Author: stlplace

Categories
CFA

Mark to market hearing

Reading Time: < 1 minute

A bunch of politicians (accounting newbies) questioning accountants
C-span video here.

All right, more finger pointing. Now people (oh, I mean Wall Street and their friends at Washington) are blaming mark to market (wiki), for the financial crisis.

This is almost same as blaming starbucks for one’s coffee addiction problem. Coffee, if consumed modestly, is good. But if one drinks more than 6 cups a day, he/she basically will get caffeinated.

Similar thing can be said to M2M, M2M is not the cause of this downward spiral, the overly leverage IS.

When politicians started play with accounting rules, I think rational investors will become really nervous.

Categories
Economy

Greenspan: not my fault

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman wrote an article The Fed Didn’t Cause the Housing Bubble on WSJ to defend himself. He was saying his low fed rate from 2003 to 2005 is NOT the cause for the housing bubble, and current financial crisis. Interesting stuff. I remember Oct. Anderson Cooper (CNN) did a series of 10 most wanted culprit for (financial) collapse, and Mr. Greenspan was No. 6. The English article on CNN360 is not easy to get, here is Chinese translation.

greenspan pic

Anyway, I don’t want to get into those political stuff. My point is, probably he has his share of mistakes. Of course, he is not alone in all this. It takes a meltdown of the whole system for us to get here, from regulators including the broader goverment (democrats and republican; congress and presidents), from business to consumser, from wall street to main street, from US to China,…each made some convenient choice without thinking the long term.

But the human nature when we hear the blame, we will say: no, not my fault.

Psychology 101: denial is the first response we hear bad news.

Categories
video

Tang Wei Zhen: Chinese Madoff

Reading Time: < 1 minute

(Update 06-13-2020) The links below no longer work. This is one nature of the internet: nothing lasts forever. Here is a new article Tang Wei Zhen.

(Original) Tang Wei Zhen 唐炜臻 (company) claimed to be Chinese Buffett (as shown in the following 11’24” video, link here). But apparently he is Chinese mini-Madoff. Chinese story here (hutong9).

Couple points to spot warning signs:

Continue reading “Tang Wei Zhen: Chinese Madoff”
Categories
video

Tim Geithner on Charlie Rose

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Link here.

Categories
Master Series

Buffett on CNBC

Reading Time: < 1 minute

The Squawk box, here are the videos.

Part 1:

Continue reading “Buffett on CNBC”
Categories
Fun

T. Rowe. Price TV commerial reminds me somthing I saw

Reading Time: < 1 minute

This is the T. Rowe Price TV commercial I saw today.

Continue reading “T. Rowe. Price TV commerial reminds me somthing I saw”
Categories
Fun

Don’t tick off Jon Stewart

Reading Time: < 1 minute

(Update 2: March 11) Cramer shot back, Stewart responds.

(Update) Correct the name (from Steward to Stewart).

Continue reading “Don’t tick off Jon Stewart”
Categories
Fun

Recent Bank Ads on WSJ

Reading Time: 2 minutes

We know CEOs of some of the nation’s largest banks are buying their companies’ stocks, to show their confidence on their respective company.

It’s also interesting to see some of the leading banks are putting up a lot Ads on Wall Street Journal. I took some pictures here from WSJ in these days and share them here.

IMG_6958
(Citi bank shows a happy couple/home owners who got mortgage from Citi)

IMG_6957
(This JetBlue ads encourage CEOs to ditch their business jet and use the discount carrier)

Continue reading “Recent Bank Ads on WSJ”
Categories
Investing

Glass half full? Glass half empty?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Week in review 030109 to 030709

We are officially in Obama bear market (source: Bloomberg), in other words, the stock market (i.e., Dow industrial for most people) dropped 20% since President Obama took office in Jan 20. Yesterday S&P 500 briefly touched 666 (the number of devil), pretty scary, huh? I am sure this economy/financial crisis has been the hot topic in many kitchen table, or office cafeteria. The financial media is also taking the crisis as oppertunity — we have seen numerous experts, panel discussions, such as the “Help Wanted” talk last night on CNN money, which is mainly talking about the Feb. job (loss) number: 650,000. This number is actually small, if we put it into perspective that 20 million Chinese migrant workers already lost job since the end of last year (read my friend Bo Peng’s article if you are interested).

Continue reading “Glass half full? Glass half empty?”
Categories
Economy Investing

Bank nationalization: II

Reading Time: 2 minutes

This is the second part of my thoughts on bank nationalization, I hope President Obama and his finance team can read my blog, as they are thinking through the “bank rescue”, the No. 1 issue facing this country, and the world economy for that matter.

As I said in my previous post, bank nationalization appears bad for the existing shareholders of bank common stocks, in the sense they will get wiped out or diluted. But I also said this is merely “mark to market” for them, whether they want to face it or not, the day of reckoning will come soon or later. In the mean time, when we are waiting for the eventual take over of some of the nation’s largest banks, consumers and business get scared, they either withdraw money and put under their mattress (consumers), or stopped investing and started hiring freeze/travel freeze/lay off (business). This will have spill over effect on the world, as we are living in a increasingly globalized economy. When the rumor of China new stimulus started, the US stock market started to rally. You got the idea.

Continue reading “Bank nationalization: II”