Tick Talk Live

For three days I’ve been waiting for someone, ANYONE to publish the real reason that $JPM cut it’s dividend (.38 to .05). JP feeds a line of malarkie to the press about wanting to pay back TARP asap. How patriotic (yeah, that was sarcasm). 

Fact is, JP is kicking Uncle Sam where the sun doesn’t shine for the fiscal year of 2009 by cutting 4 billion bananas from the domestic income flow and yanking 1 billion blips directly from the clutches of the Revenue collecting arm (aka IRS) of the USA (dividends are taxed between 15% and 30% so I rounded to 20%).

So, what set JP off? I mean, yeah, there’s this pissing match between big banks and the fed. Big banks shamed Uncle Sam into making the implicit guarantee of Freddie and Fannie loans into explicit government debt. We get that. And in return we are seeing the Fed socialize the mortgage market, and they are building their own exchanges so they can get more money when they issue their new products (TPO‘s [tax payer obligations]), but to have JP lash out like this – wow, I’d love to know the real scoop.   

At the end of the day, I’m disappointed in the peanut gallery of publishers. They take whatever statements they get and just throw them out there. Doesn’t matter how absurd the spin is, they just dance to it. Choke on this you dance-a-teria types! You’ll dance to anything by any bunch of stupid Europeans who come over here with their big hairdos intent on taking our money instead of giving your cash, where it belongs, to a decent American artist like myself! (you guessed it, quoting Dead Milkmen)

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Bernanke gave a speech about the rosey prospects of domestic banks and the verbatim phrase was “significant franchise value.”  Here is a look at what he was referring to along with its proper translation:

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Backdrop: Oct. 15, 2008

Warren Buffet: “If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.”

Tick Talk: 5 Reasons to Ignore Warren Buffet  (old fart is doing that ”verbal intervention trick” hoping more buyers will hop in and he/brk.a/brk.b can cash out).

SeekingAlpha readers:
Agreed: 5
Disagreed: 23        …and I quote: ”Who the hell are you?” “You’re a nobody.” “Any idiot can write a catchy headline, your article is totally wrong and complete crap.” “Buffet is a patriot and you are a vile communist.” etc…
——————FOUR MONTHS LATER————————————-

Buffet‘s BRK.A happens to be selling American equities  JNJ and PG.

Tick Talk: ”When Buffet is fearful, I get greedy.” Yep, just made that up. In reality, fear and greed are the most ruinous approaches to investing because – because they lack discipline, planning, and, well they aren’t strategies at all. They are base emotions.    

SeekingAlpha readers: ummm, SA won’t cover this article. It’s too short. Seems their readers need wordy, time-wasting propaganda to help them arrive at the wrong conclusions.  Pity too – “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Bill Shakespear.

Song: BELIEVE (add the line, “I don’t believe in Buffet” sounds good huh?)

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The constitution is hanging by a thread. There. I said it. And perfectly sincerely too. Congress has finally and formally approved funding for the solution of all solutions, the TSE (tax-payer sponsored entities). It looks like this: IF you have a job, be grateful. All of your earnings will pay for your taxes and your company’s taxes; and the taxes of people who don’t have jobs, and the taxes of all the companies who don’t have money (as well as to banks etc. that have lots of money but simply want more [but are adamant that they don't NEED more]).

The body populace is unfit for the time. The body politic is unfit for the time. Here’s how I figure:  In the first Great Depression, Herbert Hoover relied on the ”rugged individualism” of the nation. He had a generation of industrious people who had borne off the industrial revolution with glory. Today, the President has a generation of techustrious (almost said hindustrious) people who are technically useful, but really useless. See, they are really good and doing things virtually – not literally. The utterly meaningless minutiae of super-computer processing power which – in the hands of the people, is not instrumental in developing a people of principle, but in producing the super-consumer. Hence, a doubly unfit populace for the time.

Revolution. There. I said it. And perfectly sincerely two (yes, five months ago I mentioned it for the first time.) And that is shaping up to be impotent as well. Continuing with the techie theme, let me put it this way, if online colonists had the sensibility to understand what just happened AND if they roused a few patriotic (anti-tax) delegates and sent them to a continental congress of some kind, the product of the assemblage would be about as influential as a Google Ad. 

Only the oppressed are equal to the task (most of whom reside south of the border) and as demonstrated in Mexico City recently (and exponentially evident in border towns), their collective intention seeks power in thievery via the House of Lords – drug lords, that is.  Given that Los Angeles is in the top five most wealthy cities in America, and with the understanding that the Great State of California is bankrupt (makes one miss the good ole days when only little places like Orange County went bankrupt), I’ll predict that LA is the first city to be wrested from the Union.

Poverty. There. I said it. And perfectly sincerely too. The term is relative. Like happiness and misery as our perception of change will classify it. It’s akin to Dorothy saying ”Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” She was scared – just like the good folks in Kansas today who won’t be getting their State Tax Refunds for a while and just like the employees of the State of Kansas who “may not get paid” on Friday.  Those who bought (literally) the lie that poverty is a shameful calamity to fear more than death, if they decide to live and adapt to the changes, will discover a world where time (which was shamefully scarce) is plentiful and subsistence (which was a calamity of over-accumulation) is a simple matter of sowing seeds. Oh, and this is the best part: the leisure activities we presently pay ransom prices for (concerts, sports events, theatre) will go from pricey and surrounded by strangers to priceless and produced among friends. The island mentality is a classic example. Here’s a little tune (as always) to put it in perspective.

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$DJX $DIA – Do you hear that? NO? Well, surely you can SEE it, right? Bearish engulfing candle body nosing over the edge of a 2000 pt. descending triangle. One word: ominous.

Still don’t get it? Try this:

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The article had its value, but the comments took the cake. Here is my contribution to the commentary:

     Wow, verbally duelling economists. That’s kinda fun. What would be better is if someone called for a dance-off (the peaceful solution to inner city trash-talkin) – older folks might relate to “racing for pinkslips.” The point is performance. Name-drop and study-cite until you’re blue in the face, but it’s all hot air until the money hits the road. Does anyone here apply their brilliance by placing personal capital at risk AND have proof of profitability? If so, that would end the bickering toute de suite.

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Stocktwits.com is calling for a Boycott of CNBC. That’s simple as pi for me. I stopped watching that junk five years ago. If you aren’t in the anti-media-because-it’s-a-propaganda-machine club, start now and enjoy the peace and prosperity of your own brain-works by putting your TV/PC on ice for a day:

Here’s why: News is noise. Always has been, always will be. “If it bleeds, it leads” is what they say – and why? To make the viewers emotional in hopes of that those viewers (the masses) will make the mistake of abandoning reason (aka: suitable investing approach) and capitulate profits into the hands of greedy manipulators.

Financial media operations are owned by large corporations. The motives of said corps are:

1. Stimulate trading (buying or selling). Ever wonder why brokers advertise there? Bonnie and Clyde, those two.

2. Promoting the ticker symbols of themselves and criticising their competitors.

I have yet to meet a seasoned trader that relies on any media stream (tv, radio, newspaper, magazine, e-subscription, twitter, etc) for anything other than entertainment.  Most of us know that price combined with volume over time as represented on a chart is the most honest and accurate depiction of reality.

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Fellow consigliere Isabelle shared this with me (and a few other wikinvest groupies). It’s a hoot, so I’m inclined to share the laughs as brilliantly orchestrated by Johannes Kreidler:

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