Jay's Daily News

Seriously, I hope Madoff gets the best possible healthcare money can buy while in prison.

My train of thought is quite simple. The better the healthcare, the longer he lives. And the longer he lives, the more miserable he will be. The more miserable he gets, the better it is.

I also hope that he gets to live to the ripe old age of 221 so he can serve his full term.

NYSE Halts Transparency, Feels Goldman Program Trading Disclosure Is Unnecessary

In a move set to infuriate and send many Zero Hedge readers over the top, the NYSE has taken action to make sure that nobody will henceforth be able to keep track of the complete dominance that Goldman Sachs exerts over the New York Stock Exchange. This basically ends our weekly Program Trading updates disclosed every Thursday indicating that Goldman has singlehandedlycaptured all of NYSE's program trading.

In an information memorandum released on June 24 (09-31), the NYSE Regulation team has announced the Decommissioning of the Daily Program Trading Report (DPTR).full article==>

"BOOM!" (More Obfuscation)

by Karl Denninger

"Someone" paid 7% for overnight money on the Fed Trading system last night (that "someone" was a bank, by the way.)
This will be claimed to be "ordinary" end of quarter distortions for closing the books.
Don't believe it for a second.
Let's put this in plain language: The discount window is open for any bank that has good collateral at less than 1/10th of that interest rate.
Therefore there is absolutely no reason for any institution to go into the Fed Funds market for overnight money at 7% unless they have no good collateral to post against itand thus cannot go to the window.
So who is it? No idea. And while the amount borrowed overnight at that rate may be tiny, that's not the point - the point is that the last time we saw anything that dramatic was just before it all went "boom" last year.
Yes, I'm sure that end-of-quarter had something to do with it. In fact, I'd be stunned if it did not.
However, as I noted, there's no reason for anyone to pay that if they have good collateral to post at the discount window, given that you can do so for 1/10th or less the price.
Keep your nose to the ground and your eyes open.
Someone (or more than one someone) is in trouble.

I'm posting 2 links. One is the start of a WSJ story and the other is from World Currency Watch.
If they don't work I'll re-post by cut & paste.

Here goes:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124588934703850877.html

http://www.worldcurrencywatch.com/20...-one%E2%80%A6/

I just realized that the World Currency Watch page is copyrighted.

I hope I'm not too severely chastised for this indiscretion.

You didn't actually copy it. You just provided a link to the story. Nothing wrong with that.

Thank you for that info.
I hope the links were useful for you.

Hello Jay et al:

I am reading more about this and it is serious from the viewpoint that it puts the scalpers at a tremendous disadvantage.

Hedging functionality has already been removed, and after July 31, 2009, First In, First Out execution will be required, which mandates that the first order in must also be the first order closed.

Traders will have fewer order choices.
Traders will have drastic limitations to their risk management options.
The vast majority of Expert Advisors will no longer be functional.

Do you have more information?

Regulators Seize 7 More Failed Banks


WASHINGTON (July 2) - Six Illinois banks and one bank in Texas were shuttered Thursday as government regulators proposed new rules for private equity firms seeking to take over failed banks.


Regulators shut down John Warner Bank of Clinton, Ill.; First State Bank of Winchester in Winchester, Ill.; Rock River Bank of Oregon, Ill.; Elizabeth State Bank of Elizabeth, Ill.; Danville, Ill.-based The First National Bank of Danville; Founders Bank of Worth, Ill.; and Dallas-based Millennium State Bank of Texas, bringing the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 52.


That's more than double the 25 which failed in all of 2008 and the three closed in 2007. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of all seven. The total cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund from the seven closings will be $314.3 million, the FDIC said. full article==>

Newbies, there is your holy grail!

Ex-Goldman Employee Charged With Code Theft

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...06-713684.html

Bernanke's own staff is clear. It's about to hit the fan!

US lurching towards 'debt explosion' with long-term interest rates on course to double

The US economy is lurching towards crisis with long-term interest rates on course to double, crippling the country’s ability to pay its debts and potentially plunging it into another recession, according to a study by the US’s own central bank




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...to-double.html

Recession may get worse, Gordon Brown warns world leaders

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6644667.ece

*****Yuan Ascendent: Cross-Border Trade Uses Chinese Currency*****


Chinese officials have said the yuan-based trade experiment is aimed at helping companies reduce the risks of exchange-rate fluctuations, which have led to significant losses at some exporters recently amid global financial-market turbulence. Officials also have in recent months voiced concerns about China's dependence on the dollar, which is used for most cross-border deals and which comprises the majority of China's roughly $2 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. full article==>

Delinquencies on U.S. Home-Equity Loans Reach Record

July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Late payments on home-equity loans rose to a record in the first quarter as 18 straight months of job losses and a slumping economy left more borrowers unable to pay their debts, the American Bankers Association reported.


Delinquencies on home-equity loans climbed to 3.52 percent of all accounts from 3.03 percent in the fourth quarter, and late payments on home-equity lines of credit climbed to a record 1.89 percent, the group reported today. An index of eight types of loans rose for a fourth straight quarter, to 3.23 percent from 3.22 percent in October through December, the group said. full article==>

Stolen from maxkeiser.com (fantastic site by the way. His partner, Stacy Herbert did a great job).

3 month to 30 year US swap spreads data from bloomberg pulled into excel, mashed up a bit and set to music.

Everything suggests that the American bonds seized at Chiasso are real

Milan (AsiaNews) – Four weeks have passed since American bonds were confiscated from two Japanese men who were travelling on a direct train to Chiasso, Switzerland, and while there has been clarification of some - very few -points, Italian authorities have remained silent on the rest of the episode.

In addition, a strange coincidence in the timing of the arrest of a director of an internet radio who had made revelations regarding the incident ,increases the already strong oddities surrounding the case. This added to the revaluation of the fact that among the evidence seized there were "Kennedy Bonds", all points toward the authenticity of the items seized by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF) in early June. full article==>

While Talking About Keynesian Stimulus, Feds Are Really Just Giving Money to the Big Boys

...whether you agree with Keynesians or not - the fact is that what the government has actually been doing is spending our money on helping out the big boys, and spending next to nothing on even trying to stimulate the economy. The government is giving trillions to the big banks and financial giants, but almost zero to the working people. full article==>

Japan govt spokesman warns against forex swings

Japan's top government spokesman said on Thursday that excessive currency moves are undesirable as they would hurt the stability of Japan's economy and financial markets. The yen jumped to a five-month peak of 91.80 yen to the dollar on Wednesday as mounting doubts about the health of the global economy spurred risk aversion. [FRX/]
A soaring yen could jeopardise Japan's chances of pulling out of a recession, raising the prospect of Tokyo intervening in the markets to weaken its currency for the first time in five years. [ID:nN08397762]
"As I have said before, excessive moves in market rates have a bad impact on the stability of the economy and financial conditions and therefore are undesirable," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told a news conference.
"We'll keep a close watch on currency market trends."
Growing unease about the global economy has prompted investors to rush out of trades that bet against the yen while favouring higher-yielding but often riskier currencies.
Market participants said they were cautious about the possibility of intervention by Japanese officials to fight the currency's rapid rise, which hurts exporters by eating into the profits they make overseas when converted back into yen.
But they said few expect any immediate intervention as the yen is still far from January's 14-year peak near 87 yen to the dollar. On Thursday the dollar climbed back to above 93 yen.
Japanese officials have said repeatedly the country is not considering intervention in currency markets. However, given the country's reliance on exports, they may be more motivated.
Japan has a long history of trying to stem yen strength by intervening to buy dollars, but it has stayed out of the market since a 35 trillion yen ($377 billion) campaign over 15 months ended in March 2004. The Ministry of Finance has gradually moved away from heavy intervention because that last campaign had mixed results.

Very interesting commentary I read today. The Dollar's Tinkerbell Moment.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debat...erbell-moment/

"Incredibly Shrinking Liquidity" as Goldman Flushed Quant Trading




Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 02:36:37 PM PDT

"If ya ain't cheatin', ya ain't tryin'."
Apparently, Goldman Sachs has been booted out from doing computerized quant trades at the New York Stock Exchange.

-- GS had been making $100,000,000 a day with computerized trades.
-- This diary outlines one spectacular and illegal way to succeed at that business.

Indeed, GS was "cornering the market" for machine trading as cited from Zero Hedge by bobswern at dkos.
New York City's finance sector dropped 25,600 jobs in April. May be that GS charlie-hoteled every last one of them.
Then, seems one Sergey Aleynikov got himself arrested. NYTimes says its about "secret sauce" Goldman Sachs quant math. We'll consider Mr. Aleynikov's STORM patent with distributed processing agents. Recalls Triple Hop's text indexing tools. Nothing to do with quant math.
The big ticket, the magic wand for a rogue quant shop is technology to grab off FIX PROTOCOL, OCX, or SWIFT messages that precede every transaction_commit at the Exchanges.
Grabbing information is way hotter for conquering Wall Street than owning a crystal ball.