WordPress 2.5 ships

And it has an enormous number of new features, looks excellent.

Ten days that changed capitalism

WSJ says the feds no longer believe the market can self-correct.

The clear and present danger that the virus in the housing, mortgage and credit markets is infecting the overall economy is too great to ignore. The Great Depression was worsened because the initial government reaction was wrong-headed. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spent an academic career learning how to avoid repeating those mistakes.

At some point the government will provide price supports at many levels because it has no choice. This is the end of the extremist Randian capitalism that has dominated the markets for far too long. Few will mourn its passing.

How auction rate securities get frozen

An auction rate security is a long-term bond where the rate resets at short-term intervals via a dutch auction system. They’ve been used as convenient places to park money because they were supposed to be nearly as liquid as cash but yielding more than a money market.

The problem comes when there are no bids in the dutch auction. That’s what’s happening now. Plus, the brokers selling ARS have refused to buy them back. This means investors can not get their money out.

Lawsuits have been filed by angry investors. But you probably already figured that out.

Auction rate securities still frozen

Most brokerages are refusing to buy them back which means investors can’t get any money out of what was sold to them as a cash equivalent.

Who buys auction-rate securities? It’s not just “the rich.” I’ve heard from self-employed people who thought it was a good, temporary place for their life savings, at least until they decided what else to invest in. I’ve heard from people who sold businesses and put the money there, and from people who inherited some money and did the same.

Oprah gets seriously techie

Don’t look now but Oprah is at the top of the iTunes podcasting chart. Her discussion series with writer Eckhart Tolle is bringing not just podcasting to her huge audience, she’s doing a ten week “class” by live video with a Silverlight player and Skype discussions. It’s events like this that change the technology landscape.

This could be at least as big as when iTunes started hosting podcasts. It blew the doors off podcasting and millions of new people started downloading them. Oprah using Skype and podcasting will similarly attract many new people. Good!

Looks like the party is over for gold

And the financials and homebuilders are all up big. Go figure!

Have we hit a bottom for the financials?

It’s looking like yesterday’s massive rally could signal at least an intermediate term bottom for the market and especially the financials. Is there more pain ahead? Sure, including millions of probable foreclosures.

But maybe, just maybe, we are past the worst of it, at least from the standpoint of the stock market.

Cramer correction

He said “don’t move your money from Bear.” Meaning, if you have an account there, the money will be safe regardless of what happens to Bear. He was right. He was misinterpreted as saying don’t sell the stock.

Sometimes it’s hard to understand what he means, or if he’s talking a long term hold or short term trade. As always, do your own research and make your own decisions.

Well, he was right about Bear getting taken over

Jim Cramer, March 11. “No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble. If anything, they’re more likely to be taken over. Don’t move your money from Bear.”

The broad markets seem to be holding up surprisingly well today. No sickening plunges yet.

JPMorgan reported close to buying Bear

Around $20 a share (BSC closed Friday at 30, down 27)

The 50 most powerful blogs

From the Guardian.

Many familiar names here, both tech and political, but many new to me and worth exploring.

Closer iPod to Thee

CaraScissoria.com has sixteen new greeting cards. This is one of them.

Firefox memory leaks

Firefox is great - except for the memory lockups, freezes, and leaks. With several tabs open, Firefox gets sluggish after a few hours, sometimes to the point of being unusable. Shutting it down and restarting virtually always fixes it. Let’s hope the new version addresses these sometimes incapacitating problems. Because they sure are annoying. And a world class browser shouldn’t have such problems in the first place.

No follow through on the monster rally yesterday

So, I’m thinking that looks bearish. The Fed threw everything they had at the credit problems, and the market did indeed soar upwards. But things are flat today. That was a quick party.

I sold all my puts yesterday afternoon as the rally became apparent, and did fine. For the first time in quite a while, I have no open trades because the market doesn’t appear to have a trend now, and a trend is what I need to trade options.

Bernanke as the Great Pretender

Mish tells you why.