From Stansberry:
*"The marketplace is saying that this is not just an Italian problem, this is now becoming a European problem," Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said on CNBC this morning. "Liquidity is vanishing."
We won't dwell on Europe today, as we all know the situation – too much debt, soaring yields, and fragmented leadership. But it's worth noting the opinion of the CEO and chairman of the world's largest asset manager, with $3.3 trillion under management.
Fink noted the divergence of triple-A-rated European countries from the benchmark German bund. The spread between the bund and debt from Norway and the Netherlands moved 20 basis points (bps) in one day – the biggest moves in history. Fink also said you need to watch France, the European Union's other supposed iron-clad credit. In the midst of the subprime crisis, France was trading 10-20 basis points off Germany. Today, the spread jumped 23 basis points to 187.9 bps, an all-time record.
*Executives of publicly traded companies are notoriously bad capital allocators. They overpay for companies. They make purchases using stock when it's undervalued. They pay cash when the stock is dear. And they repurchase shares at the worst times.
It's no surprise that today, U.S. companies are buying back shares at the highest rate in four years. A Bloomberg report attributed the purchases to companies "taking advantage of record-high cash levels and low interest rates to purchase equities at valuations 15% cheaper than when the credit crisis began." Companies have authorized more than $453 billion in repurchases this year, putting 2011 on track to be the third-highest annual total behind 2006 and 2007. Do you remember what happened after 2007?
*What would you expect government-owned mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do after receiving nearly $200 billion in taxpayer bailouts? Pay huge executive bonuses, of course. Since accepting government money, Fannie and Freddie spent nearly $100 million for top executive compensation.
The top five executives at Fannie received a combined $33.3 million in 2009 and 2010. The top five at Freddie received $28.1 million.
Fannie CEO Michael Williams and Freddie CEO Charles Halderman each received around $5.5 million in pay last year. And that number could increase when final deferred compensation is set.
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Celente told Russia Today (RT), “I really got burned, I got a call last Monday, I have an account with Lind-Waldock, and I have been trading gold since 1978, and I have a very simple strategy. As you well know, I’ve been very bullish on gold for many years… So I was building up my account to take delivery on a contract, and I got a call on Monday, and they said I needed to have a margin call. And I said, what are you talking about, I’ve got a ton of money in my account. They responded, oh no you don’t, that money’s with a trustee now.”
He said that MF Global “have cleaned out and ruined a lot of people. So maybe the name MF, I’m thinking the first word of MF is ‘mother’ and we could put the other word in there if you use your imagination . . . because that is what they are doing to everybody.”
Celente is astute and is on record regarding the importance of owning physical gold bullion. The incident shows the increasingly fundamental importance of owning physical bullion (see table above) – either by taking delivery or by owning in personal allocated accounts.
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I love Triumph the Insult Comic Dog!
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Handcuffed Couple Engaged in Sex Act in Back of Cop Car
Meet Tina Marie Arie and Howard Windham.
The Texas duo was arrested on drug charges last Monday after a cop was summoned to a Whataburger, where a male acquaintance of Arie and Windham was passed out.
Arie, 44, who admitted providing the unconscious man with Hydrocodone, was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance. Windham, 30, was collared on a possession rap after he was found with the painkiller Soma. The pair was cuffed and stuffed into a police cruiser for the trip to get booked.
That’s when things got interesting, according to a spokesperson for Montgomery County Constable Precinct 4. When the officer looked in his rear view mirror, he “could no longer see Tina Arie,” who subsequently explained that she was resting her head in Windham’s lap because she was “tired.”
Suspicious, the officer pulled over to the side of the road to further investigate, according to a press statement. He discovered that, “despite being handcuffed behind their backs,” the pair were engaged in a sexual act. Windham’s jeans were undone “and Arie was servicing his exposed genitalia.”
It is unclear how Windham’s jeans were unfastened--or whether teeth were somehow involved in the undoing of said britches. A spokesperson said she was unaware whether the jeans were of the zipper or button-fly variety.
The lewd Houdini act (Lewdini?) abrupty ended when the cop “ordered them to cease sexual contact.” Though Arie and Windham could have faced an additional public indecency charge, they apparently caught a break when investigators opted not to tack on a misdemeanor count to the more serious felony narcotics charges.
He said that MF Global “have cleaned out and ruined a lot of people. So maybe the name MF, I’m thinking the first word of MF is ‘mother’ and we could put the other word in there if you use your imagination . . . because that is what they are doing to everybody.”
Celente is astute and is on record regarding the importance of owning physical gold bullion. The incident shows the increasingly fundamental importance of owning physical bullion (see table above) – either by taking delivery or by owning in personal allocated accounts.
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I love Triumph the Insult Comic Dog!
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Handcuffed Couple Engaged in Sex Act in Back of Cop Car
Meet Tina Marie Arie and Howard Windham.
The Texas duo was arrested on drug charges last Monday after a cop was summoned to a Whataburger, where a male acquaintance of Arie and Windham was passed out.
Arie, 44, who admitted providing the unconscious man with Hydrocodone, was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance. Windham, 30, was collared on a possession rap after he was found with the painkiller Soma. The pair was cuffed and stuffed into a police cruiser for the trip to get booked.
That’s when things got interesting, according to a spokesperson for Montgomery County Constable Precinct 4. When the officer looked in his rear view mirror, he “could no longer see Tina Arie,” who subsequently explained that she was resting her head in Windham’s lap because she was “tired.”
Suspicious, the officer pulled over to the side of the road to further investigate, according to a press statement. He discovered that, “despite being handcuffed behind their backs,” the pair were engaged in a sexual act. Windham’s jeans were undone “and Arie was servicing his exposed genitalia.”
It is unclear how Windham’s jeans were unfastened--or whether teeth were somehow involved in the undoing of said britches. A spokesperson said she was unaware whether the jeans were of the zipper or button-fly variety.
The lewd Houdini act (Lewdini?) abrupty ended when the cop “ordered them to cease sexual contact.” Though Arie and Windham could have faced an additional public indecency charge, they apparently caught a break when investigators opted not to tack on a misdemeanor count to the more serious felony narcotics charges.
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