Depressor of the day to peek out of his hole, see his own shadow and run back in. It is winter after all…
Bespoke/Financial Times: Merrill CEO compares situation with 1929
Warm and Fuzzy Headline of the Day
While the volatility in the market has been giving similar signals for several weeks now, we haven’t seen many high-profile headlines like the one in today’s Financial Times below:
Mr. Thain went on to say, “Right now, the US economy is contracting very rapidly. We are looking at a period of global slowdown…This is not like 1987 or 1998 or 2001. The contraction going on is bigger than that. We will in fact look back to the 1929 period to see the kind of slowdown we’re seeing now.”
Now, it would be one thing if the headline and comments had come from any number of economists who typically take a dour outlook. But these comments came from the CEO of one of the largest brokerage firms in the world. His company’s job is to sell stocks, and comments like this don’t necessarily give investors nostalgia for the good old days.
Looking on the bright side, as we learned earlier in the year when the firm raised additional capital twice after repeatedly telling investors that it was well capitalized (see comments below), when it comes to comments from Merrill’s management, investors should take everything they say with a grain of salt.
In a “half glass full”, kinda psychotic way - I think Thain forgot to say “wink-wink-nudge-nudge know what I mean?!”
My question, he’s still the CEO? After caught lying to share holders for so many times? And people still hold his bank’s shares?
I suggest hacking to major DNS servers and replacing all the news site mapping to this:
happynews.com
That should relieve the consumer confidence crisis and have the economy shooting back up. It sure beats the usual “upbeat” stream of news. Don’t click that link to CNN unless you really want to get depressed.
Cheer Up. Wink-Wink, know what I mean?
Cheers!
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