There is more talk of the Facebook IPO coming out this week, perhaps on Wednesday.
If this is the case the Street will prop this market up to get that IPO priced and out the door, barring any unforeseen events from Europe.
"And we headed out of the hotel, went to the airport, got on the plane and, about halfway through the flight, I found myself alone in the President’s cabin with him. I said, 'Mr. President, you don't have a cold. There’s something going on.' He said, 'You bet there is something else going on.' And he said, 'When you find out, grab your balls and run.' Pierre Salinger, On the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1995
"Nearly three months after MF Global Holdings Ltd. collapsed, officials hunting for an estimated $1.2 billion in missing customer money increasingly believe that much of it might never be recovered, according to people familiar with the investigation.
As the sprawling probe that includes regulators, criminal and congressional investigators, and court-appointed trustees grinds on, the findings so far suggest that a "significant amount" of the money could have "vaporized" as a result of chaotic trading at MF Global during the week before the company's Oct. 31 bankruptcy filing, said a person close to the investigation."
Bill Moyers talks with former Citigroup Chairman John Reed to explore a momentous instance: how the mid-90's merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group, and a friendly Presidential pen, brought down the Glass-Steagall Act, a crucial firewall between banks and investment firms which had protected consumers from financial calamity since the aftermath of the Great Depression. In effect, says Moyers, they put the watchdog to sleep.
"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.After the Crash of 1929, in the Congressional hearings a Wall Street 'publicist,' A. Newton Plummer, revealed that the majority of financial journalists had been 'on the take' from the great stock pools and manipulators of the day. He could not be discredited by the deniers because he had kept a great cache of cancelled checks to prove his allegations. So he was largely ignored, his story buried for the sake of confidence and recovery, and the freedom and ease of the complicit.
You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
"Easy is the descent to hell; all night long, all day, the doors of dark Hades stand open; but to retrace the path; to come out again to the sweet air of Heaven - there is the task, there is the burden."
Virgil, The Aeneid
"At that time many will falter, and betray and despise each other, and false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many will grow cold, but those who stand firm to the end will be saved. And the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Matt 24:10-14
Many come here seeking ways to increase and protect their material wealth, and the well being of themselves and their families. And this is a worthy effort.
But not all remember to preserve something so much more important and precious -- themselves.
They do the right things, but then may go too far, falling into greed and lawless expediency, and win the battle, but lose the war, to a much cleverer, patient, and opportunistic foe.
For truly, what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, but lose themselves.