you forget, the US is now the United Socialists of America. with comrades Obama, Reid and Pelosi running the politburo, the hated investor class will be punished, not rewarded.
That'd be a grand idea, but I don't see any way that'll come from Obama/Reid/Pelosi. They're only interested in taxing those who create jobs, not reducing taxes on those who invest in this country. They want the government to create those jobs (which requires more taxes to feed the beast).
Those short sellers have plenty of cap gains, so they shouldn't have to pay taxes on profits from driving the market down. :eek:
i don't disagree with your point about unknowns, but the fact remains that if the current FASB M2M rules had been in place back in the RTC times, the banks would have been nearly as fucked then as they are now. the rule does not account for extraordinary times devoid of liquid markets. in an attempt to address 'mark to fantasy' they created 'mark to armageddon'. law of unintended consequences... btw... does anyone else think Geithner is a worm. i'd have trouble trusting him with my credit card if he were a waiter in a restaurant.
Whether naked or not, short sellers are typically blamed when there is a big market decline. The shorts can't cause the decline alone. They take advantage of the bubble bursting caused by other people/factors. Shorts are vultures not eagles. The prey has to be weak or dying first. If SEC is going to set up strict rules, how about rules on regulating those fancy CDOs that caused the financial markets' problems to begin with? Yeah, bring back the uptick rule. While we are at it, why don't we revert back to using fractional prices and fixed commission structures? Like $250 a trade and you can only reach a live broker on the phone to place orders? We will eliminate the stock market volatilities. (And ban the e-minis and 2x, 3x, Ultrashort, and all ETFs too. Demolish all the ECNs. Ban computer trading.) We will be back to a good-old America stock market.
Getting rid of mark to market will only hide the true value of the assets. Personally I would rather see companies value these assets at fair value to give me the real picture of how the company is doing. Without mark to market balance sheets would APPEAR to be better but mark to market depicts a truer picture of the worth of those assets.
Thats the problem........there is no "market". That's why the govt should just set up an "entity" (Doesn't matter what you call it) to buy these assets. They could pre-announce that it will be for a set amount of assets. This would keep the banks from holding out for higher prices. Maybe they get their money back in 5-7 years, maybe they don't. Right now we're just throwing money down a hole.
This should be fun, seems like you see the s&p 500 earning around $60.00 for this year? Thats a bit optimistic don't you think, it will be lucky to come in at anything over $35...Please tell me where I am wrong, hopefully with more than a 1 sentence reponse.
Good point. So don't get rid of mark to market, just effectively create the market through the government entity buying up those assets which will eliminate the worthless assets off the books. Am I correct in my summarization of your comment?