============================   BANK OF AMERICA ===================
                   
                 There are signs the extreme downward pressure is coming off.  The Blue Closing Power Line
           is breaking its very steep downtrend and the TigerSoft "Accumulation Index" is not so negative. 
           But BAC is back on a Sell from a system that would have gained TigerSoft users 400% for the last year,
           simply taking hte automatic red Buys and Sells.  Before you go out and buy BAC, consider
           how gravely weak housing prices still are.  The red TuigerSoft Buys and Sells have powerfully profitable. 
           with BAC, C and most other financial stocks.  Much of this is because of how much insider trading
           is going on with these stocks.  If you know what the insiders are doing, making money in the
           the stock market becomes quite easy.  Get and use TigerSoft.  See for yourself.

          ========================   JAPANESE STOCK MARKET ===================

                                             Japanese Stock Market
                                               Peak - Dec. 29, 1989
                                  See also Nikkei 225 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nikkei_225(1970-).svg                      

                   On 12/29/1989 the Japanese Nikkei 225 hit a peak of 38915.87.  The Japanese bubble then
        broke.and eight months later, it was down by two thirds.  The bubble was brought on by
        wide-open  property speculation, especially in Tokyo, where a penthouse in Tokyo might rent for
        $10 Million a month.  Wages had long stagnated by 1990; so, workers were commonly
        puting in 12 hour days to try to make ends meet. Besides the parallels with the US in excessive
        real estate specualtion and the long decline in real wages, what is significant here is that
        the Japanese Government's response to the decline failed to bring much of a recovery for
        more than a decade. Just as in in the US, Japanese bankers concealed for years just how
        bad their loans were and how insolvent they really were..

                   Why did the Japanese Government fail to bring about a recovery?   What did they
       do wrong?  The Bank of Japan bought shares of public companies using a $500 billion bank bailout
       fund..  They promoted very, very low interest rates (like Bernanke) and gave their banks
       colossal sums, 12% of their entire GNP.   At the time, Obama's economic advisor, Larry
       Summers, urged the Japanese to stop try to prop up these bloated, all-but-dead big banks. 
       He warned them that the banks were eating up the rest of the Japanese economy.  It would be better
       to let them fail, use these sums to promote productivity and clear the decks for a healthy recovery
       with newer, healthier banks. 

                  Now that the US is in the same position as Japan was, with more and more retiring "baby
       boomers". Obama seems to be choosing to continue to follow Japan's prescription for decade-long
       stagnation and economic malaise.  Larry Summers' advise to the Japanese in the 1990s to put
       their zombie banks out of their misery and stop pouring good money after bad is forgotten. 

                 The value of the banks' toxic mortgages keeps dropping.  The most recent report on
       housing prices showed a record decline.  The rate of decline is more than 20% per year.
       From their mid-2006 peak, housing prices are down 27%-28.3%.  It will take trillions to
       keep the banks solvent if the trend continues another year.  The banks have been posting the
       value of their mortgage loans at "unrealistic" levels, to be polite.  There is no market for
       many of them because they are considered worthless in this climate.  Why should the government
       loan them any money based on something which is worthless!

                 Obama verbally refuses to accept the necessity of nationalization of the biggest, failing banks.  
       He refuses to see that the decline in jobs and housing prices will hopelessly devastate these banks. 
       The toxicity of their loans grows each day.  The banks are rotting away.  Their debtors cannot pay them
       what they are owed.  Just guaranteeing bank deposits is going to be hugely expensive. Guaranteeing
       the big banks themselves is probably futile.    Most economists are warning that shoring up these
       private banks will cost US taxpayers several trillion dollars MORE.  The worst banks banks
       are the biggest, CitiGroup and Bank of America.   They need to fail, be nationalized and then
       broken up.

                 This weekend, the US Treasury said it will convert its $45 billion in preferred stock, which
       pays 5%/year, in CitiGroup into common shares.  By becoming a shareholder before CitiGroup
       is declared insolvent,  the US Government and Obama will  be put into a position to have to keep
       protecting its investment by giving CitiGroup more and more money.   Already, just by this conversion,
      CitiGroup will not have to pay the yearly dividend of $2 billion on its preferred.   So, the US Government
      is in effect giving this money to the bank to save it.    This is another bailout, a hidden one, by a
      different name.   The US taxpayers are out $2 billion!  And CitiGroup will be kept on life support.  
      Obama may see that it is only a matter of time before the US Treasury will own 51%.   He can still
      claim to be for a private banking system.  But he prolongs the Zombie bank.  His lack of honesty
       has just cost the US taxpayer $3 billion.   Wait and see.   Will the de facto nationalization be
       acknowledged?  Will the Government change the bank's loan practices?  Will the CitiGroup be
       broken up?  Obama is not straight forward.  He follows the lead of his Wall Street linked advisors. 
       His lack of backbone shows clearly.  So does his loyalty to his biggest camapign contributors, Wall Street.

Wall Street Backed Obama At The Critical Beginning                        of His Campaign to Be President.       As of Feb., 1, 2008, "seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consist of officers and employees of the      biggest Wall Street firms, those charged with mainuplating stock prices, consorted short selling and bundling      unsound mortgages and selling them as Grade A investments. "Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers,      JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel      Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street. There are five large corporate law      firms that are also registered lobbyists; and one is a corporate law firm that is no longer a registered lobbyist      but does legal work for Wall Street. The cumula­tive total of these 14 contributors through February 1, 2008,      was $2,872,128, and we’re still in the primary season."                               ( http://www.infowars.com/obama%E2%80%99s-money-cartel/ )               "Obama promised change, but his economic team is slavishly loyal to the interests of the financial elite        who steered the financial system onto the shoals and now expect all of us to patch the hull and somehow get        it back into navigable water. Yes, we have some gestures to appease the downtrodden, like restrictions on        private jets and largely meaningless promises of salary caps (Lucien Bebchuk, a Harvard Law professor and        expert on corporate governance, described how they do little to restrict total comp). Summers and Geithner are        proteges of Robert Rubin, former Goldman co-CEO, and they are proving true to form, promoting even more        borrowing in a doomed-to-fail-or-be-counterproductive effort to achieve status quo ante, the very conditions        that lead to this shipwreck."                                             Obama's Advisors Have Sworn A Loyalty Oath, To Wall Street                                Robert Rubin.   "Not only did Rubin himself serve on the Obama economic transition team,             but two of the transition’s headhunters were Michael Froman, Rubin’s chief of staff at Treasury and             later a Citigroup executive, and James S. Rubin, an investor who is Robert Rubin’s son.  Source.                 Rubin denied anyone could have foreseen the consequences of the housing bubble and the writing of             billions of sub-prime loans.  Baldersash!  He sold a huge stash of shares right at the top.  And             other economists, like Roubini, did predict the disaster that unfolded.                  See     TigerSoft Blog and News Service - One Million Shares Sold by CitiGroup Insiders ...                                         A promoter of reckless, highly leveraged lending and CDOs at CitGroup.          He denied know there was a bubble, but unloaded 77,500 shares of CitGroup stock right at the top.                                       Glass-Steagall's Repeal Undid Much of What Had Been Learned                                         about Banking's Misdeeds That Led To The Great Depression.             Rubin was Clinton's Sectretary of the Treasury.  He talked Clinton into backing Republican          Phil Gramm's legislation to repeal FDR's Glass-Steagall Act that prevented commercial banks from entering          the realm of investment banks to bundle and sell their mortgages.  He sold Clinton on the globalization and letting          commercial banks sell their mortgages as investment banks.   Under Rubin’s guidance, the US heavy          industry and manufacturing evaporated and went overseas.  Wall Street and Goldman Sachs profited          from this by being the "indispensable intermediary". Median income in the US started falling in 1998.           Confronted with hard times on Wall Street, Paulsom and now Geithner are providing hundreds of billions         to the very people who caused the current calamity.    Source.    See also http://www.slate.com/id/2208371/         See his opposition to any regulation of derivatives, as initiated by the head of the Commodity Futures Trading         Commission. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/10/14/ST2008101403344.html             Rubin, as chairman of Citigroup's executive committee, urged executives there to plunge the bank much more          deeply into the market for CDOs.    "According to current and former colleagues, [Rubin] believed that Citigroup          was falling behind rivals like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and he pushed to bulk up the bank's          high-growth fixed-income [bond] trading, including the CDO business," the New York Times reported.                     "The political dynamics in 1932 have similarities with that of the upcoming 2008 presidential                election in the aftermath of the credit market crisis that broke out in August 2007. The main difference                between 1932 and 2008 is that, unlike in 1932, when Democrats could disclaim policy responsibility                for the 1929 crash, they cannot deny in 2008 the responsibility of the two-term Bill Clinton                administration (1993-2001) for the credit bubble that burst in 2007... It was Robert Rubin, special                economic assistant to Clinton and later Treasury secretary, who worked out what has come to be                known as Rubinomics, the strategy of dollar hegemony through the promotion of unregulated globalization               of financial markets based on a fiat dollar that also forced deregulation on the US financial market.   Source.                                                                         Obama's Treasury Secretary Geithner and Fed Chairman Bernanke                                                                 Rubin Proteges, All                Geithner (Treasury Secretary)       As president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Geithner               allowed the key New York Fed to loosen the controls on banks like CitiGroup, as they loaded up               on subprime mortgage loans, using extensive leveraging.                               "Because the Fed conducts much of its work in secret, details about Geithner's role in the                            Citigroup debacle remain hidden. But a review of publicly available records shows that the New                             York Fed, in a key period, relaxed oversight as Citigroup went on a risky spree.   Geithner,                             following practice common among Cabinet nominees with pending confirmation hearings,                            declined an interview for this story. Neither the New York Fed nor Rubin responded to written                            questions about Citigroup.  The New York Fed's supervisory unit reports directly to the bank                             president, Geithner. The unit's job is to ensure that firms manage risk and have enough capital                             to cushion against losses. Large companies tend to be held to more stringent capital standards.                            Yet poor risk management and weak capital levels were central to Citigroup's undoing.                            One enforcement agreement in place before Geithner took office in 2003 – an order requiring                            quarterly risk reports – was lifted during his watch. A ban on major acquisitions also was eliminated                            a year after it had been imposed in 2005. Afterward, in 2006 and 2007, Citigroup aggressively                            expanded into the subprime mortgage business and bought a hedge fund and Japanese brokerage,                            among other assets... Compared with its peers, Citigroup had a thinner capital cushion and relied                            more heavily on less-desirable types of capital, records show. The New York Fed knew –                            in 2007 it allowed Citigroup to count as capital securities that some regulators and credit agencies                            frown upon or discount."                                                               Geithner won't make waves for bankers... "Rubin, his former boss at Treasury, described Geithner                            to The New York Times in 2007 as someone with a "calm way" no matter the circumstance.                            Rubin, a senior counselor and director at Citigroup after leaving Treasury, called Geithner "elbow-less."                          ( http://www.propublica.org/article/how-citigroup-unraveled-under-geithners-watch )                                                                  Larry Summers (Presidential Economic Advisor)  Summers teamed up with Rubin to block regulation                             of derivatves, including those based on mortgages. He was Clinton's Treasury Secretary in 2000                             when Clinton agreed to abandon bank regulation under Glass-Steagall.  He had served as Rubin's                             closest aid previously a the Treasury.                              Summer has a reputation for being loudly arrogant when he is wrong, in an effort to intimidate.                             Brooksley Born was the chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under                            Clinton.In March 1998 she got a in her office in downtown Washington. "On the other end was                            Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers. According to witnesses at the CFTC, Summers proceeded                            to dress her down, loudly and rudely. "She was ashen," recalls Born's deputy Michael Greenberger,                            who walked in as the call was ending. "She said, 'That was Larry Summers. He was shouting at me'."                            A few weeks before, Born had put out a proposal suggesting that U.S. authorities begin exploring                            how to regulate the vast global market in derivatives." Source.                                                    Gary Gensler (nominee to be head of Commodity Futures Trading Commission)                  He worked at Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest brokers of commodities, for nine years.   He joined                the Treasury Department. Gensler served under two Clinton Treasury secretaries. From 1997 to 1999,                Gensler worked as assistant secretary of the Treasury under Robert Rubin until Rubin stepped down in 1999.               Lawrence Summers then became the Treasury head, and Gensler was promoted to  Treasury undersecretary.               There in 2000 "he oversaw the drafting of legislation that exempted derivatives from oversight by the               federal commodity regulator, including the viral credit default swaps that have amplified the current crisis."               (Quote: NY Times.   )   As the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Gensler               will oversee a troubled organization that has come under fire since oil prices fluctuated wildly throughout               2008. Many industry experts have blamed speculation by investors as the main cause of soaring oil prices               in early 2008.   Allowing speculators to buy crude oil futures putting only 7% down certainly needs               regulation.   He has so far been silent on that.  Summers and Gensler joined hands with Phil Gramm to               ward off regulation of the derivative markets and deregulate banking.                                                                                                     http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/10/deregulaterereg.html

 

                                                Rhetoric Asside, Wall Street Has A Friend in Obama
         
                A protégé of both Summers and Rubin... Under Rubin’s illuminated guidance, the US heavy industry fell
        behind, evaporated, or left for China. Wall Street and Goldman Sachs profited from this by being the indispensable
         intermediary, worldwide. Median income in the US started falling in 1998.   Confronted with hard times on
         Wall Street, Paulsom and now Geithner are providing hundreds of billions to the very people who caused
         the current calamity.  

                                                     How Plutocracies Self-Destruct 
                                                    
               The conflict between Wall Street and Main Street stands out clearly now. Societies that treat working
          people and Main Street this badly do not survive.  Professor Jared Diamond gave an interview to the US Public
          Broadcasting Service, Friday, February 12, 2009. He was asked point blank if he could tell of a particular
          characteristic that made some societies survive, whereas others collapse. That was the central question Diamond
          tried to address in his book "Collapse. How societies choose to fail, or to succeed".  Diamond’s answer
          "It seems to me that one of the predictors of a happy versus an unhappy outcome, has to do with the role
          of the elite or the decision makers or the politicians, or the rich people within the society. If the society is
          structured so that the decision makers themselves suffer from the consequences of their decisions, then they are
          motivated to make decisions that are good for the whole of society. If the decision makers can make decisions
          that insulate themselves from the rest of society then they are likely to make decisions that are bad for the rest of
          society."  A case in point, according to Jared Diamond: "the place that they call the City of New Orleans".
          One can ask "why over ten years, people in New Orleans did not spend a few hundred millions building
          appropriate dikes". Diamond’s answer: "Rich people are living on high ground In New Orleans. Compare
          with the Netherlands, where "the system of dikes has been called one the Seven Wonders of the World".
          "Rich people are not allowed to have mansions on top of the dikes, everybody is down in the polders.
           Politicians and rich people know that if the dikes failed, they would die".
           ( See - http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/stop-humoring-the-plutocracy/ )


                  Nouriel Roubini in his February 10 commentary, the choice is clear - the former, not the latter option
           that will be a "royal (taxpayer) rip-off" if assets are bought at above market valuations.  He sees losses so
           large that the US banking system "is effectively insolvent in the aggregate."   Jim Rogers never holds back,
           and, on February 11, was true to form on Bloomberg: Interviewed on Geithner's plan he said:
                      "Mr. Geithner has been bombing for 15 years. (He) caused the problem. He was head of the
          New York Fed that was supposed to be supervising banks. (Instead), all last year he came up with TARP.
          He came up with all these absurd bailouts. Geithner's has never known what he's doing. He doesn't know
          what he's doing now, and pretty soon everyone will know it, including Mr. Obama." 

                 Rogers opined the best way to proceed now was following the advise Summers gave Japan in the 1990s. 
          "You let (bad banks) go bankrupt. You clean out the system. You wipe out insolvent ones and let (good
           banks) take over.  America is making the same mistake (as Japan), and the politicians are making it
            worse. You want to know why they're making it worse? They want to support their friends on Wall Street."

           "The idea of the government buying up bad assets is not going to work." Either the price will be too high
           (at taxpayer expense) or it will be too low....it's not going to work. It's never worked....Pouring in new money will
           only weaken the whole system. Go back in history and see what worked. Countries that took their pain (solved
           their crisis). It was horrible going through it, but they came out of it and became rapidly growing."   

      What we need are healthy banks with clean balance sheets and enlightened risk assessment to provide consumer
      and business loans that will generate returns to shareholders." Let them sell their own toxic debt. They won't
      because they  "don't like the price." As for TARP, it failed and so will TARP 2.0 or what's now called a Financial
      Stability Plan. The idea is to get "private capital to buy bad loans and derivatives," but banks won't price them low
      enough to sell. Moreover, who'll buy risky assets unless they're practically given away or Washington guarantees
      them.    

            The Real Causes of The Crashes in 1929 and 2008:        
    


                                                               

The Real Causes                    1.   Lack of Regulation of Wall Street        1930 - "The new Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee,             Senator Duncan U Fletcher of Florida, immediately dismissed the Republican general counsel            of the commission on the 1929 crash and appointed as replacement Ferdinand Pecora, an assistant            district attorney for New York. Known thereafter as the Pecora Commission, its new investigation            after 1930 revealed a host of conflicts of interest in the financial sector in the years leading up to the            1929 crash, such as                      bank underwriting of unsound securities to save near non-performing bank loans,                      rampant insider trading and                      "pool operations" by speculators banding together to move a stock                                and to close out the pool at a peak price for profit, leaving the                                manipulated public with subsequent losses.             "More shocking still, the Pecora Commission uncovered the embarrassing fact that JP Morgan              and his fellow banking titans not only continued to reap huge profit from rescuing firms they helped              put in distress while the economy fell into severe depression, but they were also able to avoid              paying any income tax in 1931 and 1932 through tax loopholes on paper losses of distressed              companies they acquired. These bankers were in fact buying up a country in economic distress              with their tax deductions. "    Source:                           2.   Extreme Maldistribution of Wealth                 1920, 1929 and 2007 were the years when income was most concentrated in the fewest people.                 They were also years of market tops.   (Source: http://www.pimco.com/NR/rdonlyres/C61EF99E-6083-469B-B9B2-21EB055A1B76/4273/Chart1.gif )          See   TigerSoft Blog 6/24/2007 - The 1929 Stock Market Crash:  Could It Happen Again?                                                       Yes - Absolutely  -   June 24, 2007.           Michael Moore points out: “The richest 400 Americans -- that’s right, just four hundred people -- own MORE than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.   400 rich Americans have got more stashed away than half the entire country! Their combined net worth is $1.6 trillion. During the eight years of the Bush Administration, their wealth has increased by nearly $700 billion. "The Great Depression was the worst economic slump ever in U.S. history, and one which spread to virtually all of the industrialized world. The depression began in late 1929 and lasted for about a decade. Many factors played a role in bringing about the depression; however, the main cause for the Great Depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920's, and the extensive stock market speculation that took place during the latter part that same decade. The maldistribution of wealth in the 1920's existed on many levels. Money was distributed disparately between the rich and the middle-class, between industry and agriculture within the United States, and between the U.S. and Europe. This imbalance of wealth created an unstable economy. The excessive speculation in the late 1920's kept the stock market artificially high, but eventually lead to large market crashes. These market crashes, combined with the maldistribution of wealth, caused the American economy to capsize. "The "roaring twenties" was an era when our country prospered tremendously. The nation's total realized income rose from $74.3 billion in 1923 to $89 billion in 19291. However, the rewards of the "Coolidge Prosperity" of the 1920's were not shared evenly among all Americans. According to a study done by the Brookings Institute, in 1929 the top 0.1% of Americans had a combined income equal to the bottom 42%2. That same top 0.1% of Americans in 1929 controlled 34% of all savings, while 80% of Americans had no savings at all3. Automotive industry mogul Henry Ford provides a striking example of the unequal distribution of wealth between the rich and the middle-class. Henry Ford reported a personal income of $14 million4 in the same year that the average personal income was $7505. By present day standards, where the average yearly income in the U.S. is around $18,5006, Mr. Ford would be earning over $345 million a year! This maldistribution of income between the rich and the middle class grew throughout the 1920's. While the disposable income per capita rose 9% from 1920 to 1929, those with income within the top 1% enjoyed a stupendous 75% increase in per capita disposable income7. "A major reason for this large and growing gap between the rich and the working-class people was the increased manufacturing output throughout this period. From 1923-1929 the average output per worker increased 32% in manufacturing8. During that same period of time average wages for manufacturing jobs increased only 8%9. Thus wages increased at a rate one fourth as fast as productivity increased. As production costs fell quickly, wages rose slowly, and prices remained constant, the bulk benefit of the increased productivity went into corporate profits. In fact, from 1923-1929 corporate profits rose 62% and dividends rose 65%10. "The federal government also contributed to the growing gap between the rich and middle-class. Calvin Coolidge's administration (and the conservative-controlled government) favored business, and as a result the wealthy who invested in these businesses. An example of legislation to this purpose is the Revenue Act of 1926, signed by President Coolidge on February 26, 1926, which reduced federal income and inheritance taxes dramatically11. Andrew Mellon, Coolidge's Secretary of the Treasury, was the main force behind these and other tax cuts throughout the 1920's. In effect, he was able to lower federal taxes such that a man with a million-dollar annual income had his federal taxes reduced from $600,000 to $200,00012. Even the Supreme Court played a role in expanding the gap between the socioeconomic classes. In the 1923 case Adkins v. Children's Hospital, the Supreme Court ruled minimum-wage legislation unconstitutional13. The large and growing disparity of wealth between the well-to-do and the middle-income citizens made the U.S. economy unstable. For an economy to function properly, total demand must equal total supply. In an economy with such disparate distribution of income it is not assured that demand will always equal supply. Essentially what happened in the 1920's was that there was an oversupply of goods. It was not that the surplus products of industrialized society were not wanted, but rather that those whose needs were not satiated could not afford more, whereas the wealthy were satiated by spending only a small portion of their income."             (Quoted from http://en.allexperts.com/q/General-History-674/Great-Depression.htm )                       http://blog.prospect.org/blog/ezraklein/assets/ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/tax%20burdens.jpg                      Justice.  wink. wink ... CitiGroup Board of Directors Found Innocent                                Their massive writing of sub-prime loans did not constitute directorial malfeasance.          The judges deny that boards of directors can be held accountable for the worst financial          decisions in human history!    Decisons that have caused a hundred million to lose their          jobs and CitiGroups stock to collapse.                                Delaware Justice, Inc.       Judge tosses most claims in Citigroup lawsuit Delaware judge dismisses most claims in Citigroup subprime lawsuit DOVER, Del. (AP) -- A Delaware judge has dismissed most claims in a shareholder lawsuit seeking to hold Citigroup Inc. directors liable for losses related to the subprime mortgage market. In a ruling issued Tuesday, the court said the plaintiffs had failed to show that officials for New York-based Citigroup breached their oversight obligations or acted in bad faith in monitoring the company's exposure to subprime securities. The judge did allow the plaintiffs to pursue claims related to the board's approval of a $68 million departure package for former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince, who left the company in 2007. Shareholders alleged that current and former directors and officers of Citigroup breached their fiduciary duties by failing to properly monitor and disclose the company's exposure to subprime securities.     Comments by Bill M form Bethlehem, PA       "Delaware also cranks out more money by having the most pro-business laws, including laws that make it by far the most favorable for business (which is why the huge majority of U.S. companies are registered as Delaware corporations, thus giving the state a huge windfall from registration fees). Unfortunately for the consumer, Delaware's pro-business climate can also mean anti-consumer--the sleazy payday-loan industry, for instance, relies on Delaware banks to front the funds, since DE is one of the very few states that have virtually no usury (loan-sharking) laws."

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