Surprise...the game is rigged

[Captain Ginyu]

And retribution will come!

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Just out of curiosity, do you believe Corzine should be walking the streets?

If Ken Lewis was a career Democrat would you feel any differently? I think justice should be applied regardless of past political careers. I'd be interested to see whether W's administration nixed whatever law(s) Corzine may have broken.

In that case I'd say make an example out of Corzine for being a fraud, crook, inept manager, whatever the courts determine. Then apply it to free marketeers, regardless of their political stature.

 

[SpasticGramps]

I'd be interested to see whether W's administration nixed whatever law(s) Corzine may have broken.

Maybe, or more than likely it was Clinton nixing laws after he abolished Glass Stegall.

Whatever the case. They are all the same to me and belong behind bars.

EDIT: Actually the law he broke was the golden rule that's been around forever. He commingled client funds and bet with them. As MF Global's cash flow dried up he then stole those funds to prop up the bank for a couple more days before it disintegrated. It's just basic theft. No President's nixing law or deregulation or whatever. We have laws, but they are never enforced.

These were farmers and commodity traders who parked their money with the market maker (MF). The damage done by this is so enormous it can't be quantified and the way it's been handled (ie no one arrested or anything) dissolves the public's trust in the rigged market that much more.

I'm honestly at the point where I could care less. These fuckers with their corrupt system are going to rob us all anyway so may as well let them do it and then let them all walk the streets. It can only serve to hasten the collapse of confidence in the system and in the end their hubris will prove to be terminal. If the courts will not serve justice then history shows the people eventually will.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Clinton signed the bill that says private banks may become investment banks and insurance brokers. He didn't continue to deregulate (nor defund enforcement divisions of) remaining regulatory structures.

Provided Corzine violated existing law, I'd make an example of him if the opposition wouldn't make it token. If it's anything like revenues, conservatives wouldn't trade one crook for 10 Corzines.

 

[SpasticGramps]

Clinton signed the bill that says private banks may become investment banks and insurance brokers. He didn't continue to deregulate (nor defund enforcement divisions of) remaining regulatory structures.

I know you like to believe that because he was a blue team progressive that he was somehow for the people or regulation or whatever, but that's just simply not the case. Aside from destroying Glass Stegall he signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which deregulated derivatives. He also blocked the attempt by the CTFC to regulate the OTC market. He was a wall street crony capitalist puppet no different from all the rest of them.

Wiki:

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA) is United States federal legislation that officially ensured the deregulation of financial products known as over-the-counter derivatives. It was signed into law on December 21, 2000 by President Bill Clinton. It clarified the law so that most over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives transactions between “sophisticated parties” would not be regulated as “futures” under the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936 (CEA) or as “securities” under the federal securities laws. Instead, the major dealers of those products (banks and securities firms) would continue to have their dealings in OTC derivatives supervised by their federal regulators under general “safety and soundness” standards. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) desire to have “Functional regulation” of the market was also rejected. Instead, the CFTC would continue to do “entity-based supervision of OTC derivatives dealers.” [1] These derivatives, especially the credit default swap, would be at the heart of the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent Great Recession.

 

[dagnabit]

Not to mention the '90s era changes to the community reinvestment act.
Changes that benefited cronies and led to our current fuckery.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

I know you like to believe that because he was a blue team progressive that he was somehow for the people or regulation or whatever, but that's just simply not the case. Aside from destroying Glass Stegall he signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which deregulated derivatives. He also blocked the attempt by the CTFC to regulate the OTC market. He was a wall street crony capitalist puppet no different from all the rest of them.

Wiki:

I'm going on the actions that took place. I don't condone the act and the crony capitalist puppet may have telepathically influenced W's regulatory decisions. sarcasm off

We can credit what was done with who did it. I like Wiki, it's full of useful information. But the deregulation of derivatives (which were actually never regulated outside the old-school staple) didn't dissolve, defund and disband existing regulatory structures beyond private banks being able to become investment banks and insurance brokers.

I could mention that whatever happens to Corzine should apply across the board but that might be redundant.

 

[HempKat]

Well the news this week reinforced my feeling of happiness that I can't afford to mess with the stock market. Basically we saw the biggest gains of the year (according to the news) based on nothing but the belief that MAYBE, there MIGHT be a solution on the horizon for the troubles in Europe. Today however I see that while the market overall had positive gains trading was cautious because of fears that Spain will ask for help over the weekend. So what happened to all the optimism over the mights and maybes?

I don't understand how anyone can feel comfortable with a market the rises and falls on such whims. I guess in the end it all boils down to the fact that nothing else really offers any kind of real gains to be made and so as volatile as it is the stock market is still the best bet for any significant gains. Still it also means that it's also the best bet for significant losses. Seems to me that the smartest move would be to just not play the market at all.

 

[Stoner4Life]

and Farcebook closed @ $19.87 today which was the first day the lockup on initial investors shares expired, investors of course bailed out hard.......

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/face...nt-offer-price/story?id=17018516#.UC17ZKOnfYE



The beaten-down shares of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) slid over six percent, closing at $19.87 on Thursday, the first day the social network's "lockup" expired for early investors, allowing them to sell their stakes.

Expectations were sky-high that early investors and employees would sell their shares and become millionaires or billionaires. But now that the stock has fallen almost 50 percent below its offer price, disappointed shareholders have been cashing out.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed over 1 percent to 3,062.39 while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.65 percent to 13,250.11

Facebook's stock has been in a near-free fall since employees announced they were leaving the company and institutional funds started selling. Times were rough from the beginning for Facebook since its initial public offering on May 18 when technical glitches on the Nasdaq exchange caused delays in confirming trades. Nasdaq announced in June a $40 million fund to compensate investors "disadvantaged" by the technical problems.


Facebook's IPO was priced at $38 and stock opened in May at $42.05. It closed that day at $38.23 but has since been down 36 days more than it's been up.

 

[lost in a sea]

this was all done on purpose of course.. facebook could have been the biggest of its kind ever,,, but it wasnt in the script..

as if these sorts of people get this sort of stuff wrong when they were in such a strong position, before they floated the company,, with 40% CIA money and all the people that easily would have seen this coming..

i think its another mass message that confidence in capitalism is waning in the west..

shit like that will be openly in house next time, instead of poorly hidden, as it swings that way.. but maybe its not dead in the water just yet..

 

[Killy]

FB is temporary program, it was designed and marketed to collect personal data from users. When this data was processed and groups of interest were made, each with its own model to manipulate, it started to use users in other predetermined aspects of internet/life.

 

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

The Collapse of The American Dream Explained in Animation

[YOUTUBEIF]mII9NZ8MMVM[/YOUTUBEIF]

 

[SpasticGramps]

Jon Corzine Will Not Only Not Face Prosectuion, But May Be Launching A Hedge Fund Imminently

In what should be the biggst non-news of the day, the NYT is reporting that not only will Jon Corzine not face any criminal prosecution for vaporizing hundreds of millions in client money (which subsequently condensed in the JPM middle office), but will in fact be launching ... wait for it... a hedge fund. "A criminal investigation into the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global and the disappearance of about $1 billion in customer money is now heading into its final stage without charges expected against any top executives.

After 10 months of stitching together evidence on the firm’s demise, criminal investigators are concluding that chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear, according to people involved in the case." And algos... And glitches... And faulty software installs... And some junior person who has long since left the company... and, and, and, lots and lots of passive voice... Because in the Banana republic of the crave, no bundles can ever go to jail, no matter how heinous the crime, which is not to say other places are better: in Thailand you shoot your secretary in the stomach during dinner with an Uzi and you don't even pay a $600 fine. But at least it puts things in perspective.

So what is next in store for this former man of power? "Mr. Corzine, in a bid to rebuild his image and engage his passion for trading, is weighing whether to start a hedge fund, according to people with knowledge of his plans. He is currently trading with his family’s wealth. If he is successful as a hedge fund manager, it would be the latest career comeback for a man who was ousted from both the top seat at Goldman Sachs and the New Jersey governor’s mansion." So will Jon will be buying Italian bonds? We don't know. Ask him yourself.

Of course, the question remains: instead of launching Corzined LP with all those superfluous costs to cover such unnecessary items as such as legal and compliance, just fire away with a 100x levered ETF buying only Italian bonds with a ticker VPRZ.

So anyone want to invest in Corzine's new fund?

 

[D. B. Doober]

So what is Facebook stock worth now?

A similar issue raised earlier in the thread about only very rich people being able to buy the Facebook IPO stock - same thing happened with Google's IPO - they fucked the working man so hard the only way to get any of the stock was to go through fucking Credit Suise

 

[SpasticGramps]

Herein lies the problem with a rigged game. Eventually enough formerly duped participants wake up to the fact that it's rigged and lose confidence, withdrawing from the game. When this number of people accelerates past critical mass the game is over. The game implodes and the emperor wears no clothes.

This is what a dying market looks like. Once confidence is lost on a massive scale it is very difficult to restore.

Retail Exodus From Stocks Continues: Another $3.6 Billion Pulled Out Last week

There was a time when retail stock outflows were considered a bullish catalyst: after all, retail was always considered the dumb money (not "two and twenty" hedge funds which continue to underperform the stock market, and have done so for the past five years), and would pull money at the bottom and add money at the top.

This is no longer the case for the simple reason that while persistent outflows from domestic equity funds continue (and as the recent shuttering of levered ETFs by Direxion shows the infatuation with synthetic mutual fund replacements is now over), for the inverse to be true there have to be inflows, which are now non-existent. In the past two years, or 106 weeks of market data, there here been 17 weeks of inflows, or 16% of the total, amounting to $31 billion.

The remainder? Outflows for a total of $300 billion. In the 32 weeks of YTD 2012 money flows, there have been 5 weeks of inflows for a total of $3.6 billion (which was also equal to the outflow in the last week alone) none of which coincided with market tops, and in fact the biggest outflows occurred just as the market hit interim highs.

The most recent inflow, as tiny as it may have been, curious occurred during the May lows, proving retail is if anything, the smart money now. In other words, those looking for hints about the market based on retail flows are advised to look elsewhere. What this data does show is that no matter what happens in the stock market, the outflows will persist and are unlikely to reverse direction. Because if the S&P at fresh 2012 (and multi-year) highs is unable to draw retail out of hibernation, nothing will.

Where is the money flowing? Why into fixed income of course, proving that as far as the now extinct investor class is concerned, return of capital is the only thing that matters, while HFTs and prop trading desks can fight over all the return on capital scraps provided courtesy of the Chairman. Curious where the volume has gone? Now you know.

 

[Stoner4Life]

Mark Zuckerberg can't sell any of his shares until Nov this yr.......

 

[SpasticGramps]

FB is trading at 19.88. 46% off it's huge pop (ha).

Once again....... the house always wins. You can dabble in the game but eventually the house is going to rip your face off and get away with it.

 

[FlowerFarmer]

Facebook's peak is long gone..
Which is exactly why they made the decision to go public when they did. Cash out now while the gettin' was good and membership/growth is in decline...
Facebook will fall to the wayside before too long.. all it takes is Apple, Google or someone to drop a new social networking app to make facebook a lame thing of the past.

Why people invest in these businesses that have no real plan to make money/growth is beyond me? Zynga (farmville) IPO anyone?

 

[Plant Early]

 

[HempKat]

View Image

Ah they finally released the Berneke version of monopoly I see?