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Pastimes : The Naked Truth - Big Kahuna a Myth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (65940)	10/2/1999 9:54:00 AM
From: MythMan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 86076

I saw that. don't understand why the happiness. I see Ike is buying calls. What's next, cats living with dogs? -g-

To: NickSE who wrote (65940)	10/2/1999 10:16:00 AM
From: NickSE	Respond to of 86076

Bail Raised for Alleged Bilker biz.yahoo.com NEW YORK (AP) -- A New Jersey man accused of cheating Japanese investors out of up to $1 billion will face stricter bail conditions, a judge decided Thursday after prosecutors upgraded charges against him. Martin Armstrong, 50, of Maple Shade, N.J., must find four individuals who have $5 million in assets or he will be imprisoned beginning Oct. 7, U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas ruled. Armstrong's lawyer, Marc Durant, told Maas it was doubtful his client could raise bail. ''He's not going to have even one person who has that kind of assets who can do this,'' he said. Durant also said he ''disagrees vehemently'' with the amount of money prosecutors allege his client lost. Outside court, Armstrong said the charges were ''absolutely false, dead false.'' The defendant, carrying a book titled, ''The Chronicle of The Chinese Emperors,'' said he wished he could talk. ''I can't. I'd love to.'' Armstrong allegedly squandered millions of dollars in assets as the founder and chairman of a Princeton, N.J.-based investment firm, Princeton Economics International Limited. For at least the last four years, Armstrong sold about $3 billion in so-called Princeton Notes to foreign investors through the investment fund, authorities allege. Prosecutors said the promissory notes were advertised as conservative investments but instead were misused by Armstrong for risky trading ventures that failed. Armstrong had been free for two weeks on $5 million bail secured by signatures from his 81-year-old mother and his two children. Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian D. Coad asked for stricter bail conditions as prosecutors upgraded charges against Armstrong, adding additional counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, securities fraud and wire fraud. Coad said prosecutors believed Armstrong had significant assets in offshore bank accounts and was spending substantial amounts of money already on his legal defense. He said Armstrong had traveled extensively outside the country. Durant, though, said his client did not have a checking or savings account or own property and had lived in a house with his mother since his wife left him early in their marriage, leaving him to raise two children alone. The lawyer said Armstrong already would have fled if he were planning to do so, especially since he had been on notice of the severity of the case since Sept. 1, when the FBI raided the offices of his companies. In arguing for tougher bail, Coad said investigators and Alan M. Cohen, the court-appointed receiver for Armstrong's businesses, had been obstructed by attorneys for Armstrong in their quest to unearth his assets. Armstrong succeeded in getting the government of an offshore island to freeze his assets under the foreign entity's control so U.S. authorities could not intervene, Coad said. The judge said the tighter bail requirements were necessary because ''given the amount of money involved, as time goes forward there is a substantial chance of flight.''

To: NickSE who wrote (65940)	10/2/1999 11:28:00 AM
From: Lucretius	Respond to of 86076

if they are closing and have sold out of all their positions.. it simply means their leverage has been distributed throughout the system to multiple parties.... not that it has gone away.

To: NickSE who wrote (65940)	10/2/1999 4:22:00 PM
From: paulmcg0	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 86076

Unfortunately, there are a lot of powerful people in the government (such as the "Plunge Protection Team") and Wall Street who are doing everything in their power to prevent or slow down the oncoming collapse. It's in their interest to do so -- for example, the U.S. government has already figured in large capital gains taxes into the supposed budget surplus, giving them (for now) increased revenue without raising tax rates. This damned stock market mania is everywhere -- for example, I recently got back from doing some telecommunications work in Asia. I got stopped by a female U.S. Customs officer who started asking me about my trip, trying to see if I was a smuggler. When I told her what I had been doing, she started telling me how she was into telecom stocks! We're in unknown territory here -- based on valuation measures like P/E ratios, we have the most overpriced market in U.S. history. People not only have forgotten history (financial manias and the inevitable crashes), they have forgotten mathematics. (see Message 10935364 for example) Eventually, stock prices will go down, causing serious problems like the destruction of a lot of people's retirement plans, bad debts all over the place, a collapse in real estate prices, and a U.S. government that supposedly had a budget surplus facing hundreds of billions dollars in annual deficits because of declining tax revenues (for extra credit, figure what happens to the budget if tens of millions of people a year start claiming the limit of 3000 dollars a year in capital losses while millions more declare bankruptcy). You could even have disgruntled Yuppies living in their SUVs because they've lost everything else. Despite the best efforts of many people, this thing will eventually sink. I happened to be working in Thailand during the economic collapse 2 years ago. What happened there will happen here -- you will have a glut of people trying to dump their stocks and real estate with few buyers, you will have massive amounts of goods in business inventories that simply can't be sold, and you will have banks collapsing or being forcibly merged together.