Re: Next Crash? The Hindenburg Omen Triggered
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: queequeg</div><div class="ubbcode-body">It's almost as though it's possible to make money in a declining market... </div></div>
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-D...4334&sr=8-1 If you haven't already read this, you should. Michael Lewis is a former bond trader. His first book was all about the life of bond traders at Salomon Brothers - the same folks that invented the mortgage bond. He left Wall Street for moral reasons and then wrote his first book about it - <span style="font-style: italic">Liar's Poker</span>.
His newest book chronicles the few in the market that recognized the fundamental weakness underpinning the sub prime mortgage bond industry, convinced Wall Street to write an insurance policy against the bonds going bad, bought just the insurance on the bonds, and then shorted the market - making hundreds of millions of dollars.
The figures that he chronicles all came to the same conclusion - Wall Street is run by crooks (including and maybe most ominously Alan Greenspan) and administered by fools. Moreover unless there is real fundamental change our democratic, market driven society - America, is at real risk. Several of the figures interviewed in the book openly ask the question if revolution would occur if the masses really understood the level of fraud in this massive bond scheme.
I am 20 pages from the end and am left depressed. If one can intellectually understand that there is no substantive difference between the D's and the R's over the last 4 decades or more - effectively, that legacy policy continues with only minor tweeks into the next administration -> illegal immigration, corporate influence over policy and regulation of their own industry's, special interest over the voice of the people, etc - regardless of the rhetoric or the ruling party - nothing ever really changes and in fact has only gotten worse. Coupled with the lineage and progression of financial fraud: S&L Crisis, Dot Com / Telco bubble (based on thin air), Real Estate bubble (driven solely by the bond houses and influence of Wall Street over the banking regs) and now the Mortgage Bond melt down that took down some of the largest banks in the world - it forces the reader to question what is the logical termination point of the road we are on? For the man on the street - none of the probables are pretty.
Good luck
