au revoir Mr Lewis

L: 4% S:5% G: 9% N: -1% ~ $D -5% $G 357% $V 3% $P 0%

The Raven did have to chuckle, how the mighty have fallen, and rightly so! Ken Lewis made a very poor decision to buy MER last year, the price he paid, the lack of due diligence and the sneaking suspicion that he was trying to keep up with the Dimons make it all the worse, its not like CFC looks like a great trade now either. To try and cry off saying that he wanted to invoke the MAC (material adverse change) but got bullied by Bernanke and Paulson just doesn't wash. If it was damaging for the shareholders of BoA he should have used the clause, regardless of the the potential for Paulson to sack him, he has a fiduciary duty to shareholders above that of keeping his own job. He also had another potential path where he could have told shareholders of the Q4 loss at MER and insisted on completing the deal. He also could have renegociated, frankly the price he offered at the time was madness and represented an enormous and undeserved coup for Thain. He attempted to claim the glory for the income MER brought in for Q1, the Raven is pretty sure with this selective responsibilty and shameful self interest he has a long career in politics ahead of him.

The Raven is pretty sure Crash Gordon would find a place for him in his cabinet if he were British. Its funny that nobody questioned GB's cost of the Gurkhas? £350k per head? eh? did he get the treasury to make up the number, sorry ahem "forecast" that number? The Raven finds it absolutely shocking, shameful and baffling to understand GBs attitude and behaviour on this matter, it frankly shows how out of touch he is to think that there is any public support for his behaviour. It appears that there is only space for the pencil pushers, scroungers, lazy civil servants and MPs at the state teet, rather than honourable men that served the country.

As readers can see the Raven has dumped his portfolio as he's away for a long weekend, this rally also looks like its gone way too far. There was a brilliant point made by Macroman's blog, stating that we've moved from pricing a depression (since Nov) to going back to pricing a recession, the Raven thinks he's spot on, the charts agree. He's still long EUR, but thats technical, long term he'd be short EUR as he finds it impossible that rates in the EU will pick up any time soon.