Tuesday, March 29, 2011

GE had a negative tax rate for 2010 and 2008

From page 34, of their 2010 10K.

"Comparing a tax benefit to pre-tax income resulted in a negative tax rate in 2010 and 2008."

In other words, GE was paid by the IRS to make billions.

You'd think that for all of GE's stonewalling on how much they paid in taxes for 2010, that they would at least clarify that issue before someone reads their 10k.

It's not like anyone is asking them for their birth certificate!

Home price declines

Goldman's Morning


Americas-Morning-Summary -

Trump shows his birth certificate

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Water radiation level in Fukushima 10 million times normal

TOKYO – Radioactivity in contaminated water in one reactor unit at a damaged Japanese nuclear power plant tested 10 million times higher than normal, forcing the evacuation of workers and again delaying efforts to bring the complex under control, the plant's operator said Sunday.


The air in Unit 2, meanwhile, measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour — four times the limit of 250 millisieverts deemed safe by the government, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita told reporters.


WHOOPS


That story changed......


"The number is not credible," said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita. "We are very sorry."


It's only 100,000 times what it should be!


WSJ
Concern reached a new pitch Sunday morning, when the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric PowerCo., or Tepco, evacuated staff from one reactor after reporting that the level of radioactivity in a pool that had accumulated inside one of the buildings reached 10 million times the normal level found in the reactor core. The company later said the measurement was inaccurate and revised it down to 100,000 times the normal level—still a huge jump.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Charlie Sheen's new cooking show






Is she delivering the organic food?

360 degree panoramic view of Wisconsin Capitol protests

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117361823.html

Click on the HD version at the link above to really see what is going on.

And the new Secretary of Agriculture--Ben Brancel--whose farm I worked on during college--called the protest a "holocaust."


A senior Wisconsin agriculture official described the weeks of pro-union protests at the state Capitol as a "holocaust" during a speech on Wednesday, before apologizing hours later.
Ben Brancel, the new secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, made his remarks during a speech to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation hours before Republican legislators passed a contentious bill stripping public workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights.
"They (lawmakers) came to town with a lot of ideas and a lot of concepts they could really work on and then they got stuck in the middle of a holocaust and a horror story that was going on in town," Brancel told the crowd. WKOW-TV first reported about the comments.

He was a douchebag back then, and still is now!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Goldman: LBOs are coming in retail


GS 3 (4) -

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Gupta from Goldman charged for insider trading

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Tuesday that it has charged former Goldman Sachs Group director Rajat Gupta for allegedly passing inside information to hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam.

Gupta, who served on the board at Goldman and Procter & Gamble and was a friend of Rajaratnam, tipped the Galleon Management founder and hedge fund manager with inside information about the quarterly earnings at both companies as well as an impending $5 billion investment by Berkshire Hathaway in Goldman, the SEC said.


I'll take another "As Advertised" for the post below!


Friday, October 30, 2009


Why hasn't the SEC looked at Goldman's tips to Raj at Galleon?

In 2001 JP Morgan said this about Galleon: "we should reduce our allocation" to Galleon and the "more negative news about Raj and his cohorts."

The JP Morgan note also said  "alleges that the principals of Galleon “liked to operate in the ‘grey areas’” of the markets. “If these allegations are true, there are some serious issues about business conduct,” the memo said."

So who would trade with Raj and Galleon? JPMorgan thought they were a fraud in 2001. None other than Goldman Sachs--who are always able to spot a fraud, unless they are participating in it!

Or if they were getting paid. And Galleon paid out $250 million for information!
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Although bank policies often prohibit employees from divulging specific information about orders, executives who dealt with Galleon said it regularly received “colour” on market developments, frequently delivered in Wall Street slang. One example would be traders discussing a “page one seller” of shares – a reference to the first page of the Bloomberg list of top holders of listed companies.

One executive who dealt with Galleon said: “They wanted anything the public did not have. They got various pieces and put them together and that was their edge.” A former Goldman executive who provided services to funds including Galleon said: “They were tough and aggressive. They cared about short-term returns and cared a lot about the impact of their trading and the costs. They expected a lot of market information.”
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But Goldman would never suspect anything wrong with Galleon. After all, they were the tippee! And Galleon paid Goldman hundreds of millions of dollars for those tips. So let's look at Galleon's returns:


Way higher, and way better and way more consistent than Madoff's fictitious returns. But Raj's were real. The difference?  Galleon had the blessing of Hank Paulson, and the "insight" of Goldman Sachs!


So if Madoff's consistency was evidence of fraud, why isn't Galleon's?

Probably because, it would then make Goldman Sachs  in on the fix!

Because Galleon was in Goldman Sachs huddle, front running other institutions buys and sells, and trading off information that Goldman had, that others didn't!

How's Raj going to do at trial? Ask Goldman.

He spent $250 million for "research" from Goldman and Morgan Stanley, yet the prosecutor's case rests on a two bit hack?


This was just another high frequency, dark pool, front run, paid for, trading program sponsored by Goldman Sachs.

And instead of an algorithm that stole, it was people at Goldman who betrayed the trust of those who traded at Goldman.

So why hasn't anyone looked at his relationship with Goldman?

And who was Fat Raj's dummy at Goldman?

Last week, Anil Kumar, 51, and a partner at McKinsey & Co is the one accused of giving Raj Rajaratnam at Galleon information on McKinsey clients. He was a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology and the Wharton School.

Rajat Gupta of India, and current independent director at Goldman Sachs, was McKinsey & Company's first managing director born outside of the US.

According to the WSJ:

Mr. Kumar developed a close relationship with Rajat Gupta, an Indian-born McKinsey veteran whose eventual promotion to managing director of the firm's world-wide operations, the first non-Westerner to hold the post, raised the profile of Indians throughout the company.

Mr. Kumar helped Mr. Gupta launch the Indian School of Business in the southern city of Hyderabad in 1999. The school has tie-ups with international institutions like Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and its governing board is stacked with a who's who of prominent Indian executives.

This week, Mr. Kumar told the Indian School of Business's executive board, of which Mr. Gupta is chairman, that he would take a leave of absence from his role as an adviser.

Apparently these two are as thick as thieves.

Just like Goldman and Galleon were.

I'm sure Goldman will be able to assure us, that Rajat Gupta, a Goldman director, would never of discussed anything improper with Mr. Kumar, who had a propensity to discuss secrets with Raj Rajaratman. I would never even make that assertion.

Even though  Goldman was paid hundreds of millions of dollars from Raj's Galleon fund.

 Where's Lucas Van Praag when you need him?

Now I compared Galleon's returns to Madoff's. What did the beneficiary of Madoff, to the tune of $7 billion, Jeffry Picower do, the minute he "found out" Madoff was a fraud?

He closed the Picower Foundation. Even though he could of easily kept it open. After all, didn't he make $7 billion, that we found out later? He must of wanted it closed!

What did Raj do immediately after he was accused by prosecutors? Isn't he closing the fund?

Why did Goldman think Madoff's returns were inconceivable, but Galleon's weren't?

And why did Raj pay Goldman so much damn money?

Ask Raj. Or ask Anil.

But don't ask Goldman. Or the SEC. They just hired a former Goldman cronie as their new COO before Raj got busted.

You'll just get "no comment."
---------

Now how about the Buffett tip?
--------------------------
Goldman directors even tipped the Buffett deal.

Anyone remember how Goldman reversed the steep sell-off the day before Buffett invested in Goldman? And how the financials reversed that day from their lows? Did anyone from Justice check out how Goldman traded in the SKF that day? How many shorts that they had laid out in that number?

And did Goldman, ramp and reverse the financials,  the day after the Government announced the shortseller rules, because they knew of Buffett's investment?

After all, didn't Byron Trott, Buffett's broker at Goldman, who put the deal of Buffett's investment into Goldman together--didn't he at the end of March 2009, start his own firm?

And didn't Goldman, change the rules on him alone, allowing Mr. Trott to sell his shares in Goldman, unlike the other executives who were handcuffed to the hip with their Goldman stock, because of Buffett's investment?

The Sunday before Buffett's announced investment, the Fed allowed Goldman to become a bank holding company. Then they blocked all short selling of the financials. Then Morgan Stanley announced their deal with the Japanese.

Buffett bought out Constellation Energy, to give confidence in the deal making arena, because that deal was on the ropes, and in the financials, names like State Street went from 30 to 64, Morgan Stanley, went from 12 to 34, and Goldman went from 86 to 144--all in ONE day--from 12:30 in the afternoon, to 8:00 am in the next day's pre-market!

Is someone going to say that the stocks ramped all because you couldn't lay out any more shorts, or those who were short, were instead tipped?

Here was the action in Goldman the day that Buffett's tip to the rest of Wall Street was announced.

Why did you have, instead, the move in the financials, the days before?

How is it, that when a company on Wall Street, reports good numbers, and the stock sells off; that everyonne already knew that news.

Was the street so incestuous, that everyone else knew the news that Gupta had tipped?

How many people did Raj also tip? Who were also dying on the vine in Septemebr of 08?

And even with this massive, wonderful tip, Galleon was down 7.23% in September of 2008, and he was down another 5.23% in October. Even though he was getting tipped!

Is it any wonder why he was having crumpets and tea with Gupta, in his private office!

Away from the wires!

So now are we to believe, that it was just Raj, alone, who ramped the financials, or was a better explanation, that Goldman Sachs, decided to deploy their capital, into a massive short squeeze, in the shorted names, because they knew that the PPT, would be behind them, in their effort to prop up the markets, on the backs of the shortsellers, because Trott had already told Goldman that Buffett was in, and the Fed, had already told Goldman, that on Sunday night, they would be a bank holding company, and that, they would then have access to Ben's billions?

And Ben, and Timmy, and Lloyd, will all suffer memory problems, because the sole rat, in this whole mess, was Raj, just like Goldman's sole rat, in the Abacus, was a 27 year old kid called Fab!