checkout Goldman Sachs new mortality index, QxX.

Also check into JPMorgan Chase's mortality swap with corporate reinsurers, along with mortality swaps, mortality bonds, futures and mortality derivatives.

Quite the growing field, death profiteering goes into high gear.

When you expand out the graph. I'm just showing the recession start.

It is positive and it looks like manufacturing once again is growing.

That's all very good news. Fairly unusual to hear good news of any sort from U.S. manufacturing generally. But my overall impression is that the economy might very well depend on the health of U.S. manufacturing, much more so since we have all of these popping bubbles.

Look at the level. We are still pretty low. But it's positive. Right?

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

Remember we used to worry about fanatics bringing down physical structures or the OPEC mob doing clever speculation in markets ahead of their changes in policy. Then money laundering by narcotraffickers was a big concern in the 1990s. If you have TBTF threatening to bring down the economy if they don't get their way on bailouts, that smacks of extortion and econoterrorism. Of course, the Bush administration and Greenspan were of the "look the other way, the markets will take care of it" school of denial. This White Collar crime on a systemic scale is such a threat to our economy that we need to define it and go after it. If we can find money for Goldman Sachs, we can certainly afford to hire more attorneys and investigators at Justice (and the SEC). How many executives at AIG and Moody's were short the XLF last year? Or were they just asleep?
Frank T.

Remember anyone doing that would be labeled a terrorist and never heard from again.

They are secure in their ivory towers short of anything but a complete collapse of the economy. If that were to happen so many people would have literally nothing something would happen. Hence the warning from Bernanke and Paulson to Bush that if they didn't get a bailout (no questions asked) there would be rioting in the streets. They probably failed to mention that the rioting would take place on Wall Street directed towards Wall Street.

Dont' watch or listen to the talking heads that will only lower your immune system.

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

So far we have the following reactions:

From Yves Smith: unconstitutional

From Zero Hedge: Goldman Sachs LIED

The Bloomberg raises another question: If it was common knowledge that banks already hedged against CDOs or even wrote down the value then why did the Fed pay 100%?

In fact we know that Goldman Sachs did just that:

On March 20, Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar said in a conference call with investors that Goldman was protected.

“We limited our overall credit exposure to AIG through a combination of collateral and market hedges,” Viniar said. “There would have been no credit losses if AIG had failed.”

Unless, of course, like George Washington on Zero Hedge, Viniar is lying.

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

That is most amusing. Most small businesses are not traded on public exchanges too.

I guess even the corporate lobbyists are running low on spin and writing press releases for their bought and paid for Congress Reps.

Bad as things are, I just don't sense critcal mass out there. The safety net (full of holes as it is) gives people hope. People are still eating and "getting by," and they have a pretty short attention span. Sunday afternoon football and talking heads seem to have replaced religion as the "opiate of the masses." Also, there is the knowledge that the bank doesn't really want your house (thus slow foreclosure), and you can't go to jail for "just owing money." Even the "We want our $$$ back" signs at events have vanished. People adjust to new circumstances and Garrison Keillor tells them it isn't worth worrying about. Bernie Madoff has been sent to jail, and small time ponzi operators are being arrested on the six o'clock news. People have stopped paying attention to the oligarchy and, anyway, they are being publicly (verbally) flogged before being allowed to go ahead and take their bonuses and grow richer still. It will take a larger crisis than we've had, but at least we've learned something about the half-life of public outrage.
Frank T.