Who’s Winning?
We’ve all heard way too much recently on the dark side of the current financial meltdown. ‘Puter was thinking and drinking last evening and came to the realization that we’ve heard little about who’s taking advantage of the instability in this market. Fortunes can be made in times of turmoil.
‘Puter’s candidate for the winner in this fiasco is JPMorganChase. “But ‘Puter,” you wail, “financial stocks are taking a beating! How can this be?” Two words: Jamie Dimon.
Chase has been conservative through the years in its lending. It appears to have weathered the initial subprime writedowns well. It has significant assets and cash on hand. In short, the fundamentals are good. But look beyond the fundamentals for a moment here.
Mr. Dimon, in one of the first episodes in this crisis, had JPMorganChase purchase Bear Stearns. With your (taxpayer) money. At a $10.00 per share, a little less than the recent $170 per share pricing. Chase had to back the first $1 billion in bad Bear Stearns liabilites, with the feds covering the remaining $30 billion or so. In June, Mr. Dimon announced that JPMorganChase expects to earn $1.1 billion off Bear Stearns business in 2009. Mr. Dimon quietly faded back into the woodwork. But Mr. Dimon was still looking for bargains.
Recently, Mr. Dimon’s name surfaced again, in conjunction with an attempted private financing of AIG. While Mr. Dimon and the feds couldn’t cobble together a private bailout of AIG, Mr. Dimon was right there in the mix. And he was right to be there. There is significant value in the pieces of AIG, from their insurance operations to their aircraft leasing arm.
Jamie Dimon is building an empire from the ashes of Wall Street, and woe betide those who underestimate him. ‘Puter can’t wait to see what Mr. Dimon pulls off next.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.