You Can Quote Me On That

They believe their own public relations...

"There's a mark born every minute and one to trim 'em [rip off] and one to knock 'em [warn away]." Mark Twain

You can't question their belief in themselves and their ability to convince their public and each other, that they are the greatest and there should be no doubt in the stock market, that the purveyors of Wall Street regard themselves with. Their opportunistic manipulative optimism when there are significant problems on Main Street and across the real America is a testament to their removal from reality and is simultaneously surreal and magnificent.

When have you ever known the common broker to tell you to sell? Before the 1962 wild crash? 1973? 1987? 1989 mini crash? 2000? 2001? 2007? 2009? 2010 flash crash? It is in their interest to keep the stock market aloft no matter what, regardless of underlying fundamentals, economic conditions outside of the market and common sense. In a perverse way, you have to admire their capacity to convince themselves and whoever is buying stocks right now, yet one more time, that stocks always go up and never go down. As it stands now they are all looking up, huffing and puffing and blowing, to keep a bubble afloat.

Anyone interested in buying some municipal bonds?

Declining Value

Tracking A Toxic Asset...

These are graphics from Planet Money's blog where they bought a toxic asset created with more than 2000 mortgages from across the country and tracked it. The asset had been worth $75,000 but was purchased for $1000 and the graphics shows how much value it has lost.

In the beginning Dec 2006, “Toxie” was a little sick

But by July 2010, “Toxie” was a almost dead…