990,000,000 Shares on the wall

$1,400,000,000? What IBM has not spent on their current share buy back program.

$5,000,000,000? What IBM just announced that they are adding to their share buy back program.

$6,400,000,000? Grand Total to date. The numbers are so round they just fall off your tongue.

And just when you thought that it could not get any better they announced, that they (management) are going to ask the board for approval for additional share buy back authorization in April 2015 (The Hits just Keep Coming).

How much? The shills/marks on the street have not a clue. (I suspect neither does the board.) (The question is who's brother in law works for Goldman Sachs?)

Definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result from the one you are getting. Come to think of it, it might also be the definition of an optimist.

$163.60 yesterday closing price.

52 Week range as reported on Yahoo Finance $161.10-$199.21

So far an investment that is down 17.21% from its 52 week high, and I suspect will continue to still look for a bottom in the coming weeks and months.

With Quarterly Revenue Growth (yoy) at a fantastically mind numbing value of -5.60%.

With Quarterly Earning Growth (yoy) at a spectacular impressive value of -99.60%.

What is not to like about this company? Wait I know a Debt to Equity Ratio greater than 300. (Value Investing? not even close)

Do not believe me go look for your self, I could make this up, but the truth is far more frightening.

At this rate it will only take a few years to evaporate this company.

Yes, under the control of the current management team disable, destroy, and disembowel, everything is coming together for this party of pain.

At the current stock price the company will be able to reduce the number of outstanding share by almost 4 percent, I suspect that they will be able to surpass this estimate, the benefit of a falling stock price, is you get to buy more share per dollar spent, it is a feature of dollar cost averaging.

Possibly a 3 to 4 percent bump in share prices, but wait given management pitiful performance to date, not likely, so maybe they end up just keep the price at this level, not likely given their performance over the last 52 weeks. Is the mirror getting heavy?

Could this be a fool looking for a greater fool?

I did not hear a harrumph from that man.

Three years is long enough to demonstrate your skill, knowledge, and technical prowess in managing a company. So 57 is a good age to retire, still in good health, the ability to travel, and with the retirement package and perks all in all an exceptional deal, better than the one you have given to your employees, but I digress.

No it not because you are woman, the spreadsheet does not know your sex and for that matter does not care, it is just a world of cold cruel hard numbers nothing more and nothing less.

For those who might want to know I have no direct positions/holdings in IBM, but I unfortunately do have indirect position/holdings via my broad based indexed holdings, but the good news is that luckily IBM is just only one stock of a vast herd of stocks held in these indexed funds.

So be safe my fellow Amigo's, TTFN

517 Days Since Sentence Was Passed

517 Days since Rajat Gupta was sentence to 24 months in prison, and fined $5.0 Million Dollars. The  2^nd U.S.. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld your conviction. The wheels of Justice turn very slowly.

Rajat is still appealing the ruling that he reimburse his old employer Goldman Sachs $6.22 Million Dollars to help cover the cost of its legal costs associated with this mud fest. I suspect that the 2^nd U.S, Circuit Court of Appeals will have another round of bad news about this time next year.

So Rajat, is 1 June 2014 a good day for you, to start your extended stay-cation at one of our finest Club Fed facilities? As far as what facility it will be, it will be our choosing of course, but we do invite your input as to which one of our fine facilities you would like to stay at. It goes without saying that since you will be one of over 200,000 guests, we cannot guaranty that we will be able to accommodate you in your preferred selection. But rest assured, what ever facility you do eventually end up at it will as comparable as possible to your requested facility.

I know you have concerns, and that is to be expected but rest assured the staff at what ever facility you are assigned to have seen it all before, and will provide you with assistance in navigating this new and exciting phase of your life.  Starting this new adventure at 65 years of age is not for the feint of heart, but having been a Captain of Industry and Finance it should be within your skill set.

Maybe you will get Butner Federal Correctional Institution where you can catch up with 61727-054, AKA Bernard Lawrence Madoff. Or possibly FMC, Devens where you could catch up with 62785-054 AKA Raj Rajaratnam. Where ever it is I am sure that you will meet and make new friends, but it does help if you already know someone already there.

So in the end was it worth it?   After all it will have cost you nearly 2 years of house arrest, 2 year of actual prison time, and some $11.22 Million Dollars in fines and restitution, not to mention your various attorney fees, and last but not least the ruin of your good name (Which no one can put a price on).

Or was it a complete and utter waste time and effort?

2013 Stress Test

2013 Hunger Games  Stress Test

After looking at the additional requirements that the United States Federal Reserve is requiring of some of the country’s 30 largest banks and financial services companies for their annual stress test, it does not look to good for some of these institutions, this year the test is suppose to be harder.  The new questions concern their exposure to Asia, and what could these institutions look like if something bad were to happen to the Asian economies (really it China, but we do not want to so direct).

The Federal Reserve announced that it will conduct some of the test on own on the 19 largest, but that is really a falsehood, in that they will really only perform the tests themselves on the top eight, the other 11 of this group will test themselves and submit the result to the Federal Reserve.  Maybe there is a question as to the rigor that some of the organizations applied to themselves in the last round of testing.

Those chosen for special consideration in order of Total Assets are (1) JP Morgan Chase & Co., (2) Bank of America Corp., (3) Citigroup Inc., (4) Wells Fargo & Co., (5) The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., (6) MetLife, Inc., (7) Morgan Stanley, and (8) US Bancorp.

The rest of the 19 financial institution in order of Total Assets are, (9) Bank of New York Mellon Corp., (11) Capital One Financial, (12) The PNC Financial Services Group Inc., (14) State Street Corp., (15) Ally Financial Inc., (16) BB&T Corp, (17) SunTrust Banks,  (19) American Express Company, (22) Regions Financial Corp., (24) Fifth Third Bancorp, and (29) Keycorp.

Rounding out the collection of the top 30 banks and financial institutions that are subject to this annual testing again in order of Total Assets are,  (10) HSBC North America Holdings Inc., (21) RBS Citizens Financial Group, AKA Citizens Financial Group, (26) BMO Financial Corp., (27) Northern Trust Corp., (28) UnionBanCal Corp., (31) M&T Bank Corp., (33) Discover Financial Services, (35) BBVA USA Bancshares Inc., (36) Comerica Inc., (37) Huntington Bancshares Inc., and (38) Zions Bancorporation.

The Federal Reserve has this nice little web site that displays the ranking of the top 50 Holding Companies in the United States.

 http://www.ffiec.gov/nicpubweb/nicweb/Top50Form.aspx

For those who are interested in the particular of the skull numbing tests I direct you to the following link.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/20121115a.htm

Enjoy they are the attachments at the bottom of the page.  It only took about 10 minutes for my skull to lose feeling.

Release the Kraken (Where is Liam Nesson when you really need him, Ben Bernanke just does not have the voice to pull this off), and to all thirty of the participant in the 2013 Hunger Games Stress Test  “Happy Hunger Games Stress Test! And may the odds be ever in your favor!”  Let the games begin.

Goldman Sachs were nearly 40 Percent of the employees are Vice Presidents

The Bloomberg article http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/greg-smith-quit-goldman-after-unrealistic-pitch-for-1m.html

The article on Greg Smiths resignation and it’s famous Muppet contained pretty much what one would expect from the offensive in Goldman Sachs rebuttal campaign, but the little jewel I found in the story was that it reported that Goldman Sachs has 13000 vice presidents.

This is a pretty amazing fact.   Yahoo profile for Goldman Sachs reports they have 34700 full time employees ¹.   This makes the statement on the number of Vice Presidents not only amazing but also absurd and bizarre.  Imagine that nearly 40 percent of all Goldman Sachs employees are vice presidents to be fair to Goldman Sachs it is only 37.5 percent, who wants to quibble over 2.5 percent.  Sounds likes too many chiefs and not very many Indians, maybe that might be part of the problem with Wall Street, or at the very least that might be part of the problem with Goldman Sachs.

13,000 vice presidents would explain why the senior management had no idea of who Greg Smith was when he left the firm.  So if someone were to say that they were or are a vice president of Goldman Sachs, your response could or should be “I thought nearly everyone who is employed by Goldman Sachs is a Vice President”.   It would appear that Vice President is some sort of entry-level position at the firm, what a snow job.  It is another indication that the emperor has no clothes.  The pathetic part is that we buy into to this dribble.

Mr. Smith request for a salary of 1 Million Dollars a year could be taken as prima facie evidence of his delusional mental state and possible sanity  (paranoid/schizophrenic, narcissism, and greed (ok greed is more of a sin than a psychiatric disorder, but you get the picture) at the time he worked was employed at Goldman Sachs.  Some how 500K Dollars was not enough, go figure.   I do not know about the rest of you, but I know more individuals than I can count on the fingers and toes in my immediate family, who would jump at the chance to work to be employed for just one year (two would be nice, but I am not going to be greedy) at that salary level.  (On the other hand I could just be Mittens for 9.125 days and make the same amount of money, I know it is a cheap shot, but sometime the devil just gets the best of me, after all I am only human, and from time to time I can be tempted by the dark side)   I would suspect that Mr. Smith is not the only individual working at employed at Goldman Sachs afflicted with these conditions.   I would suspect that the condition is especially rampant within the entire senior executive corps with equal or more severity.

And we wonder why the frigging wheels came of the bus.

¹ Unable to determine the number of individual who actually perform work at Goldman Sachs on any given work day, but using the most opportunistic estimates it could be that on any given work day at most about half of the employees actually perform some type of work.  It is highly unlikely that this group of employees is composed of Senior Executive Corps, Directors, and Vice presidents.

Goldman Sachs “Muppet Hunt” Draws a Blank?

Where is the surprise in this announcement?  The Goldman Sachs “Muppet Hunt” is the moral equivalent to one “Elmer J. Fudd” looking for “Wabbits”.

So Goldman Sachs senior management goes on a “Muppet Hunt”, and surprise of surprises they dutifully report back to the Board of Directors that they have not found any “Muppets”.  That it was all just sour grapes by the recently departed, disgruntled, disaffected, “Not meriting promotion to Managing Director”, employee.  And that “No further actions should be taken.”(Let Sleeping dogs…). 

The “Muppet Hunters” are more than happy to report that everything is all right within the Goldman Sachs Magic Kingdom.  They dutifully report that Goldman Sachs Management and Employees are currently and in the past have been looking out for the best interest of their customers.  Additionally they are pleased to report that Goldman Sachs currently does not place the company’s interest nor has it ever placed the company’s interested above those of their customers (What a bunch of Boy Scout) (A Goldman Sachs Employee is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent).  That 99 percent of the nearly 4000 emails that reference the word “Muppets” were not comments on their customers but were references to the latest Muppet movie.

So management of Goldman Sachs has fulfilled the requirements of those immortal words uttered by of Governor William J. Le Petomane “We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!”.  And something they did, they investigated, and they reported that they found nothing (surprise), it was just one big snipe hunt.

Trust them if you want, but remember that a fool and his money are soon parted.