‘That’s Insane. Why? Why Would She Do That?’ United Airlines Flight Attendant Fired After Exiting Plane on Emergency Slide

People are going crazy in this country.

A flight attendant on a United Airlines plane deployed the emergency exit slide after landing at Bush International. She then proceeded to drop her bag off the plane and slide down the fucking chute, like the lunatic she apparently is. After reaching the ground, she picked up her bag and walked away.

Passengers on the plane were dumbfounded by what they just witnessed. It must’ve been like a scene straight out of the movie Airplane.

UAL shit-canned her.

“We hold our employees to the highest standards. This unsafe behavior is unacceptable and does not represent the more than 20,000 flight attendants who ensure the safety of our customers. We are reviewing this matter and the flight attendant is no longer employed by United.”

Pershing Square is listed on the Amsterdam exchange, so they had a nice little conference call today–where Ackman discussed how stupid everyone at his company is and how they will continue to make misinformed and malevolent decisions for their stakeholders.

“I describe ‘experience’ as making mistakes and learning from them,” said Ackman.

Then he rambled on about how many mistakes they all made, squandering billions of dollars and acting like general fools during the whole VRX ordeal.

But it’s imperative you understand his most important point.

Let’s not handwring over these missteps now. There will be a time and place for that (hopefully never, duh). But now is the time to fix the problems and Valeant is now considered to be a ‘classic Pershing Square investment’– just like Jc Penney and Herbalife short.

They’re in the process of fixing the problem.

Shares of VRX are screaming higher, as clowns file out of the clown car–rushing to buy in. Today’s move is the largest single day spike for VRX in more than 10 years.

What sort of shit is this you ask? Well, Pfizer wants to reward three executives, one who has already left the company, for failure.

Mikael Dolsten, president of worldwide research and development, and John D. Young, group president of global established pharma business, will each receive a million bucks (easy come, easy go) because the company believes they  “would have an important role in consummating the combination with Allergan and successfully integrating the two businesses.”

Naturally. That’s like giving a baseball player a bonus for being the MVP in a World Series, in spite of finishing last place.

These hypothetical scenarios playing out at PFE are an insult to shareholders, and show a total disregard for shareholders capital. It’s not like the government came out of left field with their disapproval of tax inversions. They’ve been hammering away at these deals for years. You’d think the geniuses at Pfizer would have retained the right lobbyists and advisors to make an informed decision, before entering into a $160 bill deal.

Absurd.

Oh, they’re also paying AGN a $150 million break up fee for their troubles.

Lastly, former employee, Albert Bourla, is also getting a $1 million reward–just for being at the right place at the right time. Even though he’s not with the company any longer and would not have played an integral role in the newly formed asshole of a company — he’s still cool enough to deserve a mill for his troubles.

Something to do about an EIA report is today’s excuse for an oil rally.

Crude oil inventories had a draw of -4.937 mln (consensus called for a build of +3.1 mln)
Gasoline inventories had a build of +1.438 mln
Distillate inventories had a build of +1.799 mln

Crude is higher by more than 4% now, helping spur a relief rally that is bound to catch fire–should crude continue to run.

The biggest gains are in biotech, now higher by 3.5%.

Over the past week there are been an energetic sprint towards the biotech sector. It has been maligned by 27% to close out the quarter and then everyone came in and gobbled it whole.

The rally has been widespread and fierce, sending dozens of stocks up double digits. Encompassing more than a hundred stocks, the median return was greater than 7% for the past week. But individual names like ANAC, EDIT, JAZZ and ICPT have done much better than that.

The market is seemingly at a point when earnings begin to count again. All of the oils and perhaps the retail sectors, both of which have done splendidly in 2016, aren’t expected to impress investors to any large degree. There is a level of non-systematic fear out there, with spirit and vigor leaving the early winners in search for new ones.

If your desire is to live in Fantasy Land, what better place to be other than the biotech sector, an industry without fundamentals and the albatross of having to meet earnings expectations. Of course, if these companies fail to meet their clinical trial goals or become the target of political scrutiny, they will indeed cone under pressure again. But, for the most part, this is the only sector that offers high returns, based on a drug dream similar to playing the lottery, that goes unrivaled in the market place. Because of this, the biotech sector has been the darling of the market, when it was going up, for the better part of the last 5 years.

Stifel is out this morning with multiple downgrades on a number of oil stocks, including CLR, APC and EOG, citing complete and utter horseshit ahead of the alleged ‘oil freeze’ meeting on April the 17th.

Essentially, they believe Iran will ramp up volumes and fuck up the House of Saud’s plans to effect an OPEC wide production freeze.

On the news, the targeted oil stocks are little changed.

No one really gives a shit what Stifel has to say. They’re from St. Louis.

Good morning Goldman Sachs. I’m so sorry to hear about your investment bank fee windfall being washed away. It was a nice little pay day, especially in this desert of a market where fees are a harsh rarity.

But I’m sure you’ll pick yourselves up and go get another $160 billion deal, no?

Pfizer will probably pay $120 million to $150 million in fees while Allergan’s advisers will split $160 million to $200 million, according to estimates from consultants Freeman & Co. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Centerview Partners, Guggenheim Partners and Moelis & Co. worked for Pfizer. Allergan was advised by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley.

With the deal behind it, Pfizer said it would decide this year about whether to split off its hundreds of generic medicines into a separate business. It had put off making that decision until 2019 after announcing its deal with Allergan last November.
Allergan said it would move ahead with plans for its $40.5 billion sale of its generic drug business to Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. It expects the transaction to close by June.

Thanks to the U.S. Treasury new rules on tax inversions, corporations are now trapped inside of our tax hell and can never leave.

Pfizer will pay Allergan $150 million to reimburse expenses from its deal.

Both PFE and AGN are higher this morning. They both announced alternative plans that no one gives a shit about.

Moving on please.

Before I go to sleep for the next 3 hours, I wanted to reach out to the world to let them know they’re doomed.

Loss rates are rising. Recovery for bond holders are averaging 29 cents on the dollar, down from 44 last year. Analysts believe that number can swoon down to 20 cents, leaving bond holders, inexorably, screwed.

Default rates are low, still under 5%, but rising. Remember, the vast majority of debt refinancing needs to be done between 2017-2020.

“We’ve had more corporate debt than ever, and more leverage than ever, which increases the potential for greater pain,” said Edwin Tai, a senior portfolio manager for distressed investments at Newfleet Asset Management.

Loss rates have already been rising. The potential for them to climb further may mean that in general junk bonds are not compensating investors enough for the risk they are taking, said Michael Contopoulos, high yield credit strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The average yield on a U.S. junk bond is now around 8.45 percent, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes, about the mean of the last 10 years.

“A lot of the troubled companies that had become overleveraged were able to find more temporary solutions in the last credit cycle,” Holtz said. “Those Band-Aids are no longer available now, and a lot of companies are going to have to face distress,” he said.

Junk-rated companies have debt equal to about 48 percent of their assets now, up 7.5 percentage points in the last 7 years, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch data. The ratio of debt to assets is one of the main factors in how big losses will be when a borrower defaults.

Another factor is the rate of default, because when more companies are defaulting, more are looking to sell assets or otherwise restructure, leaving investors with lower recoveries. Default rates currently stand around 4 percent, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The ratings company forecasts that the measure will rise to 5.05 percent by the end of the year in the best-case scenario, and could jump as high as 14.9 percent under the most pessimistic projection.

While holding a portfolio of speculative-grade bonds to maturity at current yields may still result in a positive return for investors, higher defaults and losses on the securities will likely weigh on prices in the coming months, Bank of America’s Contopoulos said.

For many liquidated energy companies, “there’s not a whole lot to recover in terms of cash,” said Leonard Klingbaum, a partner at law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

This story hinges on the price of oil. Back in 2009, oil shot higher and recovered with the general economy. The massive reflation of the markets helped distressed oil companies refinance their debt and survive. I should know, being long FTK from $1– which eventually traded above $20.

Sans a major reflation trade taking place, this default storm is more than likely to occur.

Some dork on Fox just rifled through all of the existing states left, overlaying polling data to make some back of the envelope projections.

The results were extremely dire for Donald Trump, who is only on pace to receive 1,193 delegates, which are many, many more than Rafael Cruz–but not enough to win the nomination.

Bottom line: Trump loses through victory. Cruz wins by coming in second. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. And, also, if you like your plan and you like your doctor, you won’t have to do a thing. You keep your plan. You keep your doctor.

Russia is evil.

After tonight’s establishment new world order win in Wisconsin, Donald Trump went apeshit in a memo released to the media, decrying LYIN’ TED as a ‘trojan horse’ a puppet and totally controlled by party hacks in an attempt to steal the nomination.

Here is the full statement.

This is a significant step in The Donald’s ascendency to “Boss King” of America, totally and completely laying waste to the Grande Olde Party, who is hell bent on seeing him either destroyed against the rocks, broken or gone.

It’s looking more and more like a 3rd party might emerge from this fuckery that is to be the Republican Convention.