Odds and Ends - Time Marches On Posted by:bobo 2/23/2008 10:14:00 PM
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Some news and ruminations about the market, and NCANS
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NCANS, the National Coalition Against Naked Shortselling, is going to get a facelift and a new name, and also 501c status. The new name will be the National Investor Protection Coalition, which is actually more in line with the broad idea of the organization - investors need to be protected by someone, and if the SEC and judicial system are going to play look the other way days while the retirement savings of America are looted by international criminal syndicates, privateering hedge funds, and amoral banks and brokerages, somebody needs to step up to the plate and take action for the little guys.
We are seeing the result of allowing Wall Street to basically run unchecked through the financial system, with the current MBS and derivative fiasco. If history has taught us anything it is that self policing doesn't work when big money is involved. Why our elected officials and media become strangely deaf, dumb and blind when that topic comes up, is probably as difficult to comprehend as why CNBC cuts any discussion of naked short selling off at the knees - even as the house of cards collapses, they do their duty by their wall street paymasters and feign ignorance of the issue, blocking any coverage just as surely as China censors discussion of dissenting opinion.
The big lie is that we live in a free and superior society. I think a more accurate description is that we live in a consumer driven society, where our freedoms have been gladly traded for gadgets and jargon and slogans. We have traded the Bill of Rights for ipods and hybrid vehicles and brown-skinned people we can all agree to despise. We conveniently ignore evidence that we are now in the final stages of the Roman Empire - our dollar is basically good for stuffing pillows and wrapping fish, we feel completely powerless against our ruler/masters, and we are satiated with spectacle rather than outraged by injustice. It's not a positive state of affairs, and we have exported our living on borrowed time to the rest of the world, which is just now awakening to the idea that Wall Street is willing to sell its soul for a few good bonuses, and subject the entire planet to outsized risk if it means a 25-year old Wharton grad can drive a Maybach and lease a Citation X.
But back to the artist formerly known as NCANS.
The new organization has been working on a bombshell project that basically paints the SEC into a corner WRT it's treatment of the securities laws. Apparently the quislings at the SEC feel it's OK to ignore the express wishes of Congress, as well as the letter of the law, so that their future employers on Wall Street can enjoy more while everyone else tries to get by on less. The NIPC project is going to make it very difficult to keep that up. It's not the sort of thing that can be ignored away, or 'lil GW'd into a tunnel of lies (check out the latest on that psycho at this site and also at antisocialmedia.net). Rather, it requires that the cops do what they are supposed to be doing, rather than what their puppet-masters have them doing. Stay tuned for more on that over the next month or so.
I hope everyone took my advice a year or so ago, and got the hell out of the market, and bought commodities like gold and platinum rather than forking over your savings to the den of thieves. If you didn't, believe me, I sympathize. Everyone wants to believe the Wall Street and media lie that you can have something for nothing. Take, for instance, the fascination on up days with proclaiming that bulls are back, etc. Does anyone buy this crap? Hasn't it occurred to everyone that if you measure Wall Street's performance over the last couple of years, and value the indexes using something besides dollars - like any other first world currency or basket of them - that we are down 30 or 40%? How does the S&P being up 10% one year stack up to the dollar dropping more than that against oil, and gold, and Aussie or Canadian dollars, or euros, or pounds? Folks, this is a shell game, and you are the grist for the wall street mill. You can't win in this casino - the only ones who will win consistently are the casino owners. What else is new?
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