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alstry (35.68)

A Final Parting Thought.....

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April 20, 2010 – Comments (22)

The Gardner Brothers and the rest of the Fools are not focusing on the right issue regarding Goldman or the other firms.

The issue you are focusing on is whether GS properly disclosed the risks of the CDO created at the request of John Paulson and manufactured by GS.  The issue you should be focusing on is why on earth was a bank in America allowed to KNOWINGLY manufacture a toxic instrument and sell it to our retirement accounts in exchange for hard earned cash?

If a drug company manufactured a drug that killed or injured those that took it.....even if it disclosed this fact.....the executives would go to jail for manufacturing and selling such a destructive product. 

What you are soon going to find out is much of what is in your retirement/investment accounts is nothing more than toxic products being misrated and mispriced by the agencies and firms......that the firms were incentivized to manufacture and distribute toxic financial instruments.

When you find this out....you will realize our system is nonfunctional because our entire system is currently dependent on such instruments to operate......and when "reform" is inevitably inposed, a new system will emerge.....probably something very different than the one we currently live under.

It will be at that point that the world as you know it will come to an end.

In the mean time keep watching the ticker....just like all the Fools kept watching their home prices rise....until.......

Could you imagine what would have happened to a Fool who walked into a synagogue full of Madoff clients getting big checks every month and told them that the Jewish Bond was a fraud???????

It has been a pleasure serving you.........good luck to all.

By the way, in case you want to know what Alstry is working on....he is in the start up phase of a new dot.com company.......crazy, the guy that ridiculed the sector ten years ago is now jumping in with both feet.

22 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On April 20, 2010 at 12:59 PM, awallejr (80.10) wrote:

Maybe GS can help you finance your new dot.com venture.

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#2) On April 20, 2010 at 1:13 PM, binve (< 20) wrote:

alstry, I don't normally comment on your posts, but I could not agree more with the substance of this post.

I have written many times that financials are the cancer of the economy.

Financials are not, at their core, bad businesses (at least financials of 30-40 years ago). They do perform a very vital role of facilitating the dispersion of resources. It it not productive, so there is a loss of efficiency, but there is an overall economic good that comes out of it.

But today, financials (investement / shadow banks in particular) comprise a disproportionate size of the economy to the amount of economic usefulness they perform. This non-productive garbage has to be cleaned out, just like cancer. This is precisely why I call financials the cancer of the economy. They are a huge drain that transfers the economy's money (the wealth of the productive part of society), largely between each other, collecting fees for their "work".

On top of that, throw in the corruption and blatant fraud that is associated with most of these debt instruments, they should be illegal, and really are when you consider the spirit of the law. The letter of the law, of course, gets bent all the time to suit.

These two posts (one by Denninger and one my Mole) sum up my outrage and disgust perfectly: Choices - http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost.aspx?bpid=339577 and Financial Carcinoma -- Denninger: Did You Need a PhD For That? - http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost.aspx?bpid=322718.

Thanks for this thought. I completely agree with it. Good luck on your new venture..

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#3) On April 20, 2010 at 1:26 PM, DarkToast (91.64) wrote:

Nice post, good point, way to leave with style.

Good luck with the new business!

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#4) On April 20, 2010 at 2:50 PM, djemonk (< 20) wrote:

alstry, I wish you the best of luck in your dot.com business.  Having been in that industry in the past, it's a tough one but I think you might be tougher. 

 

All the best, and I hope to see you post an update here in the future.

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#5) On April 20, 2010 at 3:10 PM, alstry (35.68) wrote:

What I want you guys to focus on is the nature of our system....

Right now government and Wall Street are ANNUALLY borrowing about $4 trillion dollars out of our savings and spending it in a variety of ways......

including dropping bombs overseas....paying tens of millions of people to go to work everyday......paying welfare, entitlement, unemployment, food stamps etc....

Never in our nations history have we borrowed this kind of money simply to maintain our economy.

If everytime a government worker was paid, or a bomb dropped, or a welfare check issued....OVER AND ABOVE the taxes we paid in........our savings, retirement, or investment accounts were debited......THE FOOLS WOULD BE REALLY REALLY MAD....because in short order, no one would have any money left.

Instead of debiting your account, Wall Street and Washington are concealing the transfer with toxic financial instruments.  This will go on until you Fools figure it out....but by that time, which may have already passed, it is too late.

Do you really think Harley Davidson is worth anything close to its current market cap???  Heck, they have fired over half the workforce as sales continue to evaporate!!!

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#6) On April 20, 2010 at 3:53 PM, guiron (21.45) wrote:

This will go on until you Fools figure it out....but by that time, which may have already passed, it is too late.

Then why bother? Seriously.

You say you're working a job at a dotcom startup. Doesn't seem like the actions of someone who thinks we're about to melt down or start WWIII. Of course, you're smarter than the rest of us plebes who can't figure it out, so maybe you're scheming in unimaginably effective ways that only you know about. Anyway, shouldn't you have a compound with razor wire and tons of bulk food by now?

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#7) On April 20, 2010 at 3:58 PM, alstry (35.68) wrote:

It is not the end of the world.......just the end of the world as you know it.

It is a systematic breakdown......Madoff's client's didn't die when they found out......if it is WW3, we are all screwed regardless of razor wire, guns, and bulk food.

The concept I am working on is a process......what the method or denomination of payment really is not important....so long as it can occur over the internet.

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#8) On April 20, 2010 at 4:00 PM, guiron (21.45) wrote:

Do you really think Harley Davidson is worth anything close to its current market cap???  Heck, they have fired over half the workforce as sales continue to evaporate!!!

I'm not sure how that's relevant. Although the market has been overbought for a while, the fundamentals of most of the companies in this earnings season have been more positive than anticipated. Some equities are still trading at a discount, while others like HOG are detached from the fundamentals. This is part of the cycle.

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#9) On April 20, 2010 at 4:12 PM, guiron (21.45) wrote:

It is a systematic breakdown......Madoff's client's didn't die when they found out......if it is WW3, we are all screwed regardless of razor wire, guns, and bulk food.

OK, maybe, hard to say. The thing about doomsayers is that they will probably be right once in their lifetimes. With any luck it's when they're older, so they don't think they're prophetic. We do go through this sort of thing often, a bad one about every 70-80 years.

Anyway, the message is obscured with histrionics and ridiculous predictions, the majority of which have not come to pass - even you must be able to see that much. People are going to challenge you on that and won't be inclined to talk about any serious points you need to communicate, because you sort of come off like a sideshow huckster. No offense. There's no shame in admitting you got it wrong, though that becomes more difficult the longer you cling to your position in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. Yes, borrowing during a crisis seems crazy, but it actually does work, if tightening can be applied at the right time. I know you don't agree, and that's fine, but it seems like the rest is all a lot of smoke and noise.

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#10) On April 20, 2010 at 4:26 PM, PDTBiotech (94.41) wrote:

This is the MF equivalent of one of Bugs Bunny's long, drawn-out, faked death scenes.

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#11) On April 20, 2010 at 5:05 PM, alstry (35.68) wrote:

The ONLY reason the fundementals are intact is because government and Wall Street is borrowing $4 trillion dollars per year from our collective retirement/investment/savings accounts.

About the same as China's GDP.

At some point, we will run out of savings....my guess is much sooner than many think...but much longer than I ever dreamed.

Seriously....how long do you think we can keep borrowing $4 trillion dollars per year simply to maintain the illusion of our standard of living??????????????????????????

......think about that next time you buy a municipal bond, corporate bond.....or some other financial instrument.

It is sorta strange.....when a nation's citizens are cut off of credit.....many think it is a good thing....but at the same time the government and Wall Street are borrowing like drunken sailors....from those same people that have been cut off of credit?

Have fun Fools....it is only money.

 

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#12) On April 20, 2010 at 7:48 PM, dibble905 (91.29) wrote:

What is this, Good Bye #(insert 2 digits here)?

If you so believe that no one truly cares, then perhaps you need to change your approach. Repetition day-in-day-out of the same material will not make a difference.

If you have committed to leave, then I say you should stick by it. If you can't stick by a decision, how can anyone trust what you say? Do you want that to carry over to all of your blog posts?

You're better than that Alstry. Now get out of here and move on.

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#13) On April 20, 2010 at 8:14 PM, alstry (35.68) wrote:

It is so sad how so few care.......so sad as more and more money gets drained from America's investment and retirement accounts and replaced with junk that is about to go toxic.

So sad.....after all the work and sacrifice our forefathers put into our great nation....given away so easily.

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#14) On April 20, 2010 at 11:26 PM, coattails (< 20) wrote:

I, for one, enjoy that you always come back after stating that you are done.  It's a sad day when there's no Alstry blogs.

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#15) On April 20, 2010 at 11:32 PM, Pennyperson (< 20) wrote:

Stick around man..no need to leave. We're all good...your rant has just cause at times. I'd rather TRY and look toward the poitive side of life & market no matter how grim it looks.

To be candid, I hardly ever read your blogs, but, the ones I DO have validity - period....or I wouldn't read it.

STAY

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#16) On April 20, 2010 at 11:32 PM, topsecret09 (71.64) wrote:

#13) On April 20, 2010 at 8:14 PM, alstry (< 20) wrote: So sad.....after all the work and sacrifice our forefathers put into our great nation....given away so easily............      No need to say anything else Alstry, Our government has sold out all of It's American citizens In the name of money and power. It Is truly sad....    TS 

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#17) On April 20, 2010 at 11:35 PM, Pennyperson (< 20) wrote:

Stay & calm yourself...and keep on keepen on..we need folks like you to share the view..no matter if you're sitting on that sack of seed ;)

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#18) On April 21, 2010 at 12:05 AM, NOTvuffett (< 20) wrote:

Alstry,

I agree with you on many points, but you abuse this site.  Let's say somebody spends a few minutes to make a blog to ask a question of the community here and it is pushed off of the screen by you replying to your own blog, and you are saying the same sh*t as always, how does this make things better?

And you really ought to grow a pair and really leave, since that is what you said.  You could come back as Newbie Newberson or something if you want.

With a clean scorecard you could dazzle us with your brilliance.

 

 

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#19) On April 21, 2010 at 12:28 AM, uclayoda87 (29.86) wrote:

Either entitlements die or the US dollar will.  You will know when that time is at hand when no incumbents seek reelection.  That will be the true sign that the game is over.

The good news for the optimists in the group is that like WWII national hardship may enlighten a generation to become a John Kennedy Democrat or a Ronald Reagan Republican or even a Ron Paul Libertarian.  What this mean is that common sense will become more common and altruism will be realigned with the creation of wealth.  This may eventually be remembered as the American Renaissance, ending the Dark Ages of American Fascism and Financial Oligarchy.

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#20) On April 21, 2010 at 12:38 AM, NOTvuffett (< 20) wrote:

uclayoda87,

i really don't see much too many ways to avoid massive inflation or confiscatory taxation, but the hard question is where do you put your money?

even my business partner who is a big leftie is thinking about moving the company offshore.

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#21) On April 21, 2010 at 1:19 AM, uclayoda87 (29.86) wrote:

NOTvuffett

I just wrote that answer in comment 15 in the blog

The quiet before the storm

which covers a similar topic.

Final answer:  Canadian Miners, metals, and stable non-financial companies outside of the US.  Avoid US bonds and an S&P 500 index fund is probably not that safe either.

 

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#22) On April 21, 2010 at 12:59 PM, bcchamp (47.70) wrote:

Stay- most of us that read you like the fact that you are here.

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