3 Wood Roundup: The God of ChaChing & You

Money Honey ~ Eddie Cochran

Shabbat Shalom Feral Nation ~

I don't understand a word that 3 Wood says.

Here's a roundup for those of you who do.

My uneconomic and instinctive opinion is that this dollar gone bad crapola is all orchestrated to force us into a common currency like the EURO.The nascent NAU is not a myth, and they want to institute a single currency (The AMERO).

IMO they will do whatever they need to do to make sure it happens.

Koom bah humbug, ya one world MFers!

HERE'S 3 WOOD:

What do you do for money, honey? ~ AC/DC

It looks like we are in for more turmoil on Wall Street.

First, Wachovia Bank was downgraded:

Wachovia cut to underperform by Oppenheimer

"LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney downgraded her rating on Wachovia to underperform from perform, saying expenses simply cannot come down fast enough to offset a fall in its mortgage portfolio and on-balance sheet loans."

Keep an eye on this and other key large banks in the coming weeks. The Fed's had to take over IndyMac a few days ago and more bailouts may be in the offing. This volatility will tend to cause some havoc in the ability of these banks to sell CD's and raise cash to manage their liquidity.

Then there's this:

Euro hits all-time high as dollar plunges

"NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Growing worries about U.S. financial institutions kept the dollar under heavy selling pressure Tuesday, clearing the way for the euro to set a new all-time high above $1.60.

"Confidence in the U.S. currency is at very low ebb right now," said Russell Jones, head of fixed income and currency strategy at RBC Capital Markets.

The dollar also remained under pressure after U.S. economic data showing retail sales rose less than expected in June, while producer prices rose more than expected.

Retail sales rose 0.1% last month, after a 1% increase in May. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had been looking for sales to increase 0.3%."

Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

This article is dead on and is very close to what I have been saying for a long time.

THE REAL SCANDAL

The current banking crisis has a whole lot to do with being PC and avoiding discrimination lawsuits by the banking industry. The bottom line is, for a whole lot of reasons including relaxation of regulations and standards, banks found it a lot easier to give loans to risky applicants, pocket the fees, and then sell off the loan to someone else if possible. You can't sue a bank for discrimination if they gave you the loan, you see. Well, the upshot is a whole bunch of people got loans who really could not afford them, and now you see the result.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is stepping up it's market oversight activities.

SEC subpoenas top firms over Lehman, Bear stock move: report

"LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed firms including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch as part of a growing effort to crack down on possible manipulation of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns stock, according to a Bloomberg report. The regulator is seeking trading records and emails the report said, citing people familiar with the situation. On Tuesday the regulator moved to curb short selling in the shares of primary dealers as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac amid widespread concern that negative bets from short sellers have added to the sector's problems."

For those unfamiliar with stock market terms, "short selling" is where you borrow the stock from your broker and sell it (thus betting that the stock price will go down), then buy the stock back at hopefully lower price, give it back to the broker to complete the transaction, and pocket the difference as profit. The problem is that in short selling you are betting that the market will go down and you have no limit to your risk if the market rises. Therefore, down through history it has been known that some short sellers might take other actions (such as leaking false rumors to the media) to try to drive stock prices down.

I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, but given that the SEC is issuing subpoenas they must think they found something. Don't be surprised when all this is said and done that some of the market volatility you have been seeing lately has been helped along by some creative and industrious individuals here and there. My guess is there are some very nervous people going through the "prisoners dilemma" exercise in their minds at this very moment. If there has been chicanery going on, the first one to the DA's office gets a deal.... the others get to sing Jailhouse Rock.

JAILHOUSE ROCK ~ ELVIS!

I believe that a major contributing factor to the recent stock market drop was the elimination of the "uptick rule" about a year ago.

Shorts on the run

"The problem is that last July, just a few weeks before the Wall Street credit crisis erupted, the SEC changed a seven-decades-old rule that prohibited short sellers from selling a stock short if the last trade was lower -- on a downtick. The stock had to be rising, or on an uptick, for them to short. This rule was put in place to prevent excessive shorting from exacerbating a stock's decline."

Translated into English, it used to be that if you were going to sell stock short (speculating that the price would drop) then you could only complete the second part of the transaction on and "uptick", i.e., the price ticking back upwards. That prevented people from continuing to short more and more of the stock and artificially driving the price downward. Well, with the cancellation of that rule a year ago, the door opened to potential market manipulation by smart operators to make a quick killing and force prices down. The SEC should change the ruling back.

"The SEC made a smart move Tuesday when it ring-fenced Fannie, Freddie and the primary dealers from so-called naked shorting, or shorting without actually borrowing the underlying shares of a company. It should expand that to the rest of the market. And it should reverse the uptick rule, if only for a few months, just to see what happens."

I'm not an atavistic old fogey, but since the "uptick rule" worked well for 70 years before last July I see no reason to have changed it. That one step should help eliminate at least some of the volatility in the market.

~ 3 Wood