Regulations

By -
Three things. One I meant to post on a while ago.
 
1) Why. WHY? is our central bank acting as a regulator of our financial services industry? Who thought that one made sense? Hmm... central bank.. supporting the currency... and regulating the financial industry... thats a logical combination.
 
2) Freddie and Fannie were and are too bloated. Amazingly it was only a month or two that they were expanded to be able to take on more mortgages in order to "help out" with our current crises. Good bit 'o thinking that.
 
3) SEC's naked short selling ban. I find this one disingenuous. Naked short selling is already banned. The primes are calling this a firm pre-locate requirement on these stocks, which it is, but I am going to be a little bit more of a pessimist. The thing is, this came after Freddie and Fannie tanked and the US govt agreed to give them unlimited support. My view is that the SEC is 'protecting' Freddie and Fannie from the hedgies the govt. believes could take them under and cost the govt. a bundle. Now, the interesting thing, is that I have pulled the stock loan rates on these guys (Bloomberg needed them for an article, and I think they will be a little disappointed with the result on this one), and both Freddie and Fannie were general collateral (easy to borrow) through their entire fall. What that means, and this is interesting, is that there is no need to naked short, because it is dead easy to get a locate on the shares. And, this has generally been true of most financial services firms recently: with their huge (90+%) of institutional ownership, they are easy to borrow. So what the hell is the SEC doing by banning an already banned action? Swinging baseball bats at ghosts, in my opinion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top 10 Ways to Not Suck at Driving

By -
Image
There are a lot of shitty drivers out there. Actually, most people are shitty drivers. They don't really know anything about cars, about driving, about limits of adhesion, how to react when things go badly, or what snow does to your ability to drive. In fact, most people think that driving slowly, regardless of what lane you are in, whether you are merging onto a highway or holding up 50 cars behind you, means "being a good driver." Just because you have spent many years driving in the left lane at 65mph does not make you a good driver, in fact, just the opposite. A good driver means you know how to drive, not that you have gotten lucky or simply average for the past 10 years. Personally, I would love to see a class in high school devoted to driving. I think it could be fun and informative while greatly reducing the number of accidents (especially fatal ones) on the roads every year. Right now, the driving exam is basically a joke, it means that you know what the pedals
Read more

This is just disgusting....

By -
Image
British teen Stacey Irvine hospitalized after eating nothing but chicken nuggets for 15 years By Ryan Jaslow Topics News  , Kids and family  , Food and Drink  , Strange 24 Comments Have Your Say Email Story Send to a Friend Share This Tell Your Friends Tweet This Tweet This More Share It (Credit: istockphoto) (CBS) Talk about being a picky eater. A British teenager reportedly has eaten "practically nothing" but chicken nuggets for the past 15 years. And now she's paying for it. PICTURES: Yum - or yuck? 20 freakish fried foods Seventeen-year-old Stacey Irvine didn't think her nugget habit was a big deal - until she collapsed one day work, The Sun  reported. When Stacey arrived at the hospital, doctors were horrified to find she had eaten chicken nuggets every single day and "never" ate fruits or vegetables. "My main meal is always chicken nuggets every day," Stacey told the paper. "I
Read more