Bear Mountain Bull

Bill King via The Big Picture:

The WSJ: Wall Street Pay Approaches 2007’s Records Will Ben, Hank, Little Timmy and Congressional leaders explain to the American people how it is possible for Wall Street to have near record remuneration AFTER the US taxpayers were put on the hook for about $12 trillion of guarantees to The Street? And will they explain to Americans that while Street insiders ‘earn’ record pay they must suffer a severe recession or depression, possibly record future inflation, collapsing home values, job losses and an income contraction?

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More from Zero Hedge on Government Sachs: Is Goldman Legally Frontrunning Its Clients?
Everyone who is anyone on Wall Street has at some point used the Goldman 360 portal whether for research, news, keeping a track of prime brokerage portfolio or, disturbingly, for trading, via the REDI Plus 9.0 platform (now loaded with enhanced algo trading features to make life for you, dear soon to be frontran Goldman client, so much easier). A second widely accepted Wall Street concept is that a disclaimer is the last thing that anyone reads, if ever. Yet after taking a close look at the Goldman disclaimer for the 360 portal, which is an umbrella waiver or all downstream websites, including REDI, one discovers the following gem:

Monitoring by GS: Your use of the products and services on this Web site may be monitored by GS, and that the resultant information may be used by GS for its internal business purposes or in accordance with the rules of any applicable regulatory or self-regulatory organization.

One second: by using Goldman 360 a client voluntarily allows Goldman to provide keystroke by keystroke data of everything the client does, even if that includes launching trades via REDI, to Goldman for the internal business purposes. The third thing everyone on Wall Street agrees on is that “internal business purposes” usually (and in Goldman’s case, almost exclusively) means proprietary trading.

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Bloomberg News: JP Morgan Raises Credit Card Monthly Minimum Payments [Thanks for the bailout; here’s your lovely parting gift, Mr. & Ms. Taxpayer.]  Citibank has already hiked credit card rates. The cost of credit is increasing for consumers. Is this how recoveries start? Is this a sign that the worst is over?