Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Financial Sarcasm Roundup for 01/27/16
It's not enough to have weekly sarcasm. I need to exhibit daily sarcasm. Alfidi Capital must be the unchallenged premium source of financial sarcasm every time the sun rises.
Iran's president says getting filthy rich cures radical nutjobs. He didn't quite say it like that but I like to think that's what he meant in translation. Reuters is too kind to quote heads of state that way. Iran is about to unlock $150B in frozen assets and return to exporting oil as sanctions are lifted. It pays to play nice with one's neighbors. Iran should spend that windfall on something other than harassing student protesters. Meeting the Pope may be the key to convincing Rome's street vendors to import Iranian lavashak (a.k.a. Persian fruit leather, or pressed fruit rolls). I smell a sweet deal.
Credit rating agencies are still messed up. It's about time regulators squeezed these people until they squeal. Selling ratings for MBS and other garbage helped cause the 2008 financial crisis. Dumb money does not perform due diligence even one level deep, let alone for the two or three levels needed to understand securitized products. Continued problems will bring another chance to short every falsely rated financial product in sight.
The corporate debt mountain is ready to topple. Bring on the implosion. Publicly held companies that can't service their debt will get wiped from indexes and bring shorting opportunities to patient investors like me. Defaulted corporate bonds and bankrupt ETF prospectuses will make nice art projects.
I can really get used to a daily sarcasm habit. I will enjoy force-feeding this diet to my regular readers. Eat it, people.
Iran's president says getting filthy rich cures radical nutjobs. He didn't quite say it like that but I like to think that's what he meant in translation. Reuters is too kind to quote heads of state that way. Iran is about to unlock $150B in frozen assets and return to exporting oil as sanctions are lifted. It pays to play nice with one's neighbors. Iran should spend that windfall on something other than harassing student protesters. Meeting the Pope may be the key to convincing Rome's street vendors to import Iranian lavashak (a.k.a. Persian fruit leather, or pressed fruit rolls). I smell a sweet deal.
Credit rating agencies are still messed up. It's about time regulators squeezed these people until they squeal. Selling ratings for MBS and other garbage helped cause the 2008 financial crisis. Dumb money does not perform due diligence even one level deep, let alone for the two or three levels needed to understand securitized products. Continued problems will bring another chance to short every falsely rated financial product in sight.
The corporate debt mountain is ready to topple. Bring on the implosion. Publicly held companies that can't service their debt will get wiped from indexes and bring shorting opportunities to patient investors like me. Defaulted corporate bonds and bankrupt ETF prospectuses will make nice art projects.
I can really get used to a daily sarcasm habit. I will enjoy force-feeding this diet to my regular readers. Eat it, people.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Iran Takes Lead From West In Executing Banksters
I do not normally congratulate Islamic theocracies for brutality. Today I shall make an exception. Iran has executed a billionaire for his role in a massive banking scam. This bankster defrauded a state-owned bank to buy state-owned assets. Gee, that sure sounds a lot like some of the chicanery that transpired in the US during the 2008 financial crisis. Iran sends a clear message about scammers that is lost on American executives.
The difference here in the US is that we don't execute the CEOs who commit bank fraud. We would rather let them roam free to buy off politicians and donate their ill-gotten gains to museum endowments. Our legal institutions prefer to turn a blind eye to their frauds out of concern for systemic stability. Those concerns are overblown, since the FDIC has never had qualms about shutting down unstable banks. The piles of bad mortgage paper on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet are a weapon of mass destruction. Better that we had destroyed a few big investment banks instead.
America can learn a good lesson from Iran, a former ally until they went nuts for radical Islam in 1979. The US should start prosecuting the unrepentant bankster CEOs from 2008 and ship the convicted ones to Iran for ultimate punishment. Hanging a few billionaire Westerners from lampposts in downtown Tehran would give their executioners some more practice. It may even provide a basis for an eventual US-Iran rapprochement. We can show the imams that we can meet them halfway.
Sending American white collar criminals to Iran is of a course a modest proposal, in the tradition of Jonathan Swift. Coddling them here in the good old USA is an unsatisfactory alternative if they live to steal again another day.
Full disclosure: I find ethnic Persian women to be phenomenally attractive. None of them have tried to scam me yet.
The difference here in the US is that we don't execute the CEOs who commit bank fraud. We would rather let them roam free to buy off politicians and donate their ill-gotten gains to museum endowments. Our legal institutions prefer to turn a blind eye to their frauds out of concern for systemic stability. Those concerns are overblown, since the FDIC has never had qualms about shutting down unstable banks. The piles of bad mortgage paper on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet are a weapon of mass destruction. Better that we had destroyed a few big investment banks instead.
America can learn a good lesson from Iran, a former ally until they went nuts for radical Islam in 1979. The US should start prosecuting the unrepentant bankster CEOs from 2008 and ship the convicted ones to Iran for ultimate punishment. Hanging a few billionaire Westerners from lampposts in downtown Tehran would give their executioners some more practice. It may even provide a basis for an eventual US-Iran rapprochement. We can show the imams that we can meet them halfway.
Sending American white collar criminals to Iran is of a course a modest proposal, in the tradition of Jonathan Swift. Coddling them here in the good old USA is an unsatisfactory alternative if they live to steal again another day.
Full disclosure: I find ethnic Persian women to be phenomenally attractive. None of them have tried to scam me yet.
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