There's no doubt in my mind that LEH needed the money when they said they didn't, was buying back shares with money that was given to them by the fed in violation of the terms of the trade of the securities, was hoping not to found out that they were buying back the shares, was doing so only to prop up the price of the common, in so doing was hoping to be able to get say $38 a share instead of $31 when new common was issued.

Now they were found out and will probably have to issue new stock and sell the shares they purchased at a substantially lower price.

How many of those people with two firing nuerons actually believe they have come clean with the 2.8 billion in losses? I'd guess 0. Why don't we all just for fun start a pool to guess how many billion they lose next month. I'm in for another 2.8 billion. They seem to have decided thats a nice believable number. Anyone buying this thing at this price is absolutely out of their minds. Maybe you can trade a bounce or something but to invest in something with no transparency, a history of lying to you, leveraged up into a declining market is absolutely assanine.

GEN, please explain a bear put vertical. Thanks.

Bear Put Vertical - Long a PUT at $X, Short a PUT at $X-something.

Makes maximum profit at anything at or under ($X-something) at expiration.

Its a technique used to partially nullify the effect of insane IVs.

Public school ****tards attempted to label me as LD.

School administrators do not know **** about kids.

Parents put me in private school and voila - I graduated from Cornell with a degree in electrical engineering, and finished a M.Eng. at OSU. Yep, I'm so dumb.

The current state of our schools is merely one more example of Bush's complete uselessness -- but nobody seeks to put the blame where it belongs.

More partisan bull****; its all Bush's fault.

Maybe you weren't so smart after all?

I mean, last time I checked you were likely in that school during Clinton's administration, no?

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Parents put me in private school and voila - I graduated from Cornell with a degree in electrical engineering, and finished a M.Eng. at OSU. Yep, I'm so dumb.

The current state of our schools is merely one more example of Bush's complete uselessness -- but nobody seeks to put the blame where it belongs.

NIT - sounds like you were in public school under the Clinton era, not Bush.

amen on drugging kids. I'm sure I'd have been pumped full of whatever it is they do to bright, curious, inquisitive kids today who are bored to **** and unchallenged and told to conform. parents esp. are far too quick to medicate their kids. ADD/ADHD diagnosis is a ****ing joke in most cases but these "diseases" didn't exist til what, 20 years ago? I swear half the new "diseases" are invented by drug companies with a new potion to flog.

On the ADHD and ADD subject. You've got part of it right but the truth is that the medications are almost always requested by the parents while the child is still young in the 5-10 range. I've worked with many nurses and clinicians and it is very common for mothers to come in asking for the drugs. When the nurses/Drs do their duty and question the parents on the homelife and diet of the child the parents just demand the drugs so they can manage their children. Nevermind the fact that the kids are so cracked out on sugar on a daily basis that like with the Type II diabetes argument it would almost certainly be fixed by proper diet and parental discipline. (And no, a proper diet is not hot pockets, sugar filled cereal, soda, candy and typical fare off of kids menus at restaurants.)

I've got a nephew who will only eat pizza, french fries and candy and the parents just say it's not the diet. As a godfather I had to smack them up a bit on that one and the kid is doing better although I don't know if ADHD drugs are involved.

Don't forget how much the schools love to give out candy to students all of the time which makes the problem worse. Candy and pop are great but with the ease of access by kids and being able to buy it with change easily found in the couch it is pretty difficult to keep them off of the kid crack.

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On the ADHD and ADD subject. You've got part of it right but the truth is that the medications are almost always requested by the parents while the child is still young in the 5-10 range.

A few lawsuits aimed at Parents by Junior when he turns 18 ought to stop that ****. Give a few 18 year olds their parent's house and I bet there is an immediate shift in behavior.

I agree. Parents want to abdicate their parenting responsibilities to anyone and anything they can which is also why schools are most kids only means of education. Learning how to deal with life, adversity and learning is the responsibility of the parents and if they were doing their jobs I'm sure we would have a lot fewer problems in the world.

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As I noted Friday in The Ticker we have become a generation of idiots and we will run with the herd in any direction someone points and hollers, without a moment of critical thought being applied first.

you make that sound like it's a new phenomenon...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordina....

People have been stupid and following the hype and crowds for a very long time... heh.

On the topic of ADD and ADHD, don't forget to mention the role of diet in this. Kids are fed an enormous amount of sugar and processed carbohydrates, none of which I would exactly call "brain food". How many kids are fed a dose of Sugar Smacks or Sugar Frosted Flakes and then sent off to school where they hit the vending machines for candy and sodas. try performing in school when you're blood sugar levels are being raped like this.

Talk about being set up to fail...

I don't know Lunatic. I ate tons and tons of soda and candy when I was a kid. More than I allow my kids to eat by a significant amount. The only time I was ever overweight was when I hurt my back 5 years ago and could barely get out of bed for 6 months. I know i spent ten times more time actively playing outside, running and riding bikes then most kids now. I really think the food police are full of crap. You could eat carrots and tofu but if you sit and play xbox all day you will not be healthy. Many parents, including my wife, are afraid to let their kids out of their site now, (probably justified). That inhibits their playing and physical activity.

I switched from private school to public going into the 7th grade. Parents, friends, other adults all told me that it would be like repeating 6th grade again because public schools are so much behind private schools.

Well they were wrong... Found out the hard way after I thought I could just slide through and I bombed the first quarter. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work and salvaged 7th grade, but not before being labeled leaning disabled, which stuck with me for the rest of jr high and high school.

I've been tested a few times and I have about a 140 IQ (give or take a couple points depending on when I was tested), but even so I was labeled LD and kept out of the tougher classes and was bored out of my skull. I kept asking to go into the higher classes and they kept telling me they couldn't because it wasn't recommended. I was suspended once because I told my counselor "**** the recommendations I need a challenge." On the annual letter telling my parents that I was reluctantly placed in the regular classes, and that they needed to consider special ed where I'd be better suited, there was a note about how I was developing an anti-social behavior problem.

My biggest grade problem was homework. It was 25-50% of the grade depending on the class and I never saw the point. I was bored to tears in class and it was criminal torture to take that boredom home. My test average was always in the high 90's and I have been accused of cheating more times then I can remember for getting 100's when the rest of the class could only get 80's. Who the **** did I cheat off of if my nearest classmate was 20 points lower? By my grades were always C's and D's because I refused to do homework.

Finally I gave up and just did what ever they asked and made honor roll for two marking periods. Then I had an argument with my assistant principal and counselor after they basically said I would be nothing more then a ditch digger. They where both *******s and I let them know it in no uncertain terms and then I walked out. The timing was perfect because I was able to take my GED the next day and also enroll in the spring semester at the local community college. I was through my first semester of college before the rest of my class graduated and also made the deans list (3.5gpa or better).

When I got my final report card all my grades were changed to N/A. The rule states that if you drop out after a marking period you still get the grades for that marking period. It should have shown 2 marking periods of honor roll grades (all A's, one B first marking period). I fought it for a while and found out that I was the only person that's ever happened to. I was assured it would be corrected, but something always came up...

I'm sure that if they could have they would have pumped me full of drugs and tossed me into the romper room classes where you get a C for just showing up. It's been 15 years and it still*****es me off...

I want to know where the drugs are for the teachers that are "teaching disabled"?

Outstanding rant, esp. re ADHD and the drugs. If you haven't yet, you should read Peter Breggin on the subject.

Re ADHD - my kid, a very bright bulb but very disorganized, was "diagnosed" both highly intelligent and ADHD in the kindergarten year. I had unrelenting pressure from then on - from private, parochial AND public schools where I tried to find a good spot for this kid - to drug and dumb down her education, because no ADHD kid could need gifted education dontchaknow. Private and public schools were the worst. Finally in 6th grade I pulled her out and homeschooled.

What I ended up with was an bright, happy, interesting intellectually curious kid instead of a zombefied peer-driven kid, who incidentally finished regular school subjects by the end of what would have been her sophomore year and spent the next few years following her interests. The story is still being written but one thing is true, it will not be that of a brain-dead, conformist who doesn't know how to think critically.

Cobra - spot on



The best revenge is your continued success.

Unfortunately, other kids in those 15 years were screwed as badly as you were. Your story just goes to show how irrelevant the K-12 education system in its current form really is.

All this drugging of kids totally reminds me of the short story "Harrison Bergeron" written by Kurt Vonnegut.

This should be required reading for anyone that believes that everyone is equal.

The reason for the ADHD 'diagnosis' is many fold:

* Parents who are too 'busy' to pay attention to their kids.
* Teachers who fail to understand childhood.
* Over stimulation with endless TV and video games. (See first comment)
* Steady diet of processed sugars and artificial ingredients.
* Strict adherence to 'grade based' education. (I don't mean A,B,C but Grade 1,2,3... and the fact that kids can't move ahead in any one subject matter faster than their peers because they're stuck in a certain curriculum that has been dumbed down to drool-mode.)

The neighbor boy is a very nice kid and pretty bright. But Mom and Dad (who are in the medical field, BTW) allow him to eat crap and play video games endlessly. Mom even told me that one weekend he played the games 18 hours straight. WTF? Doesn't she know how to unplug the damn thing? He's on a different medication depending on the time of day. (One pill to get him going, one pill through the afternoon and another pill in the evening - to 'bring him down'. Now I'd think that if you're using another medication in the evening to ramp the kid down that you *might* be using too high of a dosage to begin with.)

The kid is bored to **** and allowed to run amok. No wonder he's on drugs at the age of 11. Should be a real sight when he's 15.

The other neighbor kid is on ADHD medications too. However, she has an extra-bonus side effect - the medications swing her so much that her moods change in an instant and she's literally bi-polar. She's 11 as well. But the good new is that they have a pill to treat that bi-polar disorder...

Anyone ever read "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut? It's an awesome parody of where a strive for equallity at the expense of the exceptional can lead.

My wife teaches in adult literacy at a local college (GED). Most of her adult students are people who have held a job 15-20yrs (usually in the textile industry) who after that industry moved overseas were left in need of a GED to even get an interview at a new job. The younger ones are mostly what you would expect; teenage mothers, kids from the local "youth homes", and those expelled from school due to discipline problems. However, they get a few kids a year who were just so bored with school they ended up in trouble and fell foul of "zero tolerance policies". She had a couple of them (one a sophomore and other would have been a junior) last year who ended up expelled for marijuana posession (offense happened outside of school!), who walked in ready to take and pass the GED. Since kids have to be in school now to keep their licenses, after pre-testing them and seeing they were ready to test, she aked them to help tudor others while they got the needed amount of hours in class to keep their licenses. Both turned out to be pretty decent kids that one could argue were probably so bored with the intellectual challenge of public school, that it led them into stupid, but relatively normal(at least it was when I was in school) teenage experimentation. One started in community college this spring, and the other is serving our country now.

My kid was dignosed with ADHD and px'ed straterra about 4 yrs ago. I wish I would have gotten a 2nd opinion. :-(. He's been off of that stuff for 3 1/2 yrs but it still stings as a parent.

Cobra,

That's funny as hell, same thing happend to me, for the first two years of high school after my parents divorced I took to doing absolutely nothing in school was bored as hell, never did homework, didn't even try on tests.

Then one day for whatever reason I said **** that and took one Social Studies test seriously.

I got the only 100% in the class and had this grade nazi girl get up in class and flat out accused me of cheating, told the teacher that they demanded I take the test again and the farking teacher bought it.

I had to sit outside the damn class and take another different one over again over the same material, got another 100% but never got an apology from anyone, imagine that.

I later told my guideance counselor that I thought I might like to be a lawyer and he just flat out told me I was too dumb, the next year he said precisely nothing about my getting the highest ACT score in the school.

My verbal scores were pegged on my test but twice during my school years I was placed in the slow reading class, it was the dumbest most idiotic thing I've ever seen.

My daughter is now hitting that same wall, her homework is outrageous, 3 hours per night and some such bull****.

What the **** are these people trying to do?

She got a C for the first time ever in geography of all things, it's taking a toll on her just playing their game and I'm going to go home tonight and have a better talk with her about it.

I blew up at her over the C because I know she's way smarter than that, this ticker made me realize what is going on, she's a kid and kids aren't mature enough to see the game for what it is, I don't want her to make the same mistakes I did but at some point a smart kid will just hit a wall of numbness over the whole fiasco.

Wait til your kids have to pay the "uniform" tax.

****ing kackie pants with "special" iron on decal that says "you paid your tax all is well".

****ING HYPOCRITS.

Our schools sent out automated bleatings about our kids meal ticket accounts the drumbeat was daily.

They got so bad if you didn't pay by x day your kid gets only a PBJ for the rest of the school year, we paid as we always do, our kids were told the last day they were out of milk and juice and any drinks, offered to let them go one by one to the drinking fountain.

I want to punch someone sometimes.

My favorite was one day in English class I was doing Math homework (I did do some homework because for some classes you'd fail no matter what if you didn't) and the class was reading a story aloud. They skipped me because the teacher was just happy the "slow kid" wasn't causing trouble.

At the end of the story the teacher started asking questions and nobody, and I mean NOBODY, had a clue. It was like she was speaking Greek.

So I raised my hand. Very annoyed she asked "What do you want?" and I started answering her questions about the book. It completely blew her mind that I could sit in the back, do Math homework and pay attention to what was going on in class.

English class for the rest of the year was so much better because she "got it". She was one of the few who did.

I went to vo-tech for electronics and was learning pre-calculus when I was only allowed to take pre-algebra in regular school. But I was one of the vo-tech dummies as my history teacher used to say. Two years later I finally got close to catching up with math in regular school and my teacher almost threw me out of class permanently after I took 2 minutes to do the binary math test (most kids didn't finish) AND I corrected his answer key that he'd been using for the last 5 years...

I'm also the reason that the school's rule book tripled in size... Hey if it doesn't specifically say you can't, then you must be able to... And everybody thought I was a goody two-shoes for reading it cover to cover... Ahh the memories of being a thorn...

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Our schools sent out automated bleatings about our kids meal ticket accounts

In private school I used to wash dishes for a free meal up until they told me it was for needy kids only... Problem was, nobody wanted to get off their ass whether they needed the money or not. I liked having an extra $20 a week to spend.... (A movie ticket, popcorn and soda was $5 just to give a reference)