"Ben Bernanke just received 4 more years as your Federal Reserve chief. The Senate confirming him by a vote of 70-30. After providing cheap money for years, inflating the housing bubble and then delivering an infinte suppy of money after the collapse that recapitalized Wall Street while depriving America of trillions of dollars in investment, your U.S. Senate believes HE’S THE BEST MAN to run the Federal Reserve for the next 4 years…the biggest and most powerful and most secretive bank in the world, the Federal Reserve."
"Let’s be very clear, Dylan. Wall Street has enormous power here on Capitol Hill. Bernanke is their guy and Wall Street usually gets what they want. What makes me particularly sad is that the White House ALSO pulled out all the stops for Bernanke’s reappointment."
"The American people can NOT understand how the Fed can lend out TRILLIONS to large, financial institutions and we don not know the names of the organizations that received the money. The fight for Fed transparency is going to continue."
Must see video with Dylan Ratigan, Ryan Grim (featured here yesterday) and Naomi Klein. Naomi talks about the zombie banks actually being vampires, sucking the blood (money) out of our society, fearing the fate of withering and dying in the light. How can we help? Naomi suggests that we need to "out the lobbyists." – Ilene
The pressure on both Geithner and Bernanke is finally reaching a crescendo. Fixing the US economy would start with the departure of Geithner (forced or otherwise) and the full audit of the Fed. Everything else is smoke and overleveraged, uncollateralized mirrors (perfectly acceptable in the Fed’s discount window). An interview by Dylan Ratigan of Ryan Grim and Naomi Klein makes this point loud and clear. The castration of Ron Paul’s bill must not occur if America does not want to end up in the same financial collapse gutter it found itself in 2008. Mel Watt and others have to look beyond their immediate financial gain and consider what is critical for the American people.
DYLAN RATIGAN: How is the Federal Reserve trying to basically game this Ron Paul amendment which looks like it will pass, and then chop its head off just as soon as it makes it into the room?
RYAN GRIM: This is an immensely consequential debate that’s going on in the House right now, and it also tells you a little bit about how Congress works.
The Ron Paul/Alan Grayson bill has enough support to pass. So instead of trying to kill it, which they can’t do any more, they come in with what they call a “compromise.” A serious with a capital “s” amendment, but if you look at the fine print of it, it actually just extends the secrecy of the federal reserve, and as you said it’s backed by prominent economists at the fed and formerly at the Fed. They didn’t say that they that they were with the Fed when they sent a letter around backing it, but a Google search checking their resumes show that these are Fed bankers behind it.There is really unprecedented and very meaningful opposition to the Federal Reserve that has come together from the left and the right kind of opposing the center that is
Guess which two Wall Street banks were acting as informal agents of the government in order to support the bond and stock markets and reinflate them?
Two big banks that are showing record trading profits, and a small group of enablers and assistants.
Its a near layup when the US fronts you the money and then works with you to take the markets higher via its Working Group on Financial Markets. Especially when it is on thin volumes based on ‘news’ which you help to create and control via frequent calls to young Tim who is your coordinator, in addition to all your other well-placed backchannel sources. You get a heads up, you use the futures to prop the markets. You need some good news, some can be arranged. Just like the good old days when Timmy was riding herd on the NY Fed desk.
All for the good of the country. And if you happen to make a billion per month in trading profits, well, that is the price of freedom for a job well done. Besides, a lot comes back in lobbying and campaign contributions. And you get to be rather porky and demanding about new banking and derivatives regulations because after all, you have a job to do and if they won’t let you do it, well its uh oh.
That’s what we hear, rumour-wise. Makes as much sense out of this as anything. How about you? Max Keiser thinks it is a fraud, as he describes here.
Below is Dylan Ratigan and his guest’s take on this rally and the record profits.
Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke told us when the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was launched that they were not concerned about the health of our banking system. In fact, this was not the case. They were concerned about specific institutions and the overall health of the system. The U.S. financial system was much weaker than we were led to believe as I indicated at the time.
Now the TARP Special Inspector Neil Barofsky is telling the American people what many of us knew all along. Listen to what he says in the video below with MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan. His contention that these false premises undermined the credibility of TARP and subsequent government economic policy rings true. Even today, we don’t know what the banks are doing with their TARP funds. If they are loaning it out, why is the unemployment rate 9.8%?
By the way, I love D-Rat. This is a guy who likes to talk – god bless him. Sometimes he goes on way too much, but I like his approach.
Lately I have been using the phrase "Corporate Communism" on my television show I think it is an especially fitting term when discussing the current landscape in both our banking and health care systems.
As Americans, I believe we reject Communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under the perpetual broken systems with no natural motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs.
Lack of choice, lazy, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why America spent half a century fighting a Cold War with the U.S.S.R.
And yet today we find ourselves as a country in two distinctly different categories: those who are forced to compete tooth and nail each day to provide value to society in return for income for ourselves and our families and those who would instead use our lawmaking apparatus to help themselves to our tax money and/or to protect themselves from true competition.
If you allow weak, outdated players to take control of the government and change the rules so they are protected from the natural competition and reward systems that have created so many innovations in our country, you not only steal from the citizens to on behalf of the least worthy but you also doom them by trapping the capital that would be used to generate new innovation and, most tangibly in our current situation, jobs.
We are losing the opportunity cost of all the great ideas that should be coming from the proper deployment of that 23.7 Trillion in capital. Everything from innovation in medical delivery systems to accessible space travel, free energy to the driverless car; all of these things may never come to bear because those powerful individuals who have failed, been passed over by technological advancements, innovation and flat-out smarts, have commandeered our government to unfairly sustain their wealth and power.
Unfortunately, they use our wealth and laws not only to benefit their outdated, failed companies, but also spend a…
We’ve been waiting for traders to come back from their summer breaks but no sign of them so far. Sill the market volume is at historic lows and still 80% of that volume is concentrated on a dozen financial stocks that simply get traded back and forth by robots every time the market needs a push in one direction or another.
As David Fry’s chart indicates, the only big volume stick we’ve seen in the past two months have come attached to big sell-offs. In mid-August we were "just about to break higher" but gapped down instead and then again at the end of August, we reversed our low volume "recovery" with a big sell-off. Here we are in the middle of September (that every two week thing) and THIS TIME, the analysts say it’s different. Different I guess because the volume has dropped by another 1/3 since our last fake rally.
This, of course, does not stop us from "going with the flow" as running with the bulls can be very profitable but we are hedging A LOT and very cautious in our trade set-ups as we know how fast this can all turn around. We took our short profits at yesterday’s morning dip and added a mix of long and short plays during the day. We did put our foot down on SRS and the Russell, playing the SRS to go no lower than $10.25 and the Russell not to break $600 this week and we’ll be sweating out that one this morning as the pre-market pump has already jammed the futures up 40 points since Europe’s open.
Asia was mostly flat this morning but that does little to describe the madness at the Hang Seng, which was closed for the morning due to a Typhoon and opened for just 90 minutes in the afternoon where they dropped like a rock that was tied to a rock that was wearing cement shoes into the close. Still, thanks to a 200-point gap up into the delayed open, the Hang Seng managed to finish the day down just 68 official points. As soon as the US markets closed, dollar repair crews were rushed to the scene and they managed to get it back over 91 Yen in time for Japan’s open and that helped the Nikkei stay above that critical 10,200 line we’ve been…
Improvement in first time unemployment claims is slowing. Actual, not seasonally manipulated data, including an adjustment for the usual weekly upward revision, shows that the year to year rate of change is on the cusp of a possible upside breakout, which would be good news for stock market bears if it happens.
Initial Unemployment Claims Chart- Click to enlarge
Here’s why it’s mind blowing. I’ve plotted it below on an inverse scale with the S&P 500 overlaid.
Unemployemt Claims and Stock Prices - Click to enlarge
Major US Markets including (NYSEARCA:DIA), (NYSEARCA:SPY), (NASDAQ:QQQ), and (NYSEARCA:IWM) dropped over 3% each on Italian bond fears and an increased worry that Europe will not be able to bail out its 4th largest economy. Furthermore, the iShares MCSI Italy Fund (NYSEARCA:EWI) wiped out over 9% today, further illustrating the dire situation in Italy and the European Union: ...
The second economic disappointment of the day comes from the Dallas Fed, which dropped from -2.0 to -11.4 on expectations of -9.0- this was the 4th consecutive negative print month. The report was, in a word, horrible, with just 2 of the 15 constituent indices posting an increase, and the bulk solidly in the red, led by Unfilled and New Orders which dropped 16.8 and 11.2, respectively: not good for economic growth. On the employment side there was nothing good either, with both employment and hours worked declining by -...
Bloomberg reports that Diana Containerships (NASDAQ: DCIX) files to offer stock up to $172.5M. Diana Containerships says that Diana shipping will also buy $20M of stock.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...
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February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.
Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011
 
Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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Guest Post by Dylan Ratigan at 
We are losing the opportunity cost of all the great ideas that should be coming from the proper deployment of that 
Can we break higher on this low volume?
This, of course, does not stop us from "going with the flow" as running with the bulls can be very profitable but we are hedging A LOT and very cautious in our trade set-ups as we know how fast this can all turn around. We took our short profits at yesterday’s morning dip and added a mix of long and short plays during the day. We did put our foot down on SRS and the Russell, playing the SRS to go no lower than $10.25 and the Russell not to break $600 this week and we’ll be sweating out that one this morning as the pre-market pump has already jammed the futures up 40 points since Europe’s open. 
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(