Baltbear on Finance markets are like marshmallows

According to biotime sec filings (btim.ob)

:”Current loans under the Credit Agreement bear interest at the rate of 12% per annum and will mature on April 15, 2009, at which time the outstanding principal balance of the loans plus accrued interest will be due and payable. Our ability to continue in operation depends on our obtaining a renewal of the Credit Agreement that will extend the maturity date of the loan and increase the amount of credit available to us.”

so, it is now april 16th. yesterday, the market reacted intelligently to the known facts (thew ones that deny the nonsense of obama= stem cells = west = btim biotime = $$$).

let’s compare this puppy to the largest commercial real estate fir in the usa:
:”"When we did not achieve the necessary amount of agreement on the bond solicitation, at that point we recognized that it was conceivable that we would not get the time outside of bankruptcy that we had hoped for to work on a restructuring,” General Growth President Thomas Nolan told Reuters.”

has biotime bothered to tell the 4500 or so shareholder anything about , generically, “how it’s going” ?
well. no.
that woiuld be silly.
they got the shareholders money. well, no..they didn’t.
the insiders got the shareholders $$$ by being able to short an open box; thereby regaining their risk capital and absorbing, steadily, all of the financioal advantage.
wo else benefits?
let’s go back to the mall bankruptcy:
:”"We will see a significant rise in delinquent and defaulted mortgages in commercial real estate above and beyond what we already experienced,” said Sam Chandan, president and chief economist at research firm Real Estate Economics”
this is something that might be less true in the swams near san francisco where biotime shareholders have spent a largish amount of money in a locked lease that contrbutes to real estate profits, not bodily health.

a fast look at an overly simple 5 day chart gives some clues:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=BTIM.OB&t=5d&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

imho the fact that btiome could not successfully publish to the sec and the public the reults of the negotiations which it stated must be completed by april 15
says that biotime is playing a losuing hand and willfully misrepresenting itself to the “investor” who will fall for the pitch.
the prudent speculator will require some transparency, and stay away until that transparency is present.

Posted under business

So, here is today’s amusing headline:

Investors scrambled to assess potential losses from an alleged $50 billion fraud by Bernard Madoff, a day after the arrest of the prominent Wall Street trader.

Prosecutors and regulators accused the 70-year-old former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market of masterminding a Ponzi scheme of epic proportions through a hedge fund he ran.
Why does “nasdaq” and “fraud” seem to fit so well together nto a sentence?
This one personally disappoints me, because it means the “salad oil swindle” and ira haupt, one of whose executors was my mentor in things about the nyse, amex, et al is no longer the all-time winner for securities fraud.
Some analysts noted that it was obvious for a ong time that something as badly wrong with the funds madoff ran, by dint of consistently high returns. They bragged abut how they were too prudet to be sucked in.
How many of them honoured their professional ethics well enough to put pressure onto anyone to run the numbers?
None. Why? Becuase there is no basic regulation of transparency for hedge funds.
This derives from their relationship to “selling long for later delivery”–short selling. The existence of shorts and hedge funds depends on the ethical stance that th herd needs culled, and those who are skilled at it must be the lions, and therefore cool.
If you are a lion, this is logical. In fact, i find it the highest ethical stance.
This theme is iterated by eli wallach n the maginificent seven: “if God did not want them shorn, why did he make them sheep?” REaders may wish to recall that wallach was not the hero of that tale. the heroes were the peasants who worked the land, brought in the crops and kept going. They got some help from 7 losers needing redemption.
In nature, lions are balanced by elephants, rhincoceros, crocodiles, etc when they get too eager to etend their range. In fact, they get gored, tossed, then stomped.
In the traditional pure capitalist–not oligarchical elitist game called laissez faire–but pure adam smith capitalism, government exists as the elephant with the tusks and the feet to make sure the lion behaves.
This is something the sec, the fed res, conngress, etc might wish to recall, when not busy pretending to be lion kings themselves. The last 16 years has produced more than enough losers needing redemption.
Prompt reporting of short interest, sec filings for hedge funds handling more than $1 mil, and elimination of inter-locking directorships are things a transparent liquid liquid market needs, in the face of a liquidity crisis.

Posted under business