As for Ken Lewis, if he had any integrity whatsoever he would resign immediately, however, no one at BAC expects that to happen. Ken’s arrogance makes Dick Fuld look like a humble man. His comment during the press conference “losses at Merrill Lynch were much higher than anyone expected” are laughable. Expected?? Every analyst on Wall Street had warned that this was a disastrous deal.

The only reason Ken has not been fired already is that there is no one in the bank to succeed him; he has forced out all of the most capable leaders (Hance, De Molina, Oken, Taylor, etc.). We can all only hope that the board is finally engaged and quickly trying to attract one (or all) of them to return and try to save BAC. As for Lewis, we can only hope that he is forced to pay back all of his excessive pay since becoming CEO, and ends up in jail. Others that need to be fired include: Steele Alphin (Lewis’s witless lapdog), Joe Price (the CFO who led the “due diligence on Countrywide and Merrill), Amy Brinkley (Chief Risk Officer….gimme a break)and Liam McGee (known for his mantra “just say yes to everyone” when he declared Home Equity as the top priority of the company just as the market had peaked).

Why buy QID when you can short QLD? 8% better return on shorting the Ultra long. Even better results shorting the other ultra longs.

My main point is just that the transaction volume on QQQQ puts is far greater than the volume on QID calls. So the bid/ask spreads on the QQQQ puts is going to be a lot lower.
I personally stay away from anything that is even moderately illiquid.

To me, the Lewises and Fulds are symptomiatic of something worse. My question is who are these clown-show lackeys who look at potential CEOs and say. “Ken Lewis! He’s a screaming buy! We’d better give him stock options and keep him farting through silk just to get him on the team!”

That seems like not such a dire prediction to me, and probably even includes a bit of inflationary oomph pushing up stock prices (or dollar destruction, take your pick of perspectives).

Frankly, given the policies being pursued by the folks in power (current and future), a mirroring of the Japanese experience seems inevitable. I plan to be on the short side for the rest of my life (58). There’s not even a hint of light as far down the tunnel as I can see.

My rationale for choosing calls on QID vs puts on QQQQ is that QID is already 2X leveraged — it “should” be moving twice as much as QQQQ, ergo the options will be applying leverage to an already leveraged platform.

Nothing any sane person should be doing, but these are not exactly sane times. It is certainly not a low-risk strategy. But then I don’t try to time the bottom or top, getting in a bit early and out a bit early as well.

My biggest nightmare is that I’ll wake up on some Monday to find that Bernanke/Paulson/whomever have declared war on sellers, and made short-side ETFs, puts, and basically any form of short-selling illegal. Yeah, I know that’s not a rational possibility, but then these are not exactly rational times — anything can happen.

I’ve got to come out of retirement because of this jack ass.