I sent an email to TOS right after I read that, it said:

Dear TOS

Regarding my account ___XXX34

Would you kindly unwind all of the ****ty puts I have possession of for Dec5 on all of my positions, I have had a change of heart and no longer want these losers on my account. Please re compensate my account for the losses. you can leave the profitable ones where they are. Also, unwind BOTH short losses I took for the month of November, you'll see them, theyre the LARGE ones, those were made with bad information, so I expect you to do the "right thing" on those trades also.

I must wait until Dec. 20 BEFORE I do my christmas shopping to help my RTH puts as best I can, so there's no rush on putting that money back into my account, so long as it is there by Dec 20th.

Best,

BEAR
Loyal Customer

PS. We will talk about further previous back dated option losses for 07 after the holidays, Im quite busy right now.





I'll post their reply on the forum.

I'm in tears again.... you kill me..

Boz,
Agreed, they need to take the 90% before someone does the real math and realizes 90% is too big of a gift to give.

The effect/loss of this is 2 fold and I notice they are only talking about the one of them, the principal part of the loss. What about the yield loss, you know they already had that added into a budget somewhere.

The part where they asked the amounts of deposits planned, LMAO. I imagine they wouldn't even pledge one week of milk money from a third grade class

Come on you guys, this isn't some speculators or flippers taking some stupid risk.

This is effectively a money market fund used for essential activities massively "breaking the buck". Local governments aren't in it to speculate, and they don't have the knowledge or expertise to look at funky stuff. Pooling funds like this for cash management has been done probably for many decades.

Let's be clear who the villains are: securitizers passing on the worst toxic waste to a fund which should be invested in AAA only.

In days past that would be considered unpatriotic to screw your own governments.

What do you imagine would happen in China if some bank did that to one of their governments? Off with his head!

Suppose your brokerage invested your cash and margin funds into some horrible crap instead of "cash" as you thought was "cash", and then they welched?

Quote:

As you probably know Lehman was the primary banker that sold most if not all of the securities to the SBA. Guess who Lehman picked up as their new employee last August?

You guys are going to love this one!

Lehman hires Jeb Bush as private equity advisor
NEW YORK, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Lehman Brothers has hired Jeb Bush, brother of the President of the United States, as an advisor to its private equity business, a source familiar with the situation said.

Lehman hired another relative of U.S. President George W. Bush last year--George Walker, a second cousin, who heads up the bank's asset management business.

Jeb Bush is the former governor of Florida.

Lehman Brothers declined to comment.

There it is. I read a few days ago that the Pool invested in these securities in August - when they should have known better.

Drchaos,
Come on. This was an investment that went bad. They need to take the loss like everyone else in similiar circumstances and hopefully learn from the experience. ****ty investment advice/decisions does not make them immune from the consequences. You think they would have the same tune if they would have appreciated a 20% yield? Would they be on a conference call just asking for the orginal principal then?

Quote:

In days past that would be considered unpatriotic to screw your own governments.

What do you imagine would happen in China if some bank did that to one of their governments? Off with his head!

It obviously won't be that dramatic here, but I can guarantee that some attorney generals are going to sue the investment banks and credit agencies that created these "AAA" products.

I wonder if I went back to school and got my law degree if it would be too late to get in on these coming HUGE lawsuits ?...I mean ****, I got the time !...Say if I bust my ass and got my JD and Bar passed in 3-4 years, would the lawsuits STILL be profitable for an up an coming new attorney ?

These IB execs better be planning on moving to Slovenia...they will be spending ALL of their money and time till they die defending their stupid asses....

Just remember guys-- this is only one state out of 50. Which state fund do you think is next to visit the confessional. I would bet large bucks and give odds its going to be Caleeefornia as the Governator says. They have an enormous pension fund and have been known to play fast and loose in the past. MBS's?? I'll bet they are up to their eyeballs in them and if so they're about to get butt-****ed in the King Kong of all butt-****s.

I'm going to guess Montana.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/busine....

Maybe Maine, too.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bankingFi....

NOPE.....the winner is COATTAILS....

"Gal-lee-forn-ya" is the undisputed heavy weight champ of **** investment management discipline...The Governator is about to look like an ass

Coattails is the winner. Just think how much CALPERS invested into a homegrown company in Calabasas.

I said Montana, because it's ALREDAY being run on!
Haha, from that article I posted further up:

The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the nation's largest public pension fund, has invested $140 million in such unrated CDO portions, according to data Calpers provided in response to a public records request. Citigroup Inc., the largest U.S. bank, sold the tranches to Calpers.

Wow! And that's JUST the equity tranches. That's $140MM dead from the start. Just imagine how much more is floating around in "investment grade" ****. Seriously, read that article... it's just sad and shocking. And foretelling.

What I want to know is WHY and HOW is this beihg kept out of the national media? They should be interrupting 'regularly scheduled programming' for this ****.

This is another form of 'bank runs'....only modern style.

Yeah...Coattails wins....but you gotta get it right....it's not butt****ed....

IT'S SKULL****ED BY A STALLION!

yeah well steph its florida....everyone just overlooks it....hanging chads, terry schivo etc etc

Nawww....they ignored Michigan before they started ignoring Florida.

Eventually, everyone will just ignore the entire country.

yep i'm reading a book on the depression the signs were all there but all the regular folk didn't want to hear it or accept it

"Make the taxpayers whole". Now how the **** is that supposed to happen? The losses already happened.

In Mo's post, interesting points have been brought out about Jeb Bush and cousin, George Walker:

Aug. 30: Lehman Brothers has hired Jeb Bush, brother of the President of the United States, as an advisor to its private equity business.

Last year: George Walker, cousin to Bushes, hired to head Lehman's asset management business

August 2007: Florida's SBA investment pool invests in Lehman's securities

Appears suspect that these events occur on the same timetable. I wonder just how far an investigation can go and who's really at the center of this.

so what if they do investigate, and prove that they did it. who's gonna do anything about it. its just business as usual.

oh,and its ok, they got paid already.

I would think that the governments would be in big CYA mode. Some state is bound to sue the IBs and the rest will follow. Public opinion will be behind the lawsuits. I wonder how much garbage is sitting in the pension funds? If the lawsuit goes south it alone may bankrupt the IBs without even worrying about level 3.

I think this is the first time in this crisis we are likely to have government help on the short side

Calpers has 254.6 billion under management.

Total fixed income is $67 billion.

I'd like to point out a few things about Florida - we lived
in Sarasota for fifteen years.

1. Florida does NOT have a state income tax.

2. If you declare Chapter 13 bankruptcy in Florida, your
primary residence CANNOT be foreclosed on. This is
unique to Florida.

1 and 2 are in the State Constitution. This will NEVER
get changed by a popular vote.

3. A good percentage of the homes have out-of-state owners,
most of whom do not vote. These are your "snowbirds" who live there
from October to May. But they do pay property taxes. These people
are forever fighting with the locals over taxes.

4. The rest of the folks who live there year around are only too
happy to pass a property tax increase, because the brunt will be
borne by the more expensive homes owned by the out-of-staters.
The locals get a 25K homestead exemption (statewide).

5. If the rest of the school boards in Florida are like the Sarasota
County School Board, they are comprised of extremely parochial,
head-in-the-sand, stupid people.

Eg, my brother-in-law has never been north of Fruitville Road in his
52 years. He could care less. Everyone in an official capacity handles
complaints in the following manner: "You don't like it? There's I-75."

6. The people who work for Sarasota County, Sarasota School District,
Sarasota Memorial Hospital, and the police/fire departments are VERY
well paid. This is your middle class in Sarasota County.

The rest of the guys were like me, running around chasing twenty dollar
bills from the retireds, whose spouses hauled in the big bucks working
for one of the above.

So Sarasota County is made up of your wealthy retireds living in the deed-
restricted, walled developments, county workers, and self-employeds. Naples,
Ft Myers, Orlando, Tallahassee, Jax, Daytona, same thing. I don't know the
Miami Ft Lauderdale area.

The above observation by one of the posters about Lennar across I-75 -
this is Lakewood Ranch he's talking about, a 250-500K cookie cutter
home development. This is the old SarasotaManateeRanch, they started
developing it around '93,94. Lakewood right now - no action.

A prudent investor would be careful about extrapolating nationwide numbers
based on Florida financial developments.

Mike

Quote:

4. The rest of the folks who live there year around are only too
happy to pass a property tax increase, because the brunt will be
borne by the more expensive homes owned by the out-of-staters.
The locals get a 25K homestead exemption (statewide).

**** YOU!!!! I live here year around and just paid $20K in ****in property taxes. I guess you don't know WTF you are talking about when you say "too happy to pass a property tax increase". I've been bitchin to everybody I know about this issue and every person I know that lives in FL has been too.

WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am a fan of ironic stuff.

Ironic that those in charge of teaching our children go down first, hard and of course never saw it comming, those people in charge of fighting back ignorance for us all, will now be divested of that ignorance at a huge price, says a lot for our education system.

In a bonus set of irony, Florida again kicks off the 2nd great depression, what the **** is wrong with you people down there :)