Masters of the Universe category archive
Facebook Frolics, Take the Money and Run Dept. 0
A drag on the market. Reducing the IPO hysteria is likely a good thing for investors, if not for banksters. Bloomberg (emphasis added):
(snip)
“We’ve reached a breaking point where sentiment is so negative and scrutiny is so high that companies don’t want to go public and investors aren’t prepared to look at them,” said Sica, who oversees more than $1 billion as chief investment officer of the Morristown, New Jersey-based firm. “You’re talking about long-standing damage to the psyche of companies wanting to go public and investors.”
Long-standing damage to the psyche my anatomy. Fancy way of saying, “OMG we might have to have a product worth investing in.”
The Entitlement Society 0
Robyn Blumner considers the entitlements of one well-known bonus baby. She gives an example of one of his favorite entitlements:
Dade Behring went bankrupt, leaving Main Street creditors empty-handed, but not before Romney’s firm took $242 million out of it. In fact, of Bain’s 10 top business investments that made up 70 percent of the $2.5 billion Bain made for investors, four eventually went bankrupt, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That’s called winning for losing, a game perfected by top 1 percenters.
Follow the link for the rest.
Responsible Fiscals 0
Bloomberg describes the case of Sherry Hunt. Background:
Executives buried her findings, Hunt says, before, during and after the financial crisis, and even into 2012.
In March 2011, more than two years after Citigroup took $45 billion in bailouts from the U.S. government and billions more from the Federal Reserve — more in total than any other U.S. bank — Jeffery Polkinghorne, an O’Fallon executive in charge of loan quality, asked Hunt and a colleague to stay in a conference room after a meeting.
The encounter with Polkinghorne was brief and tense, Hunt says. The number of loans classified as defective would have to fall, he told them, or it would be “your asses on the line.”
Hunt says it was clear what Polkinghorne was asking — and she wanted no part of it.
She fought back. Follow the link to find out what happened.
And think about the integrity of the company that forced her to fight to be honest.
Facebook Frolics, Take the Money and Run Dept. 0
At MarketWatch, Mark Hulbert crunches the numbers and predicts
Ouch.
Actually, however, the news is even worse: No one is going to invest in Facebook shares today if its price will be 30% lower in five years. So, in order to entice someone to invest in it today, Facebook needs to offer a handsome return. Assuming that its five-year return is equal to the stock market’s long-term average return of 11% annualized, Facebook shares currently would need to be trading at just $13.80.
Follow the link for the how-to of his reasoning.
Facebook Frolics, Give Me Everybody’s Money Back Dept. 0
Curiouser and curioser:
The person said the firm is reviewing orders its retail clients placed for Facebook stock, and will make price adjustments if the clients paid too much. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The person did not say what amount constituted overpaying for Facebook’s stock.
Daring financial wizards willing to take risks in the market, indeed.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Giving rise to new specialties in real estate:
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Foreclosures poised for a comeback. Process servers worry less about employment security.
Lenders issued 809 foreclosure-related notices in the area last month, up 2.4 percent from the 790 issued in March but down 21 percent from the 1,023 reported in April 2011, according to RealtyTrac, a foreclosure-monitoring service based in Irvine, Calif.
So Much Money They Don’t Know What To Do . . . 0
. . . or, for that matter, how to do it.
The video captures a rather rambling discussions, but the numbers . . . .
The Volcker Rule, which they refer to without defining, simply returns the banking model to what it used to be: banks would not be able to gamble with customers’ deposits.
Wall Streat Weak 0
At Bloomberg, Jonathan Weil considers J. P. Morgan Chase’s gambling losses and Jamie Dimon’s statements about them. A nugget:
Don’t bother asking JPMorgan how it accumulated all these losses. That information is proprietary, as if the taxpayers who bailed out the bank in 2008 don’t have any business knowing. Here’s an idea for a new rule: If a too-big-to-fail bank can’t disclose what its trading desk is doing for fear of blowing itself up, then the bank shouldn’t be allowed to do it.
Facebook Frolics, Sharing Is for Others Dept. 0
Loyal to his Mammon.
Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for an Internet company. Saverin’s stake is about 4 percent, according to the website Who Owns Facebook. At the high end of the IPO valuation, that would be worth about $3.84 billion. His holdings aren’t listed in Facebook’s regulatory filings.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
At MarketWatch, Richard Gibson reports on the double-standard that keeps the home foreclosure market healthy and creates jobs for process servers. A nugget:
The rest of the mortgage, the amount by which the mortgage exceeds the value of the property, can be “stripped down” under Bankruptcy Code Section 506, or converted into unsecured debt, which can be discharged. “Strip down” gives underwater commercial property owners a reasonable chance to reduce their debts, and to return to profitability.
(snip)
But homeowners cannot use strip down. Under bankruptcy law, the only mortgages that cannot be stripped down are those against the principal residences of individuals or families. Donald Trump can use strip down to reduce multimillion-dollar mortgages against his casinos. A middle-class family, however, can’t use strip-down to save their home from foreclosure.
Broke Banks 0
Atrios explains how banking works.