S&P Going To 200?

Watch the two videos on this post - Kneale Abuse.

Ban Jim Cramer - Keep The ETFs

Since I'm a part-time trader, and don't really do copious research, I learn about stuff somewhat slower.

Not long ago, someone posted a comment on my blog about Cramer and him jawboning to *ban short ETFs*. Of course I saw it but didn't pay much attention.

I simply do not watch CNBC; and I definitely do not watch Mad Money.

But I was on the treadmill last Friday and saw a bit of Cramer - thankfully on mute. He was inveighing against those Ultrashort ETFs that I trade so much these days. Essentially, though he won't admit it, he scapegoats the ETFs for his losses in JP Morgan and Wells Fargo.

I'll let the ETF guys defend themselves:

"We reject the notion that short ETFs harm the markets," comments Dan O'Neill, President and Chief Investment Officer, Direxion. "Healthy markets are designed to discover the proper price levels for whatever is being traded. Most people recognize that permitting short selling simply adds robustness to price discovery. Those in favor of banning shorts are trying to manage the market higher by silencing one side of the argument. This is generally self-defeating and harmful in anything but the very short term." O'Neill also observes, "The recent housing bubble - which was caused at least in part because it is not possible to short housing - shows the danger of one-way markets."

What do the Assets Say?

Before you believe the propaganda of agenda pushers who argue that short ETFs are harmful to the stock market, look at the facts. Fund providers like ProShares, DirexionShares, and Rydex Investments each offer ETFs that play both bull and bear markets, not just bear.

Critics who complain that the UltraShort Financial ProShares (NYSEArca: SKF - News) is exerting downward pressure on financial stocks fail to mention the Ultra Financials Fund (NYSEArca: UYG - News), a long leveraged financial ETF, has an asset base more than double SKF! Currently, this pair of ProShares financial ETFs is overwhelming net long financial stocks.

O'Neill observes a similar trend at his Boston-based firm, whose ETFs were launched late last year. "Each of the Direxion Shares long and short ETF pairs is, and has been, for the majority of their brief existence, net long." He adds, "Although we believe it would be perfectly fine and consistent with healthy markets if the pairs were net short, the fact is that they are net long, meaning they're adding to market demand."

In the following clip, skip forward to the 1 min 10 sec mark for a litany of Jim Cramer's big calls bombs:



Did y'all know that Jim pounded the table on the now essentially zeroed-out Countrywide Financial?





I can't find the initial buy note (article expunged?) but Jim definitely said to buy Countrywide - AT THE TOP - at $44 per share or so.

Did that company go belly-up because of ETFs?

I think not.

Rightfully, the SEC, if it's going to make any fascist moves, ought to ban Jim Cramer from television.

He's proven a far bigger risk to *investors* than levered ETFs.

Will CNBC pull Cramer off the air because his *calls* have been so bad?

No way.

His ratings are way up. He's probably in line for a raise.

Ken Lewis Interview - Followup

Though I did tape the buffoon's CNBC interview yesterday I have to admit that I have no desire to watch it. The scapegoating and predictable, clichéd optimism I find too boring to bear. And I did hear right, Bank of America's Ken Lewis did invoke *patriotism* as a factor in him bending over for Merrill Lynch's John Thain:

He said that he and his executives eventually came to agree with the government's position: "They said, 'We strongly advise you that it is not in your best interest or the country's best interest to walk away from this.'"

Yeah, right.

"We're going to get on with doing business," he said. "And frankly, we had a pretty good January."

Yeah, right.

How much do you wanna bet that on the next disastrous *earnings* report, he blames a *pretty bad* February or March?

In the memo, Lewis called the company's performance in January "encouraging." The "extreme dislocations in the capital markets we suffered last quarter seem to have moderated" but "credit costs continue to be a big issue."

Oh,....but if not for those nettlesome *credit costs*!

That'd be like a football coach saying his team practices well, works hard on defense, plays together, knows the plays,.....just has a minor issue *outscoring their opponents*!!!

*Credit costs* = BIG LOSSES, BIG MISTAKES....they are hardly just an item in a balance sheet.

Firing former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain is "ancient history," Mr. Lewis said. Mr. Thain, 53, left his post as head of Bank of America's investment banking and wealth-management units on Jan. 22. "I'm sorry it happened. It's never pleasant."

With much of Merrill's senior leadership departed, Mr. Lewis said it's better for officials of acquired companies to leave sooner rather than later. ""Nobody executes better than we do. This plays to our strength," he said.

Nobody *executes* better than Ken Lewis?

How about nobody *commits suicide* better???

[I pulled those quotes from a variety of sources. The full transcript is here - and it's an annoying PDF.]

Here's a more accurate picture of Bank of America:



Consignments and donations welcome!

[The disrepair is more apparent if you click on the image. This building is on route-41 in Naples.]

Hank Paulson - Not Stupid, Evil

MARIA BARTIROMO: The fed increasing its balance sheet by one and a third trillion dollars in a couple of months time. The fe-- the treasury injecting money from tarp, taking stakes in bank. Can we afford this as a country?

HANK PAULSON: Maria, we can afford it as a country. We're a rich country. And (COUGHING) if history teaches us any lesson, it is that when you have an historical problem like this, if we don't react to it quickly, and react to it with force quickly, the long-term economic clock-- consequences will be much more severe. Now, again, a good deal of this treasury issuance is going to be the fund investment programs that really aren't expenditures. For instance, the $250 billion bank capital investment program. This-- this is money that will come back into the treasury. And it will come back into the treasury with a profit. So all of it won't be spending. And again, I-- I think a big part of this success will be the-- the focus that the-- and the policy choices that the next administration makes, as it relates to their stimulus program. And I'm hoping that it will be-- relatively short-term, because, as you pointed out, we have long-term fiscal challenges. And one of the things that I started working on as soon as I came down here were the long-term fiscal challenges-- social security and health care challenges. And I think that if, in the first year, the next team in Congress starts to address some of these fundamental long-term problems, it will make investors and others around the world much more comfortable with some of the things we need to do in the short-term, to deal with a very-- present and real-- you know, ec-- economic-- downturn we have in this country.

MARIA BARTIROMO: But do you worry about foreigners becoming unwilling to lend? I mean, how do we know that they're continue buying our-- our debt? Who is gonna finance, and at what interest rates-- what we have right now?

HANK PAULSON: Well, Maria, right now, there's great demand for our treasury securities. And at very low interest rates. I've spent a great deal of time personally talking with investors overseas, talking with investors in the Middle East-- China, Japan. And I will say to you that everything they indicate to me is they feel comfortable with the things we're doing. They like the fact that we're dealing forcefully and stepping up to meet the challenges and to stabilize our financial system. And to protect-- their interests, and that we-- we as-- as a nation respect property rights and respect foreign investments.



You young'uns aren't going to believe this but Maria Bartiromo used to be considered a real babe about 10-12 years ago.

I remember once, when CNBC condescended to report from the floor of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, all the horned neanderthals from the Home Depot option pit hooting and hollering at her while she gave a live report. The *money honey* scooted out of there plenty fast and probably never returned. What class we had!

This is a to-be-continued post.

I just wanted to highlight a couple of lines:

Paulson:

Maria, we can afford it as a country.....

This-- this is money that will come back into the treasury. And it will come back into the treasury with a profit.

Well, Maria, right now, there's great demand for our treasury securities.

Yeah, there was *great demand* from Miami condos in 2005 as well!

This post will be revisited, as our national debt spirals out of control, the treasury's *profits* fail to materialize, and the Treasury market crashes.

Hank Paulson is a crook of the highest order; the Maria Bartiromo's of the world (and I'm not deprecating her) simply aren't Captious enough to call his BS.

How about....

CaptiousMaria - WAIT Hank! HISTORY TELLS US lot of things. It's tells us that fiat currencies have a failure rate of 100%, that governments since the beginning of time have debased their coinage, that the solution to debt has never been more debt, that statism is a national death sentence, that propping up *zombie banks* (Japan) only prolongs economic agony, and that great civilizations have always died when the mercantilists ran the show.

FURTHERMORE, RECENT HISTORY TELLS US that when you ran Goldman Sachs you petitioned the government for increased leverage (From 10-1 to 40-1 for investment banks) and then when the party ended, you and the Goldman Sachs cabal co-opted the Federal government to bail yourselves out.

CNBC's Morning Blog - RIP

(click the pic to enlarge)

Their last post was December 4th, 2006!

Here's what I wrote about their blog two years ago:

I have Marginalized CNBC in past blogs. They are the typical big, stodgy socialist media outlet. They are trying to show their progressivism by running blogs (Squawk Blog and The Morning Blog). All day they promote their blog web addresses, but there is basically nothing on their blogs. The CNBC hosts actually tout "new pics" of themselves on the blog, as if looking at their mugs all day isn’t enough. Do they really think anyone is interested this?

Also, you need a MSN Passport ID to post messages on their blogs. Since no one has one, there is nobody posting comments. I got a MSN ID just so I could criticize them. I figured that I needed an outlet after listening to their crap for 10 years, all day long. But they won’t publish my comments anymore. You can google “CaptiousNut” (click here) to see some of my hardly incendiary comments that some pissant at CNBC has decided to censor. So to sum it up, there is little blog content, a barrier to posting comments, and censorship of criticism. Somebody tell CNBC that “THAT IS NOT A BLOG”.

It won't be long before they obliterate that blog from cyberspace. It's never seen as a good thing to leave glaring evidence of your failures around - a concept that Greg Mankiw is keenly aware of.

ESPECIALLY, when the failure illuminates Big Media's fumbling embrace of New Media.

These are the signals that make Rupert Murdoch and his fledgling business channel teem with optimism.