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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (19701)	6/19/2007 8:06:40 AM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217750

China Inc owns 3 bil of Blackstone; USA inc owns nothing of Blackstone. Blackstone steps in to help Bear Sterns; China Inc helping Bear Sterns by proxy; China Inc helping to protect CB ilaine's home value by default. CB ilaine naively boycotts China Inc; CB ilaine interestingly hurt self to feel good about nothing in particular, exhibiting contempt for criminals in China and yet not supportive of what will be coming to them, and still yet, continues to support a senseless, but certainly officially sanctioned war that is destroying the young of many innocent parents. Perhaps I am making a logical leap, but there it is, hardly deniable. BLACKSTONE IS BEAR FUND'S LAST HOPE By RODDY BOYD June 19, 2007 -- A foundering Bear Stearns hedge fund staved off collapse for another day, getting a 24-hour reprieve from angry creditors in order to allow Blackstone Group to implement a rescue plan. Beset with nearly 30 percent losses and demands from lenders for additional collateral, known as margin calls, the Bear Stearns High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leveraged Fund is at the thin end of a very, very fat wedge. The fund's creditors are listening to a proposal from fund management and Blackstone today designed to avoid the fund's collapse, presumably involving the combination of a cash infusion and a margin call moratorium. A Bear spokesman declined to comment. Merrill Lynch, which was about to auction off $400 million in fund assets amid worry about the fund's inability to meet a margin call, agreed to delay the sale until it heard today's presentation. What creditors such as J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch are weighing, however, is much more than the year-old, $600 million fund's life or death. Senior Wall Street bond executives familiar with the Bear fund's collapse are afraid that if it liquidates the balance of its holdings, "we are going to see billions of dollars worth of losses across hedge funds and dealers," according to one executive. Two weeks ago, Bank of America began the Bear fund's failure when it demanded either the return of the bank's money or hundreds of millions of dollars more cash for collateral after word of the fund's nearly 25 percent losses leaked. Last week, the Bear fund auctioned off about $4 billion in relatively highly rated bonds to raise desperately need cash. What's left is $2 billion in illiquid and arcane assets known as collateralized debt obligations that were already difficult to trade and are now rapidly losing their value. The prospect of these securities being scooped up by the bond market was already dim, but with few trading desks likely to provide capital to a struggling fund, the losses could be driven higher. If creditors don't provide capital and the fund is forced to sell the assets, which no bond trading desk is anxious to bid on, "The world becomes very different, very fast for a lot of people," said a wary hedge fund manager. roddy.boyd@nypost.com

To: energyplay who wrote (19701)	6/19/2007 9:48:14 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 217750

Iran hit by 5.9 quake, felt in Tehran, rocking the capital Tehran as well as surrounding cities, state media reported. It was measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale, Agence France-Presse ELMAT: we were expecting Bush army, not an earthquake! The epicentre was around 19 kilometres (12 miles) south of Qom, Iran's main clerical city that is home to an array of seminary schools, state television said, citing Tehran University's geophysics institute. Officials said that windows were broken and cracks appeared in houses in Qom city, but there were no reports of casualties or severe damage. Rescue teams were being dispatched to the town of Kahak and village of Fordu just south of Qom, which were the closest inhabited areas to the quake's epicentre. "Our rescue teams have been dispatched to the Kahak area to assess the possible damages," Ali Reza Parand, the deputy head of Iran's Red Crescent in charge of operations, told the ISNA student agency. "There is a possibility of damage in southern parts of Qom province," he added. The quake, which struck at 5:59 pm (14:29 GMT), was felt in the capital as well as other cities including Garmsar, Karaj and Kashan to the south. However the epicentre was around 143 kilometres (90 miles) outside Tehran and officials were quick to emphasise there was no immediate danger in the capital. "Tehran is not in danger as the epicentre was quite far from Tehran," said Mehdi Zareh, the head of the institute. Buildings in Tehran swayed gently for several seconds as the tremor struck, AFP correspondents said. It did not appear to have caused major panic and most residents carried on with marking a religious holiday although some moved into parks in case of any aftershocks. An aftershock measuring 3.6 hit the town of Qanavat just east of Qom at 6:21 pm (1451 GMT). Iran sits astride several major faults in the earth's crust, and is prone to frequent earthquakes, many of them devastating. The worst quake in recent times hit Bam in December 2003, killing 31,000 people, about a quarter of the city's population, and destroying the city's ancient mud-built citadel. Tehran alone sits on two major faultlines and the 7.5 million residents of the city live in anxiety of a major quake that would risk damaging buildings that are not earthquake-proof in densely-populated areas.