No, not “Love Potion #9″……Heh…

From NRO:

Spitzer Indicted [Stephen Spruiell]

No question mark. Greta Van Susteren says she’s holding a copy.

 

(Somewhere Hank Greenberg is laughing his azz off.)

Over the past few weeks, I’ve offered up several short blurbs about the unraveling of the financial markets. To my surprise, it is a subject which continues to get only cursory media attention.

Were it not for the coverage in the foreign press, a person might be persuaded that all is well, that this is just a temporary slowdown which will be over and forgotten soon enough. I wish it were true.

“The fourth quarter [’07] may be the worst earnings period for the financial industry since the Great Depression.” So said JPost in mid January. As the 10Ks roll in, the good news may be that it’s not quite that bad. The bad news, however, may be that the worst is yet to come. The fact is, nobody really knows how much of a hit the industry is going to take — primarily because of the uncertainty of putting an accurate valuation [heck, at this point, a ball-park valuation would be nice] on a particular type of security, a derivative known as a collateralized debt obligation, or CDO.

The unraveling is not limited to US banks and insurance companies. The Telegraph is reporting that EU banks are staring down the barrel of an additional $68 bilion in write-offs, as yet another layer of the onion is peeled away.

Our major financial institutions are in trouble. Our political institutions are both unprepared and unwilling to lead.

Most of us will feel the bite in our 401(k)’s. We’re still a month away from the mailing of the 2008 1st quarter account statements, which will cause many folks to pay attention to this for the first time. Most of the major indices are down double digits YTD, the Benchmark S&P 500 down about 12%. The additive effect of the poor results for 4th Q ‘07 will be a combined decrease of over 20% from the market high, and maybe more by the end of this quarter.

Six years ago, after taking it on the chin following the Tech Bust, I rebalanced my portfolio to a “moderate” profile, about 60-40 stocks to bonds. I’ve maintained that profile, even though the temptation was to chase after the returns during the Bush bull market. Now, the temptation is to move to sidelines and wait it out. I think, though, I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing. I’m trying to practice what I preach: fend for myself, prepare, study, decide, adjust, adapt, and overcome.

There is more to come. The unraveling continues.

Update: See also, “Banks face systematic margin call”

+++++

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(*Room Temperature)

Muqtada Al-Sadr Announces He’s Retiring From Leadership Of Sadrist Movement, Sequestering Himself

The leader of the Shi’ite Sadrists in Iraq, Muqtada Al-Sadr, has announced in a letter to his followers that he is stepping down from his position, distancing himself from people, and focusing on his studies.

He explained that he was doing so because he had failed in carrying out his father’s will to liberate Iraq from the occupation and turning its people into believing Muslims.

He wrote that the continuation of the occupation, the many who were distancing themselves from the true path, and their turning to politics and affairs of this world had motivated him to sequester himself from human society, in order to carry out his obligation to Allah and not to add sin to the crime.

Al-Sadr called on his men to obey the committee for managing the affairs of the Sadrist movement and all Sadrist institutes, and its representatives that bear the name of the Office of Al-Sayed Al-Shahid – which is named after his father, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq Al-Sadr, murdered in 1999 by the regime of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Source: thememriblog.org

I can’t imagine this fellow just voluntarily stepping aside for the reasons stated. On March 3, Al-Siyassa (Kuwait) reported that al-Sadr had been “secretly transferred a few days ago from Iraq to Iran for hospitalization as he was comatose. It was reported that his illness resulted from food poisoning.”

Nature abhors a vacuum. I wonder who the next Shiite strongman will be?

H/T: Robo

NowPublic

Tags: Iraq | affairs | al-Sadr | Al-Sayed | Al-Shahid | allah | announces | Ayatollah | believing | called | Committee | continuation | Crime | distancing | doing | explained | failed | Focusing | Institutes | IRAQI | LIBERATE | Managing | motivated | movement | Muhammad | Muqtada | Murdered | Muslims | obey | obligation | Occupation | Politics | president | REGIME | representatives | Saddam | Sadeq | Sadrist | sequester | Society | stepping | studies | turning | World

from Washington Times…

The spring before his wife began her White House campaign, former President Bill Clinton earned $700,000 for his foundation by selling stock that he had been given from an Internet search company that was co-founded by a convicted felon and backed by the Chinese government, public records show.

Mr. Clinton had gotten the nonpublicly traded stock from Accoona Corp. back in 2004 as a gift for giving a speech at a company event. He landed the windfall by selling the 200,000 shares to an undisclosed buyer in May 2006, commanding $3.50 a share at a time when the company was reporting millions of dollars of losses, according to interviews.

Now, it is certainly possible that the Clinton’s reluctance to release their tax returns has nothing at all to do with this information. No one is saying that this was illegal.

But it sure doesn’t look good.

h/t Kearney,
also at the linkviewer

Speaking of the LGF Linkviewer, I gotta say, this is a pretty nifty thinkamajig. It is a great source of news, however, I’ve noticed that a lot of it is just recycled headlines from Free Republic. But, there are also a lot of headlines and interesting input from pro-Israel bloggers that you might not see otherwise.

Certainly worth a look-see.

THIS IS the World Famous Friday Open Thread……..A Free Speech Zone.

WFFOT: To boldly go where no thread has gone before! (trackbacks welcome)