Bond funds also did amazingly well this year so for the average investor this was the best year in a gazillion years.

"The pessimists look at the economy as still struggling and the prospects for business profits uncertain. Unemployment nationwide is expected to stay above 10 percent until the end of 2010. The pessimists point to other threats -- rising government spending and the threat that inflation will come back to life, perhaps after government support of financial institutions begins to ease off in a few months."

If the SS defines pessimist as someone who has intelligence, count me in.

The silly percent game continues in this newspaper almost on a daily basis. If the stock market loses 50% of value, to recover it needs to gain 100%. Those who don't understand the simple math shouldn't be involved in the stock market unless their portfolio is managed by a professional money manager. A 19% percent gain in the market for a typical year is good. However, following a period where the DJIA went from 14,000 to 6,000 points, the year is hardly worth mentioning. Yes, since the DJIA is now above 10,000 points, the market has recovered a little over half of what it lost but we are far away from recovery. It might be worth mentioning that the feds propped up the economy by running a serious deficit and cranking up the national debt so high that we won't be paying it down to pre-2008 levels in my lifetime, that of my children and possibly my grandchildren. Yes, I guess I am a pessimist or as I would refer to myself...realist.

Apple and Dow has made my bank account runneth over!

TrimTabs Asks: Who Is Responsible For The Non-Stop Market Rally Since March; Gives Some Suggestions

http://tinyurl.com/ykbuepl

Is The Government Misrepresenting Unemployment By 32%?

What becomes obvious is that a correlation which used to be almost 1.000 has diverged massively, and now the relative outlays surpass what the government highlights are the number of people actually collecting benefits by 32%! This implies two things: either the average unemployment monthly paycheck has surged, which is not the case, or there is some gray unemployment area which is not disclosed by the government, and which accounts for a shadow unemployed insurance economy. Because while the DOL indicates there are about 9.5 million total unemployed, for the correlation to return to its near 1.0 trendline the number of unemployed on benefits has to be 14 million. At least this is what the actual cash outlays by the Treasury suggest: the government spent a record $14.7 billion on Unemployment Insurance Benefits as of December 30, a 24% jump sequentially from the $11.8 billion in November. Yet the DOL has disclosed a mere 1.7% increase in those to whom insurance benefits are paid: from 9.4 million to just under 9.6 million. To put the $14.7 billion number in perspective, in December the Federal Government paid a total of $14 billion ($700 million less) in Federal Salaries! A cynic could be temped to say that effectively the number of people employed by the government is double what is disclosed. A yet bigger cynic could claim that America is now the biggest socialist state in the world. Both cynics would not necessarily be wrong.

http://tinyurl.com/yctwbpc

William K. Black's Theory of Corporate Fraud

William K. Black is a former senior deputy chief counsel at the federal Office of Thrift Supervision. During the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s Black investigated accounting fraud. He spoke with Huffington Post Senior Reporter, David Heath, about how fraud can infiltrate entire corporations.

http://tinyurl.com/y89tewt

New York Times Takes Aim at Treasury Mortgage Mod Program

While no one has said as much, Home Affordable Modification Program, like the Paulson Hope Alliance Now, looks designed to work very narrowly within existing securitization rules to so as to minimize the odds that any mortgages modifications under the program could be challenged in court. However, the resulting program is an abortion. It gives little in the way of real benefits to borrowers. So called “permanent mods” are in fact only a five year payment reduction, which makes sense only if the borrower believes both his income will improve markedly between now and then (given stagnant worker incomes since 1973 and deflationary pressures, that is unlikely to apply for most people) and that the value of his house will appreciate considerably over that timeframe as well. Of course, Treasury may harbor fantasies like that, which might explain why they thought this dubious program was viable.

January 2, 2010 at 6:50 am

This still seems more optimistic regarding Treasury’s motives than I’m willing to be.

It seems clear that the mod program was never meant to solve the problem, namely to keep people in their homes.

Rather, facing the prospect of more and more people being willing to stand up for themselves and walk away, this program was a scam meant to induce people to keep paying, dangling the fraudulent promise of a permanent mod (which, as this piece demonstrates once again, was always a chimera). Meanwhile Treasury itself wrote into the agreements how once you enter the program you waive all rights to further negotiations or even notifications.

So once they lured somebody in with these lies, the banks could then keep extracting until they foreclosed at a time of their convenience.

Once again we see the joint crime of the banksters and this administration.

In light of that and of everything else, it’s overwhelmingly clear that where it comes to a rogue, criminal system and a rigged, corrupt “legal” system,, there are no longer any “contracts”.

The banks are not citizens. They’re simply gutter criminals, and no reasonable person thinks a contract with a common criminal is binding, morally or legally.

So I’d suggest that decent Americans stop trying to rationally argue with the “sanctity of contracts crowd” and instead demonize and villify them as the scum they are. It’s clear by now that such perps are not willing to be part of the solution, but only to be part of the crime.

http://tinyurl.com/yjedrgx

It's really been a huge rally since then. We'll see how things develope from here...

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