Where has the money gone?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Well if we're going to talk about trickle down effect, then it definitely happens a lot fucking quicker on the way out than on the way in.

Trickle down is a myth based in political agendas; not in economic principles.

The idea was to solve a liquidity crisis. Nobody was broke according the theory. But since Enron accounting principles are so rampant, then the idea was to flood finance markets with money - like too much oil on a rusty bolt. Reality, assets had completely vaporized leaving a resulting debt AND those debts were well hidden in Enron accounting. Those unknown debts were literally sucking up the money.

This is better explained in How the GAME is played..

Bottom line - something like 40% of this nation's wealth simply vaporized leaving outstanding debts. How does accounting work? Much of that wealth has disappeared long ago. But reality from spread sheets tends to suddenly appear like a rogue wave. Welcome to reality finally popping up like splotches of grass on a desert prairie.

Cellar dwellers had to know this economy had serious problems. The housing bubble was pictured on the Economist's front cover as a falling brick labeled Housing Prices. That cover discussed here often. Charts made obvious that homes were 20% and 40% overpriced. The Economist noted this problem very recently (recently in Economics terms) on 16 Jun 2005 which was reposted in the Cellar also in 2005:

Perhaps the best evidence that America's house prices have reached dangerous levels is the fact that house-buying mania has been plastered on the front of virtually every American newspaper and magazine over the past month. Such bubble-talk hardly comes as a surprise to our readers. We have been warning for some time that the price of housing was rising at an alarming rate all around the globe, including in America. Now that others have noticed as well, the day of reckoning is closer at hand. It is not going to be pretty. How the current housing boom ends could decide the course of the entire world economy over the next few years.

That was a symptom of wide spread and out-of-control money games being played by finance people. People who historically are only a service industry and yet pay themselves as if they innovate and produce something. Just another example of why so many hard assets are missing in finance institutions.

Zengum asked 'when did the money go'. So accurate. To understand what he was saying, read post 1 in How the GAME is played. It completely answered this topmost question.

[Shawnee123]

Everything is topmost these days.

[TheMercenary]

(Sorry for the double post but I thought it was relevant)


http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2008/12...surprised.html

Did you know that your Senators and your Congressmen are getting a $5,000 raise on January 1st?

That must be for all of the great work that they have done spending your tax dollars and putting your grandchildren on the hook for trillions and trillions of dollars.

.. how many of you out there who own your own business are giving $5,000 cost of living adjustments to your employees right now? How many of you have worked for years without a raise that won't even keep up with inflation? Or a raise at all?

Congress is getting one....all thanks to your tax dollars.

[TheMercenary]

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.

“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...Zlc&refer=home

[classicman]

Originally Posted by tw

Zengum asked 'when did the money go'. So accurate. It completely answered this topmost question.

Did the money actually exist? That is the question. This whole boom started without many REAL assets to back it up, then those that were real were leveraged way beyond their actual value. Is that a real worth? Or just smoke? I think I smell something burning...

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

Did the money actually exist? That is the question.

Invent assets with Enron accounting and money games. Take a paltry $67million bonus because the company did not do too well this year. Money clearly existed where it was "important". Suddenly, when real funds no longer exist, what does the company do? Go after the guy who signed off on Enron accounting? Or run to the government for protection?

Let's see. George Jr's administration refused to prosecute Enron until all but embarrassed by the State of Oklahoma. Clearly the money existed where it was important.

Meanwhile, because he was doing so much good for GM, Rick Wagoner got a 34% in 2006 and a 67% increase in 2007. This money clearly exists. No problem. The government will now pay for the ROI that cannot exist because Rick Wagoner (like Nardelli) have a long and well proven history of decreasing profits. But the money did exist in their paychecks. Nothing else matters.

[classicman]

I didn't mean to give you the opportunity to simply regurgitate the same old thing Enron/GWB/GM/beancounter all bad... Perhaps you are unaware that we all have seen and read that far too much already. You better start thinking of something new for 2009

I was referring to a much larger perspective. It was not that long ago when America was a major producer of "stuff" now it is predominantly a service economy. In this situation we do not have the goods/products to market competitively - all we have are services to provide. Well those are the first things to go and right now...they are gone.

[Sundae]

Under my mattress
Because I'm a princess
And it seemed nasty to me
To have a pea




I thank you

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

I was referring to a much larger perspective. It was not that long ago when America was a major producer of "stuff" now it is predominantly a service economy.

Another business school game. The employee would design the assembly line. Therefore he had a manufacturing job. The employee then started a firm that only designed assembly line. Now he is a service job. He does the exact same job, but the accounting games no longer call him a manufacturer.

However that problem is slowly getting worse. Lehigh University no longer calls themselves "The Engineers". Their nickname is now "Mountainhawks". Why? Even Lehigh U wants to diminish engineering. Lehigh University is massively expanding its business school. After all, engineers cost more to educate. The demand in America is for more MBAs - just like Nardelli and Wagoner.

Fact don't change only because they were previously cited. What was accurately posted ten years ago has is now obvious even on the spread sheets.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by tw

What was accurately posted ten years ago has is now obvious even on the spread sheets.

Please cite

[ZenGum]

Some of the money "went" here, either paying the early investors in this ponzi/pyramid scheme, or funding this guy's lifestyle.

Worried investors are rushing to assess the extent of potential losses after the alleged $50bn (£33.5bn) fraud by the ex-head of the Nasdaq stock market.

Wall Street broker Bernard Madoff's fund ran up the massive fraud, which he called "one big lie", prosecutors said.

A federal judge has appointed a receiver to oversee Mr Madoff firm's assets and customer accounts.

Hundreds of people are thought to have invested with him. The 70-year-old has been released on $10m bail.

More at the link.

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Did you know that your Senators and your Congressmen are getting a $5,000 raise on January 1st?

\

Meanwhile, I just took a 3% pay *cut*, which is the same as the amount of my last raise, which was nearly three years ago.

[Cicero]

First we have to figure out if it actually existed, and then figure out if it disappeared.

[TheMercenary]

Rut-row.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...hub=TopStories

[tw]

Whereas profits were mostly fictitious, real money that was supposedly invested went to enrich employees - massive bonuses. From the NY Times of 18 Dec 2008:

On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real
For Dow Kim, 2006 was a very good year. While his salary at Merrill Lynch was $350,000, his total compensation was 100 times that — $35 million.

The difference between the two amounts was his bonus, a rich reward for the robust earnings made by the traders he oversaw in Merrill’s mortgage business.

Mr. Kim’s colleagues, not only at his level, but far down the ranks, also pocketed large paychecks. In all, Merrill handed out $5 billion to $6 billion in bonuses that year. A 20-something analyst with a base salary of $130,000 collected a bonus of $250,000. And a 30-something trader with a $180,000 salary got $5 million. ...

Unlike the earnings, however, the bonuses have not been reversed.

As regulators and shareholders sift through the rubble of the financial crisis, questions are being asked about what role lavish bonuses played in the debacle. Scrutiny over pay is intensifying as banks like Merrill prepare to dole out bonuses even after they have had to be propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. While bonuses are expected to be half of what they were a year ago, some bankers could still collect millions of dollars.

... Wall Street’s pay structure, in which bonuses are based on short-term profits, encouraged employees to act like gamblers at a casino — and let them collect their winnings while the roulette wheel was still spinning. ...

The bonanza redefined success for an entire generation. Graduates of top universities sought their fortunes in banking, rather than in careers like medicine, engineering or teaching.

... More than 100 people in Merrill’s bond unit alone broke the million-dollar mark in 2006. Goldman Sachs paid more than $20 million apiece to more than 50 people that year, ...

Mr. Lin ... was one of the last people hired onto Merrill’s mortgage desk, in the summer of 2007. Even then, Merrill guaranteed Mr. Lin a bonus if he joined the firm. ... such payouts were often in the seven figures.

... Mr. O’Neal, however, got even richer by leaving Merrill Lynch. He was awarded an exit package worth $161 million. ...

The real money paid service fees and bonuses. Profits were mostly mythical since stock brokers will say, "The purpose of a company is to make a profit."

Stock brokers typically underperform the market. Significant profits come from naive investors in mutual funds, hedge funds, and other overhyped, underperforming money games where even service fees consume profits. If your broker truly represented your interests, then he recommended selling all stocks last summer. But that would harm his profits. As the NY Times article demonstrates, any real money was quickly going out the door enriching people whose job is only a lowly service but hyped into a genius mythology.