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

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