Last night Jon Stewart took on CNBC, particularly Jim Cramer and Rick Santelli. Stewart highlights several clips of Cramer recommending buying stocks at the top of the market in late 07 and early 08, including a call that Bear Stearns was fine. The beginning of the rant was aimed at Santelli for canceling an appearance (er, bailing out) on the show.
I tried to embed the video, but their code is a mess so here’s the link to the video.
You may have heard that US congressman Peter DeFazio introduced H.R. 1068 “Let Wall Street Pay for Wall Street’s Bailout Act of 2009” which seeks to impose a .25% transaction tax on the sale and purchase of financial instruments such as stocks, options and futures in order to recoup bailout costs.
This bill would essentially halt most shorter term trading, greatly decreasing market liquidity not to mention putting many out of business. This bill would be an absolute disaster.. For example, on a roundtrip trade of 100 shares of Google you’d be hit with a $170 tax bill! You better believe these higher costs will be passed through in mutual funds as well.
This page makes it easy to sign a petition and send an email to your congressman/congresswoman urging them to vote no on this.
http://www.rallycongress.com/no2tradertax/1536/tell-congres-to-block-trader-tax/
Just a quick heads up to let you know that I’ve created a new page that tracks headlines from top online finance magazines.
I’ve added Barrons, BusinessWeek, CNN/Money, SmartMoney, Kiplinger and Forbes (and will add the WSJ once they get their RSS feeds working!) I’ll probably add a few more in the coming weeks.
This page will provide a quick way to scan the columns and news stories from top finance portals. Here are some interesting headlines from the page right now…
Solar Stocks New Dawn
Cheaper Fuel Pressures Visa, Mastercard
A Cure For the Real Estate Blues
Detroit Should Get Cracking on its Googlemobile
10 Tips to Protecting Your Nest Egg
6 Retail Stocks That Need a Respirator
Who’s Vetting These Guys? (Geihtner, Daschle anyone?)
Check out all the headlines at the new top online finance magazines headlines page
The nearly $900 billion (remember when $350 billion was expensive?) economic stimulus package, aka the Pork Package set forth by Democrats cleared the House and heads to the Senate with zero Republican support. If signed into law it would push federal debt to levels not seen since WWII. With support for many social programs, many have complained that much of it will do nothing to stimulate the economy with too much wasteful spending and not enough for tax cuts. In an op ed piece the WSJ calls it a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.
For all the talk of alternative energy and the importance of reducing our need for foreign oil by the Obama administration, the Christian Science monitor points out that just $24 billion can be directly attributed to green investments – $16 billion in tax breaks and $8 billion in loans. However, including renovations of federal buildings and public housing pushes that number higher and some see this as just a down payment with a separate energy bill to be announced later.
Some highlights of the package according to USA Today and WSJ:
Continue reading Details of Economic Stimulus Package: Too Much Pork, Too Little Stimulus
If you’ve been following the financial markets this year with any degree of interest, you’ve probably heard of Peter Schiff. He’s been a media favorite over the past year for calling the US financial collapse and has been everywhere from CNBC to Glenn Beck to CNN to Fox to Bloomberg. I even spotted him in Newsweek a couple weeks ago being credited with calling the collapse.. In an era of rampant corruption, fraud, inept CEO’s and fund managers, Mr Schiff has been made out to be somewhat of a hero in all this. Let’s give credit where credit is due. Peter Schiff has been sounding the alarm for quite awhile and while doing so was often ridiculed by the talking heads on CNBC a year ago. Much of what he’s been saying has come to pass… at least in the US financial markets.
Continue reading Peter Schiff’s Euro Pacific Capital Down 40 – 70% in 2008?
The Nasdaq OMX has put together an equal weighted index (called the Nasdaq Government Relief Index) of 24 companies that have received over 1 billion in government relief in the form of TARP or other programs. Any index without volume numbers isn’t of much use to me from a trading perspective, but nonetheless it might be of interest to see how these companies perform collectively over the next couple years. Perhaps an ETF is in the pipeline that will follow this index, but for now any of the big financial ETF’s such as the SPDR Financials ETF (XLF) will be a half way decent representation since most of the big banks have received government funds but this index would include companies like AIG and General Motors as well.
Continue reading The Nasdaq Government Relief Index Tracks Big TARP Companies
Mark Cuban has always said he hates to lose and that passion for "not losing" has him in hot water with the SEC. The WSJ is reporting that Cuban sold his 6% stake in Mamma.com (now Copernic ticker CNIC) just one day ahead of a tip in 2004 that the company was prepared to dilute the shares through a private investment. The stock dropped 10%, saving Cuban 750K in losses.
Cuban discussed his purchase of Mamma.com a bit in a blog post at Blog Maverick in March of 2004.
More details emerging…
The SEC alleges that in June of 2004 Mamma.com invited Cuban to participate in the stock offering after he agreed to keep the info confidential, but Cuban knew the offering would be dilutive so within hours instructed his broker to sell his entire position.
What a strange exchange between Dylan Ratigan and the always controversial and fiery Charlie Gasparino near the end of the day today. It appeared that Charlie hit the all you can drink liquid lunch buffet this afternoon before appearing on CNBC. Dylan was asking about a Merrill Lynch merger but he just mumbled to himself "What have I got. What have I got."
Dylan said "we only have limited time" and Charlie responded with "What I got is shoot for capitalism".
Dylan: "Shoot for capitalism? Huh?"
Charlie: "What I have I got"
Dylan: "Not really sure what just happened there"
In a New York Magazine interview earlier this year they asked "What’s your favorite drink?" Answer: Coffee & Martinis.
They then asked what is your favorite medication and his answer again was coffee and martinis. Did Charlie wash it down with a coffee martini today?
Here’s the full exchange.. good stuff. Reminds of a friend of mind of mine when he has too many.
Nancy Pelosi is quite a busy woman these days. Juggling the House Speaker role, a new book, chair of the Democratic Convention. Now she’s "trying to save the planet" by sparring with Republicans over offshore drilling issues. Are Pelosi action figures next?
While saving the planet, it appears Pelosi will also line her own pockets if in fact the Pickens Plan comes to fruition. Dontgomovement.com is reporting that Pelosi is a shareholder in Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE) and purchased between $50K – $100K in shares on May 25th that could well be worth 3x that now and millions more if she’s successful in helping get California’s Proposition 10 (known as the California Renewable Energy & Clean Alternative Fuel Act) passed. The bill would spend 5 billion in California bond money to promote natural gas as a cleaner alternative fuel and is backed by none other than Clean Energy Fuels and co Seattle Supersonics Thief himself, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon (a large producer of .. natural gas)
I’m certainly all for alternative fuels particularly wind and solar, but have had my own doubts about the natural gas portion of Pickens Plan. Add the Pelosi relationship and the water rights issues into the mix and what you have is one big plan.. the Pickens & Pelosi Profits Plan.
After the bell today, Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE) reported EPS and revenue a bit better than expectations, but still reported a sizable loss of .12/share excluding special items. The stock is up about 2% after hours.