm
These accountants and MBAs should not have utter ignorance in how businesses are run, but they sure seem to get caught with their fraud, greed, and of course mismanagement. And you want freer markets. Yes, it would be nice indeed.
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Not a big deal, eh?
MR. Dings said,
March 7, 2009 at 11:24 pm
http://crisisexperts.blogspot.com/2009/02/when-fbi-comes-calling-corporate-bail.html
And if an enormous FBI investigation now underway is fruitful, we’ll see an even more dramatic shift for 2009. Many companies are sitting on a smoldering crisis, whether they realize it yet or not.
An AP story on February 11 reported that the FBI has 530 active corporate fraud investigations under way in cases directly related to the current economic crisis. Thirty-eight of them involve some of the biggest names in corporate finance, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. He said investigators are tackling an even bigger mountain of mortgage fraud cases — 1,800 of them, more than double the number of such cases two years ago — in which hundreds of millions of dollars may have been swindled from the system.
“It is a matter of lawyers, brokers, or real estate professionals that are systematically trying to defraud the system,” Pistole said. He added that agents have even seen some instances of organized crime getting involved in mortgage fraud.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 7, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Sounds to me like there are laws on the books and a law enforcement agency on the case.
In other words, a system working like it should.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 8, 2009 at 12:02 am
Just because some people speed or drive recklessly, shoud we have government agents riding in your car every time you drive?
MR. Dings said,
March 8, 2009 at 12:50 am
Corporate earnings and outlook for future earnings are the basis for the Dow, no? If those earnings were fraudulently overstated, and then the truth is discovered, is not that going to affect the stock price of the company and, if enough of them were dirty, isn’t that going to affect the Dow Jones Industrial Average negatively, when the chickens come home to roost? This is ongoing, we have not seen the end to it. Alltogether, it spoils disaster for the market, not some president who has been in office 6 weeks.
MR. Dings said,
March 8, 2009 at 2:01 am
The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown by Charles R. Morris
http://www.amazon.com/Two-Trillion-Dollar-Meltdown-Rollers/dp/1586486918/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236477664&sr=8-1
With the housing markets unravelling daily and distress signals flying throughout the rest of the economy, there is little doubt that we are facing a fierce recession. In crisp, gripping prose, Charles R. Morris shows how got into this mess. He explains the arcane financial instruments, the chicanery, the policy mis-judgments, the dogmas, and the delusions that created the greatest credit bubble in world history.Paul Volcker slew the inflation dragon in the early 1980s, and set the stage for the high performance economy of the 1980s and 1990s. But Wall Street’s prosperity soon tilted into gross excess. The astronomical leverage at major banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients led to massive disruption in global markets. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will go down in flames with it. Continued denial and concealment could cause the crisis to stretch out for years, but financial and government leaders are still downplaying the problem.
MR. Dings said,
March 8, 2009 at 2:07 am
Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla
http://www.amazon.com/Chain-Blame-Street-Caused-Mortgage/dp/0470292776/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236477430&sr=1-1
The book makes pretty clear that a number of factors contributed to the mortgage problem. Regulators didn’t get involved; Wall Street firms ignored the volatile nature of subprime loans in a desire to realize enormous profits; banks bought into the profitable business.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 8, 2009 at 3:06 am
“Regulators didn’t get involved.” just how hould you have them get involved?
Look, when the market works without socialist bother, bad guys get spanked.
MR. Dings said,
March 8, 2009 at 4:00 am
Goc, brother, if you don’t have a clue now, I don’t know what to do about you. Keep the socialism out of it. The gondeliers of greed and mavens of persuasion brung us to this juncture. The first recipients of government largesse were them and theirs from one of them, GW Bush.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 8, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Believe me, I’m trying to keep socialism out of it. That’s why you’d never catch me voting for an FHer.