The Denial on Wall St. Must Stop

Good afternoon all!

Its going to be a little quiet here until Sunday night. I am at a family gathering over the weekend. After reading the excellent comments section on here from yesterday, I felt compelled to put up a quick post about the denial of Wall St.

The Lehman problem is still unresolved, and some on Wall S.t are warning that this problem needs to be resolved or they risk endangering themselves. There was an interesting piece in the New York Times today regarding this:

"As Lehman Brothers teetered Friday evening, Federal Reserve officials summoned the heads of major Wall Street firms to a meeting in Lower Manhattan and insisted they rescue the stricken investment bank and develop plans to stabilize the financial markets.

Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, called a 6 p.m. meeting so that bank officials could review their financial exposures to Lehman Brothers and work out contingency plans over the possibility that the government would need to orchestrate an orderly liquidation of the firm on Monday, according to people briefed on the meeting.

Flanked by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, he gathered the executives in person to impress on them the need to work together to resolve the current crisis.

Mr. Geithner told the participants that an industry solution was needed, no matter what, and that it was not about any individual bank, according to two people briefed on the meeting but who did not attend. They said he told them that if the industry failed to solve the problem their individual banks might be next."

My Take:

The arrogance and denial of the pigmen is unbelievable to me. It seems like they feel no sense of urgency right now. Wall St. needs a big fat wake up call. This is SERIOUS. Maybe the bailouts have empowered them to the point where they feel like they are all too big to fail.

It seems investors are also buying into this notion. The fact that the DOW didn't react to all of the explosions on Friday was unbelievable to me. I think they are in as much denial as the pigmen!

It looks to me like the government is sending a message to them regarding Lehman. I am starting to believe the Fed and the Treasury may help orchestrate a Lehman deal, but that's about it.

Dick Fuld's handling of the Lehman situation is the epitome of what I am talking about. He is trying to negotiate as if he is sitting on a goldmine. In reality, he is trying to sell a worthless insolvent company that has a good trading desk.

Its over Dickie, and you are the only guy that hasn't realized it. Wake up and let the pigmen break you apart so we can temporarily save the financial system.

Bottom Line:

The pigmen need to wake the hell up and start accepting responsibility for their colossal mistakes. They also need to start open up their books and become fully transparent so we can start the recovery process. The smoke and mirror games must stop right now.

We are about to lose our second major investment bank, and one of our largest insurance companies(AIG) lost more of than a third of its value on Friday. We also are on the brink of losing Washington Mutual which is our 6th largest bank.

Mighty Merrill now sits in the teens and is showing signs that its about to crack.

WAKE UP WALL STREET.

You are running out of time.