to funny

yahoo says Dow is at 4000

some pigs are more equal than others.
From the release:

Voting against was William Poole, who did not believe that current conditions justified policy action before the regularly scheduled meeting next week.

From the Cleveland Fed:
The FOMC's mission is straightforward. We seek monetary and financial conditions that will foster price stability and promote sustainable growth in output.

We get so caught up in what the Fed is doing that we seem to forget that what it is doing is not what it is authorized to do.

Good thing I waited a little before quitting my job this morning.

So BofA profit drops 95%, Wach profit down 98%.

Whew. For a moment some people thought they'd swing to a loss. Thankfully the financial engineers kept them profitable.

Who's next for a 99.999% drop in profits, while still remaining profitable?

And the TIO auction cometh, there was ~$12 B in two auctions on Friday that came out today, half back out in two days and the other half in eight days.

TODAY there is an auction announcement for "$4 B - $18 B" which ended up as another $6.5 B that goes out tomorrow and comes off two days after...

Is the market up because of short covering or buyers returning?

Remember it stopped being a market years ago and turned into the "World Series of Poker Except Every Day".

ajm, that goes without saying.

Tanta, how long has the pig been waiting for this moment?

I'd hate to see the bloody carnage if it were Conjure Bag that crashed the meeting

Can you get the pig to chew Poole's ass for dissenting?

Or Greenspan saying how we need to put the Berlin Wall back up to save the economy?

Huh, oil is down. Wouldn't have guessed that.

Maybe the numbers I'm looking at aren't keeping up, but it looks like it's recovered about $2 or more from where it was down to.

... is that what happens when you have a Bush and a Dick running this country?

Hillary and Bill have been out of office for some time.

This looks like a job for Super Prime!

http://thumbsnap.com/v/8GwhSOYZ.jpg

Hmm. Maybe Super Prime should upgrade my percolator into one of those...

But dr strangemoney, there's no water in those bongs! Can it be that Super Prime is . . . out of ammo?

Until next week, kids, stay safe, stay liquid, and remember everything is contained!

CNBC guest saying we should keep looking at the "long-term view". We're scrooed.

"Absent and not voting was Frederic S. Mishkin" - so we have another 50bps cut when Mishkin get to votre next week ?

I am sure since the fed has forgot that rate cuts take 6-9 month to perculate through the economy they would see next week that (stock market conditions) have not improved and will vote to cut....

Wonderful stuff Tanta,but I doubt the meeting was anywhere near that coherent,or polite.We now have the "State of the Union" address coming up,which should be a real howler for those with cast iron stomachs.I am trying to come up with the perfect mix of chemicals to allow me to enjoy the spectacle.2 Maalox and Marijuana Brownies,1 gallon VERY Strong Irish coffee,800 mg xanax,make that 1600 MG.Popcorn.hmmm,better mix some psylocibes in with the Popcorn...makes Bush sound more coherent.And Macanudos,enough to smoke 2 at a time.

O/T - Some fears being quelled:

11:52AM Citigroup to exceed Targeted Capital Ratios Pro Forma for Fourth Quarter 2007; nearly $30 bln of capital raised or priced over last 2 months (C) 24.60 +0.14 : Co announces it will exceed its announced targeted capital ratios on a pro forma basis for the fourth quarter 2007. Taking into account recent capital raising activities totaling almost $30 bln, the co expects its following key capital ratios to hit, on a pro forma basis for the fourth quarter: Tier One at approx 8.8% and TCE/RWMA capital ratio at approx 6.9%. "These levels meaningfully exceed our capital ratio targets," The co priced a series of equity issuances last week, including a $12.5 bln private placement of Convertible Preferred securities, a $2.9 bln public offering of Convertible Preferred securities, and a $3.25 bln public offering of Straight Preferred securities. As a result of the pricing of the $12.5 bln private offering and as contractually required, the maximum conversion price on the Upper DECS Equity Units will be reduced to $31.83. All other features of the Upper DECS Equity Units will remain the same, including the reference price of $31.83 and payment rate of 11%. On Dec 21, the co closed and settled on $3.5 bln public offering of enhanced E Trups. These securities bear an 8.30% coupo

Actually I do not recall another time when a Tier I bank went to the market to say they were okay. how curious.

NY Times - To Some, the Widening Crisis Seems Driven by Fear, Not Facts "What you see is not a panic of the public. This is a panic of the sophisticated..." (That to me would seem to indicate a greater cause for our collective concern.)
To Some, the Widening Crisis Seems Driven by Fear, Not Facts - NY Times

YTL,

Careful - those steel toed bunny slippers pack a punch!

If the FED really wanted to fix everything, they could save their rate cut and instead just tack on 4 more points to the Packers final score from Sunday.

S&P 500 Fair Value for Tuesday = 1294

By my calculations, if you use the historical growth trend in corporate earnings as a guide (around the growth of nominal GDP) and assume that stocks should trail that by maybe 1% due to dilution, something like 750 would be more of an on trend value. 350 would be more like the cyclical lows you'd see in a serious recession.

If the Fed hands out enough money, however, the sky's the limit.

"So does that mean this ends with BB being buried out in the Meadowlands?"

Essentially yes, his reputation is doomed. He's the market's b$%#tch now.

I mean come on...if you're gonna do a surprise move then do it right.....everyone was expecting 75bp at the next meeting.....why not give it say 1.5bps. Do something unique so you can take credit for something.

The way it is now he gets all the blame if it fails and none of the credit if it works.

Lame Duck Bernanke already.

Anybody notice that the Russell is up?

I wonder if some of these hedgies are actually being forced to unwind leverage in short positions.

FFDIC,I am in California's whine country,about an hour north of SF.

[insert joke about typos]

Actually, the whine country is perfect. Sonoma co is holding up better then Solano but the cheese and crackers crowd has been crying loudly since Aug.

Thus far, Conjure Bag is pleased. The Fed soiled itself over the Asian meltdown.

Stocks down, euro up, soybeans down.

Conjure's clock has ticked yet again:

Conjure Clock- 11:59:06

I'm sure there are a lot of disappointed and angry shorts out there, but look at it this way: the Fed used up 75 bps of ammo just to prevent an outright crash. We're still down below Dow 12K as of this writing, and the tech leaders (GOOG, AMZN) are getting creamed.

A good 600 point dump today might have done some good in working off the excesses of the past 4 years ... instead we probably are looking at another 6 months of slow grind down until the final selloff establishes a true bottom.

Dale - Is that sort of like saying they can't see the pigs for the lipstick?

Why is everyone "surprised" the Fed cut rates? What did you think they'd do? Cut the rope?

tedzbear< I posted this earlier. I too am scratching my head. Usually there is an expectation for a Toer I to be compliant w/r/t ratios and cash reserves. The fact that this is recapped in a fashion makes me wonder if three weeks ago or a month ago ...

is it appears as if someone lost money, perhaps on a global basis $7 Trillion has been "lost"

My question is, where does that money go and the associated question as to where it came from?

some of this money was never really "there" at all. it was more conceptual than real.

here's an example.

Let's say 10 people have a house "worth" $1.

There is now $10 of total housing "wealth".

Now let's say that an 11th person comes and buys one of the houses for $2.

now all the houses are "worth" $2 based on the most recent comp....

thus we have
10 houses x $2 each= $20 of total housing worth.

As you see, that last comp made the housing worth 2x what it was before... (even though only $2 was actually used!)

Now the next year a 12th person buys one of the houses for $1.50.

now based on the newest comp, we have $1.50 x 10= $15 of total housing worth.

$5 of housing worth "disappeared". It never really existed anyway.

same thing happens with stocks.

hope that helps. it's very simplistic, but I think the gist is correct.

YTL

"unrealized yet to be realized..."

yikes

brought to you by;

the department of redundancy department

ok im an idiot

(

"aw, gross"

Naw - he was lookin' fer da bacon!

Tanta has too much time (and talent) on her hands. I've gotta be wondering how long her crystal ball has be conjouring this up.

Financials are the "superstars", so sez Bloomberg analyst.

Oh, goody! I wuv fairy tales. Question: When will the big bad bear eat Goldilocks? Do any of you have a pig tale?