Post-partisanship

Obama’s job plan will send us into a stock market bubble

September 9, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

There was a speech by some leader of the supposed “Free World” last night?

Ah, yes. The Republican/Democrat Regime’s current puppet leader came out with a $500 billion corporate welfare program to further boost the biggest companies’ earnings last night. Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP were already at historically record levels. I expect that more corporate welfare will further boost corporate profits in coming quarters.

To be clear then — I am sick and appalled by both parties’ ability to continuously and blatantly expand corporate profits as a percentage of GDP (rather than say trying to grow GDP and to simply level the playing field and apply all laws and taxes equally to everybody and every company…exactly as was called for in our constitution with that whole “justice is blind” concept), but just because we are appalled at it, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to profit on it.

And that’s just it. The government’s forcing you to figure out how to get any kind of return on any kind of money you might have (how’s that 0.5% interest rate that the Fed enables the banks to borrow money so that you have to lend the banks your money at that same rate going to help you build your nest egg?).

And if that much time and energy from our corporate leaders is spent coming up with these new ways to artificially boost corporate profits while pretending to do so in the name of “labor”….

Well, I expect that all this will indeed help propel this stock market and many of what would otherwise be smaller/less-profitable companies into a big ol’ bubble. Just like these policies have done throughout my lifetime….how many bubbles have you seen in the last ten years alone?

Nothing has changed the overall political and macroeconomic set up and our playbook remains the same after last night’s “Jobs speech”.

As for our portfolio and trading today, Sandisk and Marvell are both popping again, despite Texas Instruments’ and Corning both having warned about the present quarter. The commentary isn’t “we can’t stay up with demand”, but as I’ve said repeatedly, even in this current economic/consumer soft patch we are experiencing, corporate profits remain in growth mode. And profit growth is probably what will drive these stocks just as it usually does.

Indeed, Texas Instruments is actually up fractionally after that guide-down. And Corning is down only in magnitude with the broader markets’ action itself.

I’m not expecting to do a whole lot of trading again today. We’ve had a big bounce of the recent lows in the portfolio and I’m continuing to let our hard-earned positioning play itself out according to the playbook.

Filed Under: Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship, Stocks

Rick Perry loves big government and other true political stories

September 2, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

I spoke to a group of politically active, so-called conservatives last week at a hotel here in my New Mexico hometown. One of the topics that kept coming up was whether I despised Texas Gov. Rick Perry as much as I despised most other candidates that the Republican/Democrat regime is trying to force me to pick from in the next election.

Let’s think through some deep thoughts and do fact-checking on Perry and the entire Left/Right paradigm as most people seem to see it right now:

You can spend about five minutes on the governor’s official website confirming that Rick Perry is yet another big-government, corporate-welfare lover from the Republican side of the Republican/Democrat regime, whose policies are fundamentally no different from the Clinton/Bush/Obama policies of years past.

Apparently, for example, the government doesn’t create jobs except when it’s welfare for Office Depot Inc. (ODP):

Gov. Perry: Fiscal Responsibility is Essential for Prosperity and Job Creation: Perry noted that government doesn’t create jobs; it creates the environment for jobs to grow. He credited Texas’s economic strength to the state’s low taxes, reasonable and predictable regulatory climate, fair legal system and skilled workforce.

Gov. Perry Announces TEF Investment in Office Depot to Create More Than 200 Jobs in Central Texas: Perry has announced the state is investing $300,000 through the Texas Enterprise Fund in Office Depot for the creation of the company’s new Inside Sales organization in Austin. Contingent upon the completion of a local incentive agreement, this investment will create 203 new jobs and a multimillion-dollar capital investment.

Sigh. I mean, what can you say? Maybe, with more welfare help from the taxpayers of the city of Austin, Perry’s government wants to take credit for creating 203 new jobs by giving $300,000 of welfare money from the taxpayers of Texas to Office Depot? But Perry says government doesn’t create jobs.

Don’t stop looking for the giveaways there … $300,000 is chump change compared to the amount of welfare that the energy industry gets from the taxpayer of Texas via Perry’s stewardship. It took me another five minutes to find this on another Texas government website:

Texas State and Local Energy Subsidies: The Comptroller’s Office also compiled an estimate of state and local energy subsidies for 2006. In Texas, state and local subsidies totaled $1.4 billion in 2006. Oil and gas garnered most of the subsidies with an estimated 99.6%. However, the oil and gas subsidies constituted only 1.5% of all Texas spending on oil and gas since the estimated total spending on the oil and gas industry was $94.7 billion in 2006.

I’m pretty sure I read that Perry is the longest-serving governor in Texas history, which would mean that he was in charge back in 2006. Wonder how much the Texan welfare fund for energy is costing tax payers now.

Is Perry a rightie? Is Obama is a leftist? I can’t tell which is which. Can you?

Let’s see … $14 trillion in bailouts from Bush and Obama in the last three years. Is that left or right?

$1 trillion for Obamacare over the next 10 years that seems to benefit the health-care lobby much more than it does the general public. Is that left or right?

Expanding our wars in the Arab world: Is that left or right? Did Bush II or Bush the First do that or did Obama do that? Wait, I’m confused.

Expanding Medicare and Medicaid budgets … didn’t Bush II and Reagan expand Medicare and Medicaid? Were they left or right again?

Increase taxes on the rich? How about we just stop bailing out the rich? Is that a left stance or a right stance? That’s my stance, anyway. I mean, for example, the banks and their shareholders and their lenders are on welfare and we’re talking about increasing taxes on them? How about just taking the whole of corporate America off welfare and simplifying the whole tax code?

The upshot: Don’t let the ongoing fake debate distract you from the trillions and 0% rates that are really what are more likely to drive our economy.

Filed Under: Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship

How Ron Paul can go mainstream and become our next president

July 22, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

http://twitter.com/codywillard

I don’t play the Republicans-are-conservative and Democrats-are-liberal game. I mean, I get the idea that Republicans pretend they are “conservative” and that Democrats pretend that they are “liberal”, but I don’t ever vote for either party. Yeah, I know that you Republicans will say that means I “split the vote” and put in Democrats, and that you Democrats will say that means I waste my vote by voting for somebody who can’t win. I disagree because the only wasted vote is one that feeds into their system.

Seriously, there is no difference between the parties. I’ve seen targeted tax tricks for the ultra-rich and corporate welfare explode throughout my lifetime under both, either, the same party.

I’ve seen Republicans start wars and Democrats extend them. I’ve seen Democrats start wars and Republicans extend them.

I’ve seen bailouts for Wall Street started for and propagandized by Republicans including Bush, Palin, McCain and McConnell. And I’ve seen that same incredible redistribution of wealth upwards expanded under the Democrats including Obama, Pelosi and Reed.

I’ve seen Reagan expand Medicare benefits for the elderly so that private corporations with huge lobby and donation power can profiteer on our system. I’ve seen Obama dramatically increase spending on the health care system so that those same private corporations, though much fewer in number after years of supposedly illegal consolidation and elimination of competition, can further their profiteering on our system.

I’ve seen Clinton – and now Obama – cut social services while dramatically increasing our spending on murderous unconstitutional wars. I’ve seen the intangible, but very real symbiotic corruption, of the mainstream media by these same parties up front and personal in my years in the public eye.

I’ve seen the Democrats expand the ability of the TBTF banks to extend and pretend, to loot and to profiteer on our financial system with a bill that they said would do exactly opposite called Dodd-Frank. (I actually read more than half of it, as I did all the bailout bills that come in the last three or four years, if you can call looking at that giant incomprehensible loophole nonsense “reading.”) I’ve seen the Republicans declare that if the Democrats don’t add hundreds of more pages and inconceivable loopholes to that bill that the entire financial system will collapse.

I’ve interviewed many of the Congressman, Senators and lobbyists who put these bills and propaganda through.

I’m very worried that we’ve gone way too far in the last few years. I am betting my time and money and reputation on that idea that these Republican/Democrat policies are driving us into yet another huge series of bubbles (please visit TradingWithCody.com or Revolution Investing for more info). We might have a few years of incredible wealth generation for the giant corporations, banks and elite who benefit from 0% interest rates and trillions in hidden monetary infusions/targeted tax tricks/extend and pretend policies.

But I’m worried that unless we quickly stop this incredible profiteering and looting by the corporate/banking/Republican/Democrat Regime that we’ll bankrupt ourselves somewhere say five to ten years out when the music stops once again and they can no longer borrow against your children’s future prosperity to enrich themselves.

Until we stop this rapidly expanding Republican/Democrat paradigm of redistributing trillions in wealth annually upwards from the quickly disappearing middle class, we have no business debating the four trillion dollars over a ten year period from the redistribution of wealth downwards. That is, let’s conquer the trillions spent annually on corporate welfare, bank welfare, homeowner welfare and other redistribution of wealth upwards. Then, let’s get to the debate about the one trillion of so spent annually on redistribution downwards. It’s a matter of simple math, no?

There are only a handful of people in the public eye, in the public sphere who get this concept and actually rail against it. One is presidential candidate Ron Paul. Another is Elizabeth Warren, who basically created and should have run the Consumer Financial Protection-Bureau.

Wait a minute! Isn’t Ron Paul a “major conservative?” Isn’t Elizabeth Warren a “liberal?” Ron Paul and Elizabeth Warren are on the same side!

See, there you go! You do a little homework and it turns out that the entire paradigm is all wrong. I’ve interviewed both of these incredible people several times over the years, and both in front of the camera and off, they are principled, smart and fighting for the common man/woman. I’ve read practically every interview they’ve given in the last few years. I’ve watched them volley back and forth against…the same enemies in Congress and the Federal Reserve.

So here’s what I propose. Congressman Ron Paul should get Elizabeth Warren as his VP candidate. Imagine the passion that ticket would enlist in people. It might actually win! It’d be impossible for any true “conservative” to vote against presidential candidate, Ron Paul. And it’d be impossible for any true “liberal” to vote against vice presidential candidate, Elizabeth Warren.

Congressman Ron Paul’s floated the trial balloon of even putting my good friend Judge Andrew Napolitano on his presidential ticket as his VP. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Judge Nap and he’s another very principled good man. But a Ron Paul/Andrew Napolitano ticket would have no chance of winning.

I think about it this way — my dear Aunt Mokie probably considers herself a died-in-the-wool “liberal” and I know she almost always votes for the warmongering/bailout-loving/upward-redistributing Democrats of the Republican/Democrat Regime. She’d never vote for a Ron Paul/Andrew Napolitano ticket, but I’d bet she’d vote for a Ron Paul/Elizabeth Warren. She’d at least think about it that way. No way a couple of “libertarians” like Ron Paul and Judge Nap would garner a second look from her, though.

The fact is that such leadership might actually turn this country around before it’s too late. If nothing else, it’d sure help re-frame this entire nonsensical conservative vs liberal paradigm that truly has no meaning in reality in the 21st century.

Filed Under: Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship

Dismantling the “TARP was paid back” lie

March 29, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

Hey, did you hear?! The banks paid their TARP bailouts loan back! Does that mean you and me all us hardworking citizens get a taxbreak because we’re so rich as a country now? No? Really? But, but, but…they paid it back! We’re rich! It worked!

I’m so sick of the propaganda from both sides of Republican/Democrat Regime, which both have created and carried out the ongoing outsized bailouts and bank welfare programs saying that the bailouts worked and that TARP specifically has been paid back. It’s a total lie.

TARP was only “paid back” only because the banks received trillions more in 0% loans, guarantees, tax breaks, welfare, welfare, welfare. You steal from me with your left hand and tell me about how my right hand paid me back. Lies, propaganda and utter BS.

Goldman, JPM, Wells Fargo, Warren Buffett (who bought and sold billions of dollars of the companies he knew from his sources would be getting bailouts and “saved” by the Republican/Democrat Regime and still owns a huge chunk of WFC and other banks/servicers), and all the rest of the crooked banksters on welfare need to send us taxpayers about $14 trillion by my calculations, when you include TARP, STIMULUS, OFFSHORE TAX CREDITS, 0% LOANS, GUARANTEES, QE1, QE2, MAIDEN LANE, AIG, FRE, FNM, AUTO, AND SO ON.

In other words, the banks have stolen $14 trillion of our assets so far since the Bush and Obama and their Republican/Democrat congresses started their explicit socialization of the banking system. And they’ve paid back about $700 million of that. We even? Just ask, Robert Samuelson, Ben Bernanke, Michael Pishkin or read these stories:

Why TARP has been a success story Washington Post – 12 hours ago
Editorial: Derided TARP bailout an unheralded success‎ – ScrippsNews
AIG Takes The First Step To Get Out From Under Government Bailout‎ – Daily News Pulse

The renter, wage earner and responsible savers are being forced at gunpoint to pay taxes and suffer the harshest tax of all (inflation) to give their money and assets to banksters, homeowners, corporations, and the oligarchy of the Republican/Democrat violently fascist regime. Taxes and inflation are forms of coercive violence. We’ll never get paid back from these firms, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a way to profit from these idiot banksters who are still on welfare despite Samuelson et al’s arguments.

Last week, I went through and updated my Revolution Investing analysis and the balance sheet information for all 20 stock picks from my special report, 14 Stocks That Should Double in 2011 (and 6 That Should Collapse). I’ve highlighted 14 underestimated stocks positioned for huge growth for the next couple years and six that are likely to collapse, including shorting both the XLF, XLF, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that represents a bunch of financial, mortgage servicers that gets me short the TBTF, bankster stocks that are somehow still receiving “emergency” welfare and interest rate loans from the taxpayer and are now going to start literally transferring some of that taxpayer largesse that they are receiving to the people who supposedly “risked” their capital as shareholders. And also, I’ve been building up my short position in Lender Processing Services, which can be thought of as a ratings agency, in terms of its culpability. You can get your hands on the entire report three different ways — Subscribe to my real-time stock trading service, http://TradingWithCody.com where I detail my real-time stock and option trades from my personal account for you. Subscribe to my Marketwatch Revolution Investing newsletter where I provide weekly fundamental analysis for individual stocks, the broader markets and the macro-economy. Buy the report itself at http://Tradesfor2011.com.

Filed Under: Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship, Revolutionomics Tagged With: banks, Tarp, TBTF

Why it’s time to short the banks

March 21, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

In a conversation we’re having at TradingWithCody.com, I just answered a subscriber’s question about how to trade Citigroup and the other big banks right now:

“Hey Cody! What do you think about the reverse split with Citi? Buy?? The other big banks? Buys? Thanks, Shawn.”

Shawn, I’m shorting the XLF of which Citi and its welfare-funded business is a part. Citi would be insolvent right now if not for ongoing welfare/transfer of wealth through the Republican/Democrat Regime’s policies. I don’t like to invest in companies that can’t survive without violent redistribution of wealth. Short and fight all the TBTF welfare bailed out banks til they learn to live on private funds!

Let’s think this latest “the banks are finally in the clear” logic all the way through, as the biggest, most influential and heavily subsidized banks in our supposedly “free market” country get approval to “pay dividends”. Somebody explain to me how the Fed can approve “normalized dividends” at the banks while keeping them on “emergency welfare/loans/subsidies”??? You can’t have it both ways. Get the banks off welfare, make them pay taxes, make them borrow from the free market and stop all guarantees and then they can give all the dividends they want!

Until Citi, JPM, Wells Fargo, Goldman, et al are off the taxpayer tit, they have NO RIGHT TO tax me and send that money directly to their shareholders. Let’s just enforce the laws of the land and send these banksters to prison already! I’ve highlighted repeated examples of the CEOs, CFOs, traders and others in these firms who could easily be prosecuted for misleading statements they made about their balance sheets and the states of their businesses.

So yeah, I’m shorting some XLF, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that represents a bunch of financial, mortgage servicers that gets me short the TBTF, bankster stocks that are somehow still receiving “emergency” welfare and interest rate loans from the taxpayer and are now going to start literally transferring some of that taxpayer largesse that they are receiving to the people who supposedly “risked” their capital as shareholders. They don’t see the pendulum swinging back against the endless subsidization of a broken financial system, but it is swinging on main street now, and within a couple years, I expect the tide will have gone out on these giant banks that can’t endure without access to taxpayer money. Regardless of your politics, this looks to me to be a good bet and an excellent short hedge against our many long bets.

I’m detailing my trades in real-time on TradingWithCody.com, and I’m sharing a weekly compilation of those posts every Friday for readers of my Marketwatch Revolution Investing newsletter. I also just updated my analysis and the fundamental data for every single stock in my report, “14 Stocks That Should Double in 2011 (and 6 That Should Collapse)” and we’re giving it away for free to subscribers of Marketwatch Revolution Investing. Click here to sign up for my email trading alert service, Trading with Cody. Click here to sign up for my weekly investment newsletter, Marketwatch Revolution Investing.

Filed Under: Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship, Revolutionomics, Stocks Tagged With: banks, short stocks, stock trading

Headlines about banking and real estate that every investor needs to read

March 8, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

The model of thinking that got our Country into such bad shape can be called “financial absenteeism.” It can seem at times that no one entity claims responsibility over any part of the financial crisis. Indeed, mortgages were passed around like a hot potato, then diced, reconstituted, and everything but deep-fried. And if one believes that housing prices always go up, what’s the harm in keeping the game going? But the buck always stops somewhere, and here are some buck stopping headlines that all banking/finance/real-estate investors should be reading:

Profit from the robo-mess Revolution Investing - In today’s Marketwatch Revolution Investing newsletter, we reveal the results of weeks of exhaustive analysis by me and my team, including Ashwin Deshmukh and Bill Fox. Our goal was to find the single best play on the whole mortgage fraud/foreclosure/robo-signing-gate that I’ve been mentioning cursorily in regards to our banking sector shorts in recent months.

Mortgage Settlement Term Sheet: Bailout as Reward for Institutionalized Fraud - See, this is the exact logic I’ve been screaming to you dear readers and my former TV viewers since before the bailouts even started. Do you see how perverse the Republican/Democrat Regime and the bankers who fund it have gotten in their incentives and rewards systems? This Dodd-Frank / Basel II-III / Goldman Sachs/ Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac / AIG / publicly-funded system for bankers is not capitalism. Tails you win, heads we lose…that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

Massachusetts voters can now register as ‘Pirates’ - Do it, Mass peeps! There are almost always independents running around you, Susan. You just have to look past the front page of the paper. And if not, write in your own pick. There is no difference between the policies and the incentives from the Republican and the Democrat choices you’ve been destroying our country with. Register and vote Pirate and finally make a difference. Susan, I would want any nutty independent candidate over any Republican/Democrat candidate. Unorganized nuttiness will never be able to do the damage that organized candidates funded by people trying to steal all your money and property for the elites living on welfare in this country in the 21st century. Seriously, who can argue that?!

Peter King: Financial transparency may be next step to the NFL finding labor peace and Peter King: Players face big decision if owners open books; mail – Maybe the players should do a “stress test” like the Fed and Treasury did…point being, that the players will be fools to believe that the numbers the owners show them have any more place in reality than the numbers Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan and the rest of the banks . Come to think of it, the owners are on welfare just like the banks via their own below-market loans, subsidies, tax tricks and loopholes that the rest of us are forced to fund their businesses with. In fact, isn’t that the part of this whole debate that irks you more than anything else? Why are these NFL team owners and the players who work for them getting any help from the public dole at all? Tax the hotdog vendor so the billionaire owner of the Patriots can pay Tom Brady nine figures a year? Bankers, athletes, team owners should fund their businesses with their own damn money, not the public’s!

Foreclosure King David Stern Shuttering His Law Firm - Another domino in the still-pushed-forward collapse of the existing banking/financial/real-estate paradigm and the companies who are funding it with public money. Short the banking ETFs or check out today’s edition of my weekly Marketwatch Revolution Investing newsletter…

Why trading with Cody? and See what people are saying about Cody’s calls and trading successes – Long-time readers know that I sold all my stocks when I closed my hedge fund back in October 2007 and that I haven’t traded or owned a single stock since then. I told you readers late last year that I was planning to start trading again in 2011 — and that time has now come. I’ll also be chronicling those trades in real-time at TradingWithCody.com, so be sure to check that out if you’re an aggressive or professional trader.

Willard may have long or short positions in the companies mentioned in his newsletter. At time of publication, Willard was net long Cisco, Cypress, Nuance and Nokia, although positions can change at any time. Willard will not buy previously unmentioned securities in Revolution Investing until the next trading session. None of the information in this column constitutes a recommendation by Willard.

Filed Under: App Revolution, Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship, Revolutionomics, Stocks, Tech Tagged With: banks, democrat, financial crisis, republican, stocks

Revolution Investing Links 2/23/2011

February 23, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

Microsoft’s Kinect: The New Mouse? – The Kinect is a game-changer for Microsoft. It’s not about the revenues that Kinect will generate this year, which won’t move the needle much at Softee, but it’s about the Kinect platform and all the incredible apps, interfaces, games, and technologies that will be built upon it. I wrote a lot about the importance of the platform concept for technology investors, and with Kinect, Softee has just opened up a brand new platform that will, over the next twenty years, likely rival what Windows did over the past twenty years.

The median sales price for existing U.S. homes fell to $158,800, the lowest level in nearly nine years http://on.wsj.com/hn6P1L – In 2007 and 2008, every time we talked about the real estate market on the Fox Business show I anchored, I’d say, “There’s never been a better time to sell real estate than right now!” Fast forward to today, three or four years later and guess who’s shopping for real estate? I wouldn’t expect some sudden huge rebound in real estate, but if you’ve got a time horizon of ten or more years, now’s a great time to start buying real estate.

MERS Endgame Nearing? One County Seeks Over $22 Million for Unpaid Recording Fees – I’ve been doing a lot of work on Lender Processing Services and some of the other servicers as potential shorts and cited LPS in my Marketwatch Revolution Investing newsletter a few weeks ago as a short-side trade. It’s probably a great longer-term short too.

Amazon Couples Movie Streaming With Shipping – I don’t know why the author didn’t make the connection that Netflix also makes the “odd coupling of shipping and cinema” with their mail-order DVD along with their video streaming businesses. I wonder if in ten years whether Amazon will still be getting the bulk of their sales from shipped physical goods. And man, both of these stocks have been too expensive for my taste for a long time, even as I’ve cited both many times as very good plays on the App Revolution.

Revolutionomics – The end game of the Internet and app revolutions is total empowerment of the individual (subscription) – A sample from my newsletter published here on Marketwatch yesterday:

Control has fully shifted from the few to the many, and each of us now has more control than anyone’s ever had before. Our forefathers knew that a system of checks and balances would help curb corruption. They put in a system in which three disparate branches of government keep an eye on each other, and the framers knew that it was important enough to keep the government and the press apart that they made freedom of the press the First Amendment to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights.

As brilliant as he was, I’m not sure Thomas Jefferson ever would have imagined what a system of a billion checks and balances would look like — or the prosperity that such a system would spark. The one thing that evil always hates is attention. We always fight evil by calling attention to it — we’re taught to scream if we’re attacked, we install loud alarms to protect our cars and homes, we put up lights and security cameras to safeguard citizens.

This power shift from the media and the politicians to the public is not really a sum-zero game. More entities — especially individuals — will be empowered. But old-school media outlets will never lose all of their power either. Granted, the old school media outlets themselves will be subject to the empowered watchdog bloggers and other checks and balances as never before. But like a growth-oriented, capitalistic economy that creates wealth and prosperity (rather than simply redistributing it) for most of its participants, so too does the empowering of the people result in a net creation of simply more power, prosperity and better checks and balances.

For specific trading ideas from these trends, please be sure to check out my my Marketwatch Revolution Investing newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter now and get a free copy of my $39 eBook, 14 Stocks That Should Double in 2011 (and 6 That Should Collapse). If you want to know how to invest in apps, be sure to check out my eBook, 50 Stocks for the App Revolution, which includes a handful of stocks I think can go up 500-1000%, by visiting http://AppRevolutionStocks.com. We also just published my brand new eBook, Ten More Undiscovered App Stocks, available at http://UndiscoveredAppStocks.com.

Filed Under: App Revolution, Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship, Revolutionomics, Stocks, Tech Tagged With: amazon, app revolution, internet, investing, kindle, microsoft

Small and medium businesses forced to fund their larger competitors

February 8, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

Well, hello Merger Monday! Thank the Bernank and his Federal Reserve minions and their Republican/Democrat Regime backers. We walk in today to see a flurry of M&A activity in the markets:

Beckman Coulter is being bought by Danaher for $6.8 billion. Pride rallied is selling itself to Ensco Plc for $7.3 billion. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway won the backing of the company’s board to buy the 20% of stock it doesn’t own in Wesco Financial Corp. AOL’s continues its content- acquisition spree as it buys the Huffington Post for $315 million. And there are several other mergers out there today.

Most all of those acquisitions are talking about finding efficiencies, generating higher margins and earnings for shareholders — read: lay offs and cost cutting.

And that’s sending the markets higher yet again and Mr. Bernanke and Mr. President and both parties who have been fueling all this push for lower corporate and wealthy taxes while giving unprecedented amounts of direct corporate welfare to the Chamber of Commerce they bow to will be able to point to the rallying stock markets as more evidence of their policies of flooding the biggest businesses with below market interest rate loans. Remember, that they say they are keeping rates and their laughably-undercounted misnomer QE”2″ which helps the biggest corporations and leverage buy out firms buy other companies…and find efficiencies by laying more people off.

To be clear, from all the conference calls I listened to the last couple quarters, it seems to me that job growth is turning and that the economy, corporate earnings and the markets are poised to boom for the next few quarters at least. But as any an economist has pointed out, even those so-called conservatives and and so-called liberals who were for the bailouts for big banksters and big financiers like GE, there’s little evidence that using taxpayer funds to save corporate and LBO America on interest charges isn’t helping to create jobs at all anymore. Yes, that direct transfer of wealth to the ownership class is helping fuel big takeovers in the markets…which are great for corporate earnings…because they result in job cuts.

The economy would be better off if we’d just prosecute the big bank executives who perpetrated and oversaw the perpetration of accounting fraud and let capital flow the most efficient operators and businesses, including those small and medium size businesses that pay double digit interest rates while paying taxes so their larger competitors can pay single digit interest rates.

Filed Under: Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship, Revolutionomics

Must read articles for every investor

February 4, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

BP Mediator Feinberg Can’t Call Himself Independent, Judge Says – Disclosure…that’s all this suit is about — disclosure. People simply have the right to know exactly how many and how deep the conflicts of interest between Feinberg and BP are. Why would anybody fight full disclosure in the public sphere? I used to hate it when pundits would come on my TV show and spew their “opinion” on a topic like health care or bank bailouts and then I’d come to find out later that they were secretly on the payroll of a health care company or a bank. See Inside Job for more on how these powerful people are paid to spread propaganda and pretend that it’s all their own thoughts. As for Feinberg and his secret conflicts of interest with BP and other giant corporations — “The clear record in this case demonstrates that any claim of the GCCF’s neutrality and independence is misleading to putative class members and is a direct threat to this ongoing litigation, as claimants must sign a full release against all potential defendants before obtaining final payments,” the judge said in yesterday’s ruling.

JPMorgan Hid Doubts on Madoff, Documents Suggest – I talked about this years ago, and the evidence is very damning for JPMorgan. As I said originally in this interview, “There’s an article in The New York Times today about J.P. Morgan pulling their own company’s money out of (Bernie) Madoff’s company a year before the Ponzi scheme came down, but they quote ‘Couldn’t tell their investors by law.’ So in other words, we protect ourselves from being protected.” What a crock — and if I were a customer in any way of JPM or any other TBTF bank that treats its customers that way, I’d leave and never come back. Short these crooks all the way down til the banks’ share of GDP is closer to historical norms….about 1-1.5% vs the 2.5-3% it is right now. For the best ways to trade the return to bank normalcy, please be sure to check out my report, 20 Trades for 2011.

Pete Peterson Using High School Courses As Trojan Horse for Anti-Social Security, Medicare Propaganda – Blackstone and Pete Peterson have privately sucked billions of dollars out of the economy in the last couple decades since they helped create the mortgage securitization market and regulations that destroyed our economy and led to them eventually getting explicit access to billions of dollars in welfare to continue to find other ways to unproductively suck money out of our system. But they have the gall to take that welfare money they live on now and actually try to use it to stop poor people from getting their own welfare? I bet Pete Peterson and Blackstone would tell you they are just capitalists doing their thing…but they themselves are only in business today and they themselves continue to benefit from explicit corporate welfare programs designed to help their firm and they are decidedly not capitalist. And they make me sick.

For all the details about the discovery of 6 new Earth-like planets, follow @NASAKepler & check out http://go.nasa.gov/e4Zf1f – So cool, so fascinating. On the other hand, I wonder – Do they have bailouts for corrupt bankers who then argue against welfare for poor people on their planets too? Do they have their own Martian Pete Peterson?

Chinese Online Video Company PPLive Raises A Whopping $250 Million http://tcrn.ch/hRVztU – Holy free money, Bernank-man, you better get busy with the next round of “quantitative easing”…oh wait, maybe there’s enough money in the system for big companies already?

The Fed in La-La Land, Again – I’ve been saying that we’ll be back closer to 7% or less in the unemployment numbers by the end of 2011…I think all this corporate welfare and free money for the banking system and giant corporations from the Fed and the Republican/Democrat Regime is sending us into another bubble, perhaps the Mother of All Bubbles (MOAB), and we’ll have some better employment numbers as part of that giant asset bubble. For the best ways to trade the upcoming Mother of All Bubbles, please be sure to check out my report, 20 Trades for 2011.

TiVo Says It Can A Better Job Analyzing The Effectiveness Of TV Commercials http://tcrn.ch/fZ4ZHs – Go back and look at a long term chart of Tivo. Then compare that to Netflix. What a difference having a vision of the future and executing on that vision actually makes, huh? Tivo could have been everything Netflix is today and perhaps more…but Tivo is like Walkman now. Any bets on which stock is a better buy right here right now? Netflix is so damn expensive that it will take years for the fundamentals to justify the current quote…but Tivo and its management are terrible. I don’t know — I’d rather just own Apple, as I have outlined for your readers since I first flagged the stock in my newsletter at $7 a share back in 2003 anyway.

Revolution Investing: How To Play The ‘App’ Boom

Revolution Investing’s Cody Willard explains to Simon Constable how to profit from the explosion in mobile applications.

Filed Under: Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship, Revolutionomics

Revolution Investing links: 1/31/2011

February 1, 2011 By cody Leave a Comment

Google Spent $5.2 Million On Lobbying In 2010; Up 29 Percent From 2009 http://tcrn.ch/e2Ell7 – Lawmaking is a great gig if you can get it. Google and the other lobby-happy corporations are likely to continue to benefit from influencing the laws that affect your freedom…but are you? Maybe it’s time to make a stand and refuse to vote for any lawmaker from any party that takes money from big corporate? Or do you like what they’ve done to your economy and country and want more of the same?

More Judges Pushing Back on Dubious Foreclosure Documents – The collapse of property law and their inability to legally foreclose along with the mortgage fraud debacle in which the mortgage servicers like JPM and Wells Fargo are now being accused to have been actively perpetrating fraud on the courts of the United States is 2011’s most under-apprecitated economic story. Forget the bankster-written Frank-Dodd bill, forget Basel III and its bankster-written capital requirement debates, forget the soon-to-end bankster welfare of 0% government loans and 3% government interest payments, the biggest issue confronting the mega/TBTF banks and the banksters running them is MERS and the destruction of property title chains in the states. Short the banksters and any firms related to mortgage service factory businesses. For specific trading strategies for this trend, please check out my 25-page report, 14 Stocks that Could Double in 2011 and 6 That Could Collapse.

How To Keep Up With the Latest News on Egypt – The Internet might be shut down in Egypt by the Republican/Democrat Regime-sponsored violently oppressive Mubarak Regime, but you can still help the Egyptian democracy and freedom cause by staying informed in this country for now.

Loneliest Man in Davos Foresees 2015 Bank Crisis While Global Elites Party – I’ve outlined similar possible timelines and a coming recurring bank/economic/societal crisis for subscribers of Revolution Investing. That said, I’ve also outlined and detailed how best to profit if we are first entering a new bubble, perhaps the Mother of All Bubbles (MOAB? Hmm) as a result of the bailouts/endlessQE/0% interest rates and the “Fed-forced risk” trade. Check out ten of my favorite bubble plays in my latest report, Ten More Undiscovered App Stocks.

Gross Derivatives Exposure – All discussions of bank capital ratios are a joke until we get some reality injected into what accounts for capital. This is a decent first step, but come on….we all know the entire financial system needs purging (including the complete break-ups of the mega/TBTF/welfare banks including Goldman Sachs and criminal prosecutions of any and all fraud and other financial crimes) and a complete rewrite of the rules, including accounting and regulatory. Bank profits as a share of GDP will be a bigger percentage for 2010 than ever before…I doubt I’ll be able to say the same ten years from now…one way or another, the pendulum has begun the swing and the current/expanding/unconstitutional government-mandated profits of the financial sector will fade in coming years. I highlight two specific ways to profit from this trend in my 25-page report, 14 Stocks that Could Double in 2011 and 6 That Could Collapse.

Android Takes The Top Spot From Symbian Following Strong Sales http://bit.ly/eeiccZ – Americans always give that shocked look when they see that Nokia still has as much market share as it does. Nokia’s not exactly been executing well in the last couple years, but I would not count them out just yet. Still, Apple and Google are the purest plays on the app revolution…even as they’re up huge over the last few months since I gave each of them 9/10 ratings in my 56-page report, 50 Stocks for the App Revolution, and up even bigger over the years as I’ve been highlighting each of them for subscribers to that Marketwatch Revolution Investing newsletter thingee I publish every Tuesday.

Filed Under: App Revolution, Economy, Politics, Post-partisanship, Revolutionomics, Stocks, Tech