Really?!

This genius group has a great rearview mirror...they must not have
felt the need to warn/advise anyone a "year ago". Hope they get a
new Magic 8 Ball for xmas...what a bunch of self-serving idiots. Another
snippet I read about this gang, in the WSJ, said they "boasted" of calling
every recession's length with great accuracy. So, tell us when it's going
to end...


December 1, 2008, 12:13 pm
NBER Makes It Official: Recession Started in December 2007

Official recession watchers at the NBER said today that the U.S. is recession, and it began in December 2007. Here is the text of their statement.
The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met by conference call on Friday, November 28. The committee maintains a chronology of the beginning and ending dates (months and quarters) of U.S. recessions. The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months.

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators. A recession begins when the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends when the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/...=djemalertNEWS

The fact that THEY know when it will peak and recess is one of the many ways they always come out ahead. Just think... all the money being lost just isn't disappearing, someone has to be getting it!

__________________
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all" (Bender, futurama)

You make something idiotproof, they'll make a better idiot

You think professional is expensive, just wait until you pay for amateur.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

X5 pics

RIP 4.6is.....

2003 4.6is

MD,

I have great empathy for your situation. We are all sharing the results, but most of us are not likely in your precarious situation.

The WSJ has some great charts showing the history of the market's cycles and their correspondence with the depression, WWII, Gas crisis etc. It has some clear cycles.

The weirdest facts are the highest drops and gains both still occoured in the Depression. It's referred to as a symptom of Depression, WILD market swings. You can see the average decline and growth around the recession and depression large swings.

Nothings for certain, a wild ride awaits us all and the safest long term investment is the Stock market.

Still getting the dividends - granted, net worth -40%, but so far so good - only BAC cut the dividend - have four stocks that pay monthly - none have even mentioned a possible cut - still, I'll probably adjust my monthly withdrawl to match dividend income after New Year's to preserve principal - no trips planned until March

__________________
Mark _______________________________
2001 X5 4.4i topaz blue/sand Sport, complete Dinan S2 , hitch, V1, tint, BSW Stage 1, Alpine INA-W910BT
___________
Life is not fair!
You can't protect people from their own stupidity!
Laughter makes life worth living

Sort of amazing that investors are will to take zero interest for a safe place to park cash: 30 day TBills...

From Wednesday's WSJ, excerpted:
"Investors gave the U.S. government 0% financing and the yield on other Treasury bills fell below 0% on
Tuesday...

The Treasury sold four-week notes at a 0% yield for the first time, with investors in effect giving their
cash to the government for safe-keeping until 2009. This rush to safety occurred last year, too, when
investors wanted only to own the very safest, most liquid investments when they closed their books at
the end of the year."

The same nervous investors snapped up three-month Treasury bills, pushing their prices up and yield
down below zero for a brief period."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122883278593491329.html

Joe Six Pack, and even some of us with a few quid in the ol' portfolio,
are scratching our heads over the umptyseventh crook that surfaces
belly up, in the slime pond know as Wall St. Between the "banks", the
derivatives, the scams and the already wasted billions, one wonders
if even that beef stew can full of Bens, buried in the backyard, is really
safe.

My father-in-law was way back "in line" to invest some of his millions with
this fookin putz...hope Madoff has fun in the joint with the iron pumping
group.
BR,mD

For Investors, Trust Lost, and Money Too


By DIANA B. HENRIQUES and ALEX BERENSON
Published: December 12, 2008
The zoning lawyer in Miami trusted him because his father had dealt profitably with him for decades. The officers of a little charity in Massachusetts respected him and relied on his advice.


Times Topics: Bernard L. MadoffWealthy men like J. Ezra Merkin, the chairman of GMAC; Fred Wilpon, the principal owner of the New York Mets; and Norman Braman, who owned the Philadelphia Eagles, simply appreciated the steady returns he produced, regardless of market conditions.

But these clients of Bernard L. Madoff had this in common: They chose him to oversee much of their personal wealth.

And now, they fear, they have lost it.

While Mr. Madoff is facing federal criminal charges, accused by federal prosecutors of operating a vast $50 billion Ponzi scheme, many of his clients are facing an abrupt reversal of fortune that is the stuff of nightmares.

“There are people who were very, very well off a few days ago who are now virtually destitute,” said Brad Friedman, a lawyer with the Milberg firm in Manhattan. “They have nothing left but their apartments or homes — which they are going to have to sell to get money to live on.”

From New York to Palm Beach, business associates of Mr. Madoff spent Friday assessing the damage, the extent of which will not be known for some time. Many invested with Mr. Madoff through other funds and may not know that their money is at risk.

Emergency meetings were being held at country clubs, schools and charities to assess the potential losses on their investments and to look for options.

There is not much guidance available yet from regulators. On Friday, a federal judge appointed a receiver to oversee the Madoff firm’s assets and customer accounts. A Web site is being set up to keep customers informed, but no one is sure yet whether any sort of safety net will catch the most vulnerable investors.

For Stephen J. Helfman, a lawyer in Miami whose father had opened an account with Mr. Madoff more than 30 years ago, the news on Thursday came as a hammer blow.

“The name ‘Madoff’ has overnight gone from being revered to reviled in the Helfman family,” Mr. Helfman said on Friday. His grandmother, at 98, relied on her Madoff money to pay for round-the-clock care, he said, and his two children’s college funds were wiped out.

“Thirty-six years of loyalty, through two generations, and this is what we get,” he said.

The news was equally devastating for the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation in Salem, Mass., which works to reverse the dilution of Jewish identity through intermarriage and assimilation by sending teenagers to Israel and supporting other Jewish education efforts.

The foundation was forced on Friday to dismiss its small staff and shut down its programs to cope with its losses in the Madoff funds, according to Deborah Coltin, its executive director.

“We’ve canceled everything as of today, everything,” she said tearfully.

Ms. Coltin said she did not know how the little foundation came to be so exposed to the Madoff firm. Its most recent tax filings show that it had $7 million at the end of 2006, with $143,344 in stocks and the rest in “government securities.”

It reported the sale that year of “Bernie Madoff” securities, but did not explain what those securities were.

Sam Englebardt, a media investor in Los Angeles, said several relatives had entrusted virtually all of their assets to Mr. Madoff — and he understood why.

“It seems like a huge over-allocation, I know,” Mr. Englebardt said. “But remember, they had started out small and invested over 5 years, 15 years, 30 years — and every year they got a great return, and they could always take money out without ever having a problem.”

As that track record lengthened, his relatives gradually entrusted more of their savings to Mr. Madoff, he said. “I suspect that is what has happened across the board,” he added. “People came to trust him so much that, eventually, they trusted him with everything.”

Such stories were repeated in e-mail messages and telephone calls throughout the day on Friday. A woman in Brooklyn whose father died just weeks ago found that his entire estate and a substantial portion of her stepmother’s money was invested with Mr. Madoff. A law school official in Massachusetts fears he has lost millions in the collapse of the Madoff operation.

Some wealthy victims, of course, can afford to seek redress on their own. But for them, litigation seems the only certainty.

Throughout the rumor-fueled hedge fund world on Friday, money managers were comparing notes and assessing losses. By all accounts, they run broad and deep — in the billions.

Mr. Merkin, a prominent philanthropist and the founder of several hedge funds, including one called Ascot Partners, jolted his clients on Thursday with a letter announcing that “substantially all” of that fund’s $1.8 billion in assets were invested with Mr. Madoff.

“As one of the largest investors in our fund, I have also suffered major losses from this catastrophe,” Mr. Merkin said in the letter. “We have retained counsel to determine what our next steps should be.”

Some of Mr. Merkin’s investors have also “retained counsel.” Harry Susman, a lawyer in the Houston office of Susman Godfrey, said he was talking with several clients about legal options.

“These investors were never aware that all of their money was invested with Madoff,” Mr. Susman said. “They are obviously shocked.”

Sterling Equities and the Wilpon family acknowledged on Friday that they had money at risk in the Madoff scandal.

“We are shocked by recent events and, like all investors, will continue to monitor the situation,” said Richard C. Auletta, a spokesman for Sterling and the Wilpons.

The Mets organization issued a statement saying that the scandal would not derail its new Citi Field stadium project in Queens or “affect the day-to-day operations and long-term plans of the Mets organization.”

A lawyer for Norman Braman of Miami, a wealthy retired retailer and the former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles football team, confirmed that Mr. Braman, too, had money locked up and perhaps lost in the Madoff mess.

And Bramdean Alternatives, a London asset manager run by Nicola Horlick, saw its share price plummet nearly 36 percent on Friday after it announced that nearly 10 percent of its holdings were caught in the Madoff scandal.

Mr. Madoff has resigned from his positions at Yeshiva University, where he was treasurer for the university’s board and deeply involved in the business school.

“Our lawyers and accountants are investigating all aspects of his relationship to Yeshiva University,” said Hedy Shulman, a spokeswoman for the university.

The most recent tax filings for the university show that its endowment fund, a separate charity, was heavily invested in hedge funds and other nontraditional alternatives at the end of its fiscal year in 2006.

The school paper, the Yeshiva Commentator, recently reported that its endowment’s value had dropped to $1.4 billion from $1.8 billion — before the scandal broke.

__________________
Ol'UncleMotor
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An Ethanol Bailout?

And we thought we'd seen everything.

Along with Russia, Venezuela, Iran and the Dubai property market, add another name to the list of bubble economies hurt by the falling price of oil: the ethanol industry. And naturally, the ethanol lobby is looking for a bailout on top of its regular taxpayer subsidies.

The commodity bust has clobbered corn ethanol, whose energy inefficiencies require high oil prices to be competitive. The price of ethanol at the pump has fallen nearly in half in recent months to $1.60 from $2.90 per gallon due to lower commodity prices, and that lower price now barely covers production costs even after accounting for federal subsidies. Three major producers are in or near bankruptcy, including giant VeraSun Energy.
So here they go again back to the taxpayer for help.

The Renewable Fuels Association, the industry lobby, is seeking $1 billion in short-term credit from the government to help plants stay in business and up to $50 billion in loan guarantees to finance expansion. The lobby would also like Congress to ease the 10% limit on how much ethanol can be added to gasoline for conventional cars and trucks -- never mind the potential damage to engines from such an unproven mix.

Of course, the ethanol industry wouldn't even exist without the more than $25 billion in taxpayer handouts over the past 20 years. Congress only recently passed energy and farm bills that further greased ethanol production with a 51 cent a gallon tax credit, corn subsidies, plus increasingly stringent biofuel mandates. We were told, as usual, that profitability was just around the corner.

The uglier realities of corn ethanol are at least becoming more widely recognized, even on the political left. The Environmental Working Group and five other environmental organizations said this week they oppose a bailout because subsidies "for corn-based ethanol have produced unintended, yet potentially catastrophic environmental consequences, with little or no return to taxpayers in energy security [or] protection from global warming."

Don't expect Congress to listen. Ethanol may never be profitable in the real world, but in Washington it's a lucrative business that provides jobs and votes. Like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ethanol is a business created by Congress that now has to be bailed out to save Congress from embarrassment.

Hi David, I haven't checked in a while and woke up this morning to a flat tire on the X-5, Merry Xmas. I feel for your situation, it is very difficult seeing years of conservative living and saving dissappearing on what seems on a daily basis. My 201k plan is down 48% and when my Oppenheimer confirmations come to the post office, I don't even open them, they go right into the blue trash bins. As part of our legacy, we old timers always thought that we would leave a cushion for the kids when we start driving the X-5, heavenly edition. Looking at the Madoff situation, things could be worse for us. I never planned on an early retirement anyway but I assumed it would be by choice and not circumstances. My accountant called and told me that I was old and that I should put in the $5000 catchup provision before the end of the year. My question is why (except for the tax deduction) I'd rather not watch that money fly away also.
You will survive this, I'm quite sure-just remember you have to ask "paper or plastic" - kidding.
Best wishes to you and your family during this holiday season.
Fred

Hi DocFred,
Good to read you again!

If I was still earning income, I'd sock that extra 5Gs away...I'm even thinking of rolling my 101K into a Roth,
pay the taxes and hope I live long even to get that fund caught up; it would be tax free then, to me or heirs.

I'm not going to miss lunch, but it is disconcerting to see a third plus of the old port. just erode away.

NEway, our best wishes to you and your Fam...I enjoy your emails and hope to read you more frequently,
here or there.
Best Regards, mD