January 2009

Atilla the Hun:  My Candidate to Head the SEC

Fraud and more fraud

OK - it is not just Madoff.  There is a guy missing in Sarasota who probably ran another Ponzi Scheme, and another investigation in Idaho.  The SEC is the most useless organization in the country, since it has done absolutely nothing to provide regulation and enforcement in the financial area.  We need somebody like Atilla to give us a pile of heads.  Unfortunately, we are just way too lenient to white collar criminals, even when they get caught.

"Nobody Knows Who is Swimming Naked until..."

In good times it seems that it is just too easy, at least with our useless SEC, to get away with stuff.  Avoid hedge funds entirely - some may be run by honest people, but you simply cannot know which ones are honest.

January 23, 2009

We now have a new President, and most of the cabinet is confirmed.  While I am pleased, I am also worried that Obama will not be tough enough on terrorists.  For example, a militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, released from Guantanamo and sent to a "rehabilitation" program in Saudi Arabia, is now in Yemen and back with the terrorists.  Now will Obama release more?  Personally, I think that they should treat them all as prisoners of war and never let them go.  I am very worried about our safety.

One interesting line in the speech:  Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.  For me, this greed and irresponsibility is the reason why Bush's Presidency will go down in history as one of the worst ever.  Of course, there are a lot of contenders:  Kennedy, who promised much on civil rights and delivered nothing, Johnson, who lied to get us into war, Nixon, just plain crooked, Carter, honest but ineffective, Reagan, who ended the cold war but did various illegal things and ignored the AIDS crisis, and Clinton, who just could not keep it in his pants.  He had that in common with Kennedy, of course.  There has not been anybody in my memory in the White House whom I could truly admire.

January 28, 2008

Now we have "Mini Madoffs" - other Ponzi schemes which are simply smaller.  And some people are just plain stupid:

On Monday, at a suburban New York train station, Nicholas Cosmo surrendered to federal authorities in connection with a suspected $380 million Ponzi scheme, in which investors paid a minimum of $20,000 for high-yield “private bridge” loans that he had arranged.

Mr. Cosmo promised returns of 48 percent to 80 percent a year, and none of his investors apparently minded — or knew — that Mr. Cosmo had already been imprisoned for securities fraud. In the end, 1,500 people gave him their money, often through brokers who worked on his behalf.

And in Florida, not far from the Palm Beach clubs where Mr. Madoff wooed some of his investors, George L. Theodule, a Haitian immigrant and professed “man of God,” promised churchgoers in a Haitian-American community that he could double their money within 90 days.

He accepted only cash, and despite the too-good-to-be-true sales pitch, he found plenty of investors willing to turn over tens of thousands of dollars.

Well, this month has provided us with some upside and some downside volatility.  The market is full of head fakes.  

Meanwhile, below we have the ultimate British Male, according to the Daily Mail.

It is a combination of Hugh Grant, Orlando Bloom, Daniel Craig, Ewan McGregor, Lewis Hamilton, and Johnny Wilkerson, in a composite image.