26 Jul 2013

Yanis Varoufakis on Saving Europe and SAC Sacked

theprimeinterest: It's official. SAC Capital is toast. That would be Stevie Cohen's hedge fund, which posted annual profits of over 20% and once had $15 billion under management. A grand jury indicted the firm alleging securities and wire fraud. And the hedge fund may have to disgorge hundreds of millions in profits. Notably, Mr. Cohen is not himself indicted. In fact, the Indictment doesn't even contain his name. He's simply referred to as the SAC Owner. So, SAC Owner, it looks like you've pulled a Corzine for now.
But he may face civil suits from investors that may not get their money back. By the way, the soon-to-be-defunct hedge fund accounts by some estimates to be 10% of daily stock market volume at the New York Stock Exchange. Don't worry though, high frequency traders have promised to pick up the slack. Perianne breaks down insider trading, and Bob duels Sam Sacks on the same.

And with all the talk of tapering quantitative easing, someone has decided to quantify just how much Ben's money printing has goosed corporate profits. According to the director of market strategy at the brokerage firm Newedge, that's about 47% of the earnings of the top 500 companies since 2009. He said QE is like "an athlete on steroids." Hey, if Lance Armstrong can get his Tour de France titles yanked for doping -- maybe we could apply the same strategy to his Chairmanship.

Finally, the super rich are heading for the exit in Switzerland. After getting burned by Swiss bankers who sold them out to authorities for tax evasion, hundreds of billions of francs might flee Switzerland. Not only are they withdrawing cash, but emptying safe deposit boxes. Most important in this story is what they're doing with their cash. According to the Spiegel story, they're investing in fine art, wine and classic cars. Gold isn't the only safe haven. Always follow the capital -- and right now it's an exit from cash. We talk about the Eurozone debt crisis with author and professor, Yanis Varoufakis.

No comments:

Post a Comment