June 19, 2008 11:10PM

The Big 3: Help the Help, Longing to Short, and Goldman Gobbles up the Stragglers

By Cody Willard

1. The Red Cross Is Broke.
2. Contrary to the Contrarian…
3. i Is for Illuminati.

1. I mentioned yesterday that the floods in the midwest would cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in losses and rebuilding efforts. Turns out, the floods have already depleted the entire national Red Cross disaster relief fund and the agency is now taking out loans to pay for the services its providing in the Midwest right now. Hey, if you wanna help, visit RedCross.org.

2. I’m a pretty vocal commodity bear…and I’ve been a pretty vocal bear on the financials since they finished their recent post-bear sterns bail out rally. I’m wondering if maybe the contrarian trade is to stay long the commodities and short the financials.

3. So Goldman, which has seemingly orchestrated much of all the behind the scenes movements of the Fed and the bail outs they’re sending to Wall Street, reports billions in earnings and says they’ve got some plans to take over some of the struggling SIVs. Call me paranoid if you want, but I gotta call out the manipulative iBank conspiracy that’s seemingly more powerful than ever. I though the “I” in iBank stood for investment…not Illuminati

2 Responses to “The Big 3: Help the Help, Longing to Short, and Goldman Gobbles up the Stragglers”

Comment by Justin

June 20th, 2008 at 10:54 am

I’ll definetly make a donation. It’s funny you know how different the people in Iowa are handling the massive flooding compared to the people of New Orleans in the Katrina aftermath. The key difference is that one group of people lived on government subsidies for generations while the other group of people took control of their situation and didn’t wait for government to save them.

The only victims of Katrina were those that the government created via unchecked subsidization. When you provide people money to stay comfortably in the economic position they are in, you create a dependence to the state. Eventually it becomes engrained as a life style and people have no incentive or will to do anything except ask for more government welfare. The dependence on the state gets bad enough to where people wont even leave their city with a major hurricane bearing down on them. And once government isn’t there to provide for these people, they resort to shooting, looting, and the law of the jungle instead of coming together and taking the initiative to help themselves and their neighbors. This is a perfect example of how the unchecked welfare will ruin a country.

As far as commodities goes, I’ve been bullish on them a long time. I come from the Jim Rogers school of thought, and what he’s been saying makes alot of sense to me. Is oil a bubble? I don’t know, but I don’t these evil hedge funds, institutional investors, OPEC, and the oil companies conspiring to artificially keep supply short. I think it’s a weak dollar problem, since an ounce of gold today would buy you the same amount of oil is it would 20 years ago.

I see our government infringing on private property rights and I see other nations drilling in our own gulf and laughing. Do these other nations give a crap if there’s an oil spill that ruins our beaches? Are the greens going to take fascist actions to force other nations from drilling in international waters? I believe it’s just a bunch of leftist crap that the bureaucrats are spewing so they can gain even more control of our lives via windfall taxation, expand their voter base via wealth redistribution, and help bring home the bacon to their expensive special interest green energy companies at the expense of the American tax payer. When green energy can be produced at the same cost or cheaper than petro without massive subsidies, I’ll make the transition. I sure as heck wont do it to combat “man made” global warming.

I don’t like Goldman. I don’t like any of the banks. I think they are hiding something in their books. I don’t know how much longer they can hide it. It’s a wait and see however before I take a massive short position in them. The Fed at this point is screwed. They sure as heck can’t cut anymore without fueling even more inflation, and if they raise to protect the dollar, our debt bubble economy will come crashing down. It’s going to be interesting to watch the actions of helicopter Ben. Something has to give eventually, and I’m leaning toward a continual fall in the dollar to protect the bubble since inflation favors debtors. Of course, that will send prices soaring and a huge drop in the standards of living for everyone in this country.
Comment by DanS

June 20th, 2008 at 11:34 am

Hi Cody, I am pretty sure you questioned your hedge fund guest yesterday on why he was focusing on US stocks, stating something like the Nasdaq is high. High? It is still 50% off the bubble high. Did you mean the S&P 500? If so, it is inline with historical average. I thought you were SLOW MONEY?