One year ago today: January 29, 2020, Yep, Puerto Rico.
Five years ago today: January 29, 2016, still too expensive.
Nine years ago today: January 29, 2012, welcome to Hollywood.
Random years ago today: January 29, 2009, governmental errors.
Dominant in the news is GameStop. Forget all the mumbo-jumbo, as I will attempt to describe what’s happening without much technicality. Some of the least favorite American corporations are hedge funds, which gamble on the stock market by tradingg “options”. They agree to buy a stock at a price determined in the future, and put a small down payment for a fixed period of time, after which they must by the stock. They ganged up on a company called GameStop, driving the stock prices down, causing those who already owned the stocks to panic sell.
The hedge funds signed options to buy all the GameStop stocks, but some sharpie Redditor noted they had signed to buy more stocks than GameStop had for sale. Ooops, but it happens when not everybody is paying attention. He got together with his buddies and they began buying GameStop, knowing their eventual sale was guaranteed by law—a law the hedge funds themselves had put in place.
This is forcing prices up 1,000% by the option deadline meaning the hedge funds had to buy them or declare bankruptcy. The funds began howling, as they had put as little as 10% down. They soon were having to buy the shares at 10,000% of a skyrocketing price. They lost $12 billion the first day, and I hear it is now up to $70 billion. Folks, that’s 7,000 millionaires losing $10 million each. And they are fuming mad.
Worse yet, since most of the Redditor Raiders had less than $300 to lose, they held on to those stocks, the opposite of what the hedge funds expected could ever happen. So far the corporations have succeeded in block further sales (probably illegal if anybody else did it) and forcing websites to stop publishing which stocks have been “shorted”. Dirty pool, but as this blog stated long ago, the Trumpster has not changed the way the insiders operate, he’s only exposed it to public view. If the Bidenistas try to restrict what we can buy on the market, there will be rebellion. Yet if Biden doesn’t, how can he hope to pay back his corporate donors?
TMOR, the significance here is that if the filthy rich don’t do something fast, they will not have enough money to meet their option commitments. One company, Melville, would already be under but they got bailed out by two banks. However, after the bank bail-outs of 2006-2008, where the bankers used the money to pay their own Xmas bonuses, the American public will not stomach any free money to the detested hedge funds. Read today’s addendum for a similar scheme I put together in 2015-ish, which I am now reconsidering.
Route 66 bike tour.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
I think Big Loretta might have wanted to be a pro-wrestler, but decided therapy was a more gentle pursuit. These are the final sessions before I’ll have to make a decision on surgery so I’m more tolerant of pain. I have to be. The progress is that the “bass playing” zone is well defined. It is the angle I hold my right upper arm when playing bass. The pain goes across the arm, not down it. This is where the bumper hit me.
There is a zone where I can raise my arm to that point and no further. But with assistance, I can get past it into a clear area—but have to pass through the same equally painful zone on the way back down. This has not changed in the months since the collision. I expect to be fully compensated for this. I am able to work every day, but that’s because I’ve rebalanced all my daily chores to maximize the use of my left hand, which I’ve never been good at because I am not only right-handed, I am right-dominant. That means there are things I cannot do with my left hand without including my right. This includes getting the notes right on the neck of my bass.
ADDENDUM
I’m revisiting my plan concerning house auctions. We may see another market collapse because nobody has any money to buy anything and owners can’t make their existing mortgage payments. I am far better prepared to enact such a scheme now, just six years late. I’ll go over the process here as a refresher.
JZ & I went to the auction in Arcadia July 14, 2015 to be exact. It was a waste of time. The bank has a shill in the room to bid the price back up to what they want, usually ten to twenty times the “reserve” bid. Most people realize after the first round, they cannot win against the banks and give up. But this caused me to consider the bank’s point of view. I’m guessing, but here goes.
What if the bank’s plan was not to force the bid price up, but to discourage others from even trying, thereby allowing the bank to get the houses back for the tiny reserve bid price? Do you see the similarity with the GameStop method—doing the opposite of what they expect. Now that bank cannot blatantly buy their own house back, so that shill must be working on some sort of commission. My thinking is, test this theory by sticking around and bidding all the prices up, knowing the shill has to outbid you. See the theory? If ten houses had reserve bids of $5,000, then the shill gets all ten for $50,000.
But what if I showed up and bid each house up to $20,000 (remember, you have to prove in advance you have the cash), then even knowing I cannot win against the bank, they now have to pay $200,000 for the same houses. The idea was not to actually defeat the bank, but let them know I would quit doing this if could see their way clear to let me buy a few of the houses, nomsayn?
The idea arises from a Texas auction I saw when I was a kid. Each year the town big shots held a charity auction, in which it was customary to buy this stupid lamp for $50, then donate it back for sale the next year. The town drunk, Willie, hated the town council, one of whom always bought that lamp. So that year the bidding started at $5. Up it went, $10, $20, $40 at which point the mayor says, “$50 and I’ll top any bid”.
Going once, going twice—and from the back row comes Willie’s squeaky voice, “Two hundred dollars”.
Now, the plan is more complicated than I’ve said, and there are tactics the banks use to stall you from placing the same money from one failed bid onto the next sale. But I now have enough money to see this through, and something in this wrecked Biden economy has to give way. Say, Redditors, why not target silver. Put the price up to $5,000 just for one day.
