Markets go up & down, but either way works for Wall Street. - The Blackmailing of the Country continues.

4/19/11 - So yesterday was tax day, and that of all days was when the rating agency S&P decided to publicly scold the US leaders, and their constituents, by downgrading their ‘outlook’ for the whole Country. We’re “spending too much money” was the basic message. Even our international banking children, the IMF and the World Bank, agree; Cut spending to go along with the decade of bipartisanly instituted tax-rate decreases, or else.

http://current.com/news/93162037_s-p-cuts-u-s-rating-outlook-to-negative-kicks-t...

Or else what, you might ask? Most would answer that it would have negative consequences for our economy. Bloomberg was quick to point out yesterday that S&P’s mere perception of trouble ahead caused the markets to tank:

*Stocks Sink on U.S. Credit Outlook as Euro Falls on Debt Crises*

“U.S. stocks sank the most in a month, oil slid and gold rose to a record after Standard & Poor’s cut the American credit outlook to negative and concern about Europe’s debt crisis grew.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-18/euro-weakens-on-greece-debt-concerns-oi...

Seems pretty clear to me; We’re not going to be able to afford Europe’s world-class infrastructure because we’re too much in debt already. Implied is; Europe is a perfect example of what happens when you over-borrow to improve society, and the US is a perfect example of what happens when you over-borrow to blow them up. Too bad for us it seems…..we should have made better choices years ago.

Then this comes along this morning:

*MarketWatch: Is this the final stage of the bull market?*

“I believe [the numbers] are currently telling us that the market is now at a stage in the fear-greed cycle that either represents the top for the uptrend that has been underway since March 2009, or we are being given one last chance to load up on equities before the current uptrend enters what will prove to be the final (but far and away most profitable, mind you) stage of said bull market…….. Perhaps I am wrong, and the market will decide to “drift sideways” for several months in order to frustrate bulls and bears alike……”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-this-the-final-stage-of-the-bull-market-2011...

So let me get this straight, the market might go up and be “most profitable”, or it might drift sideways, or as you said yesterday it might tank. Did I get that right? Yesterday the markets were convulsing over the budget, today futures are up and the markets opened higher.

Which begs the question; Do any of these ass-clowns know what’s going to happen in the future any more than you do? The truth is, they don’t. They do, however, have better information than you do and quicker computers executing programs to take advantage of the market in ways your pension and 401k can only dream of:

“The new cream-skimming trick in Wall Street's playbook is called High Frequency Trading, or HFT.

It works like this: big trading banks invest in super-computers that can process information at every faster speeds, splitting nano-seconds into smaller and smaller units. These super-computers can process instructions faster than regular computers, and much faster than humans. Next, they place these super-computers in the exchanges themselves. This gives direct access to the exchange, cutting out the latency of connections from remote locations. By trading faster than smaller investors, profits can be constantly churned.”

http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/high-frequency-tra...

Great. Wall Street’s biggest institutions are playing your 401k’s and pension funds for chumps. They artificially manipulate the market, up, down, and sideways extracting profit no matter the conditions. Rules have even been created so that they can borrow the stocks and bonds in your retirement accounts to make money on whenever they choose:

*Short Selling Explained*

“Selling a stock short basically means that you buy the stock when it's high with the intention of selling it when it's lower. The way this works is that the investor makes a "short" trade with his broker. This trade tells the broker to lend the investor a certain amount of shares at the current price. Rather than keeping these shares held in an account, they're sold immediately and the investor is given the value of how much they are worth…….when the investor thinks that the stock is low enough, he puts in a "short cover" order with his broker that allows him to buy back the shares. He or she then returns the shares to the broker and keeps the difference between the price he originally sold it for and what he bought it back for.”

http://www.stockjargon.com/articles/stocks/short.html

So there you have it. Rating Agencies like the S&P that are paid by Wall Street’s biggest investment banks have a vested interest in periodically producing news that gyrates the markets. Average Americans with 401k’s and other pension accounts for retirement savings always loose when markets go down, but Wall Street benefits either way.

So what does this have to do with the budget? Not much directly, but that’s a story for a different day. For now rest comfortably knowing that cuts to the budget will benefit some people, and those people are not you.

-Schnookums