More Videos- Revenge of the Gangsta Nerds
- It's Beginning To Look A Lot More Riskless
- Topless Business Is Taking Off
- Gambling Drunk, Texting to Live And America's On Sale - Your Emails
- The Lloyd's Prayer, Leggo My Eggo, Plate Hate & Your Emails
- Help Wanted—Please Run $4 Billion University
- Madoff—The Holiday Drink
- Drugs, Booze and Vegas
- Happy World Toilet Day
- Coffee, Tea or My Ad?
MOST SHARED
- The Good Entrepreneur Winner
- Gold Will Collapse Like Oil Did in 2008: Charts
- CNBC VIDEO: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates 'Walk & Talk' at Columbia University
- Abu Dhabi Will Aid Debt-Fraught Dubai 'Case by Case'
- Next Week: Cash In Now Or Wait For A Santa Rally?
- Halftime Report: Dubai - First Ripple Of Larger Crisis?
- U.S. Stocks Fall on Dubai Worries
- Black Friday at Best Buy
- Strategists on Dubai: Avoid 'Rash Moves' Now
- Longer Lines, Fuller Carts This Black Friday
- Dubai Stock Market Fear Has 'Legs': Dennis Gartman
- Obama's Emission Reduction Pledge Paints Future for Autos
- Is Super Bowl Halftime Act Too Old?
- Surprising Options Trades in TiVo Shares
- EA Sports Hopes to Pump Up Sales Through Pop-Up Locations
- Abu Dhabi Will Aid Debt-Fraught Dubai 'Case by Case'
- Banks With The Biggest Exposure to The UAE
- Dubai's Debt Woes Signal New Era for Creditors
- Next Week: Cash In Now Or Wait For A Santa Rally?
- Dubai Stock Selloff May Bring Buying Opportunity
- Longer Lines, Fuller Carts This Black Friday
- Big US Banks May Be Forced to Raise Capital: Bove
- Bank of America Amends Pay for Senior Executives
- Tiger Woods Out of Hospital After Accident
RSS FEED
Funny Business
Text Size 
 |
Meantime, I'm outside a WaMu[WM
Loading...
()
] branch today. No lines, no panic, and no taxpayer money involved in this bailout.
Good thing, because Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics expects 110 banks to fail this year with assets totaling $850 billion. He thinks the cost will be $200 billion-$250 billion, but "the FDIC will not run out of money."
BREAST MILK IN ICE CREAM, AND MORE ON THE BAILOUT
Jeff J. reacts to my blog on PETA pushing for breast milk in Ben and Jerry's ice cream:
"After years of eating seaweed and other crap in ice cream, oh, what's another 'ingredient' to make it worse? I understand PETA's sympathies, but following their own logic, don't (human) women also lactate only during / after preggers? So to keep B&J factories running, they have to promote MORE pregnancies just to meet ice cream quotas? (I'll punt on the 'forced impregnation' thingy.) And whither the extra babies?...I'm sticking to sorbet (no milk). The laws of unintended consequences bite again."
Nanette S. starts with PETA and moves onto the bailout:
"PETA should start a black market for breast milk, perhaps that would provide the many women who are challenged to feed their children a viable income. There is no lack of subject matter now for you as 'Funny Business' abounds. Everyone thinks the death of investment bankers is about subprime mortgages, while in fact it is really about 'innovative' banking products sold worldwide of subprime, A, alt-A mortgage securities along with bonds and other assets. I'm pretty upset with CNBC and the spin about that. The $400 trillion derivatives market, CDOs and massive greed with 30:1 bets and debt made this mess...The stock market should not be the sole repository for the decades of savings and work for the very reasons we see today. Those 'free' market capitalists have proven themselves unworthy of trust with our futures or our most important means of building tangible wealth. I won't capitalize them, I even do a vetting process for banks, who owns them before my deposit goes in so I know I'm not funding China's infrastructure, genocide in Darfur or sweat shops in Asia; but rather my own community...After watching CNBC for a very long time, I've had to change the channel for health reasons--it's preventative medicine so I don't have a freaking stroke."
MORE ON JEFF GREENE
Some of you have written asking how much money Jeff Greene had to put up to get into the subprime bonds he shorted, what his premiums were, etc. Greene didn't want to tell all, but he did say that he had to put up a "notional" amount of what the bonds were worth, about 5%-6%, which was $50 million to $60 million. His premiums were 1.4% above LIBOR, and since his cash was earning LIBOR, he had to pay the extra. He didn't make money when he first got in during 2006. But during 2007 the bonds started to fail and he started to make his windfall. Greene had to work very hard to be able to do these trades on his own, and he says if more investors had done what he did--shorted subprime through default swaps--the spreads would've been wider, meaning mortgage rates would have been higher, and "we wouldn't have gotten into this mess."
Questions? Comments? Funny Stories? Email
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes