The DOW is kicking A$$$

[HL]

Dow tops 14,500 for 1st time; S&P also nears record

[World Fan]

Get your space suit to the cleaners

because this baby looks like it is going to the moon.

It broke out!

Index is 30 very large companies where they take out poor performing ones and substitute for strong performing ones. There has been very large inflows of money that has to go somewhere.

S&P is a better gauge. No mistaking it, euphoria is back.

I will watch the ride.

[Hortical]

Yes, it is blazing.....it will continue firing for the next couple years.....invest....wisely

[World Fan]

Would you happen to have any Grey Pupon?

[HL]

"....well of course sir"

" Well Butler...please pass the Grey Pupon to the good man".

[HL]

...and that large inflow of money appear to be coming from the Banks....

[World Fan]

and whose money is that now?

[HL]

I think the money was provided by the government--to the banks to be used for lending. The banks kept it and invested in the markets.

So this "record DOW" is for the most part-- is created not by regular investor capital ...but by the banks.

[World Fan]

..and remember, there are only a few left, and they are too big to fail.

[Willi]

LoL

Its POUpon.

How unno expect it fi last if the Bank dem a speculate instead of lending on productively? Where is the foundation for the medium to long term?

[World Fan]

I stand corrected on the Poupon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqIZa3PTX6c


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...trading-losses


JP Morgan accused by Senate panel of flouting rules and ignoring regulators

Senators say bank believed it was too big to fail and call for more oversight of Wall Street in wake of $6.2bn London Whale losses

• Dominic Rushe in New York
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 March 2013 14.11 EDT
• Jump to comments (3)

Ina Drew, far left, said she believed her oversight of the trades had been 'reasonable and diligent'. Photograph: Gary Cameron/Reuters

JP Morgan was accused by a Senate committee on Friday of believing it was "too big to fail", as chief executive Jamie Dimon came under fire for withholding information from regulators as the bank's "London Whale" losses mounted.


The bank was heavily criticised by the Senate subcommittee on investigation, which said it had ignored regulators, manipulated documents and flouted its own risk rules as it racked up $6.2bn in losses.


The hearing, chaired by retiring Democratic senator Carl Levin, came a day after the committee published a damning 300-page report on JP Morgan's handling of the so-called "London Whale" trade.


On Friday, the committee heard from Ina Drew, former head of the chief investment office that oversaw the London trading operation. She has since been fired, along with many of the bankers involved.


"Firing a few traders and their bosses won't be enough to staunch Wall Street's insatiable appetite for risky derivative bets or to stop the excesses. More control is needed," said Levin in his opening statement.


The committee heard that Dimon temporarily withheld key data from the regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, as the bank's trading problems grew. Executives said the bank was concerned that information had been leaked in the past. "I'm not sure that there are many organisations or institutions that could get away with such a thing," said senator John McCain.


Douglas Braunstein, JP Morgan's chief financial officer, said: "Senator, the report in question … I am not certain, I am not aware, if it was a report required to be sent to regulators."


Drew, in a prepared statement, said she believed her oversight had been "reasonable and diligent". She blamed flaws in JP Morgan's risk model, VaR, (Value at Risk) and "deceptive conduct by members of the London team".
According to the Senate committee, the new VaR cut the appearance of risk being taken by JP Morgan in half – even as the bank's London traders were taking ever riskier bets. As the losses mounted and press reports started to emerge, Levin suggested the bank started trying to aggressively mark down its losses.


Levin asked Braunstein whether it was appropriate for the bank to attempt to minimize its losses. Braunstein denied that this was something the bank did.
"How do you possibly justify your process?" said Levin.
Levin brought up a transcript of a conversation between Drew and Javier Martin-Artajo, who supervised the London traders. "It's absolutely fine to stay conservative, but it would be helpful, if appropriate, to start getting a little bit of that mark back," she said.
Drew said that she was "challenging him" to show that the position was correct with data.
"But you used the word helpful. Right?" said Levin. "Tweaking is not a prediction or a hope, by the way, tweaking is changing something. And I hope the guidance that you would give would be against tweaking," he said.
"The suggestion was that he tweak something to make the numbers look better."


McCain quizzed the JP Morgan executives about a call with analysts last year during which Braunstein said that he was "very comfortable" with the size of the chief investment office's trades. Dimon went on to dismiss the media coverage of the losses as a "tempest in a teapot."


"Based on the benefit of hindsight, the bank and I were both misinformed and incorrect when I said I was very comfortable," said Braunstein.


The senate committee found that JP Morgan had regularly violated its own risk limits for months on end. Levin said that bank staff in London had had to manually enter information for its risk models for its massive portfolio using spreadsheets and there was very little testing of its data.


JP Morgan's acting chief risk officer Ashley Bacon said the losses had been caused by "multiple things that should have caught it didn't catch it." He said that oversight in London "failed miserably." "It would actually have been easy to catch this is many ways, and very regrettably that didn't happen," said Bacon.


But he claimed that JP Morgan did not believe it was too big to fail, and that the bank had taken many actions subsequently to make sure that something like this could not happen again.
Levin called for greater oversight of Wall Street. "The American people have already suffered one devastating economic assault rooted largely in Wall Street excess, and they cannot afford another.


"When Wall Street plays with fire, American families get burned. The task of federal regulators, and of this Congress, is to take away the matches. The whale trades demonstrate that task is far from complete," he said.

[Willi]

The original Missa JP Morgan was guilty of spreading propaganda rumors pon the small regional US banks in the 1920s and that caused runs on those banks and they collapsed while he picked up the pieces for cents on the dollar.

Dem history dark...