Juggling Dynamite

Further to my recent post Oil industry has made smokers of us all, North Vancouver city counsel voted unanimously Monday night, to start labeling gas pumps with warnings similar to those mandated on Canadian cigarette packs.  See:  Climate change stickers mandatory on North Vancouver gas pumps.

Along with captivating pictures (three of the samples being considered are shown below), a staff report has recommended call to action messages on the labels such as:

Electric vehicle incentives: “Get $5,000 toward a purchase of a new electric car.”
The B.C. Scrap-It program: “Trade in your clunker for a transit pass worth $1,360.”
Fuel-efficient driving tips: “Save fuel through properly inflating your tires.”
“Idling your vehicle for more than 10 seconds wastes more gas than restarting your engine.”

Stockman starts his entertaining and quite informed rant at 1:22 and ends at 9:02, the preamble and afterword are the usual CNBC slapstick, “reporting from the mother ship”…funny.  More like “live from bubble-vision headquarters.”  Meanwhile viewers keep falling month after month with each implosive asset pump from the CNBC “trading experts”.  It would be pure comedy except for the damage they inflict on the unsuspecting.

Former OMB Director David Stockman, weighs in on whether a December rate hike is in play and how to trade bonds now.  Here is a direct video link.

Executive “stars” are up to the same levered tricks seen before previous market meltdowns.   Bankers are happy to make the loans, accountants often recommend the tax deferrals. But in the end the practice leaves markets more vulnerable to steep losses and other investors (individuals, retirement accounts and pensions) in financial peril.  See: US executives pledge stock for loans, raise margin call concerns.

“U.S. corporate executives and directors have pledged at least $15 billion of their own company stock holdings to secure personal loans, in spite of recent examples of these arrangements creating bigger losses for other investors during selloffs.

Most U.S. companies say they limit or prohibit stock pledging because they can increase downward pressure on a company’s stock price if an executive’s pledged shares are sold under duress, such as a margin call. Still, some boards make exceptions for their stars, corporate disclosures show. And they rarely disclose what these insiders are doing with their borrowed money…

“Nothing good can come from these arrangements from a broader shareholder perspective,” said Mark Borges, a principal at Compensia, an executive compensation research firm in San Francisco. “When you pledge shares you are essentially giving someone else the ability to sell the stock out from under you. It exacerbates the situation when they are sold into an already anxious market.”