Thursday Tea Party

So.

Last Thursday we saw the Dow lose 512 points. Friday it rebounded a mere 60 points, and Monday after the S&P downgrade we tumbled another 630 points. Tuesday it was then up 420 points in a rebound, before Wednesday's action took the DJIA back down another 510 points in seesaw trading action. It's only fitting that Thursday brought another huge bounceback, this time up 420 points once again, as investors prove that, more than anything else right now, they simply do not know what stocks are worth today. That's what makes this such a scary, and yet exciting, time to be investing right now. Usually -- during well more than 95% of the trading days out there for sure over time -- investors generally feel comfortable that where the market closed yesterday was a fair valuation of the stocks of the companies involved. That's not to say that everyone who ever bought a share of stock in any company has automatically done some calculation in their head to get an idea of what the company is intrinsically worth or anything, far from it. But as a general statement, stocks the next day might go up a little or down a little depending on the business news of the day, but in general there's not going to be a big revaluation of the whole thing on a daily basis.

That's what is missing right now. With all the uncertainty out there right now as I have chronicled over the past week here on the blog, investors truly don't have confidence that they really know what the market is worth. Like, the whole thing. It's one thing for an individual stock to trade up 5% one day and down 5% the next based on some company-specific news or updates. But for the entire market to move 5% at a time, five out of six days in a row, and in both directions, it is literally unprecedented in the history of the Dow and it gets at what I was describing yesterday as the "historic" magnitude of the past week's moves. It's just plain historic. And it indicates that, much like the FOMC itself, investors are very concerned right now, and know very little about what is going to drive growth in the U.S. economy for what is increasingly becoming a more and more extended period of time into the future.

So don't let the big rallies on Tuesday or Thursday of this week fool you. The bears aren't gone, they just know how to pick their spots based on the news and the circumstances of the day. Give them a rumor of a major bank failure in France, and they'll come out of the woodwork. Throw 'em a really bad monthly jobs report with the unemployment rate jumping a couple percentage points, and the bears'll be there, you can count on it. Any serious talk about another recession, and the bandwagoners will jump ship like the sheep that they always, always are when it comes to their money.

And recession is clearly one of the hot topics among the financial talking heads over the past month or so -- specifically, whether or not we're going into a "double-dip" recession, following up on the recession of 2008-2010. But all that talk about whether or not we're going to double-dip seriously misses the whole point -- we basically already have! A total of 1.6% cumulative growth in the U.S. GDP over the first half of the year? Where I come from, that's basically a recession already. Or a stag-cession, at best. It's no kind of recovery, that's for sure. And that's what already happened, just in the first six months of 2011. It's a good guess that things have worsened in July and August with all stability completely leaving the financial markets. You can argue till you're blue in the face about whether or not we're going to recess, but in reality, we've already been stagnant as a matter of stone cold fact for not just one but two straight quarters, and we're almost surely in the midst of a ho-hum at best third quarter as well. And that means that we haven't heard the last of the bears in the market yet, probably not by a longshot.

I thought I would leave you on this Friday with two videos from the literal guy who literally started the Tea Party movement in the United States a couple of years ago, right on live tv on CNBC. His name is Rick Santelli, and the below rant from back in early 2009 when the Dow was around 7000 and then brand new President Obama had just started talking about loan modification programs to enable Americans who could not afford their mortgages to modify them to lower amounts that they could actually afford to pay. Needless to say, Santelli went off, and inadvertently started an entire movement. The entire clip really is worth watching, other than the short part in the middle when the nerdy guy talks about something or other:



Once you watch that and become a Rick Santelli fan for life, check out this Santelli rant from CNBC just this past Monday morning, just after the S&P downgrade while we waited for the stock market to open in what proved to be a 630-point down day for the Dow by the time it was all said and done. Santelli really "gets it" in a way that most others simply will not allow themselves to get it:



Governor Rick Santelli. I like the sound of that.

Wednesday Reality

Hello? Helllllooooooooooooo? Is there anybody out there?

Where did everybody go who just one day ago was telling you that the market rallied 600 points in an hour on Tuesday afternoon because the Fed pledged long-term support for the market? Boy, that long-term pledge of support sure disappeared in a hurry, didn't it?

Where did everybody go who denied that Tuesday's Fed statement made the FOMC sound overly negative, and overly powerless?

Where did all the talking heads, analysts, and current and former fund managers go who advised you to buy on the dip all day on Monday? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Right back under their rocks is where they went, that's right. Only to re-appear in a month or two and tell you they've predicted this whole move downward all along. But then, that's the shtick that makes any public market analyst survive nowadays, isn't it.

The markets plunged again on Wednesday, erasing all of Tuesday's massive 4% gains in the U.S. and then moving more than a full percent lower than that, bringing the Dow's total five-session tumble to a stunning 1176.50 points, representing a decline in just one week of 9.9% of the full accumulated value over the entire lifetime of the Dow Jones Industrials Average, and I can say from the perspective of a very involved market observer, it has truly been a thing of awe to behold. Even more ominous than the fact that Wednesday saw the markets give back significantly more than all of Tuesday's gains, is the fact that the market sold off hard all throughout the final 90 minutes of trading, and finished Wednesday's abysmal session literally right at the lows of the day.

Make no mistake -- what we're witnessing right now is one of the most impressive momentum struggles between the bulls and the bears that we've had on Wall Street in our lifetimes. Of course the absolute peak of the 2008 financial crisis was even a little worse than what we've endured over the past several trading sessions, but after Wednesday's huge slide, I think it's fair to say that we've officially moved into "historic" territory with this incredible fiasco over the past week in the stock market. It's not quite to "apocalyptic" yet -- in fact, amazingly it's nowhere near "apocalyptic" yet by a longshot -- but in truth, a 10% decline in exactly one week is close to as bad as the whole market at large ever gets. With the situation in Europe seeming to deteriorate almost daily, and with the GDP numbers for the first half of this year finally making clear to Americans for the first time the farce that has been manufactured by the current administration through growing use of government-printed money over the past two years, combined with what I have been telling you was a Fed statement on Tuesday that somehow managed to make the FOMC sound simultaneously as scared and as powerless as I have ever seen them sound, this is far and away the market bears' best opportunity to garner the support they need to force huge downward spikes in the market since the financial crisis finally bottomed out in March of 2009.

It's been two and a half long years for the bears, it really has. Even by bear market standards. The move from Dow 6,600 in March 2009 to Dow 12,810 on April 29, 2011 was one of the single most ferocious bull cycles in the history of the DJIA. Think about that -- the world's leading market index surged a full 94% over the span of just over two years. It was basically impossible to make money shorting stocks, or doing anything other than sitting squarely on the long side in equities, for over 25 months in the U.S. In truth, mostly every bear out there has been pulling his or her hair out for over two years as equities have inexorably risen, seemingly without any valid justification to support such strength, a sentiment expressed by many financial bloggers and other talking heads in the industry repeatedly ever since the market started recovering from the financial crisis.

And now, finally, the confluence of negative events I mentioned above have given the bears their first chance to flex their muscles since March of 2009. And given what the past 25 months have been like on Wall Street, the muscle of the bears can be great indeed, as we saw well back in 2008 and as we're seeing again now in a big way. The bottom line is that these negative guys, and the momentum guys, and the logarithmic trading guys, they all come out of the woodwork in times like this, and they do so in incredible numbers and with incredible strength in their push. We see it every few years like this, even though most market participants seem to be surprised all over again each time the cycle repeats itself. The bulls put up a strong effort around midday on Wednesday after a large opening drop following Tuesday's short-lived rally, bumping up the Dow more than 200 points off the morning lows, but the bears circled the wagons for another sick push in the afternoon, and the final 90 minutes of trading on Wednesday was about as bad as you ever see the markets get. And once it was clear that this selling momentum had started kicking in and that traders were setting their sights on a run at the day's lows, it was like a tidal wave of sell orders flushing over Wall Street.

Given what things look like at this exact moment, the bears' insatiable thirst for blood in the market has clearly not yet been quenched.

The Bounceback

Man, there is nothing better than times like this on Wall Street. Honestly, if you can keep your wits about you and you're not too overinvested in the market, and you have some solid finance knowledge to feel empowered to have a good sense of what's really going on, these unbelievably volatile days are the rarest of treats. And if you're actively involved in the market, you learn to appreciate them, of course the huge up days like today's 5% bounceback rally, but even the massive selloffs like we've seen over the past week. If you know what you're doing, those down days are some of the most exciting times there are, because there are any number of ways to profit from steep market declines, and especially because you get to go bargain hunting for those stocks you've had your eye on for 18 months just waiting for the right entry point.

Tuesday's trading action was simply a spectacle to behold. We opened up like 200 points on the Dow after the clear overreaction of what, 1200 points lost over three trading sessions on Wall Street, but within half an hour the bears had mounted their push, weighing stocks down and pushing the major indices down into negative territory within the first half hour of trading. But just when it looked like the bottom was ready to fall out of the market again, the bulls made their recovery, bouncing the indices off of the flat line and sending stocks solidly higher once again as the bears' early morning push was successfully fended off by those who saw too much value in stocks at Dow 10,800 to sit by without jumping in.

The Dow stayed up 150-250 points or so through the midday in New York, but then as we approached the Fed's FOMC announcement out of Washington, DC at 2:15pm, investors pulled in the reins a bit, perhaps anticipating that there were likely no magic words the Fed statement could include that would quickly address the myriad problems facing the U.S. and global economy at this stage. Within minutes of the Fed's announcement, which I linked to here almost immediately, people very easily saw exactly what the Fed was saying, given that this was one of the shortest and most transparent and straightforward Fed announcements I can ever recall seeing, and it basically included (1) a statement that the economy is clearly much worse than they had expected it would be earlier this year, and (2) a promise to keep short-term interest rates -- which have been at zero since the financial crisis in 2008 -- remaining at zero for at least another two years. This was the first time any extended time period like this has ever been included with this kind of specificity in a regular FOMC announcement, but at the same time, the Fed's obvious fear about the current path of the economy, combined with their lack of any real bullets left in their fiscal policy gun, and absolutely no promise, indication or scintilla of evidence of any intention to launch a third round of quantitative easing or other Fed balance sheet action, made the FOMC statement truly one of the most depressing and pessimistic proclamations I can ever recall being made by the U.S. central bank.

The moment that the bears saw how objectively negative the FOMC statement was, they immediately seized back control of the markets, pushing the Dow from up 200 points to down 200 points within half an hour of the Fed's release to the market's lows of the day, and it seemed we were looking once again at another complete washout as the Dow tested the 10,600 level for the first time in some ten months. It was an extremely impressive push by the bears, who have finally firmly wrested control of this market over the past week or two after basically two and a half years of nonstop bull market action, and the market-savvy could tell that the sellers had decided this was their moment, their chance to really make a splash and cause a scare among the investors of the world. In ten minutes the Dow would be down 500 points again, and there was finally going to be some raw old-fashioned panic again in the markets.

Yep, the bears gave it their best shot at around 2:45pm ET today, buoyed by a shockingly negative and poorly thought-out announcement out of the Fed, but then a strange thing happened. 10,600 proved to be the breaking point for the bulls, and when that level was reached about 15 minutes before 3pm on Tuesday, everything suddenly turned on a dime, and the most massive onslaught of buying I've seen in at least two and a half years took hold, sending the Dow from down 200 to up 430 points, closing at the highs of the day as the market shot up more than 600 points in just the final hour of trading. 600 points up in one hour, just when the bears thought they were about to wring out another day of heavy losses from U.S. investors. Even over the past week's crazy action minute-to-minute, I have not seen volatility like this -- with two huge pushes by the bears of multiple hundreds of Dow points each, combined with a truly epic FOMC fail by historical standards who all but proclaimed that growth will stink in the U.S. for at least another two years -- again since those crazy days in late 2008 when we would be down 700 three days in a week, and then up 550 the next.

The uneducated, the naive, and those who want to appear like they know what they're talking about but who actually have not a frigging clue posted headlines all afternoon and evening on Tuesday like "Investors Cheer Fed No-Exit Announcement" and "Stocks Soar as Fed Announcement Interpreted as Long-Term Support", etc. What jokers. As I've said, the Fed announcement was, factually speaking, about as negative as it could realistically have been. I can't even believe how poorly conceived that statement out of the FOMC was, almost as if it was designed to send the markets into another tailspin, which is exactly what it did within seconds of hitting the wires. There's just no debating that. If you read people in other finance outlets tonight telling you that investors interpreted the Fed decision as an implicit promise to launch another round of quantitative easing, then please don't read that publication anymore because that writer is a fraud and is as naive as the person who bought in big right before last Wednesday's action and then sold everything at this past Monday's close. The Fed has been perfectly clear in several recent FOMC statements when it is planning or expecting to launch more balance sheet measures to support the U.S. economy. They are crystal clear about it on purpose, because it is important to them that investors get the message that the Fed is here to support them. This FOMC statement was simply completely devoid of any such references or inferences, a fact which stuck out like a sore thumb.

Similarly, if you read one of these so-called market intelligence websites or newsletters today that has the audacity to actually put into print that investors bought up U.S. stocks on Tuesday because of the Fed's long-term promise regarding interest rates, once again that person's opinion is not worth the paper it is written on. Seriously, think how ridiculous that is! The Fed has already held interest rates at zero for over two years straight, and anybody who thought at this point, with the Fed's effort having failed to stimulate any real growth for nine straight quarters now, that there was any chance of any time soon seeing the Fed kicking up interest rates is as clueless as the day is long. No, it was already stone cold obvious that the Fed would be holding rates at zero for the foreseeable future, and a promise to do so "until 2013" is barely more than a statement of intent, as clearly the FOMC could act long before then if there is some sustained turnaround in the country's economy and/or inflation rates long before then. The 2013 rate commitment is a red herring plain and simple, and if anything as I mentioned above will surely come to be interpreted by the market as a clear indication of the Fed's expectation that growth will remain very sluggish in the U.S. until at least that time, an unprecedented type of statement out of almost any government office and in particular the FOMC. Anybody who thinks the market went up on Tuesday because of that FOMC statement simply does not have sufficient experience in the market to really know what's going on.

The market rallied ferociously in the final hour of trading Tuesday, but it did so directly in spite of the FOMC, not as a result of it. The Fed did about as much as it realistically could have to scare the crap out of U.S. investors for some inexplicable reason, and when the market had a few minutes to digest the FOMC statement, that is exactly what happened. The market didn't turn positive at all because of the Fed, make no mistake about it. The market turned at 2:45pm today because it had fallen much too far much too fast, and when the bears mounted their great big push, they went too far and made stocks too cheap for the money on the sidelines to stay away. The result was a massive wave of pent-up buying, one that completely overwhelmed the bears as it should have after the carnage we have seen over the past four trading sessions. But make no mistake, that rally was purely a momentum play and nothing more.

And that means that, without actually feeling any support from the Fed after the FOMC statement this week, the huge Tuesday rally cannot be trusted to hold at this point in time.

The Downgrade, and the Fed

Longtime financial equities analyst Dick Bove has publicly been a clueless ass for a long time, including in a big, huge way all throughout 2007 and 2008 while the financial crisis besat the markets and left Bove holding the bag as he preached that all of the nation's largest banks and brokerages would be just fine. Oh, Bove will deny he ever said any of that now -- just like any good Wall Street analyst does with regularity these days -- but I was there, on the inside, hanging on the guy's every word, and let's just say he has been a confirmed clown for a long time and I was sure that would pretty much never change.

But for once, Dick Bove finally got something right. Go read Bove's piece at the link above about the S&P downgrade of the U.S. debt, where he basically nails it, in agreeing with my statement yesterday that we should actually be happy to have only dropped our credit rating from AAA to AA+ given the actual state of our national debt situation. I could read this stuff about people slamming on the S&P for even deigning to consider downgrading America's debt all day long, but my side would hurt from the unending guffaws and knee slapping from what I was sure at first had to be the rantings of people confined to insane asylums.

Here's a good general piece of advice for those of you who are interested in learning more about the financial markets: if someone has posted this week that S&P are a bunch of "idiots" (or insert your other ad hominem personal attack sans any intelligent or sensible justification) for their "flawed" analysis of the U.S. debt situation, quickly delete that bookmark just as fast as you can and don't ever read there again, because that my friends is a person who is simply far too blinded by false patriotism, naivete, or just a general lack of big-picture understanding to ever be able to see the truth. Anybody who thinks that S&P's job is to continue rating U.S. debt as "risk-free" even while there still right at this moment remains a good chance that we default on our debt at some point in the next six months, and while Tea Party and Republican members of Congress repeatedly declare publicly even just today that they are willing to push our country into default if that's what it takes to get our president to stop recklessly spending printed money that we don't really have, quite simply does not have even a basic understanding of S&P's role in the marketplace.

Yes, S&P and all its lesser competitors embarrassed themselves horribly with respect to the excessively positive ratings given to collateralized mortgage securities for years during the past decade. But the suggestion that S&P now is somehow required to continue that incompetence when faced with pretty much the easiest, clearest downgrade from "risk-free" status perhaps in the recorded history of mankind, reflects a lack of understanding about how the marketplace works in general so profound to make nothing else ever said by such a person even worth reading again.

Update: The Fed's FOMC just released their statement following the FOMC meeting in Washington, DC today, and the results are shockingly short on any support for the financial markets in my view. Basically, the Fed is announcing (1) that the economy and the jobs market are much worse right now than had previously been expected, and (2) that the Fed will maintain short-term interest rates at zero -- where they've already been for the past three years -- for at least another two full years. How that is supposed to make anybody feel confidence about the market right now is utterly and completely beyond me.

Which might explain why the Dow was up 210 points at 2:15pm just seconds before the FOMC announcement, and is now tanking big time.

Doesn't anybody in Washington know what to do or understand what is going on these days?

Monday Market Mania

Well that was fun in the stock market on Monday, wasn't it?

Let me start by just personally extending kudos to S&P for finally -- for the first time in several years at least for sure -- actually doing their fucking job and telling the truth, and for showing why they have always been considered and always will be considered far and away the most credible ratings agency in the world today. And especially for refusing to kowtow to pressure from no one less than the President himself not to downgrade U.S. debt as is obviously warranted at this time. In a way, I think we should probably be happy to be retaining even an a AA+ rating from S&P, and I am not the least bit surprised to see our debt only only downgraded but put on negative watch for further downgrades even from here.

I mean, it's highlarious to sit and listen to the President on national tv (for some strange reason today) as well as Treasury Secretary Geithner rage against S&P about how unwarranted the rating cut was and how mistaken S&P's judgment is, etc. When in reality you, me and everyone else in the country all know that, literally less than one week ago, this country was straight-up one or two days away from a debt default. Period, end of story, we were one or two days away from some form of debt default, a fact that was made extremely public by both sides of the debate on a repeated and consistent basis and in a very deliberate manner. Longtime readers will note that I have always been all about owning the consequences of your decisions here on the blog, and when the President and the GOP leadership both repeatedly make the decision to broadcast to the world how we are going to default on August 2, we won't be able to make a $60 million interest payment due on August 3, etc., then shut your holes and don't complain when a ratings agency whose sole job is to determine how likely your country is to suffer some form of a default on its debt, decides that maybe you are no longer worthy of the highest possible credit rating indicating the highest possible confidence that no default is ever forthcoming.

Because, you know, last week everyone and their mother associated with the U.S. government told the world loudly, clearly, and very deliberately that we were going to, you know, default on our debt on August 2 or 3. There was a stalemate on both sides heading right up to the weekend immediately prior to the scheduled default, and in fact the two sides eventually settled the debate generally by kicking the can down the road (sound familiar? It's unbelievable, isn't it?) until December to determine which programs will suffer cuts, and how much, to help stabilize the deficit in this country.

Anyways, somebody tell me again how President Obama goes nuts all week a couple of weeks back about how we're going to default on our debt on Tuesday, we're going to miss interest payments on Wednesday, etc., and then is back on tv a week and a half later questioning how S&P could possibly decide that U.S. government debt is not worth of what is essentially known as "risk-free" status among the major ratings agencies. That is just about the most thoughtless thing I've heard in the entire Obama term thus far. We're obviously not a triple-A rated country anymore in terms of our sovereign debt, and those of you Americans out there who actually have some scrotum should probably be focusing a lot more on what the fuck Moody's and Fitch could mother fucking possibly be looking at in recently re-affirming the U.S.'s triple-A "risk-free" status for its sovereign debt. As one more reminder, this is the debt that was very publicly a day or two away from literal default less than a week ago. The entire issue is really just unbelievable if you have your head screwed on straight.

Oh, and here's one other topic while I'm discussing the markets. This story makes my mother fucking blood boil -- that AIG is apparently going to sue Bank of America for some $10 billion for fraud related to subprime mortgages leading up to and during the financial crisis. And don't get me wrong -- Bank of America are a bunch of shitbags, and that bank -- the country's largest I believe -- could very well be leading the market and the sector lower as people are sure to start really considering that the bank might require another bailout or at the least a solid round of capital-raising in order to right the ship.

But this is AIG -- the company that essentially invented the notion of writing insurance contracts on other companies' debt defaulting over the past decade, accepting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance premiums to insure the debts of companies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia, etc. on the blind, thoughtless assumption that none of these banks would ever actually fail, and that AIG was thus merely being paid "free money" at zero risk to the firm of ever having to pay out those insurance obligations in case of the disaster. This is the same company that, when all of those entities I mentioned above did experience defaults or even bankruptcies or near-bankruptcies, AIG of course couldn't even come close to actually paying out what it owed under these insurance policies, and who thus required a $180 billion bailout package from the U.S. government back in 2008/2009, much of which was paid directly by the way to Wall Street banks straight out of the government's coffers.

And now this same true piece of garbage company wants to recover $10 billion from shitbag Bank of America, for "misleading" AIG as to the nature of the mortgages bundled into securities that AIG accepted millions in fees to write insurance polices on. So AIG employees recklessly chased millions in fees and agreed to write countless insurance policies that the firm could not possibly ever pay off in the event of an obviously realistic set of circumstances (since they actually happened), and now they want to recoup from their clients AIG's losses on those insurance policies? Are you fucking kidding me? AIG, are you out of your fucking mind? The whole mother fucking point of offering up insurance on mortgage securities is the process of doing the due diligence to determine whether or not you are willing to provide the requested insurance, and at what price your actuaries have determined you are willing to offer it. That's the whole fucking point.

I mean, I could understand the claim that Bank of America probably made about a billion statements that turned out to be completely and utterly wrong about its expectations with respect to the value of the mortgages packaged into securities insured by AIG. Every company in America, on both sides of these transactions in fact I am sure, was more or less totally wrong about their expectations for the underlying mortgages in just about any debt portfolio five or six years ago. But how a company with the sophistication level of AIG -- the preeminent insurance company on earth as of before the financial crisis, bar none -- can willingly choose to participate for premiums that it agreed to, as an insurer of last resort in an entire securitization system that was truly hopelessly flawed, ultimately do its due diligence and decide to accepte hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to insure these mortgage securities against default at the prices agreed to by AIG in each and every case, accepting those premiums in exchange for promises to insure those securities and then now try to claim that they were somehow "tricked" by Bank of America with respect to what was in the securities that AIG had investigated before quoting its price to begin with, is beyond me.

And the thing that pisses me the shit off the most, by a mile, is that the U.S. government right now owns 77% of AIG. No, strike that -- Americans own 77% of this company right now, even after a large sale share earlier in the summer to reduce the holding from originally 92% after the company's ridiculous bailouts in 2008 and again in 2009. We own this fucking company!! And we're going to stand by and allow them to try to file downright frivolous claims that by definition would eliminate responsibility for AIG's own due diligence as the leading and most sophisticated insurance company in the history of the world? Literally! Why the shit would we ever allow that? We own this fucking company, big time. You and me brotha, we own this shit.

President Obama: if you're interested in getting someone with a head on their shoulders to at least consider voting for you in the next election, I want to see you on the fucking television, wagging a finger right at the camera, and telling AIG that they either withdraw this refluckulous claim today -- like, right fucking now -- or you are shutting them the fuck down once and for all like the filthy fucking crooks that we all already know they are. And then, let's hope they call your bluff and don't withdraw the claim against Bank of America, so you can shut those assholes down and put every one of those 63,000 full-time AIG employees out of business. You know -- our fucking employees. Mine and yours. How dare those sanctimonious shitpieces at AIG, who are only even employed at all right now by the mother fucking grace of having a two consecutive pussies as president who are just too damn afraid to stick it to the people who deserve it most, now demand the return of $10 billion because they didn't even fucking try to do their jobs and actually size the potential liabilities under the default insurance contracts they wrote. But it's not AIG's fault, right? They were "tricked" as part of the financial crisis by the very clients they were agreeing to protect. How unbelievably AIG of them.

What a load of bullshit. I would happily accept a big loss on our $180 billion investment in AIG at this point if it means putting the company's entire 63,000 full time workforce out of business. Tomorrow.