NYTimes Wall Street Reg Coverage: Preemptive Preemptiveness Preemptively

Speaking of being preemptive, how about the relentless attack by the NYTimes on the pending new "regulations" proposal for Wall Street and the banking industry from Paulson and the administration.

Don't get me wrong now, I'm all for bashing these proposal and all of the convoluted ways it will redistribute wealth from taxpayers to the government and its cronies on Wall Street (to be sure of course, any of these new regulation proposals from either fraternity party in Washington will will redistribute wealth from taxpayers to the government and its cronies on Wall Street just as the government always does "in the name of protecting you"), but the relentless front page attack on the NYTimes this weekend struck me for its very preemptiveness (ooh, nice word).

News Analysis

 

In Treasury Plan, a Reluctant Eye Over Wall Street

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and FLOYD NORRIS

 

The Bush administration is proposing the broadest overhaul of Wall Street regulation since the Great Depression. But the plan, to be unveiled on Monday, has its genesis in a yearlong effort to limit Washington’s role in the market.

Editorial

Toward New Rules for Wall Streete

...But early word from the Bush administration, which still has nine months to influence the debate and even start the nation down one path or another, is not altogether encouraging. On Monday, the administration is releasing a blueprint for regulatory reform, much of which was developed before the Bear mess, though it may still be important for further discussion...

Treasury’s Plan Would Give Fed Wide New Power

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: March 29, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation’s hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades.

Democratic lawmakers are all but certain to say the proposal does not go far enough in restricting the kinds of practices that caused the financial crisis.

We'll hit on this subject and more when we discuss the proposals from Paulson and Washington on tonight's Happy Hour with Barron's Bob O'Brien.

PS. Ever notice how funny a word preemptive is if you sound it out phonetically? Pree-mptive, as in rhymes with tree-empty?

Homogenizing Celebrities: We Put Our Faith in Blast Hardcheese

Saw a great picture of Lindsay Lohan on the cover of my buddy Chris' People magazine tonight at dinner (Paul and I love to give him a hard time about reading this stuff...):

Upon further inspection, of course, I noticed it was actually one Mariah Carey on the cover there, as maybe Lindsay hit cover fatigue after the recent manipulated media frenzy. At any rate, I'm not saying either one's had any work done because I have no idea and don't really care (okay, I suppose, for the sake of keeping it real, that I'd guess that Mariah's had some work done, but why go there?)... but the fact that both Paul and I mistook Mariah for Lindsay (or, technically, did we mistake Lindsay for Mariah?) underscores the larger issue that that these issues are full of people whose looks, already very similar, homogenize over time.

How crazy is it, when you step back and look at it from say an alien's perspective, that our culture literally chooses to cut away at their skin, bone and muscle to look ever more like others who choose to cut away at their skin, bone and muscle.

It really does feel sometimes that we are living in a science fiction movie. And to get existential about being existential here, are the paparazzi and the media machine they feed the equivalents of Joel Robinson and the bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000?

Then again, we've done it to puppies and newborn boys for centuries already, no?

PS. Does it make me a hypocrite that I plan to someday have my bottom lip fixed since I bite into it at times since it bulges out a bit after having had six stitches in it from a sucker punch back I took from a giant ex-team-mate on the basketball court? Not cosmetic, but functional?...

Happy Hour 3.28.2008

On a Freaky-Fantastic Friday that has been fortuituously fortold by a feroicious fluffy feline here at fox.

We have the following guests booked for this evening:

- Ted Weisberg, Seaport Securites 

- Zane Tankel, Apple-Metro C.E.O.

- Saul Simon, Lincoln Financial Certified Financial Planner

- Dr. Marc Lamont Hill

- Shannon Liss-Riordan , for Kid in Massachusetts

- Lis Wiehl

- Lizzy Goodman, Blender Magazine

- Phillippa Raschker, Senior Athlete

Join Cody and Rebecca Gomez for a live Happy Hour at the Bull and Bear at 5:00–or at 5:00 and 11:00pm on FB

Click HERE to find out where you can See Happy Hour where you live.

The Options Option Is Getting Expensive

Given how wildly volatile the markets have been of late, I was remembering back to what it was like in late 2006 when the VIX (a measurement of volatility in the markets) was bottoming out around 10. There was a span of less than 1% move days in the S&P 500 that David Merkel and I kept tabs on. My last post on that streak cited 92 days of the S&P 500 barely moving intraday in a row.

The markets have been putting on 2%, even 3% moves back and forth, higher and lower all the time these days. The traders who used to complain about how hard it was to make any money in the non-action, should be happy as pigs in mud right now. (Fact is, of course, most aren't, as the market always fools as many of us as it can as often as it can and most of the traders I know, as usual, are in pain). The Vix now spends its time in the mid 20s.

Since back in May of 2006, I've been a huge proponent of buying calls and puts, a buyer of volatility as it were. But as the volatility here hits extremes relative to years past, the premiums on options are starting to get awfully pricey. Better trading pitches are coming to swing at. But easy on the options for now.

Introducing the New Happy Hour Segment: Slow Money

The financial discussion I have most often with people when they actually open up and talk about their lives is about how they’ve lost big money over the years in one sort of trading scheme or tip sheet or newsletter or TV show or another as they try to make the quick buck.

There ain’t no such thing as a quick buck. You gotta be patient and conservative…and if you are and you work hard and save along the way, you’re gonna do great financially relative to what you make. It’s all about the Slow Money.

Bureau of Econ Analysis: You Get What You Pay For

The multi-talented Mark Lieberman, senior economist at Fox Biz, just sent out this to all of us at the network:

GDP grew at a 0.6% quarterly rate anualized in 4Q '07, according to today's "final" report, the same growth rate as reported in the advance and preliminary estimates. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, this is the first time all three GDP reports have been the same since BEA began producing three estimates of each quarterly result in 1977.

So for the first time EVER in the 30 year history of the government keeping track of this stuff, they actually got it right when they initially and secondarily reported this stuff?    And people actually wonder why I think these government reports are such a waste of time and energy for investors and traders....not to mention the waste of money for taxpayers who foot the bill for the billions that it takes for these bureaucrats and their cronies to put together this worthless data.

It's why I always tell people to get their economic data from private research groups -- sorta like why most people prefer a private bathroom to a public one...you get what you pay for, no?   And to get trends and information about the economy, you gotta listen to company conference calls and read everything you can get your hands on...don't get me wrong, those executives on the conference calls lie all the time too, but this is one case where I'm willing to take the lesser of two evils (unlike when it comes to voting where I don't get the idea of condoning, much less trying to put in power any form of evil, even a lesser of two, btw).

Speaking of which, the Oracle call last night wasn't half bad, despite the trashing of the stock today.  Not a favorite name of mine, but not a bad play on tech into the summer either.  I'd prefer Adobe here though.

Moto Mojo Gonna Lead to Momo, or, Buy MOT Below $10

Icahn's down pretty huge on this Motorola trade as far as I can tell, and he's gonna need it back to $15 or so to make any money on it, again as far as I can tell from having been following his activism in this name over the last few years.  But he's finally getting a large part of what he's been looking for, as Moto finally announces that it's going to be spinning off its handset division from the rest of the company.

The handset division, in case you haven't been around anybody in the developed world in the last few years, peaked at about the same time the Razr was featured on HBO's Entourage in 2004 or so...it's been all down hill from there as Motorola and its supposed and now-departed savior Ed Zander bet the next half-decade on the Razr form factor somehow convinced that tapping on a 12-button phone platform that'd been around since the punch phone replaced the dial phone a quarter-century ago was a good idea as convergence made smartphones king.  In other words, the Razr was great in 2004, but it sucks in 2008 but Moto's idiots were still hoping it'd catch back on.

The good news is that Moto's finally going in all kinds of new directions, and they're going to be rolling out some really great phones this year and next.  On top of that, the spin off will probably squeeze out some market value further.  And the rest of the company's undervalued so long as the economy stays steady as she still is.

Will talk about this more on Happy Hour tonight, but the upshot is that Moto's a darn good looking investment (and even several-month-long trade) here below $10, just about 10% above its recent lows and still 50% from its highs last year.

Flip It Life Lesson: I’ve Got Time

One of my favorite Thoreau quotes is "As if you can kill time without injuring eternity". I quote it often, and in my most recent relationship, I had quoted it in a discussion about why nothing good can come when you're out after about 1am or so. I'd used the Thoreau's wise words to underscore a bigger point as I often think of it in my own head, and that is that you've got to keep hard at it because your career and goals will pass you by unless you're focused and pushing for them.

She'd been worried that she was nearing 30 and wasn't breaking out yet. I sure get that logic and often have felt like I need to hurry up and accomplish. I turned 24 soon after I got to NYC with a bachelor's degree...that put me two years behind where I should be in my own head...and I and set goals in my own head like:

Upon coming back from Lithuania with a completed novel, I'd set my mind that "I want this novel and my next published before 1999" (never happened)... After 9/11, I'd decided "I want to run a fund before 2002 is over" (launched it in October 2002)... When I saw my first boss on Wall Street on CNBC soon after moving here, I'd thought "I want to be on CNBC by 30" (missed it by just a few weeks)... To this day, I think "I want ten million bucks by 40..."

Logic can be "flipped" of course, and you gotta wonder what the hell we all are in such a rush for when you read an article like this:

Artist Paints From Memory, and at 101, It’s Long

Adele Lerner has been painting New York City for about 40 years — not bad for someone who first picked up a brush at age 60.

“Like they say: better late than never,” she said. “What can I tell you? I’m a late bloomer, but I’ve been looking at the city my whole life.”

She says she is still maturing as a painter but benefits from having been a New Yorker for more than a century. For her 60th birthday, her husband, Julius Lerner, bought her a paint-by-numbers set, and encouraged her to keep improving and buying blank canvases. The gift wound up sustaining her through the loneliness after his death 30 years ago.

And this woman and how she's living/lived her life gives an even deeper perspective here:

Mrs. Lerner earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Lehman College at age 83. And several years back, she began borrowing children’s books written in Hebrew from a library and studied to make her bat mitzvah.

This is what Flipping It is all about. I'll leave it in the wise words and smart melodies of the artist, Paul Simon:

Slow down, you move too fast
You've got to make the morning last
Just kickin' down the cobble stones
Looking for fun and feelin' groovy!
(La,la,la,la,la,la, feelin' groovy)

Hello, lamp post, whatcha knowing?
I've come to watch your flowers growing
Ain't ya got no rhymes for me?
Doot-in' doo-doo, feelin' groovy!
(La,la,la,la,la,la, feelin' groovy)

Got no deeds to do, no promises to keep
I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me
Life, I love you, all is groovy!

Endless Google Domination

I must have written hundreds of articles and blog posts for RealMoney.com, on these pages, for The Financial Times and elsewhere for the last few years about how Google's dominance will grow for a long time.

Take a look at the Tech page on NYTimes.com today.   It's really all about Google, isn't it?  Fastest growing company in the history of capitalism.  Still a screaming buy below $500 even if I'm not jumping up and own about it like I was when Whoopi was on Happy Hour and said she was bummed about owning it at $415...

Happy Hour 3.24.08

Manic Monday (yes we have a case of them).....We have the following guests booked for this evening:

-Steve Grasso, Stuart Frankel Managing Director
-Rich Edson, Fox Business
-Shibani Joshi, Fox Business
-Christian Weller, Center For American Progress(Via Dc Remote)
-Andrew Napolitano, Fox News
-Ken Mansfield, fmr Beatle Manager, former Exec. for Big Apple Records

Join Cody and Rebecca Gomez for a live Happy Hour at the Bull and Bear at 5:00–or at 5:00 and 11:00pm on FB

Click HERE to find out where you can See Happy Hour where you live.