Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
LOL My screen name has NOTHING to do with making or losing $$$. See http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=14715118 if you're interested in where I got that name. LOL
Ok. That was my last 911...rofl
Here comes another 911 LOL
you should see the folks in the live trading room tryin to figure it out...I'm busting out laughing my ass off here!
There's my 911!!! LOL
You will see my 911 buy very soon after the open this morning! LOL
Just day traders exiting on the bid, nothing more nothing less, IMO.
Here's the "baloney":
SUPPOSED MM "SIGNALS":
100 > I need shares
200 > I need shares badly but dont take it down to get em
300 > Take the price down to get shares....
400 > Trade it sideways based on Supply and Demand
500 > Gap one way or the other, usually to the direction
of the 500 trade. Sometimes -if in the middle -keep the price right where it is.
Dave, your commitment & confidence have NEVER been in doubt in my mind.
More importantly, however, you illustrated the point that so-called "MM signals" are nothing but PURE BS & are just traders playing games!!! I've done it LOTS of times myself...usually "911" "411" & even the occasional "666" trade...LOL The "666" ones really freak out some folks, but I've done it to make the point that these MM "I'm out of shares", etc. "signals" are 100% baloney. But folks will believe whatever they choose to believe.
I was tempted to throw in a 911 share buy at the ask near the close but was selling off my last airline plays of the day. I'll do a "911" buy on RDWG tomorrow morning just to hammer home the point! When you see it on the ticker you will know that was me.
FYI, today I loaded up some .0016s & .0019s on the dips & sold at .0023s & .0024s on the ASK & while there was MOMO, so I did NOT hurt the stock's price action. I wish others would get a clue that it is indeed possible to flip without killing a run, but for some reason bidwhackers who have no clue how to sell seem to abound in pinkieland. I'm still holding a substantial core position (ALL "freebies" at this point) for much higher levels & I will average UP on key breaks. IMO, until RDWG breaks into the penny range we can expect to see lots of flipping from buying up the dips just simply because 30%-40% gains are so easy as this level, but personally, I'm done with flips on this one.
BTW, I HOPE that's a transaction number on your post & NOT your Scotty account number!
Cheers!
Bob :)
from the EOD action, it's clear that SBSH is short here; IF you're gonna sell some, set your sells at the ASK & let them take you out on the way UP...no whacking the BID!!!
.002+ open...could go to .003+ tomorrow, IMHO
GLTYA :)
here's how: 200+ traders in his live trading room; many started whacking their way out when he called his sell & made those comments, hence RDGW dropped as folks were exiting; serves as an example of the importance of locking in some profit on the way up...anything like this can happen...seen it too many times
"normal" SOP for his room is "do not call your sells"; he broke his own rule & a bunch of peeps blindly followed his exit
-end of story-
RDWG holding nicely now that most who wanted out are out, although it needs to breathe a bit, IMO
GLTYA
BTW: I'm still in riding freebies; added today @ .001s; whoever says "hard fills @ .001s" is either a liar or needs a new broker; very easy (almost instant) fills at the ASK here through TDA
"So we sailed up to the sun...till we found a sea of green..."
easy fills @ .001 here
here you have it (my PM to you) for PUBLIC VIEW:
"Dave, yup...Bil said 'something funny here; I'm all out & not touching it again for now...look @ SBSH...blah blah blah'...caused many to dump IMO...I think this will be just fine, but I'm disappointed in Bill...broke one of his own rules by calling his sell...many in his room are stuck much higher...I lost a bunch of respect for him this morning cuz of this...pity...he SHOULD know better"
RDWG: OTCPicks.com is on it; email campaign started/rec'd tonight; nothing new here, but OTCPicks.com has a LOT of subscribers...could help bring in some new $$$ & also help the chart continue to recover & shape up to where it will draw even more attention here:
ROAD WINGS INCORPORATED (OTC: RDWG)
"Up 57.14% on Friday"
Detailed Quote: http://www.otcpicks.com/quotes/RDWG.php
Road Wings, Inc. offers telecommunication services and is based in Henderson, Nevada.
RDWG News:
August 1 - Road Wings Updates Financials
Road Wings, Inc. (OTC: RDWG) has posted new financials on its Pink Sheets disclosure filings, available for view at www.pinksheets.com.
"As a direct result of our cash injections into OneFi Technologies, our ownership interest in OneFi continues to grow, benefitting from the OneFi balance sheet, also reflected on Pink Sheets," stated RDWG President Travis Grimmett. Grimmett went on to say that RDWG will, "continue to buy into OneFi Technologies on a consistent basis."
According to the Company, the most recent share structure of Road Wings as of August 1, 2008 is as follows:
Shares Outstanding — 446,000,000
Float — 351,000,000
RDWG: OTCPicks.com is on it also; email rec'd tonight:
ROAD WINGS INCORPORATED (OTC: RDWG)
"Up 57.14% on Friday"
Detailed Quote: http://www.otcpicks.com/quotes/RDWG.php
Road Wings, Inc. offers telecommunication services and is based in Henderson, Nevada.
RDWG News:
August 1 - Road Wings Updates Financials
Road Wings, Inc. (OTC: RDWG) has posted new financials on its Pink Sheets disclosure filings, available for view at www.pinksheets.com.
"As a direct result of our cash injections into OneFi Technologies, our ownership interest in OneFi continues to grow, benefitting from the OneFi balance sheet, also reflected on Pink Sheets," stated RDWG President Travis Grimmett. Grimmett went on to say that RDWG will, "continue to buy into OneFi Technologies on a consistent basis."
According to the Company, the most recent share structure of Road Wings as of August 1, 2008 is as follows:
Shares Outstanding — 446,000,000
Float — 351,000,000
NEOM: OTCPicks.com is on it; email rec'd tonight:
NEOMEDIA TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED (OTCBB: NEOM)
"Up 60.00% on Friday"
Detailed Quote: http://www.otcpicks.com/quotes/NEOM.php
NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. is the global leader in optically initiated wireless transactions, bridging the physical and mobile world with innovative direct to web technology solutions. To provide a robust high-performance infrastructure for the processing of optical codes NeoMedia extends their offering with award winning Gavitec technology. Located in Germany, Gavitec AG - mobile digit is a leader in development and distribution of mobile scanners and software for mobile applications. In addition, Gavitec provides standardized and individual solutions for mobile marketing, couponing, ticketing and payment systems. To learn more, visit www.neom.com, www.neoreader.com, and www.mobiledigit.de.
NEOM News:
July 31 - NeoReader for Apple's iPhone Provides Easy Access to Mobile Content on the Go
NeoMedia Technologies (OTCBB: NEOM), the global leader in camera-initiated transactions for mobile devices, announced today that their mobile barcode scanning application — NeoReader® — is now available for the iPhone and free to download from Apple's App Store. The NeoReader transforms the iPhone into a barcode scanner which provides instant access to mobile content by clicking on 2D barcodes.
Available immediately for free download, iPhone users simply install the NeoReader barcode scanning application onto their iPhone via Apple's App Store, either over a cell network or using Wi-Fi. The application is also accessible via iTunes.
The NeoReader application turns the iPhone into a mobile conduit to interactive content and information. The simple "one click" access makes the mobile internet much more accessible for iPhone users — by scanning 2D barcodes via the iPhone's camera, users avoid typing in long URLs and navigating cumbersome menus. The 2D barcodes serve as "hyperlinks" from printed mediums to mobile web content and are activated when and where users choose.
The use cases for mobile barcodes are virtually endless, from advertising or editorial content (e.g. movie trailer, product coupon or video content to accompany a print article) to public service information (e.g. bus schedules or prescription drug information) and personal information (e.g. interactive business card). iPhone users can even promote themselves with mobile barcodes. By creating personal codes users can link their website to a business card, a t-shirt, a social networking profile or any other creative place a barcode can be printed.
"We are very exited the NeoReader for iPhone has been approved by Apple -- the superior web experience of iPhone translates to an enhanced experience with the NeoReader as well. iPhone users are exactly the type of consumers that can propel mobile barcode usage into the mainstream," stated Iain McCready, CEO of NeoMedia Technologies. "We know the mobile handset is sacred ground for iPhone users and we respect that. The NeoReader empowers consumers to 'take control' of the content that reaches their iPhone — they choose when and where they want to engage with a mobile barcode. NeoMedia makes sure the experience is secure, fast and reliable. I believe the NeoReader can be the breakthrough needed to deliver the promise of an easy and accessible mobile internet experience."
The NeoReader is a universal barcode scanning application that reads all standard 2D barcode symbologies — QR, Data Matrix, Aztec — so iPhone users won't need multiple barcode readers. Many companies are beginning to utilize 2D barcodes in their marketing and communications efforts. By installing the NeoReader, iPhone users will enjoy the value and convenience of a rich and relevant interactive experience wherever they encounter a mobile barcode.
NEOM: OTCPicks.com is on it; email rec'd tonight:
NEOMEDIA TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED (OTCBB: NEOM)
"Up 60.00% on Friday"
Detailed Quote: http://www.otcpicks.com/quotes/NEOM.php
NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. is the global leader in optically initiated wireless transactions, bridging the physical and mobile world with innovative direct to web technology solutions. To provide a robust high-performance infrastructure for the processing of optical codes NeoMedia extends their offering with award winning Gavitec technology. Located in Germany, Gavitec AG - mobile digit is a leader in development and distribution of mobile scanners and software for mobile applications. In addition, Gavitec provides standardized and individual solutions for mobile marketing, couponing, ticketing and payment systems. To learn more, visit www.neom.com, www.neoreader.com, and www.mobiledigit.de.
NEOM News:
July 31 - NeoReader for Apple's iPhone Provides Easy Access to Mobile Content on the Go
NeoMedia Technologies (OTCBB: NEOM), the global leader in camera-initiated transactions for mobile devices, announced today that their mobile barcode scanning application — NeoReader® — is now available for the iPhone and free to download from Apple's App Store. The NeoReader transforms the iPhone into a barcode scanner which provides instant access to mobile content by clicking on 2D barcodes.
Available immediately for free download, iPhone users simply install the NeoReader barcode scanning application onto their iPhone via Apple's App Store, either over a cell network or using Wi-Fi. The application is also accessible via iTunes.
The NeoReader application turns the iPhone into a mobile conduit to interactive content and information. The simple "one click" access makes the mobile internet much more accessible for iPhone users — by scanning 2D barcodes via the iPhone's camera, users avoid typing in long URLs and navigating cumbersome menus. The 2D barcodes serve as "hyperlinks" from printed mediums to mobile web content and are activated when and where users choose.
The use cases for mobile barcodes are virtually endless, from advertising or editorial content (e.g. movie trailer, product coupon or video content to accompany a print article) to public service information (e.g. bus schedules or prescription drug information) and personal information (e.g. interactive business card). iPhone users can even promote themselves with mobile barcodes. By creating personal codes users can link their website to a business card, a t-shirt, a social networking profile or any other creative place a barcode can be printed.
"We are very exited the NeoReader for iPhone has been approved by Apple -- the superior web experience of iPhone translates to an enhanced experience with the NeoReader as well. iPhone users are exactly the type of consumers that can propel mobile barcode usage into the mainstream," stated Iain McCready, CEO of NeoMedia Technologies. "We know the mobile handset is sacred ground for iPhone users and we respect that. The NeoReader empowers consumers to 'take control' of the content that reaches their iPhone — they choose when and where they want to engage with a mobile barcode. NeoMedia makes sure the experience is secure, fast and reliable. I believe the NeoReader can be the breakthrough needed to deliver the promise of an easy and accessible mobile internet experience."
The NeoReader is a universal barcode scanning application that reads all standard 2D barcode symbologies — QR, Data Matrix, Aztec — so iPhone users won't need multiple barcode readers. Many companies are beginning to utilize 2D barcodes in their marketing and communications efforts. By installing the NeoReader, iPhone users will enjoy the value and convenience of a rich and relevant interactive experience wherever they encounter a mobile barcode.
I was asking you about where the "more than 40%" bit came from, & you've already replied that you surmised it from reading INTO the PRs, not reading the content of the PRs themselves.
I'm not an idiot and for you to suggest that I cannot read a PR is ludicrous. Thanks for the insult.
This has degenerated to the point that I'm gonna have to place you on ignore, which is a sad state of affairs for a board moderator. At least I can rely on Dave to convey the INFO without the incessant cheerleading/pumping.
BTW, it's not Travis that's doing the dumping, it's the financing folks and they evidently don't give a crap about where & how many they dump either. As far as IR is concerned, they've already been paid to do their job...I heard it from the IR guy myself on a LIVE phone call in Bill Panetta's live trading room.
As I stated earlier (I'm trying to clarify the issue here; I was watching Level 2 when those "trades" went through & I can say with reasonable assurance that that those were most definitely NOT retail buys....that was MM VNDM puking out those huge blocks...then it stopped, we moved up a bit, then UBSS starting dumping again @ EOD
"So we sailed up to the sun...till we found a sea of green..."
again, posted by YOU this morning: "we know they are buying more than 40% of the company" at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=31081706
I'd call that speculation, but that's just me.....
Ummmm...perhaps cuz you're a better PUMPER than a Mod?!!? You are a VERY easy read regarding when you sell. All one has to do is review your posting history on any particular stock. It's pretty easy to tell when you've moved on...your incessant pumping on any particular stock just simply stops DEAD in its tracks.
It would make it considerably easier to keep track of the information posted on this board if I put you on IGNORE, but since you're a Board Moderator, that would be a pretty stupid thing for me to do, dontcha think?
Give us a break...there's toooooooo much information to sift through without reading hundreds of your posts daily with the hope that a samll fraction of them contains something substantive.
No offense intended..just speaking my mind here.
I know that. RDWG is taking an equity position in OneFi via a financing deal. I was posing a question to a response from "CJ" where HE said it was a merger.
I just want the facts, jack...lol
GLTYA...we're gonna need it......
I don't see "merger" anywhere, just that RDWG is taking an equity position "up to 40%" in OneFi. Where do you get "merger"? Or is this just a semantic discussion? TIA
I will pray for you.
Noooooo! Don't go. From what I've seen you're representing FACTS that have been corroborated.
It's a certain other individual who's posted information that is erroneous then just pumps incessantly & doesn't respond to legitimate questions.
You're doing JUST FINE here...& you've got the right attitude: "A Quitter never wins & a Winner never quits", to quote a trading pal.
I don't expect you to respond to a question about something you did NOT post. I expect the poster to respond........I'm waiting here...........
Nobody I know got any of the .0009s...it was MM VNDM flushing the toilet, imho
yup...my bad with respect to gender pronoun......
"She"...oops, my bad...but I wholeheartedly agree with you. "She"/"He"/"Whatever pronoun is appropriate" (I don't know this person other than as a screen name & a supposed "board mod." here) is being a lil chit to not respond to serious, legitimate queries from an investor in this stock.
He might as well resign...I've replied to his posts with requests for correct information to no avail.......
"we know they are buying more than 40% of the company":
that is from your post http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=31081706
Where did you obtain this information?
Pretty sad state of affairs when a board moderator doesn't respond to a legitimate question, never mind posting information that is erroneous.
What's the deal here CJ? It's bad enough that the financiers are are giving us the shaft via the MMs...c'mon, get with the program and get the FACTS to the investors here, please. TIA
How much of OneFi is owned/going to be owned by RDWG? I'm confused...is it 30%? 40? 50%? ...or are they buying them out entirely? Also, I thought this was a Reverse Merger deal??? TIA
nobody I know got ANY of those .0009s...it was MM VNDM flushing the toilet...let's hope he's done...UBSS still not done dumping based on the EOD action, imo...let's hope it ends SOON
Market Cap = Number of Shares Outstanding X PPS (closing price usually used, hence the "as of" date), but the accuracy depends on the accuracy of the OS count.........
Good job, BTW. :)
Cheers!
Bob (aka "looz")
"So we sailed up to the sun...till we found a sea of green..."
still "Bambi-bashing" I see...now I hear you're teaching your daughter the same chit?!?? LMAO
I think if it holds a dime today we're OK.
I've still got my eye on that first gap at around .26, plus some nice news could really send this sucker flying.
I remember what a nice trader NEWC/NEWCQ was after it flopped last year...IDMC could be even better, hopefully. :)
lol...ditto here
reloaded .095 - .105 today & gonna hold it
someone's scalping the heck outta this thing today
GLTY :)
IDMC 8K 22 July 2008
http://www.pinksheets.com/edgar/GetFilingPdf?FilingID=6053696
nice list Bill...didn't trade much beyond Tues...was outta town, but sure as heck glad I listened to you about IDMC...got in on dime break & got out at .18; lookin' for re-entry early tomorrow :)
in case you missed it, below is from today's "Opinion" section of the LA Times:
"Boom and bust: It's the American way": IndyMac's crisis is hardly unique. Bank panics have been with us from the beginning.
By Jane Kamensky, July 20, 2008, Los Angeles Times
Earlier this month, my mother-in-law called from Pasadena, in dire need of consultation with my husband, who serves as the family's unofficial Ben Bernanke. "Denny," she said, "rumors are flying around here. Should I pull my money out of IndyMac?"
"Don't worry about it, Mom," came the answer. "A big bank like that -- it'll never fail."
But the rumors kept coming, until so many IndyMac customers had withdrawn their funds that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took control of the bank's affairs. By dawn Monday, lines of betrayed, angry and tearful depositors snaked around IndyMac branches across Southern California: a central-casting bank run in the heart of film country.
My husband -- like so many others who trusted IndyMac -- was wrong. Banks, even big banks, go under. And now, once again, the popular wisdom that banks cannot fail has been temporarily replaced by the knowledge that banks can fail. Share prices of bank stocks plunged to multiyear lows before staging a comeback last week.
This rapid oscillation between confidence and panic in the banking sector is nearly as old as the United States. Indeed, at the nation's beginning, the financial landscape was far more complex, the hills steeper and the valleys deeper. Until the Civil War, every bank in the United States issued its own paper money, or notes, and the number of banks grew quickly. In 1790, the infant nation had four of them. During the next two decades, state legislatures incorporated more than 100 more, a surge one diarist labeled "bank mania." Soon, he feared, "every company of boys which had a stock in marbles" would seek a banking charter. Whether their capital consisted of marbles or gold or silver, each of these banks printed notes that passed for money. Every bank bill was a promise; every transaction an arbitrage; every shopkeeper a currency broker.
Two centuries ago,worried investors turned to the newspapers, much as they do today. Many papers carried a column called the Banking Thermometer that helped them to reckon the value of the promises in their pockets. In the initial months of 1809, the Banking Thermometer tracked the "falling temperature" of notes issued by banks stretching from Massachusetts to the Michigan Territory. At first, the notes traded at something close to face value. Down the temperature went. Late January: 80 cents on the dollar. Then 70. 40. And finally, zero.
Amazed readers watched seemingly solid stuff -- their paychecks and the value of the homes they bought with the notes -- simply evaporate. Editorials paraphrased Prospero, the sorcerer-protagonist of Shakespeare's "The Tempest," reminding readers that paper money was an enchantment, its value the "baseless fabric" of a "vision." Ordinary men and women woke with a start to find that the "airy stuff" they knew as money had "melted ... into thin air."
Shakespeare's Prospero was a cold, capricious enchanter. The financial wizard behind the banking collapse of 1809 was a more authentically American type: a striver, a gambler, one of the founding fathers of our speculation nation. Andrew Dexter Jr. was an ambitious man in an ambitious age. Like many born in the era of the American Revolution, he nursed a gravity-defying dream of rising without limits, a dream at once noble and venal, creative and destructive. On a small plot of land in downtown Boston, he would build the nation's tallest building, a seven-story, 153-room colossus he called the Exchange Coffee House. His design, he explained to prospective investors in the winter of 1807, just before breaking ground on the project, was to take the city's merchants out of the muddy streets where they conducted their trading and house them in a temple befitting the grandeur of commerce in the cradle of the late Revolution. He was the Donald Trump of early America. All he needed was some cash.
Dexter's tower rose on a foundation of paper promises. Promises bought the land and the bricks and the timber. Promises paid the masons and the carpenters and the tinsmiths. Promises begat more promises. As expenses mounted, Dexter used the building as collateral to buy a controlling interest in a cluster of banks located far enough from Boston that New Englanders would have a hard time putting their promises to the test. Then he directed the banks' boards to print money. When the notes began to depreciate, he printed millions more. While people trusted the alchemy behind them, the notes passed, from hand to hand to hand.
By the end of 1808, Dexter had papered much of the Eastern Seaboard with promises. Merchants who doubted the unfamiliar paper piling up in their cash drawers paid a battalion of runners to mass at bank counters from Michigan to New Hampshire and demand the gold and silver that Dexter's bank notes said they were good for. Poker-faced, the cashiers delayed, slowly counting piles of copper coins or writing IOUs -- more paper promising still more paper later on. But they couldn't stall forever.
In March 1809, the Farmers Exchange Bank of Gloucester, R.l. -- the weakest link in Dexter's chain -- became the first bank in U.S. history to go under. Dexter had owned the bank for 11 months, during which the Farmers Exchange issued more than $600,000 in notes. When state investigators opened its vault, they discovered exactly $86.48 worth of gold and silver, a liabilities-to-assets ratio of more than 7,000 to 1.
All that summer, as the notes of the defunct Farmers Exchange Bank wreaked havoc on the accounts of everyone who held them, the wave of failures spread. Their coffers full of money-turned-wastepaper, each bank in Dexter's web pulled against the others. People wondered why they had ever "confided" in bank bills. Paper phobia replaced paper mania. By August, a writer in the Pittsfield Sun said, it felt as if all New England was suffocating under an "immense floating mass of ... paper TRASH."
Today, we struggle to clean up an entirely modern species of paper trash: the alphabet soup of CDOs, SIVs and other securities backed by subprime mortgages. The firms affected now aren't small banking outposts in the American wildernessbut giant multinational concerns. Britain's Northern Rock, Wall Street's Bear Stearns and now IndyMac have collapsed. Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan are wounded. And still the circle of mistrust widens, from mortgage lenders, to banks and brokerage firms, to the insurers whose contracts guaranteed the bogus mortgage securities, to credit markets around the globe.
As we grope our way through the wreckage, we're better off than the first generation of over-leveraged Americans. We have a strong central bank to chart a course between recession and inflation, an FDIC to underwrite at least some of our mistaken confidence and bankruptcy laws that offer at least some protection for those who fail.
Andrew Dexter's contemporaries knew none of these remedies. They had to settle for the smaller satisfaction of getting to the bottom of their mess. They found the man whom one of his fellow merchants called a "grand enchanter, whose touch converts every thing to paper." Then they hounded him, in newspapers and through the streets, from state to state. He died in Montgomery, Ala., in 1837, alone and despised.
And broke, like the rest of his countrymen in a nation still addicted to paper credit, and once again suffering through a panic. Try as he might, Dexter never did make good. But he made a good villain, an icon of meaning amid the existential comedy of a boom-and-bust world.
Jane Kamensky teaches history at Brandeis University and is the author of "The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse."
--------------
GLTYA...now let's make some nice lemonade outta all these friggin' lemons!!!
Cheers!!!
Bob ;o)
Boom and bust: It's the American way
IndyMac's crisis is hardly unique. Bank panics have been with us from the beginning.
By Jane Kamensky, July 20, 2008, Los Angeles Times
Earlier this month, my mother-in-law called from Pasadena, in dire need of consultation with my husband, who serves as the family's unofficial Ben Bernanke. "Denny," she said, "rumors are flying around here. Should I pull my money out of IndyMac?"
"Don't worry about it, Mom," came the answer. "A big bank like that -- it'll never fail."
But the rumors kept coming, until so many IndyMac customers had withdrawn their funds that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took control of the bank's affairs. By dawn Monday, lines of betrayed, angry and tearful depositors snaked around IndyMac branches across Southern California: a central-casting bank run in the heart of film country.
My husband -- like so many others who trusted IndyMac -- was wrong. Banks, even big banks, go under. And now, once again, the popular wisdom that banks cannot fail has been temporarily replaced by the knowledge that banks can fail. Share prices of bank stocks plunged to multiyear lows before staging a comeback last week.
This rapid oscillation between confidence and panic in the banking sector is nearly as old as the United States. Indeed, at the nation's beginning, the financial landscape was far more complex, the hills steeper and the valleys deeper. Until the Civil War, every bank in the United States issued its own paper money, or notes, and the number of banks grew quickly. In 1790, the infant nation had four of them. During the next two decades, state legislatures incorporated more than 100 more, a surge one diarist labeled "bank mania." Soon, he feared, "every company of boys which had a stock in marbles" would seek a banking charter. Whether their capital consisted of marbles or gold or silver, each of these banks printed notes that passed for money. Every bank bill was a promise; every transaction an arbitrage; every shopkeeper a currency broker.
Two centuries ago,worried investors turned to the newspapers, much as they do today. Many papers carried a column called the Banking Thermometer that helped them to reckon the value of the promises in their pockets. In the initial months of 1809, the Banking Thermometer tracked the "falling temperature" of notes issued by banks stretching from Massachusetts to the Michigan Territory. At first, the notes traded at something close to face value. Down the temperature went. Late January: 80 cents on the dollar. Then 70. 40. And finally, zero.
Amazed readers watched seemingly solid stuff -- their paychecks and the value of the homes they bought with the notes -- simply evaporate. Editorials paraphrased Prospero, the sorcerer-protagonist of Shakespeare's "The Tempest," reminding readers that paper money was an enchantment, its value the "baseless fabric" of a "vision." Ordinary men and women woke with a start to find that the "airy stuff" they knew as money had "melted ... into thin air."
Shakespeare's Prospero was a cold, capricious enchanter. The financial wizard behind the banking collapse of 1809 was a more authentically American type: a striver, a gambler, one of the founding fathers of our speculation nation. Andrew Dexter Jr. was an ambitious man in an ambitious age. Like many born in the era of the American Revolution, he nursed a gravity-defying dream of rising without limits, a dream at once noble and venal, creative and destructive. On a small plot of land in downtown Boston, he would build the nation's tallest building, a seven-story, 153-room colossus he called the Exchange Coffee House. His design, he explained to prospective investors in the winter of 1807, just before breaking ground on the project, was to take the city's merchants out of the muddy streets where they conducted their trading and house them in a temple befitting the grandeur of commerce in the cradle of the late Revolution. He was the Donald Trump of early America. All he needed was some cash.
Dexter's tower rose on a foundation of paper promises. Promises bought the land and the bricks and the timber. Promises paid the masons and the carpenters and the tinsmiths. Promises begat more promises. As expenses mounted, Dexter used the building as collateral to buy a controlling interest in a cluster of banks located far enough from Boston that New Englanders would have a hard time putting their promises to the test. Then he directed the banks' boards to print money. When the notes began to depreciate, he printed millions more. While people trusted the alchemy behind them, the notes passed, from hand to hand to hand.
By the end of 1808, Dexter had papered much of the Eastern Seaboard with promises. Merchants who doubted the unfamiliar paper piling up in their cash drawers paid a battalion of runners to mass at bank counters from Michigan to New Hampshire and demand the gold and silver that Dexter's bank notes said they were good for. Poker-faced, the cashiers delayed, slowly counting piles of copper coins or writing IOUs -- more paper promising still more paper later on. But they couldn't stall forever.
In March 1809, the Farmers Exchange Bank of Gloucester, R.l. -- the weakest link in Dexter's chain -- became the first bank in U.S. history to go under. Dexter had owned the bank for 11 months, during which the Farmers Exchange issued more than $600,000 in notes. When state investigators opened its vault, they discovered exactly $86.48 worth of gold and silver, a liabilities-to-assets ratio of more than 7,000 to 1.
All that summer, as the notes of the defunct Farmers Exchange Bank wreaked havoc on the accounts of everyone who held them, the wave of failures spread. Their coffers full of money-turned-wastepaper, each bank in Dexter's web pulled against the others. People wondered why they had ever "confided" in bank bills. Paper phobia replaced paper mania. By August, a writer in the Pittsfield Sun said, it felt as if all New England was suffocating under an "immense floating mass of ... paper TRASH."
Today, we struggle to clean up an entirely modern species of paper trash: the alphabet soup of CDOs, SIVs and other securities backed by subprime mortgages. The firms affected now aren't small banking outposts in the American wildernessbut giant multinational concerns. Britain's Northern Rock, Wall Street's Bear Stearns and now IndyMac have collapsed. Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan are wounded. And still the circle of mistrust widens, from mortgage lenders, to banks and brokerage firms, to the insurers whose contracts guaranteed the bogus mortgage securities, to credit markets around the globe.
As we grope our way through the wreckage, we're better off than the first generation of over-leveraged Americans. We have a strong central bank to chart a course between recession and inflation, an FDIC to underwrite at least some of our mistaken confidence and bankruptcy laws that offer at least some protection for those who fail.
Andrew Dexter's contemporaries knew none of these remedies. They had to settle for the smaller satisfaction of getting to the bottom of their mess. They found the man whom one of his fellow merchants called a "grand enchanter, whose touch converts every thing to paper." Then they hounded him, in newspapers and through the streets, from state to state. He died in Montgomery, Ala., in 1837, alone and despised.
And broke, like the rest of his countrymen in a nation still addicted to paper credit, and once again suffering through a panic. Try as he might, Dexter never did make good. But he made a good villain, an icon of meaning amid the existential comedy of a boom-and-bust world.
Jane Kamensky teaches history at Brandeis University and is the author of "The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse."
--------------
GLTYA...now let's make some nice lemonade outta all these friggin' lemons!!!
Cheers!!!
Bob ;o)
Boom and bust: It's the American way
IndyMac's crisis is hardly unique. Bank panics have been with us from the beginning.
By Jane Kamensky, July 20, 2008, Los Angeles Times
Earlier this month, my mother-in-law called from Pasadena, in dire need of consultation with my husband, who serves as the family's unofficial Ben Bernanke. "Denny," she said, "rumors are flying around here. Should I pull my money out of IndyMac?"
"Don't worry about it, Mom," came the answer. "A big bank like that -- it'll never fail."
But the rumors kept coming, until so many IndyMac customers had withdrawn their funds that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took control of the bank's affairs. By dawn Monday, lines of betrayed, angry and tearful depositors snaked around IndyMac branches across Southern California: a central-casting bank run in the heart of film country.
My husband -- like so many others who trusted IndyMac -- was wrong. Banks, even big banks, go under. And now, once again, the popular wisdom that banks cannot fail has been temporarily replaced by the knowledge that banks can fail. Share prices of bank stocks plunged to multiyear lows before staging a comeback last week.
This rapid oscillation between confidence and panic in the banking sector is nearly as old as the United States. Indeed, at the nation's beginning, the financial landscape was far more complex, the hills steeper and the valleys deeper. Until the Civil War, every bank in the United States issued its own paper money, or notes, and the number of banks grew quickly. In 1790, the infant nation had four of them. During the next two decades, state legislatures incorporated more than 100 more, a surge one diarist labeled "bank mania." Soon, he feared, "every company of boys which had a stock in marbles" would seek a banking charter. Whether their capital consisted of marbles or gold or silver, each of these banks printed notes that passed for money. Every bank bill was a promise; every transaction an arbitrage; every shopkeeper a currency broker.
Two centuries ago,worried investors turned to the newspapers, much as they do today. Many papers carried a column called the Banking Thermometer that helped them to reckon the value of the promises in their pockets. In the initial months of 1809, the Banking Thermometer tracked the "falling temperature" of notes issued by banks stretching from Massachusetts to the Michigan Territory. At first, the notes traded at something close to face value. Down the temperature went. Late January: 80 cents on the dollar. Then 70. 40. And finally, zero.
Amazed readers watched seemingly solid stuff -- their paychecks and the value of the homes they bought with the notes -- simply evaporate. Editorials paraphrased Prospero, the sorcerer-protagonist of Shakespeare's "The Tempest," reminding readers that paper money was an enchantment, its value the "baseless fabric" of a "vision." Ordinary men and women woke with a start to find that the "airy stuff" they knew as money had "melted ... into thin air."
Shakespeare's Prospero was a cold, capricious enchanter. The financial wizard behind the banking collapse of 1809 was a more authentically American type: a striver, a gambler, one of the founding fathers of our speculation nation. Andrew Dexter Jr. was an ambitious man in an ambitious age. Like many born in the era of the American Revolution, he nursed a gravity-defying dream of rising without limits, a dream at once noble and venal, creative and destructive. On a small plot of land in downtown Boston, he would build the nation's tallest building, a seven-story, 153-room colossus he called the Exchange Coffee House. His design, he explained to prospective investors in the winter of 1807, just before breaking ground on the project, was to take the city's merchants out of the muddy streets where they conducted their trading and house them in a temple befitting the grandeur of commerce in the cradle of the late Revolution. He was the Donald Trump of early America. All he needed was some cash.
Dexter's tower rose on a foundation of paper promises. Promises bought the land and the bricks and the timber. Promises paid the masons and the carpenters and the tinsmiths. Promises begat more promises. As expenses mounted, Dexter used the building as collateral to buy a controlling interest in a cluster of banks located far enough from Boston that New Englanders would have a hard time putting their promises to the test. Then he directed the banks' boards to print money. When the notes began to depreciate, he printed millions more. While people trusted the alchemy behind them, the notes passed, from hand to hand to hand.
By the end of 1808, Dexter had papered much of the Eastern Seaboard with promises. Merchants who doubted the unfamiliar paper piling up in their cash drawers paid a battalion of runners to mass at bank counters from Michigan to New Hampshire and demand the gold and silver that Dexter's bank notes said they were good for. Poker-faced, the cashiers delayed, slowly counting piles of copper coins or writing IOUs -- more paper promising still more paper later on. But they couldn't stall forever.
In March 1809, the Farmers Exchange Bank of Gloucester, R.l. -- the weakest link in Dexter's chain -- became the first bank in U.S. history to go under. Dexter had owned the bank for 11 months, during which the Farmers Exchange issued more than $600,000 in notes. When state investigators opened its vault, they discovered exactly $86.48 worth of gold and silver, a liabilities-to-assets ratio of more than 7,000 to 1.
All that summer, as the notes of the defunct Farmers Exchange Bank wreaked havoc on the accounts of everyone who held them, the wave of failures spread. Their coffers full of money-turned-wastepaper, each bank in Dexter's web pulled against the others. People wondered why they had ever "confided" in bank bills. Paper phobia replaced paper mania. By August, a writer in the Pittsfield Sun said, it felt as if all New England was suffocating under an "immense floating mass of ... paper TRASH."
Today, we struggle to clean up an entirely modern species of paper trash: the alphabet soup of CDOs, SIVs and other securities backed by subprime mortgages. The firms affected now aren't small banking outposts in the American wildernessbut giant multinational concerns. Britain's Northern Rock, Wall Street's Bear Stearns and now IndyMac have collapsed. Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan are wounded. And still the circle of mistrust widens, from mortgage lenders, to banks and brokerage firms, to the insurers whose contracts guaranteed the bogus mortgage securities, to credit markets around the globe.
As we grope our way through the wreckage, we're better off than the first generation of over-leveraged Americans. We have a strong central bank to chart a course between recession and inflation, an FDIC to underwrite at least some of our mistaken confidence and bankruptcy laws that offer at least some protection for those who fail.
Andrew Dexter's contemporaries knew none of these remedies. They had to settle for the smaller satisfaction of getting to the bottom of their mess. They found the man whom one of his fellow merchants called a "grand enchanter, whose touch converts every thing to paper." Then they hounded him, in newspapers and through the streets, from state to state. He died in Montgomery, Ala., in 1837, alone and despised.
And broke, like the rest of his countrymen in a nation still addicted to paper credit, and once again suffering through a panic. Try as he might, Dexter never did make good. But he made a good villain, an icon of meaning amid the existential comedy of a boom-and-bust world.
Jane Kamensky teaches history at Brandeis University and is the author of "The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse."
--------------
GLTYA...now let's make some nice lemonade outta all these friggin' lemons!!!
Cheers!!!
Bob ;o)