At a roundtable discussion tomorrow (Tuesday), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will talk about restoring a rule that some believe could have mitigated the bear market in U.S stocks.

Tomorrow’s meeting, which will focus largely on short-selling, follows recent internal discussions in which SEC officials have talked about restoring the so-called “uptick rule,” a fairly straightforward securities regulation that many experts say could have blunted the steep stock-market sell-off that U.S. stocks experienced in late 2008 and early 2009. The uptick rule was abolished in 2007. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is a proponent of the uptick rule’s restoration.

“If the rule is to be restored, it should apply to all equally, including market makers as well as professional traders and individual investors,” Bernanke said if during a question and answer session with

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Notes from the Investment Underground San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

April 6, 2009

Why the economy is still heading for a cliff… All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the banks back together again… The madness of Sheila Bair… The government lies over banks are paper thin… Infighting at the Treasury… Why Citi’s CEO should go… Banks plunge… “Fake dividend” strategy exposed… Can mark-to-model save them? Selling OTM calls against your financial stocks… What happened on March 9… And more!

*** You’re reading this newsletter because you don’t believe the cheerleaders in Washington and in the mainstream press. You know it’s safer to know the truth about the economy than to believe the hype and the lies and the false optimism. You know that real money-making ideas can’t be found on CNN and

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Jon Stewart torched Jim Cramer live on TV, but did he do more harm than good by slamming long-term investing as well?

For anyone who didn't catch it on March 12, comedian Jon Stewart put to shame many hard-nosed financial journalists when he caught CNBC's Jim Cramer in outright lies about his scamming ways running hedge funds.

Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," also blasted Cramer for his less-than-substantive antics on CNBC's "Mad Money" show. 

We should all stand up and applaud Stewart's performance. But he took it too far when talking about how his elderly mother had bought into the industry's long-term investing mantra.

Stewart should've stayed on-topic, drilling Cramer and not letting him off the hot seat. Instead, he ventured too far afield when relating the apparent drubbing his mom took in the markets during the ongoing recession.

Although ex-journalist Cramer is the sort of slumdog

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pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/811qwzLk4TgNj91nFHaoClmEY34/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/811qwzLk4TgNj91nFHaoClmEY34/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pspan class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 19px;font-size:13;" ul class="posts" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; list-style-image: none;"li style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.25em 1.3em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; list-style-image: none; list-style-position: outside; text-indent: -15px; background-image: none;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 136);"a href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/03/leading-indicators-rise-two-months-in.html" style="text-decoration: none;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"Leading Economic Indicators Rise Two Months In A Row/span/span/abr //span/lili style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.25em 1.3em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; list-style-image: none; list-style-position: outside; text-indent: -15px; background-image: none;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;" Why was this story under-reported? Because the data actually surprised analysts when it came in with a key positive number for the month of January. The Index Of Leading Economic Indicators for the second month in a row showed anspan style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;" increase/span in economic activity./span a style="color: rgb(51, ...

pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/5R0IjqQAWslnfwIDim2ROCul2xA/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/5R0IjqQAWslnfwIDim2ROCul2xA/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pIn recent days it's been tit for tat between the White House and Jim Cramer the host of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNBC" title="CNBC"CNBC/a's ia href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Money" title="Mad Money"Mad Money/a/ibr /br /Cramer’s claims: "Obama has caused the greatest wealth destruction I have seen by a president.”br /br /“I’m not sure what he’s pointing to, to make some of the statements,” responded the White House via the press secretary. The secretary even tried to marginalize Cramer -- pigeon-holing him to a niche audience, while Obama's audience "is the whole country."br /br /Cramer pointed to stock averages down significantly and associated "main street" savings and 401K plans suffering. Jim further pointed to the government's spending plans as the cause of such stock market depths.br /br /But then get this. Amidst all this jousting, span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"both men actually agree. Stocks are oversold./spanbr /br /President Obama: "Right ...

Traders! Investors! Message Board Trolls! Lend me your ears! I come to praise Jim Cramer, not to bury him! Mr. Cramer has had a tough 2008. It has become quite fashionable within the investment community to mock and ridicule the man. While this had been going on for some time, several of Mr. Cramer’s calls on his show “Mad Money” amplified the cries for CNBC to suspend or remove him. From his remark that Bear Sterns was “not in trouble,” to calling a market bottom this summer, to then making his panic-stricken call on October 6th to get entirely out of the market, Mr. Cramer has been under close scrutiny. While he had defenses for each of these pronouncements, the damage had already been done. Aside from his questionable market pronouncements, even his best buddy Eliot Spitzer lost his job over a Jersey Girl. ...

In Cramer’s May 15 Sell Block segment, “The Newest Mortgage Offenders,” why did the Mad Money guru slam IndyMac?

IndyMac’s bad loans are skyrocketing, the company keeps diluting shareholders as shares outstanding continue to build up. And it isn’t even saying it can be profitable this year as it remains heavily exposed to the worst areas of the California market, which make up nearly 50% of its holdings.

At one time, IndyMac (IMB) made my Small Cap Watch List (Track at Marketocracy). But that was a long time ago. These days it doesn’t even make it past my initial screens.

Disclaimer: The article mentioned below mentions Trade-Ideas as an 'industry standard' and sprinkles a bit more praise on us but was written unsolicited by a former trader, Dave Goodboy, turned writer for TradingMarkets.com and other outlets."How To Use A Stock Screener"Goodboy's article addresses the most basic of scanner and screener tools available to the new trader/investor. Much of what he describes are the free tools available to help define the appropriate environment a trader has learned or researched to trade. I am only adding the following footnotes:"What's Free at Trade-Ideas"Don't forget about the free data Trade-Ideas provides in the form of End-of-Day data and even delayed intraday data. The cream rises to the top when we compare this data to what else is out there (many companies even charge for less quality data than what we give away)

"Scanning Patterns Will

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Mad Money host Jim Cramer made a passionate, and quite amazing, plea to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on CNBC yesterday. He urged Bernanke to cut interest rates and, in turn, help the market and the people who were losing their jobs on Wall Street.