Juggling Dynamite

“The corporate insiders running our country’s publicly traded companies have been heavily selling their stock, which some market pros say speaks volumes about the veracity of the current rally.
The market has moved sharply higher since August 27, when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke suggested that he and his allies on the FOMC might consider another bond purchase program in order to juice economic activity. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which includes holdings like Exxon (XOM), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), and Bank of America (BAC), is up 11% since Bernanke’s speech.
But, even as hedge funds and prop traders at the big commercial banks might be buying, one group of investors has carefully side-stepped this rally: corporate insiders…”

See: Corporate Insiders Cash Out.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair delivers a keynote address on the issue of foreclosures and the future of housing finance at a joint Federal Reserve/FDIC conference in Arlington, Va:

This moring the Case Shiller Index for August confirmed that Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Rose Less Than Forecast. The next down-leg in housing is now underway: demand is not resuming and supply on the sidelines remains very heavy. Persistent unemployment, decimated credit scores, and the next wave of the foreclosure fiasco are all likely to work housing prices lower over the next year or two.
The correct role of government policy is preventative rules and regulation. Efforts to bail out the housing bubble and its aftermath have been ineffective and wasteful of the public purse. Moreover they represent a disheartening lack of understanding on the part of governments and flawed institutions trying to reinforce the status quo rather than admit mistakes and effect meaningful reform. This is what happened in Japan over the past 22 years. It won’t end well in North America either.

The annual Barrie Film Festival presented some great titles this past weekend, I was fortunate to catch three. The Tillman Story was a stand out. A brilliant documentary based on a riveting story in our recent past. Tillman is a tragic hero in the tradition of Greek mythology. But this is very much real life. Footage of the congressional hearings that took place after Tillman's death was for me eerily reminiscent of the embarrassing testimony given last year by the North American car makers and banksters.