Cesarnc's market talk, gossips, rumours & fun

I actually think the average American is less informed, in terms of global awareness, due to the geographic aspect. For instance in Europe, countries are so close together they're more aware of one another, because they have to.

I happen to believe otherwise and because I want to continue enjoying my weekend will leave it at that.



Other than to say that yes I have been to Europe (Germany/Austria/Switzerland/UK) and many years back worked for 3 different companies - a UK company, a German company and a Swiss company.

I think every average citizen's stupid that's just me though. I've lived in Europe, and South America before.

200-bucks a barrel.
:

You guys lost me now on the serious Vs joking part... you guys are thinking on a 50% gain in oil in the short term?

Did someone nuke middle east? :

On a more serious note, anyone wants to share some thoughts on what can happen to oil and other commodities if there is central bank intervention on the valuation of the USD?

Logic says that if the USD goes up then oil goes down, however doesn't intervention means that USD is still weak and it is just the other currencies that are getting weaker and so the price of commodities should maintain itself if there is enough demand?

AND YOU KNOW THIS MAAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!!

Time to get my hustle on.............

HOLLA

Been there......done that..................

HOLLA

I hear that...let them fight it out!!!!

Stop trying to bail the markets out....let's go "Old School" and make it a street fight!!!!

AND PUT AN END TO THIS CRAP!!!! So we can resume business!!!!!

HOLLA

What's up gang??? Hope everyone is enjoying their weeKend...


I watched a documentary tonight on The Discovery Channel called: Download, A True Story about the Internet.

Pretty cool to see how far the internet has come....I mean we all use it now to find information and to make money (Trading) while sitting in front of our computer.

We can "NOW"...connect all over the world. I couldn't even imagine that back in 1985.


HOLLA

Any intervention will be short lived (imvho). Sell the $ on the rallies, buy the commodities / currencies on the dips.

Oil @ $125 is an almost certainty. @ $150, high probability and around $200, possible.

Bear Stearns Weekend Talks Reveal 2 Key Contenders

By Charlie Gasparino, CNBC On-Air Editor

CNBC.com
| 15 Mar 2008 | 08:42 PM ET


Department heads at Bear Stearns met with officials at J.C. Flowers and JPMorgan Chase Saturday afternoon to give an overview of their business divisions, including headcount and profit and loss positions, CNBC has learned.

The discussions indicate that potential bidders for Bear have been narrowed to those two firms, although other last minute contenders could still weigh in, according to one source aware of the talks.

While Bear would certainly like more bidders, time has become a major issue for the investment bank.

On Friday Bear Stearns , the fifth largest U.S. investment bank, said a cash crunch forced it to turn to the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan for emergency funds, intensifying fears of a widening global credit crisis and driving its shares down as much as 50 percent. It also stepped up efforts to find a buyer.

On the same day S&P lowered its long-term counterparty credit rating on Bear to "BBB" from "A," and it placed long-and short term ratings on credit watch with negative implications.


Because of that S&P downgrade, bankers have now come to the conclusion that a deal must be done by Monday morning because no one on the street will trade or lend to Bear Stearns, which is rated a notch above junk bond levels. If the downgrade hadn't happened, Bear management would have had more time to work the Street for a deal, sources said.

The big question in the talks is price. Bear has been touting its $80 a share book value but no one is willing to pay that. It is very hard to value the firm and its businesses. One person close to the deal said the price could end up as low as $15 a share or less, depending on Bear's liabilities and balance sheet. Aside from its clearing and prime brokerage operations, which get good marks, the rest of Bear's business lines are considered mediocre at best, according to various Wall Street executives.

The stress level at Bear among executives whose life savings is tied up in the company's stock was palpable Saturday as the meetings to determine the value of Bear continued.

"Everyone is here," said one Bear Stearns official on Saturday evening. "The dining room is open, the whole thing is open. It's just one big 10-hour meeting."

If there's no deal Bear Stearns will have to file for bankruptcy, executives said.

People close to the deal say JPMorgan is the likely candidate to take over Bear because the firm has the capital to purchase the entire firm. J.C. Flowers might just bid on pieces of the firm rather than the whole.

Still it is not clear what JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon will do if his company buys Bear; he hates the bank and doesn't need traders. The likely scenario, sources say, it that he gets rid of most everything except prime brokerage and clearing operations. He also apparently likes the Bear building which is around the corner from the less elegant Chase headquarters.


One big problem is that whoever buys Bear will want to retain some of the talent. However, they are already being offered jobs elsewhere.

In the meantime, the Bear debacle is a huge blow to New York City and its Metro-area economy where most of Bear's workforce lives. Many will be out of work. Bankers and other execs have lost fortunes since many were paid in Bear stearns stock.

The Bear situation rocked bank stocks Friday. Shares of Lehman Brothers Holdings fell sharply, as did Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group .
2008 CNBC.com
URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/23651058/

Poor Uncle Sam

Just read your post on Bear Stearns... Man, this credit crunch is indeed severe... I sincerely thought the bad days were over and now it would be all about writedowns popping here and there, but no....

Ok... now the question, how low can it still go? It's already hard to trade one big fundamental (recession OR credit crunch) and we have to deal with both of them simultaneously... This is crazy...

And there's another writedown coming from Goldman, too

There was a 5 years party in the financial markets. And in the very year I went in, there are just the junkies and drunks and the good people leaving through the door

The worst is yet to come. If the FED cuts 100 basis points it will confirm the worst case scenario for me. If they cut 50 basis points the above still would be true but it might be that the FED does not yet want to confirm this to the market.

It should be an amazing week in the forex market.

Enjoy your Sunday.

make no mistake guys this will not be easy money trading the intrest rates. anything thats to predictible is a sign of caution.

Bear Stearns Bailout Was `Finger in the Dike,' Historians Say

By Elliot Blair Smith

March 16 (Bloomberg) -- With Bear Stearns Cos.' temporary rescue in place, the $200 billion subprime crisis joins the history of government bailouts to preserve jobs, homes and savings when economic disaster looms.

Ever since Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo shut the New York Stock Exchange for four months in 1914, to prevent foreign investors from cashing out and throwing the U.S. into financial chaos at the outset of World War I, American policy makers routinely have suspended their support for free markets when confronted by economic peril.

``I think the systemic risks dominate right now, which means you've got to put your finger in the dike,'' says William Silber, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of ``When Washington Shut Down Wall Street: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 and the Origins of America's Monetary Supremacy'' (Princeton University Press, 232 pages, $27.95).

Bailouts can buy time while policy makers try to defuse panic. Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provided financial support for Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest U.S. securities firm. It faced eroding investor confidence in the fallout from losses related to securities based on mortgages to the least creditworthy borrowers.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the Fed said they would back New York-based Bear Stearns with emergency funding for an initial period of up to 28 days in the largest U.S. bailout of a securities firm. The deal is part of an agreement that enables the investment bank to borrow from the New York Fed's discount window while all three seek permanent financing or alternatives.

Panic of 1907
Bear Stearns needed the support in response to ``a multitude of market rumors regarding our liquidity,'' said Chief Executive Officer Alan Schwartz.
Just over 100 years ago, John Pierpont Morgan himself, the namesake of what was then known as the House of Morgan, came to the rescue when panic selling in October 1907 convulsed the New York Stock Exchange and threatened several banks and trusts.

Morgan, 70 and semi-retired, obtained an emergency pledge of $25 million from the U.S. Treasury. He persuaded New York's leading bankers and trust executives to put up another $25 million, after locking them in his library all night, according to ``The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and The Rise of Modern Finance,'' by Ron Chernow (Atlantic Monthly Press, 812 pages, $45.95).

Roosevelt and Central Bank
By the force of his personality, Morgan restored order to the market. His intervention also convinced Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt of the need for a central bank.

Booms and busts define economic cycles, forming a familiar pattern to historians while surprising investors, policy makers and financiers.

Congress authorized $250 million in loan guarantees to rescue Lockheed Aircraft Corp. in August 1971, over the objections of the late Democratic Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin. By today's standard, the stakes were small: about $1 billion in potential losses and 60,000 jobs.

The costs have risen steadily since, from the $1.2 billion in loan guarantees Congress provided Chrysler Corp. in 1979 to the $116.5 billion taxpayers spent to resolve the savings-and- loan industry's collapse by 1995.

Long Term Capital
The New York Fed averted a subsequent threat in September 1998 by persuading 14 banks to lend $3.65 billion to help unwind the leveraged trades of the Greenwich, Connecticut, hedge fund Long Term Capital Management. That was roughly equivalent to the $3.6 billion that the New York Fed loaned Chicago-based Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust Co. in 1984, in the largest rescue in U.S. banking history.

Yet the Treasury's shutdown of the New York Stock Exchange in 1914, a year after Morgan's death, remains one of the bluntest interventions by U.S. officials to head off a crisis. It is also one of the largest departures in American history from the capitalist creed of letting free markets sort out problems.

European investors held much of New York City's public debt. As foreigners cashed out, converting their securities to gold, the Treasury realized that its ability to maintain the dollar's link to bullion was being undermined, Silber wrote.

``Treasury Secretary McAdoo succeeded in August 1914 because he did not hesitate to bludgeon the crisis with a sledgehammer,'' Silber said in an interview March 14.

The decision served as a precedent for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who closed the banks for a week on his first day as president in March 1933. When lenders reopened, Silber says, depositors who had stood in line to withdraw their money queued up to put it back in.

Exports, Loan Guarantees
On both occasions, Silber says, government policy makers offered more-lasting solutions to ease market fears. In 1914, McAdoo moved to increase agricultural exports, bringing foreign capital into the country. In 1933, Roosevelt offered federal loan guarantees during the bank holiday to stimulate credit.

Founded in 1923, Bear Stearns has 14,153 employees at 34 offices in the U.S. and 14 abroad. It was providing trade execution and clearing services for $288.5 billion in client accounts as of Nov. 30, 2007. Last July, the failure of two of its hedge funds that invested in subprime-related securities initiated a broader selloff that continues.

Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who ran for president this year, told the House Financial Services Committee in February that financial services bailouts would reward bad behavior. Paul doubts the Bear Stearns rescue will prop up the economy, he said March 14.

``It won't work,'' Paul said. ``It's like drug addiction. You feel withdrawal pains, but you save the patient.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Elliot Blair Smith in Washington at [color=#0000ff][email protected][/color].

Agree

I Smell it, its called



FEAR, BRING IT MF'ers, BRING THE FEAR.


Now watch the biggest rally of all time happen on monday

When the mainstream press is telling us all how bad it is, watch out. They are always last to the party.

It's officially released

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y28/cesarnc/movie.jpg

I smell an Oscar for this one