Sunday, July 17, 2011

Atlantic Magazine national correspondent compares House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to Eddy Haskell; Cantor invested to profit on gov't default

eddieh.jpgAnd if a leading party in a very important set of negotiations has shown that he'll walk right out of the "bargaining" room, release a distorted version of what has just been discussed, and use it to whip us his side to more demands, that makes a difference too. For the worse. The prospects for an agreement now are worse because of Rep. Cantor's presence in them. That's not because he's a conservative -- so, obviously, are Boehner and McConnell. It's because he's acting like a weasel." — James Fallows
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Daily Kos: Cantor to profit from government default
In 2009... when Eric Cantor took the trouble to pick individual investments,  he chose the following:
$1-15,000: ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TBT)
$1-15,000: iShares Barclays TIPS Bond Fund (TIPS)...
      So yeah, that acronym TIPS ring a bell? It should if you read Paul Krugman..
      TIPS, as I read it is basically the interest difference between nominal U.S. Bonds and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities.
     Eric Cantor's bet on the iShares Barclay's TIPS Bond Fund is ANOTHER bet that U.S. Treasury Bonds will lose value (relative to inflation)...
     There are huge implications here:
     1. When Eric Cantor had a spare $2,000 to $30,000 laying around, he didn't just go and buy some extra shares of Exxon or FOX stock or gold... He literally bet against America.
     2. Eric Cantor is in the Republican leadership, and has been making open threats that he may push the United States toward defaulting on their bond obligations. If he does this, he has set himself up to profit from it. This is a really big conflict of interest.

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