Your Black Muslim Child-Molesting Store-Vandalizing Journalist-Murdering Bakery

Your Black Muslim Bakery, a long-time Bay Area institution, is now connected to the murder of a journalist who was investigating the bakery:

When police raided Your Black Muslim Bakery and three homes, and arrested seven people Friday on suspected involvement in three homicides, including Thursday's slaying of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, it was the latest chapter in a history of violence and arrests that have been linked to the longtime Oakland group. ...

Your Black Muslim Bakery - well-known in the Bay Area for its peach pies, carrot cakes and ginger-snap cookies - was founded in 1968 by Yusuf Bey, who was arrested in 2002 and charged with forcing an underage girl to have sex in the mid-1970s. At the time of his death from cancer in 2003, Bey was facing trial in that case and allegations from other women who said Bey had abused them for years when they were girls.

Since Bey's death, his successors at the bakery have been charged with a series of crimes. In 2005, a group of men from Your Black Muslim Bakery, including Yusuf Bey IV, a son of the founder, was arrested on suspicion of vandalizing two Oakland liquor stores and threatening the owners for selling alcohol to African Americans. In 2006, the younger Bey, who by then had become a leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, was arrested and accused of running over a bouncer with his car in San Francisco.

I never went in there. The place always seemed to have an angry vibe. But I was more worried about the old loogie-in-the-pastrie trick than murder.

Where's CalPERS?

In June I noted that CalPERS was stupidly buying the riskiest tranches of asset-backed investments, so-called "toxic waste" CDOs. The idiots at CalPERS were swindled by banks like Bear Stearns and Citigroup, which wanted to get the toxic waste off their own books as quickly as possible.

With even the highest tranches now taking huge losses, the CalPERS toxic waste is probably nearly, if not totally, worthless.

So where is CalPERS spokesman Clark McKinley? No apologies to the employees whose retirement funds were squandered? No plans to sue the pants off of the banks? Step up, McKinley.

Ha!

On the day when Wells Fargo raised mortgage rates to 8%, as mortgage lenders are collapsing left and right, and ahead of millions of mortgage rate resets, OMB Director Rob Portman just said that housing "does appear to have bottomed out now."

Heckuva job, Portie!

Blood in the streets

You've gotta watch this video of Cramer freaking out. He says if the Fed doesn't cut, it's the end of the world. He starts screaming about 2 minutes in.

Iran is awesome

The glorious nation of Iran recently unveiled the world's biggest carpet, and, surprisingly enough, it wasn't on the back of a large Iranian woman.

Beat that stock like it owes you money

Huge premiums in out-of-the-money August puts on CFC today. Big volumes too. Somebody thinks something bad is going to happen. Aug 20s were going for $1.90 at one point, meaning somebody's betting the stock will be below 18 within two weeks! I got 2.30 for Aug 22.50s and then bought them back a half hour later for 1.45. The stock had moved less than the way-out-of-the-money options, a very unusual circumstance.

Trouble ahead, lady in red

The mortgage thing continues to get uglier. Mortgage lenders blow up left and right. Hedge funds are imploding with increasing frequency. Jim Cramer advises homeowners to default on their mortgages (as I've said they would/should do again and again and again).

Two of the smartest people I know have sold all stocks (ahead of the recent downturn) and are sitting entirely in cash.

Consumer confidence is still strong. The consumer doesn't see the train wreck all around him.

This will hit the consumer. As I've said before, we're in the greatest asset bubble in the history of the world, and the bursting won't be painless.

Why am I still long stocks? Maybe the Fed will turn on the fire hose. Foreign and domestic stocks and gold will be where you want to be then, not in bonds and cash. Alternatively, maybe the Fed does its job, breaks the back of inflation, and we have a nasty recession. Another 10% or 20% downside is possible, but I'll take my chances. And foreign stocks could hold up relatively well even in an ugly US economy, at least in dollar terms.

I could be wrong. It's happened before. For an alternative view of the likely outcome, see Market Ticker.