Bill Ackman is out, after his disastrous foray into JC Penney (and before that, Herbalife) where he took major losses and contributed nothing of value or fresh perspective to the embattled retailer.
So now a new group of clueless hedge fund morons comes in, this time headed by none other than "Japan is going to experience a debt collapse," Kyle Bass. Bass has been putting on quite the dummy show in the past ten months telling everyone who would listen (mostly CNBC) that Japan won't be able to find enough "external funding" to pay its debts (which are in yen and which, last time I checked, are created solely by the Japanese government).
I guess Bass has now decided to focus his Einstein-like intellect on the retail sector and, seriously, that ought to be fun to watch.
I'm wondering if Bass might decide to take some cues from a fellow "genius" hedge funder, Eddie Lampert, you know, the Libertarian, Ayn Rand espousing, CEO of Sears Holdings (Sears, K-Mart), the American retailing icon that he has been phenomenally successful in destroying?
Line 'em up, folks. Whether we're talking about Bass or Lampert or Ackman or Paulson or Cohen or even Jamie Dimon and Goldman, this is what American capitalism has devolved into. A bunch of privileged, whiny, egotistical, arrogant, sociopathic jerks playing casino games with vast amounts of chips who leave a path of destruction in their wake everyhwhere they go that the rest of America has to swim through.
Michael
ReplyDeleteSometimes I feel 2 ways about these people who think sovereign issuing countries can default on their own currency (!) :
a. These debt mongers are trying to make the country in question ( here Japan ) think the same way as if Japan is going to panic and go out and borrow other country's money which they will not do. In other words they have a secret ploy to get the Japanese to borrow in other currencies like the Europeans and Americans did to Argentina during the 1990's which left the Argentines vulnerable to rate hikes by the Fed.
b. These debt mongers really believe the hype.
Would they really believe they can fake out the Japanese and hope for creative destruction there ?
The Japanese forcefully prevented the Chinese from buying Japanese debt and treasuries just 2 years. The Japanese are very well protected in their own currency which they are managing well.
The problem they have is that the rich people in Japan keep all their money in dollars during the 90's and 00's and only repatriated it when they needed it. That is because the Yen was very weak.
However, going from 120 to 1 Yen for dollar from 2000's and then
to 80 to 1 in 2008, these rich fish became canned sushi when the Yen appreciated.
The reason the Yen appreciated is because the Japanese has resistance to the Toxic mortgage morass since they had antibodies since the 80's when they had their real estate bubble.
Texas had some antibodies as well since the Gulf coast had the Savings and Loan crisis vis-à-vis RTC ( Resolution Trust Corporation ) from the late 80's and early 90's.
We only need to connect this to Iran - Contra and we'll have a full loop, hopefully without anything to do with Paul Volcker's "cardiac defibrillation" to the economy by jacking rates up to 18%.
Has there been any advances in the early TARP transparency questions so that we know where the monies went to around the world from the Tsy and Fed ????