Long or Short Capital

Dear LoS,

I work for a bank in London. Or rather, I had been working for a bank in London, and now, I have to fight for not only my job, but my life. You see, after the recent bumper bonus tax, my firm is downsizing its staffing levels in London. Some jobs are being relocated to more favorable geographies; others like mine, well, they are being fought over. In a gladiatiorial ring. With knives and nets and shit.

You see my bank, decided to just give the British government what they really want — bankers’ blood. Half a billion pounds sterling is a drop in the bucket, but cutting down bankers for the masses is worth its weight in gold. So for the bank employees who want to continue to be 1) employed in 2) London, my bank is having us step into the ring.

All of which leads to my question. My fight is scheduled for the next bank holiday in Green Park. It will be a duel between a combatant who is completely blindfolded but has a dagger against a man who has full use of his vision, but has no weapon. He who lives, works. As a Senior VP I have the right to choose which combo I’d prefer. I know you have been going through something similar recently, what would you do here?
-Markus Orlyius

In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king. I’ve never had the opportunity to say that in context, so today is a good day amicus (gladiator for friend). A no-brainer — choose sight and then fight a battle of attrition. He can only use that dagger in close, and he cannot flail it around wildly without having to stop. Pick your spots — if you see an opening kick him in the balls, then retreat tactically. Is he crouched in a protective fetal crouch? Maneuver so you can kick him in the head, and again tactically retreat. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Veni. Vidi. Vici. Just grind him down like this, until he gets sloppy and you can get a stomp in on his knife-arm, either getting him to drop the weapon or breaking the arm. Know that he will nick you during this fight, be prepared for that, but just avoid getting gored. You will prevail if you fight like you bank — smartly. Good luck.

Dead_Cat commented on the Screw You, Science piece thusly:

I hereby launch my new fund Doomsday Device Partners Fund I LLC. This is a private equity-style product specifically focused on the acquisition and exploitation of doomsday devices. The fund will develop a diversified portfolio of doomsday devices, which may include particle accelerators, nuclear research and generation facilities, underground virus research laboratories and key religious artifacts. Nicolas Cage will be Chief Investment Officer and Milla Jovovich will be Chief Risk Officer.

Unfortunately for you, and really for all of us, Long or Short Capital already has a Doomsday Device fund, one which is itself a doomsday device. We designed it with an automatic trigger system, a sophisticated system of arrays and failsafes such that, if any competing doomsday fund were ever to be launched, we would be able to retaliate no matter what happened to the value of our assets.

And unfortunately for you, and really all of us, we may not have been entirely sober when we designed this system. We called it The AYFKM system, but we generally referred to is as “No Whammy.” Kaiser conceptualized the structure. The first part of the design is an array which monitors an assortment of global communication channels. There is also a direct line of communication from No Whammy to the Long or Short Capital bunker, which is not a euphemism for our moms’ basements.

The device can be activated in one of three ways:

1. If No Whammy’s array detects that any doomsday fund has started pitching investors, the No Whammy goes live.
2. If the Long or Short Capital bunker signals for The AYFKM device to go live, it goes live. An instance where the line of communication between the LoS bunker and The AYFKM device is severed or otherwise goes down, The AYFKM device goes live. Just in case.
3. If there is seismic activity in Manhattan greater than 0.7 on the Richter scale or an unusually large flock of Canadian geese, No Whammy goes live.

What does it mean for No Whammy to go live? It means that within 72 hours, thermonuclear missiles will be fired from silos we have across the globe, rendering the Earth uninhabitable. We did design a fail-safe in case of a mistaken triggering of No Whammy: we have a bunker with a single person in it who has access to a button that can stop the process, provided he first gives enters the correct password.

Unfortunately for you, and really for all of us, that bunker is staffed by Yuri, a drunk and a loudmouth. And Dmitri absolutely HATES Yuri. Dmitri, you see, was the first button-pusher we hired. We had a following out with Dmitri over a heated game of Risk in which one party did not honor his agreed upon alliance, and in fact, exploited the truce that the illusory alliance provided in order to build up forces and launch an invasion from said party’s (it’s Dmitri, duh) Kamchatka base. We immediately replaced Dmitri with Yuri, because we are a responsible firm, one who cares about things like not negligently letting our doomsday device render the Earth uninhabitable. But what we could not control was how many times Yuri had had sex with Dmitri’s wife Ludmilla. Or in how many different positions. Or on how many internet webcams. And when he learned of them, these numbers very much upset Dmitri and he refused to divulge the appropriate password to Yuri. Or to us. So if No Whammy goes live and at that time Yuri deems it appropriate to stop the launch of the missiles, it’s on Yuri to correctly guess the appropriate password.

And thus here we are. Not for long mind you, but here we are.

Recommendation: This is a clear demonstration of how important it is that when deploying an automatically triggered doomsday device, one must first SIGNAL that such a device is being deployed. That is really the whole value in the device in the first place. This is a mistake we won’t make again, we promise you. Amazingly, this has happened before.

The seniors want to steal $250 each from our kids. We should say No.

Rosanne Altshuler, co-director of the Tax Policy Center in Washington, says that the checks “seem to be pure pandering to seniors.”

Indeed, the politics are attractive. People over 65 vote in large numbers. Saying no to them is never easy.

This is demonstrably false. After reading this article, I immediately set out to the street. There I spotted a female senior citizen. Although I didn’t cut her in half and count the rings, which we all know is the only way to accurately tell a woman’s age (and much more polite than asking her), she was definitely over 45. I could tell because I had no manly desire for her. I snatched her purse from the clutches of her arthritic claws.

“Give it back!” she said.

I said NO. And boy was it easy. Her arms didn’t hold the strength to dissuade me, being as scrawny and infirm as they were.

I trotted at a medium gait towards the river. She followed me on her senior scooter device. By the way, she had a senior scooter device.

“Do not even think about throwing my purse into the river, you [handsome] young man,” she chided from her saddle.

My feet stopped, my cobalt eyes locked onto her gaze, and my lips let lose NO. And again, it was easy to say “NO” to not even thinking about throwing her purse into the river. What could she do? Her aged brain clearly lacked the telepathic abilities that could have forcibly compelled me.

As I cocked my arm and gazed upon the horizon, I thought about her life, who she was, and how much she had given this world. What wonders she must have experienced growing up in the 60’s or 70’s! All those changes and stuff!

“Sonny, don’t throw my purse into the river. I beg you, I’m just a poor old woman on social security and we only got a 5.9% cost of living adjustment last year.”

That old bat’s mutterings gave me pause. Was I wrong? Were the old “not so bad?” Did these leeching frauds who are destroying the young deserve a second chance? A scan of the contents of her purse caused me to unpause. Raising the bag over my head, I turned it on its end, disgorging it of its contents. First things to fly out were wads and wads of counterfeit $100 bills. Then a leather carrying case for a syringe and rubber hose, a baggy full of heroin, 106,328 metric tons of CO2 emissions, a gun with the serial filed off, Polaroids of various women in open-toed shoes, gold bullion cubes, a well-worn copy of Eat, Pray, Love and innumerable kitten heads.

“Listen you old broad, and listen good. No. NO, I will not not toss your bag into the river. NO, I will not consent to you mortgaging America’s future. NO, I will not be ok with giving you a check for $250 so you can proceed to either not spend it, or worse, use it to subsidize Steve the Senior Stud’s cialis purchases at the nursing home, or whatever frivolous way you will deploy this cash, cash which you clearly don’t need based on 1) the way you have pilfered from America’s future your whole life and 2) the contents of your purse. No no no NO. Learn what that means because I am going to saying it to you a lot.”

And with that, her purse shot through the air, entering the fray of the choppy waters, scored only by a screechy dying old-ladyish “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”

Full disclosure: Long or Short is Long Age Warfare.

HT to the love of my life, crampell.

What the science.

In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Obviously, Science has a different definition of “all goes well” than I do. Things not on my “all goes well” list:

1. Dying in a fire
2. Getting punched in my mini-ballers by a midget (think of the devastating angle they have on you)
3. Being melted by toxic waste like that guy in Robocop
4. RECREATING THE BIGGEST UNIVERSAL EXPLOSION ON EARTH FOR KICKS WITH YOUR FINGERS CROSSED THAT IT WON’T END EXISTENCE AS WE KNOW IT

But that’s not even the part that really frustrates me. Previously there was a notion that Science had some measure of prudence and competency. But Science has evacuated its collective gourd. From the above linked article:

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Which is worse:

1. Science is speculating there are time-traveling protective fairy particles to save us from ourselves.
2. Science is willing to admit that there is a chance that a “Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature” that time-traveling protective fairy particles would come back to save us from ourselves.

Recommendation: Isn’t this the kind of thing that would give a reasonable person pause? Not Science dude, no Science just plans to plow through it and hope it all works out. Awesome. Science, before we get sucked into the vortex of unexistence, I’d like you to step into the ring with me, mano-a-scienco, I’m done with your shit man.

Math, you’re up next.

As an aside, we are still selling July 2008 End of the World Puts and September 2008 End of the World Puts. Although not technically in the money under conventional physics, with time-travel on the table they could still pay off.

From this FTC report concerning an apparrel maker whose marketing was not consistent with the actual makeup of their products:

According to the Commission’s complaint, issued in August 2009, The M Group, Inc., d/b/a Bamboosa, and its principals falsely claimed that the company’s products are “100% bamboo fiber,” when they are composed of rayon. Rayon is a man-made fiber created from the cellulose found in plants and trees and dissolved with a harsh chemical that releases hazardous air pollution. Any plant or tree could be used as the cellulose source – including bamboo – but the fiber that is created is rayon.

The complaint also charged Bamboosa with making a number of other deceptive “green” claims. Bamboosa claimed that its products retain bamboo’s antimicrobial properties. However, even if the rayon used in Bamboosa’s clothing and textile products is manufactured using bamboo as the cellulose source, the FTC contends, rayon does not retain any natural antimicrobial properties of the bamboo plant. The rayon manufacturing process eliminates any of these natural bamboo properties.

Recommendation: You may have read our initial diligence on Bamboosa called “Why I Do, and Why You SHOULD, Have a Bambooner” in which we erected a strong case for buying Bamboosa. The thrust of that piece lay in this quote: “There are two O’s and a BAM up in this piece, time to get long (I think I just did).” We were bamboozled, legitimately bamboozled, and we deserve a pass on this one, because really, that’s a cool way to lose millions for investors who depend on the legitimacy of our recommendations. I know you’d agree.

HT to Felix Salmon

This is a sponsored post

In the mini-series Band of Brothers, the 101st Airborne’s Easy Company encounters concentration camps and the horrors contained within. After that point, the Nazis were no longer just conquerors who these Americans thought should be pushed back into the bowels of Bavaria. The Nazis were the pure evil and Easy company knew that it was their moral imperative to defeat Hitler’s men, lest the forces of darkness swallow the Earth whole. The title of this episode was “Why We Fight.”

To Gary Barzell, business loans are Nazis. If you need financing, the idea that you would be forced into making secured loans impugns his sense of right and wrong. That is why he will offer you up to $250,000 in unsecured business loans. No questions asked.

How do we know this? Let’s just say that Long or Short Capital is richer by approximately $250,000 at each of our possible levels: parent, opco, several subs and a series of shell entities we created solely to be able to exploit Gary’s generosity.

The best part is that because these loans are unsecured, there is no collateral he can seize from you when things go awry or you fly to Tahiti.

Now you might be saying, isn’t this the kind of reckless no doc no strings financing extended to uncreditworthy entities (like Long or Short, for example) that built the bubble that got us into the current economic mess? The answer is YES. But it’s also this kind of reckless no doc no strings financing extended to unsavory uncreditworthy entities (like Long or Short, for example) that let us know our long economic nightmare is over, that the target for the DOW should be reset to 36,000 from our previous target of 8, and that we will be mini-balling again in no time.

Returning back to Easy company, they realized in “Why We Fight” why they fought. To defeat evil. Like those brave American soldiers, Long or Short has learned Why We Write. We write to get paid and to defeat evil. And to kill Nazis.

Thanks you and God Bless.

Reader The Paleofish sent in a link to Hugo Chavez in action, sticking it to uppity hotels.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he seized the landmark Hilton hotel on Margarita Island because its owners dared to impose conditions on its use by his government to host a summit there last month.

“To hold the conference we had to ask for permission… and the owners tried to impose conditions on the revolutionary government. No way,” said Chavez.

“So I said, ‘Let’s expropriate it.’ And now it’s been expropriate

The hotel was a Hilton, the second Hilton to be seized by Hugo Chavez. How does this affect your portfolio? Quoting myself, something I love to do, this was our first piece on Piratery:

But setting up a lair in a place like Isla Margarita, located off the northern coast of Venenzuela, would be an environment with relatively low piratery penetration but proximity to major cruiseline and OPEC oil routes. An added bonus, Isla Margarita is where non-pirate berserker Lope de Aguirre reached his crescendo.

Revisiting this recommendation, we would downgrade Isla Margarita to “Not a good place to set up a pirate lair” due to the Venezuelan government’s growing presence in the quasi-legal seizure business.

Have you heard the news? Garmin’s (NASDAQ: GRMN) new nuvifone is new?

Recommendation: Short Garmin. It may be my irrational fear of oomlats, my hate of redundancy in advertising or my rational fear of combo devices, but any company that is working all three of these angles, isn’t a company worth a damn. If they had changed the name to “noovifone” they may have had a hit.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently on a boat. Later on, I was on a dolphin doing flips and shit, but mostly I’ve been on a boat. And all I could think as I idly sailed about was:

“People call this a sport? Raping mother nature’s winds for your own pleasure? Hundreds of feet from your competitors, who like you, are wearing dock shoes, and Nantucket reds and have the complexion of snow. Where is the sport in that? And what is that Somali looking man doing with that RPG?”

Sailing needs something. It needs conflict. It needs physicality. It needs to be more impactful. It needs to feature boarding and grappling hooks.

When Black Beard did the first America’s Cup race back in 17whateverthehell, they didn’t race each other in boats that cost tens of millions dollars, helmed and manned by sons of privilege. They fought each other to death in pilfered pinnaces, helmed and manned solely by maroons and sons of bitches. Race? The only race was to see how long you could survive, and how much whoring and pillaging you’d take down before death.

So obviously things are different. And that’s why sailing needs a sea change, three of them actually.

First things first, the aforementioned grappling and boarding is allowed in all sailing races. Let’s see how many Ted Turners are “courageous” when they face the chance of being gutted from groin to gill by an Australian ex-con named Roggie. As a bonus, this return to its classical roots would make sailing the world’s most popular spectator sport.

Second. All yacht clubs ban popped collars, people with names like Preston, and people rich enough to own a boat. Yacht club membership will remain an exclusive status, but the criteria for admittance will change. Instead of a blue blood test, there will be a red blood test. You have to have killed a man on the sea, justly, to become a full member. Junior membership will be bestowed upon anyone who has won a knife fight or bedded a mermaid.*

Third. Grappling and boarding is also legal at any point on the sea. If you are a “boater” and you love being on the ocean, then you better be able to handle your business with a cutlass. Any boat seized after being boarded would then be lawful property of the seizers, the male crew would be subject to death or impressment, the female crew would be subject to slavery.

*Manatees do not count, regardless of how hot they look. I’ve heard all the hot manatee claims before, and that crap won’t fly with me.

America will blow up the moon, we have the technology, the time is now, science can wait no longer, children are our future, America can, should, must, and WILL blow up the moon…And we’ll be doing it during a full moon so we make sure we get it all.

Quote from Mr. Show in 1996

I don’t mean to be that monkey, but why are we blowing up the moon? Has it come to this? I understand that this is a search for water but at $79 million, aren’t their cheaper local sources? Isn’t this the kind of thing that leads to more global warming? E.g. sourcing water from the moon and then shipping it here burns more fossil fuels than even bottled water, according to my model at least.

Recommendation: Short moon real estate. While it’s likely to benefit from increased scarcity, it’s also likely to be negatively impacted by being exploded.

Dear Ben,

Congratulations! I have heard the good news that you will be reappointed as Fed Chairman and I have to say that you’ve earned it! It’s been a long fourish years, but in that period of time there isn’t likely a single soul who wouldn’t agree that Fed’s commentary and actions have reeked of unequivocal success. When you make a call, Ben, you nail a call. I remember back to November 2007 when you said:

Our forecast is for moderate but positive growth going into next year. We think that by the spring, early next year, that as these credit problems resolve and, as we hope, the housing market begins to find a bottom, that the broader resiliency of the economy, which we are seeing in other areas outside of housing, will take control and will help the economy recover to a more reasonable growth pace.

Paulson may have been the hammer, but you provided all the nails when it came to nailing that economic forecast for 2012. People may quibble about timing, especially since your policy for the dollar and your far-reaching Fed actions of questionable legality were predicated on the timing and accuracy of your forecasts, but those people are the vocal minority; those fools probably hope to have grandchildren whose government won’t be crippled by an untenable debt load. Selfish morons!

Now, I can’t say I always envisioned you in your current role. As a child, when you weren’t eating dirt or inflating sandbox economies, you spent most of your time forming your arms into rotor blades and making yourself into a helicopter, or a Bernankptor as you liked to call it. PHWIT PHWIT PHWIT PHWIT would be the accompaniment your mouth provided before you’d set down the Bernankptor with a THWOMP. You were so happy then as a boy, it brings a smile to my soul to know that boy is still spinning his rotor blade arms inside the Federal Reserve walls. I can picture you now, alone in your office, behind your mahogany desk, arms out, PHWIT PHWIT PHWIT PHWITting about.

But this is neither here nor there. I’m writing because I’m just so proud of you. It was always clear that you were around 70% tardass and we thought you’d never even become a helicopter pilot of any kind. Today, The Obama is reappointing you as Dollar Force Pilot 1. It fills my heart with pride.

Love,
Mom

Last week I wrote this quite racistly:

And as we all know Crabs:Cephalopods as WWII Italians: WWII Germans — fun-loving incompetent bottom-feeders who love spaghetti and wouldn’t mind being along for the world domination ride.

Well I can only blame that I grew up with The Untouchables, and, in that movie, the character of Malone colored my view on the whole country when he described a would-be assailant with a series of slurs which made impaled the assailant’s Italian descent. But, much to my racist chagrin, only days after feeling a smidgen of guilt for comparing Italians to bottom-feeding crabs, I read something like this, headline: In Italy Parmesan Is As Good As Money. Seriously.

The vaults of Credito Emiliano SpA hold the pungent gold prized by gourmands around the world – 17,000 tons of parmesan cheese.

The regional bank accepts parmesan as collateral for loans[.]

…

The bank offers loans for as long as 24 months, equal to the time it takes the parmesan to age, at the euro interbank offered rate, plus 0.75 percent to 2 percent, Bizzarri said. The bank gives producers as much as 80 percent of the value of the product, based on current market prices.

The bank considered taking prosciutto ham, another of the region’s specialties, and olive oil as collateral, but such products are harder to store and brand, Bizzarri said.

I bolded the AYFKM parts.

Recommendation: Let me just reiterate that I can’t take any country or group of people seriously if they keep up with this kind of stuff. This cheese shit doesn’t cut the mustard of taking a country seriously.

HT to MO

Actually based on the numbers, probably not so good for you as more than 50% failed Level I, II and III. But think of it this way — you fit in. You finally fit in! More people are like you, a pathetic failure, than are not like you. Bright side! Don’t think about how many hours you poured down the drain, hours wasted with nothing to show for it other than the empty husks of relationships left that decayed and unspent nights of your twenties that you will never be able to reclaim. Especially don’t think about the stress that has subtly (but surely) caused your hairline to recede a few millimeters. Rogaine won’t work for that, so don’t bother.

June 2009 Pass Rate
Level I Pass Rate: 46%
Level II Pass Rate: 41%
Level III Pass Rate: 49%

Comments are open for anyone proud to have passed, humiliated to have failed, humiliated to have passed or proud to have failed.

Running this company has failed and the company has filed for bankruptcy protection. It’s time for management to roll the dice. Literally. They need to take their entire capex budget to the craps table and bet it on the Six to Win. Or better yet the No Pass Line. I don’t get why they haven’t thought of this. It’s called Gambling Expenditures or Gamblex. It can be a positive amount, but generally it’s a negative number on the cash flow statement. The owners’ equity checks are already toast, so what do they have to lose?

Worst case they go bust and they screw their debtholders, but who cares about those morons who signed up for a convoluted structured deal for a company run by certifiable madmen? And shouldn’t they expect the Fertitas to do something like gamble all the capex money in a dice game? That is why you do due diligence — to avoid providing debt financing to people who are certifiable madmen.

Best case, they win and get the opportunity to double down, which of course they’d need to do again 2 or 3 times. Station should act like responsible irresponsible managers they are and pour all the cash they can into gamblex.