Wall Street Exploits Ethanol Credits

I hate the ethanol subsidy.  If you are a true small government tea party activist then this should be the number issue you should be all over your congressman to sequester out of existence. It is a truly ridiculous incentive to feed our cars and not our bellies.  That Wall Street is taking advantage is no surprise.

I believe Wall Street is over funded with a surfeit of true economic growth inducing ideas.  It is particularly disconcerting that the Dow will shortly include Goldman Sachs as part of the thirty stocks in the Dow Jones average because I can't for the life of me see their long term business model.  Publicly funded gunslingers do not make a worthy benchmark of American industry.  For example today's article in the New York Times business section on the proudly private brokerage firm of Sandler Oniel describes the business in hunting terms.  "We eat what we kill." And you know what?  I find that to be exemplary.  Compensation is high but so is the risk to the partners.  Goldman on the other hand is a rent seeker diddling the system pretty much as Gretchen Morgensen describes regularly in her Fair Game column in the same paper.

The Perils when Megabanks Lose their Focus

This New York Times business section article leaves a out critical point, which is that gaming behavior is not a long term profit growing strategy.  As an individual investor I have lost interest in Megabanks.  If they keep up their idiotic loser course then others will as well.    

Goldman IT not so intelligent

Today's report of "2 Accused of Stealing a Trading Firm's Code" reminded me of Michael Lewis's article in Vanity Fair about the very same issue and where after all the mindless prosecuting and jailing it is Cyrus Vance, Manhattan District attorney, and Goldman Sachs who come out looking like they don't know what they are doing.
I bring it up solely for the fact that Goldman's vaunted high speed trading prowess apparently is not. Those managing the program do not understand that, while proximity gives a slight edge in the speed of light transaction, if your logic is a patched together piece of convoluted gobbledy gook, then you arrive late and out of luck.  I think high speed trading is a waste. But to participate in a waste and not be good at it is like being declared second runner up in the nit wit club.

September 1 Postscrpt

Reading Code Blue in the Economist and I smell Goldman's IT rat as the culprit for the three hour crash at the NASDAQ last week. Not only are they incompetent, but now it appears they are dangerous.

Antitrust and creative destruction

The Government is great at putting on an antitrust suit just when the forces of creative destruction are sweeping away the status quo.  I disagree with Paul Krugman's assessment in "The Decline of E Empires" that  monopolists, especially in the very fluid IT business, are affected by government action in any manner.  The Justice department and the European anti monopoly agency is laughably out of it fighting calvary assaults as if the browser wars has anything to do with current fifth generations apps.

Say it ain't so, Joe

Joe Nocera just went off the deep end in his editorial of today where he actually broaches the idea of keeping  Fannie and Freddie.  Joe, didn't you read Gretchen Morgensen's book,  Reckless Endangerment?  Mixing public and private commerce can only lead to the eventual "heads" banker win "tails" taxpayer loses fiasco we suffered in 2008.  Please, keep the system clean of stupid exceptions that a congressman can drive an aircraft carrier through and don't let Fannie and Freddie live.  That goes for the other GSE's, such as Sallie Mae and Farmer Mac,  as well,

What a Waste

Goldman and others diddle of the commodity markets makes a lie of their claims of investing.  The transfer of aluminum ingots from one warehouse to another described in the New York Times article "A Shuffle of Aluminum" simply to extract a rent describes an bank bereft of real money making ideas.

Desperately Seeking Scepticism

The Economist 22 of June article describing Deloitte's bruising from the Standard Chartered money laundering scandal is another instance of reliance on the fee payer to self report to the regulator.  It is clear that it doesn't work.  It's so bad that the paying client, Standard Chartered,  was advised by the auditor, Deloitte, of possible avenues of avoidance using Deloitte clients as examples.

I am the Lawsky