Did this happen in New York? No, silly! It happened in Nigeria!
Sounds kinda familiar, dunnit?Cecilia Ibru, former head of Oceanic bank, pleaded guilty to three of 25 counts in a plea bargain that will see her serve her jail sentences concurrently over six months.
Oceanic was one of nine lenders rescued by the Nigerian Central Bank with a $4bn bail-out last year, after reckless lending and alleged malpractice brought the financial system in sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest economy to the verge of collapse.
Lamido Sanusi, the reforming central bank governor who took over last year, administered the bail-out, fired the management at eight of the troubled banks and sought to overcome the impunity of financial barons long protected by political connections.
Mr. Sansui - I know the Tea Party is perceived as anti-immigrant , but if you'd like to take a job at the Federal Reserve, I'm thinking we could scrounge up a visa for you.
Trust me on this.
I'm thinking there is an awesome Nigerian spam joke in here somewhere, but it's escaping me right now.
ReplyDeleteA dozen men of Mr. Sansui's caliber couldn't hack through the tangled GS web. A hundred dozen, even!
ReplyDeleteLewy, has the stock market lost its marbles? Why did it break through 11,000? Surely the promise of more "quantitative easing" didn't trigger flurry of buying?
Lewy, has the stock market lost its marbles?
ReplyDeleteThe standard answer to any stock market question has to be "I don't know." This always has to be kept in mind.
That said:
There are reasons to believe that the stock market has it "right" - namely that the Fed will be soon printing about a hundred billion a month. This will help drive up the price of everything, from stocks to gold to eggs.
There are reasons to believe the stock market has it wrong - namely that printing money won't help because our problems are structural, and printing money wont' change the structure of our economy. Therefore the bad recession / near depression will continue. At best.
Both reasons are scary. IMHO. YMMV.
Good morning, lewy!
ReplyDeleteDriving up the price won't affect the actual worth of the stocks, though. I mean, a stock that I bought at 36 yesterday and sold for 100 post massive "quantitative easing" still buys me the same loaf of bread. I wouldn't have gained anything. So why bother? Someone must be making money off of this rise in stock prices, but who? Surely not the traders; if they take a long position, and the feds decide against the Weimar Republic approach, they're stuck with a pocketful of overpriced stock.
I wouldn't invest a dime in the market now. It's scary and unfathomable.