- SEC reaches a $550 million settlement with Goldman Sachs. “The regulators get to claim victory while the Eloi get to continue their frolic atop the fluffy clouds of privilege and untouchability,” Josh Brown writes at The Reformed Broker. “Nobody admits wrongdoing, rightdoing or frankly, admits anything at all for that matter.”
- “This is surely a massive win for Goldman, whose entire business was at stake if it was found guilty of serious wrongdoing,” Reuters blogger Felix Salmon says. “The risk, of course, is that Goldman’s victory here will only serve to exacerbate its arrogance. Could the Squids of West Street become even more insufferable, now?”
- Business Insider has a list of winners and losers in the Goldman fraud settlement case.
- Lots of data to digest this morning, and most of it isn’t promising. Producer prices fall for third straight month and manufacturing data was weak. Headline jobless claims number looks good, but seasonal adjustments played a large role in the better-than-expected figure. “Due to the seasonal issues around the adjustments with GM doing the opposite of what they’ve historically done has made initial claims more difficult to analyze for a few weeks,” says Miller Tabak’s Peter Boockvar. “One thing though is for sure, up to 3 million workers will be falling off the extended claims rolls as benefits run out.”
- Naked Capitalism blogger Yves Smith relays an interesting nugget from HousingWire: for every one home currently on the market, two are waiting to be sold. “The scary part here is this estimate of market overhang refers only to foreclosed and distressed property,” she says. “There is another category of hidden inventory, people who would like to sell but aren’t even listing their houses.”
- Oil has finally stopped gushing into the Gulf. For now, as BP tests a new containment cap.
- Apple’s (AAPL) acquisition of mapping company Poly9 marks the second maps-focused company AAPL has bought in the last year. “In the short term, and with Poly9 specifically, Apple is buying its Google Earth,” Business Insider’s Dan Frommer says. “But more broadly, Apple is preparing for life after Google.”
- H-P’s (HPQ) Android tablet, which was supposed to hit the market in 4Q, has been delayed and won’t ship before the end of the year, Digital Daily blogger John Paczkowski reports, citing anonymous sources. Reason for the delay aren’t clear. “Perhaps, H-P has decided to focus its resources on the future webOS slate PC that its new Palm unit is developing,” he says. “Or perhaps the company is reconsidering its multi-OS tablet strategy in light of the Palm acquisition. After all, H-P has said repeatedly it is ‘doubling down’ on webOS.”
- “Even as lenders struggle to pull themselves out of the credit crisis, signs of a new and potentially dangerous infatuation with risky borrowers are emerging,” WSJ reports.
- Pretty pumped to see Carlos Beltran patrolling center field once again for the Mets.
(Editor’s note: the embedding code for some reason originally put David Cottle’s video in this space. While we’re fans of David’s, let him plug his videos on his own blog. Hopefully, we’ve now got this fixed.)
This is the bulls moment to take this thing back. The euro’s stabilized, even as Goldman Sachs throws in the towel on its estimates, and data out of Asia look better. But there are still counterweights: weekly jobless claims remain stubbornly stuck around 450,000, and the financial regulation bill is nearing its final form, which will likely crimp some bank profits.
- The unchecked flow from BP’s busted well is bringing more than just thick crude to the surface — desperate emotions are bubbling up, too. Former labor secretary Robert Reich wants the federal government to temporarily put BP into receivership and take over its North American operations. As justification, he argues BP hasn’t been truthful about the size of the gusher, and “continues to be responsible primarily to its shareholders, not to the American public.”
- Pinning recent ups and downs in asset and commodity prices solely on Europe “misses an important part of the story,” UC San Diego economics professor James Hamilton says. Venture a glance at China.
- The Economist effectively declares bank balance sheets have been repaired and banks don’t need to raise much new capital. But naked capitalism blogger Yves Smith begs to differ. “It should be no surprise that US bank regulators are continuing to prop up banks, but it’s disappointing when the media gives them and the bank earnings phony-baloney they enable a free pass.”
- S&P 500 drops 19, or 1.7%, to 1071, marking the third worst post-Memorial Day performance ever for the index.
- Attitudes toward big banks are changing around the world, except the US. “Our top policymakers are simply convinced that what is good for the biggest and most dangerous element on Wall Street is good for the American economy,” former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson writes. “This is cultural capture in its purest and most extreme form.”
- “Policymakers are betting that the recovery is strong enough to self-sustain, and so they are turning their attention to other threats,” Ryan Avent says. “Perhaps they’re right. But if they aren’t, the policy decisions being made right now will look awfully peculiar and unfortunate several years down the road.”
- There may be signs that “the rich” are back, from luxury home sales in New York and San Francisco to rising sales at Tiffany (TIF) and Whole Foods (WFMI), Daniel Gross says. But the actual story may be about the “not-quite-rich,” and “while they may have emerged from their stunned, locked-down stupor, these consumers are not at full strength…it may take another year or two of solid growth, market gains, and healthy bonuses before they start to party like it’s 2007.”
- Internet ad spending has jumped from zero to 5% of all US ad spending over the past decade. “That is the most bullish signal about investing in the Internet that I have seen this year,” Fred Wilson writes.
- “If stocks keep pace with valuations, then the S&P 500 could easily be over 1400 within 18 months,” Eddy Elfenbein says. Bold prediction, which would mark a 30% increase off current levels. But keep an eye on those earnings forecasts: if companies increasingly start cutting guidance, “then the whole bullish scenario falls apart.”
J.P. Morgan reported some strong earnings today. But what this bloggers eye were some of the sub-numbers in the earnings report. The bank booked $1.8 billion in investment banking fees. But don’t be fooled – that wasn’t from big M&A advising. But $429 million was in advisory fees. Instead, that $1.3 billion + remaining fees […]
You can’t lie to the Internal Revenue Service. But can the IRS lie to you? Congress spent much of the day grilling IRS officials for the revelations that came out last week that the IRS was targeting conservative groups. And some lawmakers didn’t like the answers they were getting and accused IRS officials of lying. […]
