Am morgigen Samstag findet wie schon geschrieben, die dritte Kulinarische Filmnacht im Berlin-Charlottenburger Kino Die Kurbel und im Restaurant Thiels statt. Wer noch Lust und Zeit auf einen tollen Film und ein für diesen Anlass kreiertes Menü hat, der kann noch bis zum 21.11.09 um 15:00 Karten über dinner-auction ersteigern oder kaufen. Der Preis liegt bei 29,90 € pro Person. Gezeigt wird in der Kurbel der Film “Eat Drink Man Woman”. Hier ein paar Filmbilder:

Und Herr Thiel vom Restaurant Thiels – ehemals Küchenchef im sachs – hat ein Menü kreiert, das es nur zu diesem Film geben wird. Hier die Details:

Gefüllte Gurken
in Soja-Ingwerbrühe

Glasnudelsalat
mit Enten-Wan Tan

Spare Ribs nach Wuxi Art
mit pochiertem Pak Choi

Tapioka
mit Zitronengras und Mango

Viel Spaß und Bon Appetit!

ZeroHedge says it best : If There’s Anybody Out There Trading… Anybody… Please. You Are [Not] Alone

What does a stock market rally on no volume tell you? That people are getting scared shitless.

Wouldn’t surprise me if this rally is driven by MarketBot2000 (© Goldman Sachs), while Goldman and a few other select players are using their darkpools to unload stocks at top speed for “subsidized prices”, meaning two ticks under what MarketBot2000 just tagged it for. A stealthy pump-n-dump, maybe? Well, either that, or the tumbleweed on Wall Street is yet another sign of Mr. Bernankes unwillingness to explode the money supply any further.

Now, the bankers has gone not bankers, but bonkers…

They claim:  ‘We do god’s work’

The simple fact that he claims to be doing “gods work”, indicates he may need some tax-funded help of another kind.

Nip over to see for yourselves, as reported in the mail online…

They also defend the stance that their bonuses and other etravagances should be welcomed by the public.

At the same time, the very same public that has been fleeced for a nearly unlimited amount of money to bail out these bankers, and save them from their own highly planned “mistakes”, the very same “mistakes” that they have repeated over and over again, and are gearing up to do yet again, while still recovering, are asking for understanding, and demanding yet more money from the people they abuse.

The way this has been done, begs the question:

Why is it that the banks, as a single industry, can be given what is effectively unlimited state guarantees, subsidies and other forms of backing, when NO OTHER industry or type of business, which is also begging on their bare knees for a bit of support, will get any? How can this NOT BE anti-competitive and a blatant violation of the EU competition laws, especially since the banks actively damages the rest of the business world as well as the people living within it, by its continous actions?

It is as if the bankers live in a parallel universe.

I guess my blog posts has removed my chances of ever getting a job within the banking sector, but would i miss it?
No.  I would like to keep my honor, and to be able to look people in the eyes with a straight face.

The probability of making money in 64/65 trading days in a given quarter HAS to be ridiculously low.

Can someone calculate the probability that a firm like Goldman Sachs did that in the current climate without conspicous front-running activities?

My bet would be 0. But it could be less.

From Zero Hedge

There was, once, a very angry letter written by a group of fat, old white people. It was a scathing rebuke of government, and made clear these fat, old white people’s intention of no longer abiding the law as it had been laid down by said government. You might have heard of it. It was the Declaration of Independence.

This will probably be another letter written by a malcontent, overweight, (half) white man; and much in the fashion of the document mentioned above, I’m here to express my displeasure with the government. And then explain why this letter is absurdly patriotic.

I have, recently, expressed my discontent with the way things are in this country. My faith has faltered with regard to a system that can allow 47 million citizens to live without decent health-care (well, 307 million if you want health-care that actually works (I do)) . I find myself incapable of abiding a world where the  richest 1% to have more financial wealth than the 95% under them combined. I was raised to believe that, in the United States of America, with hard work you could become anything you wanted. You could own a house, have a few kids, a spouse, and probably a patriotic dog named Freedom.

That was complete bullshit.

(I’m not even going to talk about how I’m excluded from the “American Dream” by things like California’s Proposition 8 and Maine’s Proposition 1. No, this is not a blog about my ability to marry. I am, in fact, going to write this whole thing and not play the “Gay Card” once. Compared to what I’m talking about, my inability to marry is minimal. I’m not saying that makes it any better. In fact, I think that makes it worse.)

I have come to realize that hard work has nothing to do with the total amount of wealth you amass. In fact, those people who work hardest (factory workers, civil servants, manual laborers) tend to make the least money. And those who work the least hard make sums of money that would make most people’s heads spin. Very recently, those same very rich people people– whom I like to imagine sleeping on piles of money and laughing at poor people, even though this is likely a minority of very wealthy people– got $700 billion free of charge. From the factory workers, civil servants, and manual laborers who make the least. They got $700 billion from me, and I don’t even have $6.50 for a pack of cigarettes. I don’t own a car. I’m wondering how I can afford school. I know I can’t afford to pay the CEO of Goldman Sachs and all his golf buddies a couple billion a pop.

But I did. They got their billions and I got the shaft, and was told to pull myself up by the bootstraps by “trickle down” economists. I hate “trickle down” economics. Just the name pisses me off. It’s makes me think of people dying of dehydration in a downstairs apartment, while someone floods the penthouse and assumes it will “trickle down.” When was the last time a Chairman at AIG decided to give his part-time workers a hefty holiday bonus instead of buying a Porsche? Never. And I want a Porsche. Everyone wants a damn Porsche. I guess we’re all waiting for the Porsches to “trickle down.”

But, I doubt fine German automobiles will ever rain from the heavens. I have an equal amount of doubt that I’m ever getting that holiday bonus. Maybe I’m just not working hard enough. Maybe, regardless of the fact that I’m a full time student, I’m just not trying hard enough to make money. Maybe on the days I spend smoking pot and neglecting my blog at light-speed, I could be renting out a massive office with picture windows and nice chairs. I could sit in that office, talking with a whole bunch of stuffy white people about things I pretend to understand. “Let’s short this stock.” “Let’s invest in these options.” And then, after a few hours of that, I’m handed my check for a quick million and I go home to smoke more pot and glare at my computer screen. It could work, right?

No, that idea sounds absurd, even to my obviously THC riddled mind. I mean, working four hours a week is just not a feasible way to make a living wage. You’ve got to work full time, and be in school full time, and be a parent full time, all at once, or you’re a damn terrible person. You’re flipping burgers at Jack in the Box to pay for your seven year old’s braces? Well what the hell aren’t you doing in school?! You’re in school so you can get a better job? Well what the hell aren’t you doing at home with your kids?! You’re taking a day off so you can see your children? You damn lazy oaf, why aren’t you working?!!

Yeah, see, it doesn’t work. You can’t be three different people and be one good person. Working four hours a week, even in a rented office, won’t land you millions of dollars and a slightly soggy Porsche (from all the trickling it did, you see?). Unless you’re the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Then you can show up for 0 days of work, commit massive fraud, and then go bitching to Congress about how unfair it all is and how you need money fast, or the whole world will end!!

Okay, maybe I’m overstating the urgency they placed on the bailout (I’m not). It’s not like they said that, without the money, we would have another Great Depression. Oh wait, that’s exactly what they said. So, I have to give the corporate fat-cats $700 billion, with absolutely no strings attached, or people across the nation will lose their homes, jobs, and entire livelihoods?! Well, okay, maybe I should do it.

Whew, glad we just saved the whole fucking world with a few measly bucks. What’s $700 billion really? 202,898,550,724,637 Starbucks coffees? Still, not much compared to the whole planet. We’re heroes!

So, the foreclosure rate is still skyrocketing (look at it go!), unemployment is higher than it was before the bailout, and I’m starting to feel a little bit cheated by this whole thing. I mean, isn’t this exactly what we were told wasn’t going to happen? Didn’t they say that, with that money, we could patch up the leaky roof and keep all that terrible wealth from plaguing us “Dead Peasants” here on the bottom floor? Why are they remodeling the penthouse? I haven’t seen water in a year!

Oh, yeah, Dead Peasants. That’s us. Like, you know, working class people. Now, that’s not to say all working class people are Dead Peasants, just some of us. Well, specifically, those unfortunate souls who work for a corporation that has taken life insurance out on them, in case they die. Oh, and it’s not like your health insurance, where you pay for it but you also use it as a benefit. No, the corporation pays for it. Which I guess makes sense. Especially considering that they’re also the ones who collect the insurance money when you die. Yes, you read that right. Your boss can take out life insurance on you so that, in case of your “expiration”, they get a quick, tax free check. The best part? They didn’t even have to tell you they were doing it until recently. And if you don’t want them to? Tough shit, kid.

So, you’re broke, homeless, jobless, and uninsured. They’re rich, in a summer house in the Hamptons, more than gainfully employed, and probably want you dead. Is it just me, or is this sounding a lot like an “us-against-them” scenario? Are we at war or something? I must have missed something here. Where’s the revolution at? Shouldn’t we have some coalition or some armed uprising? Is there at least a 1-800 number? No? Well, fuck, I’m going to kill myself. Oh wait, if I do they’ll collect on my life insurance money! Fuck!

So, we’ve kind of screwed ourselves completely with our apathy. I mean, we’ve been following blindly, doing exactly what these rich assholes want us to do. So what’s broken? Is it all out fault? Well, no, we kind of trusted the government to protect us from shit like this, because they’re supposed to. But this time the government was the one that fucked us royally. So maybe we don’t trust the government so much. Or banks. Or, hell, stock brokers, economists, bankers, sub-prime lenders, CEOs, CIOs, Chairmen, and anyone who voted for Bush the second time. I think we can agree that those are all terrible, terrible people. But what can we do? Let’s fucking revolt.

Now, I know that sounds extreme. People will die. You might, I might, Freedom the patriotic dog might. But, won’t our children have a better future for it? Isn’t that really the “American Dream?” That we can live in a society where I could be as rich as Lloyd Blankfein, as long as I work hard enough? Shouldn’t we offer people the chance to live a decent life? Franklin Roosevelt proposed we add a “Second Bill of Rights” to the Constitution, one that guaranteed all citizens the right to, “. . .a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; the right of every family to a decent home; the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; the right to a good education.”

So let’s get some shit together. Let’s make those fat-cat bastards afraid of we, the people. I’m not employed, I have the time. Chances are you’re not employed either. No excuses. Maybe we even overthrow the government. Isn’t it the people’s right to rise up against a government that not only fails to protect them, but actually abuses them and uses them as cash cows? Isn’t that exactly what the Founding Fathers did?  Doesn’t that make this letter the most patriotic thing you’ve ever read? Yes. Yes it does.

IT’S been “a long year” for Dion Hershan, who oversees about $270 million in the market as the head of Australian Equities at Goldman Sachs JBWere Asset Management.

But now, more than six months on from the lows of early March when the stockmarket looked like falling below 3000 points, Hershan is breathing more easily, confident in the fundamentals behind the recent rally.

The S&P/ASX200, which Goldman’s pooled fund solely invests in through about 35 stocks, has rebounded to near pre-Lehman Brothers levels, thanks to what he describes as “an almost indiscriminate rally in risk”.

But Hershan, who joined Goldman’s Prop Trading team in 2006 from Citadel Investment Group in New York, believes the market was heavily oversold and that the normalisation of debt markets, dividend yields and the economy in general supports the 50 per cent surge in equities since March and that there are better times to come.

“The improvement in fundamentals does support an improvement in stock prices,” he says. “We think the earnings outlook and the ability to keep growing earnings, dividends and expand valuation multiples, all things being the same, is constructive for equity markets.

“From here it’s really important to be selective, own the right companies that will have the significant earnings upgrades, that have still got valuation support and still have a margin of safety so you can prosper as the economy progresses. It will take history to test whether or not the market ran too hard, too fast.”

Goldman’s Australian equities team of nine analysts operate about six funds and invest the pooled money together through bottom-up stock selection. Their aim is to outperform the various funds’ relative ASX benchmarks over three to five years, with the overall fund ahead of the S&P/ASX 200 Accumulation Index in the last five years but slightly behind in the last three months. Hershan says the fund fell behind the recent rally because sharemarket recoveries tended to favour more distressed and broken companies that Goldman avoided.

“We’re very mindful that people shouldn’t indiscriminately run in and buy risk and the market,” he says. “We think this is a classic stock-picker’s environment, where for lack of a better phrase the easy market might have been made. This is now about judgment, being discerning and being selective.”

Goldman favours sectors exposed to the “strong” Australian consumer and Asia’s demand for resources. Its fund is overweight relative to the S&P/ASX 200 benchmark in consumer discretionary stocks and resources and underweight in consumer staples and financials.

Hershan remains positive on banks and expects upgrades from the big four along with further growth from staples such as Woolworths, but says the fund likes the leverage it gets from being overweight elsewhere.

Leaving New Orleans,we headed north out of Louisiana, through Mississippi and then into Alabama to the site of the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum which is located about halfway between the city of Birmingham and the Talladega racetrack. As we drove north, the vegetation changed from tropical trees, live oaks, the occasional banana and palm tree, to being more of a mixed, almost temperate forest and the sugar cane gave way to cotton fields.  The swamps gave way to rolling hills and obviously we were no longer at sea level.

The Barber collection of vintage motorcycles is counted as being the largest in the world, and one of its several claims to fame is that 99% of the bikes can be made to run within an hour. That would likely not be true of the single example of the Suzuki GT750 they had as it was incomplete, and not really ‘correct’ which was a bit disappointing.  By way of compensation, the other bikes that were on display were beautiful and there were many I’d only ever read about: Munch Mammoth, Kawasaki 1300 6 cylinder, Benelli 750 Sei, Allen Millyard’s V8, 1300 cc Kawasaki etc. It’s almost too much to grasp as there is something like 1200 machines in the collection ! I could probably have stayed there for days, but we did have a firm appointment for dinner that evening with some friends so eventually, and regretfully we had to leave. There is an annual swap meet and auction held at the facility in October and I had hoped to attend this year, but that just didn’t work out from a scheduling perspective, however I am seriously thinking of going next year.  And you can be assured if I do, that I will be spending much more time in the museum – highly recommended.

The next day, we went to meet Jess Stockwell the new owner of a company called Rotary Recycle in  a little town called Tullahoma in Tennessee.  On the way there we drove by the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, but we didn’t stop – if you can believe it,  it is located in a ‘dry’ county (has been so since prohibition) – so there are no sales of alcoholic beverages, and no tasting on the tour ! You have to drive to the next county to buy a bottle of JD – weird. 

Rotary Recycle was started by Sam Costanzo who bought the remaining RE5 stock and spares from Suzuki when Suzuki decided to give up on the rotary (Wankel) engined RE5 motorcycle that they produced in 1975 and 1976. He also bought up whatever parts and pieces he could track down for the Hercules W-2000 rotary engined bike, built by Sachs/DKW in 1974/1975. With Sam’s retirement, the business was sold to Jess who has relocated the stock and parts to the new warehouse location he has put together in Tullahoma. The business has been open at the new location for about 6 weeks and the web site is still a it rough, but hopefully things will come together in the next short while.

Walking through the warehouse (visits are by appointment only), I was amazed at the amount of material on hand as well as the number of certified, used engines and parts bikes on hand for both the Suzuki RE5 and Hercules W-2000. It is an immense collection – most probably the largest gathering of rotary engined motorcycles on the globe, and I really hope Jess can make a go of it as it would be a huge loss to the RE5/W2000 owner community if he doesn’t. If you own one of these rotary engined motorcycles, give him a call.

Next stop – the National Quilt Museum !

Eine einfache und kurze Online-Meldung auf dem Baz-Portal hat heute meine Aufmerksamkeit erheischt. “Frisiertes Töffli erreicht 64 km/h“. Eigentlich nichts besonderes, doch es beweist eines. Die “Töfflibueben” sind noch nicht ausgestorben. Das Puch Maxi war und ist unter den Nostalgikern die Töfflilegende schlechthin. Bis 1995 wurde es gebaut, eheh das Unternehmen Steyr-Daimler-Puch schliessen musste.

Auch der Zweitakter von Sachs war ein beliebtes “Frisierobjekt”. Aber auch diese Firma stellt heute weit moderneres her und ist der allgemeinen “Roller-Mania” verfallen. (siehe SACHS BIKES).

Nun, im St. Galler Hinterland scheint die Töffliwelt aber noch in Ordnung zu sein, wie der Artikel zeigt: “Mini Schwyz, mi’s Töffli”.

We’re proud to have our Cole wheels under the men and women of the Richard Sachs Cyclocross Team, including some very special prototype builds of theT38 (cousin to the T50 that VeloNews liked so much back in August) and T24 wheelsets (in some of the photos, they’re so new they don’t even have their decals yet).

In addition to being very fun and great racing, ‘cross is an incredible proving ground for wheel strength and reliability: a single race will subject wheels and hubs to as much gumbo mud, stress, pounding, and miscellaneous abuse as a whole season of road racing or XCMTB.

The team’s doing quite well this fall, including ace rider Dan Timmerman taking first in the pro event at the UCI C2 in Vermont. And, yes, the wheels are performing flawlessly.

Follow the team’s adventures on Richard’s exhaustive blog, Richard Sachs ‘Cross Reference.  So, Pookums, Amy (with no “w”), Dan, Josh, and Will (and Richie), this one’s for you. And as Richard likes to say, Cross does kcufign rule atmo! (whatever that means).

Photos above (and many, many more besides) from the Richard Sachs Flickr feed.

This set courtesy of (and copyright by) MLK Images (thanks, Michael!). Highly recommended. Click here for hundreds more.

PS: We’re also pleased to announce that Cole wheels will be available on selected Richard Sachs models in 2010.

Is the Federal Reserve Still Shoveling Money to Goldman Sachs? It is a very strong possibility. There is a lot of mystery surrounding Goldman’s high velocity trading. When Goldman’s 3Q earnings were announced, I wrote:
So what is this “velocity” all about? Who knows? Max Kaiser seems to think it is front running, it may very well be. You really need someone at Goldman or the NYSE to explain the high flying black box that Goldman is using. That’s the only way to understand it, for sure. Goldman has captured the NYSE, so they are as likely not to tell you as Goldman itself.

Viniar:

Oh, I would say that it was much more markups than sales…I don’t have the exact number, but it would be much more markups than sales.

Got that? Of the reported $1 billion in principal revenues, it wasn’t cash sales but just markups. There is something very fishy going on here.

Goldman’s high velocity black box may be even more suspicious than even I first suspected. It may be the Fed propping up certain markets by buying assets from Goldman, and then, on top of this, Goldman marking up the remaining like assets. When Whitney asks who is going to step in to buy these assets once the Fed stops propping them up, that’s one helluva question. Just who would prop up a market to shovel money to Goldman?

This Whitney-Viniar exchange is reason enough to demand an audit of the Fed.

29-Year-Old to Head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This this a joke?     The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission named Adam Storch, a 29-year-old from Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s business intelligence unit, as the enforcement division’s first chief operating officer.
Storch, who joined the SEC Oct. 13, was named to the newly created post of managing executive in the enforcement unit, charged with making the division more efficient, the SEC said today in a statement. At New York-based Goldman Sachs, he had worked since 2004 in a unit at that reviewed contracts and transactions for signs of fraud.
It ordinarily requires a lot of self-discipline let the facts speak for themselves.  Emotions compel us to editorialize.  Yet what more can a person say?  A 29-year-old is going to become the chief operating officer of the SEC’s enforcement division.  That sentence would not even make sense if we omitted one material fact: Mr. Storch is from Goldman Sachs