DPM, XOM, HES, GM, HOME, MRK, MYL

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April 2012 TEF Commentary

h/t: ZH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZhDR_2xx9w

“At this point we haven’t ruled out foul play,” police Lt. Alan Hamilton told the Los Angeles Times. “It is one of the things being considered. We are waiting for the coroner’s results.”

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Eli Radke of TraderHabits.com relates a recent conversation he had with a ‘trader.’

Read the conversation here.

14 influential points of view…

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With markets approaching new highs again it makes sense the bears are coming out to cry warning….

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Trying to find the right evaluation is always hard when it comes to new technologies, platforms, or products. Social media and cloud companies take the latest cake.

I suppose it depends on your age as to whether or not you believe. Not sure how social media will ever be a fad considering our nature as social being. I say when the markets get smacked  and all the oxygen has left the bubble then it is time to pounce. For now I think were looking a trading vehicle.

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxiwmzeCbhw 450 300]

“Jim O’Neill, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, is the economist behind the BRIC acronym.

Business Insider spoke with O’Neill about the BRICs, which he considers to be the “dominant structural theme of our generation.”

This may be no surprise coming from O’Neill.  However, he shared with us some mind-boggling statistics that made the current issues facing the eurozone seem trivial….”

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“Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Mohamed El-Erian said the U.S. economy is having difficulty gaining traction after a government report showed U.S growth expanded less-than-forecast in the first quarter.

The Federal Reserve is likely to provided additional assistance if the U.S. economy weakens further, though there is “no immediate need” to do so, El-Erian, the chief executive officer of the world’s largest manager of bond funds, said during an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop” with Betty Liu…”

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“Short-sighted reforms like central-bank liquidity injections or austerity measures won’t rid the world of its economic ills and are actually endangering global economic recovery, says Mohamed El-Erian, CEO at Pimco, which runs the world’s largest bond fund.

More sweeping global economic overhaul is needed that includes greater input from emerging-market countries if developed countries want to see better days.

Otherwise, unpleasant surprises will continue, such as the U.K.’s return to recession or disappointing manufacturing data in the U.S….”

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“International investor Jim Rogers thinks a wave of inflation is coming to the United States. As a result, he staying with his investment of choice – commodities.

The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy is impotent, Rogers says.

“[Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke and the Fed have zero credibility,” he tells Marketwatch. “Bernanke has never been right about anything.”

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Jim is shorting a metals company in Germany….

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MDRX, AMZN, ATHN, CLWR, CTCT, DECK, EXPE, F, JAZZ, PG, SBUX, WDC, ZNGA

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In Play

On the Wires

“Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos ruled out seeking a bailout hours before Standard & Poor’s cut the country’s credit rating to three levels above junk and a report showed unemployment jumped close to a record.

“Nobody has asked Spain, either officially or unofficially” to turn to Europe’s bailout mechanisms, he said in an interview in Madrid late yesterday. “We don’t need it.”

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Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) — Did Wal-Mart’s Mexican subsidiary pay bribes, in 2005 and earlier, to the Mexican officials who grant permits for stores like Wal-Mart? And did Wal-Mart cover up these actions for several years, after an internal investigation discovered the bribes, before finally reporting the internal investigation to the Department of Justice and the SEC last December?

The answer, according to recent news accounts, is yes. This could mean that Wal-Mart violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, adopted in 1977, which forbids U.S. companies from paying bribes to foreign officials.

If Wal-Mart violated the law, U.S. officials should prosecute. No one should be above the law, whether the law is sensible or not.

Yet the public and policymakers should also consider whether the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is good policy. And despite good intentions — particularly, the goal of reducing corruption — it is not.

The act is difficult to enforce on a consistent basis, since companies that wish to pay bribes can circumvent the law in numerous ways, mainly with minimal risk of exposure. So, most violations go undetected. The act therefore hurts companies that break the law clumsily and get caught, thereby creating a competitive advantage for companies that break the law cleverly and get away with it.

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TOKYO – A half dozen ominous new North Korean missiles showcased at a lavish military parade were clumsy fakes, analysts say, casting more doubt on the country’s claims of military prowess after its recent rocket launch failure.

The weapons displayed April 15 appear to be a mishmash of liquid-fuel and solid-fuel components that could never fly together. Undulating casings on the missiles suggest the metal is too thin to withstand flight. Each missile was slightly different from the others, even though all were supposedly the same make. They don’t even fit the launchers they were carried on.

“There is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups,” Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, of Germany’s Schmucker Technologie, wrote in a paper posted recently on the website Armscontrolwonk.com that listed those discrepancies. “It remains unknown if they were designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers simply did some sloppy work.”

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