SP 500 and Nasdaq 100 September Futures; Gold Daily Chart at Week's End

Sleepy trade despite the almost 20 point range on the SP futures, and on a Friday the 13th no less.

Light volumes and trader's games.

SP 500



NDX



Gold

GM IPO Timed to Complete Just Before the November Elections

It will be a wonder if the stock market remains favorable to an IPO of this size by October.

ABC News
GM IPO Filing Delayed Until Early Next Week
By Soyoung Kim
August 13, 2010

NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Motors Co has delayed its IPO filing until early next week as it updates its prospectus with the recent CEO change and a management risk factor, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday.

The filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was originally scheduled for Friday, sources said previously.

GM Chief Executive Ed Whitacre said on Thursday he would step down and Dan Akerson would take over, effective in September.

The source who said the filing had been delayed declined to be named because preparations for the IPO are not public.

GM's several-hundred-page prospectus will not provide the number of shares to be sold or the pricing range. It will cite the company's bankruptcy, steps completed in restructuring, financial projections, details of ownership, and a large set of risk factors, sources have said.

GM is now adding a new risk factor regarding the departure of Whitacre and increased uncertainty about the automaker's long-term leadership and the change is expected to take more than a day, the source said.

By filing initial paperwork with the SEC next week, GM is aiming to complete its IPO between late October and the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, another source familiar with the matter said.

A successful GM IPO, which could be the largest ever for the U.S. market, would hand the Obama administration an important political win against critics of its controversial $50 billion bailout of the top U.S. automaker, analysts have said.

The automaker secured a $5 billion credit facility this week, two sources briefed on the deal told Reuters on Wednesday, clearing the last remaining hurdle toward an initial public offering of stock expected to make the U.S. government a minority shareholder.

Ten major banks have signed on to the $5 billion credit facility, committing up to $500 million each, but the individual commitments would be cut as GM adds more banks in other countries and emerging markets as part of its efforts to attract global investors, sources said...

Lair of the Pigmen: FHA to Extend Government Loan Subsidy Benefits to NYC Luxury Condo Market

Weren't FHA loans supposed to be a form a welfare for 'poor people?' Not since the Expanding America Home Ownership Act of 2007.

And it appears this is one 'reform' that can't be blamed on 'the liberals' and Obama. Crony Capitalism is not a political party, it's a way of life in which power and greed are the measure of all things.

Well, some of the New York real estate developers are poor, relatively speaking, compared to an investment banker or a trader pulling down a fifty million dollar annual bonus for packaging fraudulent financial instruments. But they are all rich in their well connected friends in the government.

The kleptocracy never sleeps; crony capitalism knows no bounds...

NBC New York
Luxury Condos Asking the Feds For Help
By JUAN DEJESUS
Fri, Aug 13, 2010

Seek FHA insurance to drive condo sales

The federal government may soon come to the rescue of stalled luxury condominiums in Manhattan.

Manhattan luxury condominiums known for posh amenities and high price tags are beginning to apply for Federal Housing Administration backing.

Condominium developers hope to open financing opportunities for their purchasers as well as guarantee a little protection for themselves. Not only will lending institutions be more willing to lend to purchasers with FHA backing, but the FHA will pay the mortgage should a home buyer default.

The FHA loosened the condo rules because of “market conditions,” Lemar Wooley, an agency spokesman told Bloomberg.com

The administration recently agreed to insure mortgages for apartments at the 98-unit Gramercy Park development, known as Tempo in Match, according to Bloomberg. That deal allowed buyers to make a down payment of as low as 3.5 percent in a complex where apartments run up to $3 million...

William K Black on 'Financial Racketeering;' Government Coverup; a 250% Tax Increase

The interview with William K. Black starts at 13:00 in this video and is well worth seeing.

Gresham's Dynamic: The least ethically inclined have an advantage in the US financial system (in which regulatory capture nullifies enforcement) driven by perverse incentives of oversized bonuses and the failure to investigate and prosecute criminal activity.



In addition to the overhang of unindicted and undeclared fraud that is still in place, distorting the clearing of the markets, there is the issue of an imbalanced economy in which an oversized financial sector exacts what amounts to a draconian tax on the real economy, that is, fees and tariffs and other unproductive drains in excess of anything that the government is levying.

What Do You Get for a 250% Tax Increase?

As I recall the percentage of financial sector profits to corporate profits recently peaked at 41%, from a long run average of less than 16%. Granted, this is a bit theoretical because of the pervasive accounting fraud in the banks and the corporations.

I wonder what the percentage of profit, pre-bonus, is being enjoyed now?

This can be viewed as a form of a tax. If the government raised taxes from 16% to 41% what do you think the impact on the US economy would be? And yet there is little discussion of this, or the racketeering that accompanied such a festival of looting.

Yet conceptually this is what has been accomplished through the deregulation of the banks and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and of course, regulatory capture. The financial sector acts primarily as a capital accumulation and allocation system, and secondarily to facilitate wealth transferals through pure investment and speculation, the famous school of winners and losers. I would suggest that this latter function has grown out of control like a cancer, and metastasized to drain and debilitate the better part of the political system and the non-financial economy.

I would suggest that this system is broken, and that there can be no sustainable recovery until it is fixed. How can confidence return when most of those in the know realize that the fraud is still in play? Who can take positions with confidence in such a corrupt environment wherein the government acts as the handmaiden to a handful of powerful Banks which engage in large scale frauds as a mainstay of their business, and with virtual impunity?

Stimulus that is not targeted, and especially any subsidy that passes through the Banks, is liable to this tax. It reminds me of warlords stealing charitable relief as it arrives in a Third World country before it can be distributed to the people.

But austerity is even worse, because the kinds of austerity being discussed are specifically targeting the ordinary people who have been badly used already to say the least, and not the perpetrators of one of the biggest financial frauds in the history of the world, and those wealthy few who benefited from a culture of deception which they helped to form.

This is a compounding of the suffering and injustice. If one were to set a recipe for a social and civil revolution it would fit the bill nicely. No one ever said that the pigmen are not self-destructive in their lifestyles and obsessions.

The comparison to the aftermath of the Savings and Loan crisis could not be more stark. Why the inability and reluctance to investigate and indict? What is the government covering up? Who is pulling Obama's strings?