Monday, May 31, 2010

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Which one isn't the real estate agent?



An IT consultant was mis-identified as a real estate agent in Australia, the center of the latest real estate bubble.

Can anyone spot the real estate imposter?

Nation of Islam has issues next to Obama barbeque

Just a few blocks from Obama’s home in the Kenwood/Hyde Park neighborhood, Obama’s friend Marty Nesbitt lives across the street from the ornate yellow-gold home where Farrakhan lives.

For the past two years, when Obama has brought his family over to Nesbitt’s home, the press pool bus parks near Farrakhan’s house. This usually does not cause a problem, but Saturday night — as most of the city was indoors watching the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup finals — a bit of tension emerged on Woodlawn Avenue.

A pool report noted that as a dozen reporters and photographers following Obama stood on the sidewalk in front of Farrakhan’s home, someone’s foot touched the city-owned curbside grass.
Immediately, a polite man in jeans and T-Shirt emerged to ask the press to stay off the grass, the report stated. Soon he was pacing and talking on a cell phone. He went inside the mansion’s black wrought iron fence, crossed the well-landscaped yard, lifted a water bucket behind rose bushes and retrieved a walkie-talkie. He was heard to refer to “the CIA.”

[The Secret Service is a separate agency from the CIA]

Soon he approached the secret service agent minding the press and asked him to move the van and its occupants.

“How is this a security breach?” the agent asked. He asked if the house was government property. Neighbors all over Hyde Park and Kenwood have learned to deal with streets being blocked off and having to show ID to approach their own homes since Obama ascended to the presidency.

The man said something else and at that point the agent stuck out his hand to shake hands and introduced himself as a Secret Service agent. He added, “Sir, I can assure you that we will do nothing to interfere with whatever is going on in there.”

The man paced and talked on his cell phone, walkie-talkie in hand. Three more men in T-Shirts reading “Wide or Die!’’ joined the man from the Nation of Islam. A reporter asked one of the men if this was Farrakhan’s house. The man just stared back. Asked again, he said, “I don't have no comment.”

Eventually a dozen “Fruit of Islam” agents arrived. As each casually dressed man arrived, he exchanged elaborate handshake/hug/double air-kisses with others. Two walked by a reporter, chanting “Islam.”

The men filmed and photographed the reporters, the van and its license plates with their cell phones.

One came and stood close to reporters and the secret service agent. The secret service agent asked if he could help. The man did not answer. The agent asked again. The man said, “No.” The agent said, “Secret Service — please move away from this group of people.”

The man did.

The agent asked the reporters to go back into the press bus, which they did.

Before they did, some asked the Nation of Islam crowd if they could use the rest room in Farrakahn’s home.

No offer was made.

Operation Top Kill flops



Top Kill Ongoing_ Liabilities to Rise -

Rihanna's trip to Jerusalem

Looks like it wasn't a light day at the Red Sea Hotel!

All of a sudden, the exhibitionist decided to grab a towel!

Friday, May 28, 2010

Ozzy is alive at Madame Tussauds

He posed as a wax dummie and then came to life!

Cenus workers can enter any room in your house

 Even if its a manger.

What many Americans don’t realize, is that census workers — from the head of the Bureau and the Secretary of Commerce (its parent agency) down to the lowliest and newest Census employee — are empowered under federal law to actually demand access to any apartment or any other type of home or room that is rented out, in order to count persons in the abode and for “the collection of statistics.” If the landlord of such apartment or other leased premises refuses to grant the government worker access to your living quarters, whether you are present or not, the landlord can be fined $500.00.

That’s right — not only can citizens be fined if they fail to answer the increasingly intrusive questions asked of them by the federal government under the guise of simply counting the number of people in the country; but a landlord must give them access to your apartment whether you’re there or not, in order to gather whatever “statistics” the law permits.

Maybe that's how Mr. Starr was found!

A New York financial adviser to celebrities was arrested and charged with running a $30 million fraud scheme that allegedly involved using clients' money to buy himself a lavish Manhattan apartment and enrich friends, including a former New York City politician.


Mr. Starr, 66, was found hiding in a closet by federal agents at his Upper East Side apartment on Thursday morning, prosecutors said.

BP still looking for the crack

The junk shot is now the money shot!

Thursday, May 27, 2010

666,666.666 barrels of oil leaked!!


Cramer gives the all clear to buy

Because he doesn't buy the rally!! He's had a couple articles on his site that all start like this:

Can't Trust This Move -- Even Though It's UpDown 2, up 2. Can't catch the up 2, happens at the opening. Can't sell the down 2, it happened at the opening. Can buy the down 2, but might be down 3. Blah blah blah. This market is unstable to the upside today. Unstable and wobbly and dangerous. It's just as wobbly and unstable and dangerous to the downside. You can't have a market that opens up limit or down limit as if it is lumber and keep players in -- a la what Doug Kass says -- with this kind of activity. You can't have a market that goes up 200 points because of a rumor about China dumping European bonds gets disproved. Or maybe wasn't made at all. You can't have it and think that it is a "good" one that you want to buy into....

Blah blah blah......

Cramer, the chief stock pimp of CNBC is bearish and doesn't trust this market.

What more do you need to buy???

THE MARKET CORRECTION IS OVER!!!

Google won't turn over WiFi data

Google said that it had "inadvertently" collected the WiFi data, but now it won't turn over the inadvertent data that they collected.

As though Google ever does any thing inadvertently!

BERLIN — Google has balked at requests from regulators to surrender Internet data and e-mails it collected from unsecured home wireless networks, saying it needed time to resolve legal issues.

In Germany, Google said it was not able to comply with the Hamburg data protection supervisor’s Thursday deadline to hand over data the company had collected — inadvertently, it says — while roving cars were compiling its Street View photo map archive.

Georgia Teacher of the Year fails high school student for not giving her a baby

Keenon Aampay Hall, 29, left a promising career as an English teacher at the Gwinnett County school amid allegations that she seduced a senior who came to her for homework help. An investigative file on the case compiled by the school system’s human resources division contains the student’s accounts of sexual trysts at a hotel, a friend’s home and in the teacher’s classroom during school hours. The report also says that pornography was found on Hall’s Gwinnett County schools laptop.

The student, a player on Shiloh’s football team who is to graduate Friday, claimed that Hall gave him gifts and pressured him to commit to their six-month relationship by giving her a baby, according to the file. When he declined, the student’s family said, Hall gave him a failing grade, prompting him to report the relationship to school officials.

According to the file, the student said that the teacher once paid for a cab to pick him up and take him to a hotel.

“We entered the room ... then she gave me some vodka and ask me do I enjoy drinking?” he wrote. “I told her lies about being a good drinker, but honeslty after one drink I was done. She began feeling my man parts and we had sex.”

The teen also told administrators that Hall gave him cash, a cell phone and had sex with him in a classroom, an encounter the teacher denies. The student said the teacher eventually turned on him because he didn’t want to get too serious. “What made Kennon Hall mad ... is the fact that I would not give her a baby.”

Rep. Djou

Tongue firmly in cheek, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on Tuesday afternoon called on reporters to demand to see the birth certificate of new Rep. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii).

As Djou (pictured here) was being sworn into office, Frank walked the hallway of the Speaker's Lobby off the House floor calling on the media to "do your job" and review Djou's papers.

And Barney has the experience with the cheeks!

China still promises to be the market's pimp

We won't sellour euro-zone assets!!

We're still just digging in!

BAC and C: We made "errors" when we cooked our books

Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. incorrectly hid from investors billions of dollars of their debt, similar to what Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. did to obscure its level of risk, company documents show.

In recent filings with regulators, the two big banks disclosed that over the past three years, they at times erroneously classified some short-term repurchase agreements, or "repos," as sales when they should have been classified as borrowings. Though the classifications involved billions of dollars, they represented relatively small amounts for the banks.

A bankruptcy-court examiner said Lehman had been doing the same thing to make its balance sheet look better before it filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, using a strategy dubbed "Repo 105" that helped the Wall Street firm move $50 billion in assets off its balance sheet.

Just an innocent mistake--and BAC number is $70, $60 or $50 billion the last three quarters.

But to banks, with Turbo Timmy as their best friend, that's just a rounding error!!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Einhorn slams Moody's



Just in case you don't want to play Bingo, Einhorn slammed Moody's tonight, and the stock sold off afterhours. ZH has that story.

Of course, this is the company that Warren Buffett, said at his shareholder meeting, that they had a fantastic business model.
You can get the Wall Street table of "Criminal Elements" here.

And you can read about Buffett; Moody's cheerleader, and stock seller, here.

Bingo!!!!!


Rules for Bullshit Bingo:
1. Before Barrack Obama's next televised speech, print your "Bullshit Bingo"
2. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
3. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout "BULLSHIT!"

Testimonials from past satisfied "Bullshit Bingo" players:

"I had been listening to the speech for only five minutes when I won." - Jack W., Boston

"My attention span during speeches has improved dramatically." - David D., Florida

"What a gas! Speeches will never be the same for me after my first win." - Bill R., New York City

The atmosphere was tense in the last speech as 14 of us waited for the fifth box." - Ben G., Denver

California's budget solution is bottletops!!

At the heart of the proposal is the idea of raiding the state's bottle deposits for the next 20 years and then getting an $8.7-billion loan from Wall Street. The programs currently funded by bottle deposits would be reimbursed by a new tax on oil production.

Gold on the charts

This number 0888 888 888 is not available!

The first owner Vladimir Grashnov – the former CEO of Bulgarian mobile phone company Mobitel which issued the number – died of cancer in 2001 aged just 48.

Despite a spotless business record there were persistent rumours that his cancer had been caused by a business rival using radioactive poisoning.

The number then passed to Bulgarian mafia boss, Konstantin Dimitrov, who was gunned down in 2003 by a lone assassin in the Netherlands during a trip to inspect his £500 million drug smuggling empire.

Dimitrov, who died aged 31, had the mobile with him when he was shot while eating out with a model.

Russian mafia bosses – jealous of his drug smuggling operation – were said to have been behind the killing.

The phone number then passed to Konstantin Dishliev, a crooked businessman, who was gunned down outside an Indian restaurant in Bulgaria's capital Sofia after taking over the jinxed line.

Dishliev, an estate agent, had secretly been running a massive cocaine trafficking operation before his assassination in 2005.

He died after £130 million of the drug was intercepted by police on its way into the country from Colombia.

Since then, the number is understood to have been dormant while police maintained an open file on Dishliev's killing and his smuggling ring.

Now phone bosses are said to have suspended the number for good. Callers now get a recorded message saying the phone is "outside network coverage."

Oh My!!! What happened to the European scare??

Keeping abreast of the news

Romanian tennis player Simona Halep, had breast reduction surgery, to help improve her game.


No word if she consulted with Serena!

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Pentagon brownie recipe is now 31 pages

It's now been updated from 26 pages.

Eggs? Section 3.2.6:

Whole eggs may be liquid or frozen and shall have been processed and labeled in accordance with the Regulations Governing the Inspection of Eggs and Egg Products (7 CFR Part 59).

Walnuts? Section 3.2.5.3

Nuts, walnuts, shelled. Shelled walnut pieces shall be of the small piece size classification, shall be of a light color, and shall be U.S. No. 1 of the U.S. Standards for Shelled English Walnuts. A minimum of 90 percent, by weight, of the pieces shall pass through a 4/16-inch diameter round hole screen and not more than 1 percent, by weight, shall pass through a 2/16-inch diameter round hole screen. the shelled walnuts shall be coated with an approved food grade antioxidant and shall be of the latest season's crop.
Here's the 26 page recipe.

In the good old days, it was just 22 pages!


Those brownies are one heckuva job!


Now we just have BP!

Heckuva job ............!

They could of just asked Tiger's mistress #14, for her brownie recipe instead!

MTA bus drivers get two months paid leave if they get spit on

A bizarre policy has allowed city bus drivers to land an average of two months paid time off -- with one staying at home for more than half a year -- every time a rider spits on them.

The outrageous arrangement comes courtesy of TWU Local 100's strong union contract and the willingness of MTA officials to categorize spitting incidents as "assaults" -- even though the state penal code doesn't.

Of the 153 bus drivers who took time off because of assaults last year, 51 -- one-third -- did so solely because a disgusting rider decided to spew his frustrations, MTA officials said at a committee hearing yesterday.

And they averaged a whopping 64 days of paid time off for each incident, the officials said.

Someone found Bernanke's reading material in the bathroom

Subprime? It's contained? Europe? It's contained also!

Let us revisit Geithner's comments just 10 days ago:

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner expressed confidence that Europe will resolve the debt crisis buffeting the region and said the U.S. economy is strong enough to withstand any fallout.

“Europe has the capacity to manage through this,” Geithner said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. “And I think they will.”

Geithner, 48, said he doesn’t think the European turmoil will hurt U.S. growth because “our economy is getting stronger. We’re seeing a lot of strength, improvement and confidence.”

He learned from Bernanke!

Overseas Madoff investors get 100 cents on the dollar back

MADRID — About 720,000 investors outside the United States who lost money to the convicted swindler Bernard L. Madoff have settled with their banks, receiving about $15.5 billion in all, according to law firms representing those victims of the fraud.

The settlements cover about 80 percent of the clients represented by the firms, said Javier Cremades, founder of Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, a Madrid law firm, who helped organize the global alliance of 60 firms a year ago.

The $15.5 billion figure represents, in theory, 100 percent of the amount clients had invested, Mr. Cremades said, but excludes in almost all cases the bogus paper gains that were listed on investor statements.

Looks like the oversea banks didn't want any discovery on their books!

Monday, May 24, 2010

Everything is now like cocaine

We hear that greed caused the meltdown, and that making money is as addictive and destructive as cocaine.

Here's that story:

An example cited in his book involves a successful hedge-fund manager responsible for a $300 million fund who is constantly looking for new investments. Gawande's discussion with the fund manager is about how to avoid making bad investment decisions. Turns out, in addition to being smart and having loads of financial information, it takes extreme discipline. That's because of something called "cocaine brain."

What?


Researchers have discovered that making money, such as is done by investors, stimulates the same part of the brain that using cocaine stimulates. The more you have, the more you want until it kills you, or you learn to control it. The hedge-fund manager points out that many big investors get into trouble because of "cocaine brain."


Now think about what happened on Wall Street. People with huge amounts of money couldn't stop trying to get more. Despite being smart, they lost their ability to make sound judgments, just like cocaine users. In Gawande's example, the investor has figured out a way to avoid the "cocaine brain" syndrome by religiously sticking to an investment decision checklist he has developed.

On fact, this story was picked up by MSM:



So now add videogames to your cocaine checklist!

But somehow, that doesn't have the same story line unless it's coke and Wall Street!

Why did Obama's bank, Shorebank get bailed out?








iPads don't work in the hot sun


Today we've seen two people report that their iPads have displayed the "iPad needs to cool down before you can use it" message.

The iPad is officially out in the UK next Friday. Jon Silk and James Whatley got their iPads from the US and decided it would be a good idea to use them out in the sun - the iPads disagreed.

BP's Merger

Hah!!!

BANZAI7 NEWS--In a surprise development, BP announced a proposal to merge with Bubba Gump's Shrimp Restaurants. The newly combined entity will be named Bubba Pump's. BP sees the merger as a synergistic solution to its runnaway Gulf oil leak.

Goldman is back shorting positions concentrated with the hedge fund crowd

But they have a different name for it. High beta underperforms during market sell-offs!


GS main 0524

Venus: It's all an illusion!!

Look at what Venus wore at the French Open. She said her flesh colored panties were all an illusion!

You make that call!

It looks as effective as a Rachel Uchitel bikini! (And now that Tiger has split from his wife, how long before he has a relapse with her?)


But speaking of golf,  finally, we have a sport picture that will cause as much of a buzz as when golfer Christie Kerr, kissed her trophy, in 2005.

She better have Goldman help her with their Financial Fornication cover!

But this is a stock market blog, so I have to give the bears a picture also!

Is it just an illusion?

You make that call!

Because for once, they kicked a leg off of the bulls!

But we'll see how they are standing later!