One Hundred to One - Once in a Life-Time Chance!

One Hundred to One - What an Opportunity!?!

Some people are making a killing on IMB (IndyMac Bancorp) these days. Your $10,000 invested a year ago could be worth well over $1,000,000 today. Only problem: you had to bet AGAINST IndyMac (go Short) a year ago to make this 100x money.

A year ago, IMB was trading for $31.00. Today it closed at $0.12 (yes, twelve cents) - down another 50+% from Friday's close of $0.28. What an investment (actually 200x)!

Didn't have Failing Financials on your radar a year ago? No problem -

Today, the Financial Sector UltraShort ETF, SKF, was UP over 10% - a nice little one-day return. And that one you might have seen coming! Still more to be made there? Tough to say - but it's clear that some people have done well shorting financial stocks in the past year. A year ago SKF was trading at $71.05. Today it closed at $192.01. Careful - it hasn't been straight up. It was down $41 one day earlier this year.

Tonight, early word from across the globe has foreign markets - Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, So. Korea, all fainting under the exposure they have to US Financials. Can you say World-Wide Do-Do?

Forget for a minute that you have foreign-market exposure in your 401K. Forget that you can't short stocks in your IRA. And set aside that you're not trading your retirement on one-day gains. Forget, too, the 10,000 individuals guilty of trusting IndyMac with more of their money than the $100,000 limit for federally insured funds (your tax dollars at work?).

Then, maybe you can appreciate what Phil Gramm (of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act fame) must have had in mind when he spearheaded the Financial Deregulation of 1999. He pushed a left-for-dead bill across the finish line late while most of Washington and the Nation were glued to the Supreme Court's commandeering of Florida's Presidential Election results. The regulatory protection of the overturned Glass-Steagall Act had held America's financial institutions out of such trouble since the bank panics of the Great Depression in the 1930's.

I can recall as a youngster my Father, now 88, telling me of those dark days with wide eyes and stern tone - "The money was gone! There was nothing left!" I guess that's how IndyMac's depositors felt this past weekend.

Gramm himself says "I see no evidence whatsoever" that the subprime collapse was caused by this deregulation. Gramm has some strong support for his position. After he set the financial community a twitter with plenty of rope, he left the US Senate and went to USB. USB has since lost a reported $38 Billion (so far) on the subprime collapse. They still like this guy that gave them all that rope.

So does John McCain. I watched in amazement the video on MS-NBC of a McCain rally with McCain handing off the microphone to Phil Gramm - already on stage with McCain. This, so Gramm could explain the economic plan they have in store for us.

Maybe we ain't seen nothin' yet. Perhaps there's still time to place your bets.

How can these guys be so wrong? Gramm with a plan for his company's shareholders to lose $38 Billion of their assets? McCain with no capability to discriminate economic skill from obviously flawed and, now, woefully irresponsible ideology.

But most of all, what about the Voting Public that has this team running nearly dead even with Obama - a man who's main objective is a total change from all this on our behalf?

Oh. That's right. Bush won twice. That explains a lot. That, and, some people just can't get enough of these latest stock market gains, I guess.

JT