Farfeg-Yer-Nugen

Who's the biggest, baddest company in all the land? Move over Exxon...

Numerous hedge funds, smart money playas and all varieties of profiteering miscreants were on the wrong side (the very wrong side) of the mother of all Volkswagen short squeezes today.

In what seemed like easy money, being short the common stock of V-dub and either long Porsche or long V-dub preference turned out to be oh-so-painful when Porsche announced "Hey guess what guys, we have options to buy a larger stake in Volkswagen, and we will begin doing so right... about... now."

So they started to buy, like, lots of shares... and buying drives the price up, and then they bought more, and more, and more... and the Volkswagen shorts were heard yelling "Oh shit! We're on the wrong side of this one!" And they had to buy shares too, to cover their failing short positions. And that buying drove the price up some more. So after the mostly non-consensual Volkswagen stock buying orgy ended and the dust settled, Volkswagen was up like a million percent. Okay, not a million percent but 289% in one week.

And that is how you turn an ailing car maker into the company with the largest market cap in the world... almost overnight.

And if you're a hedge fund, this is how you lose $30 billion in a day, which is exactly what they did. (And $30 billion used to be alot of money, until central banks around the world began spraying hundreds of billions all the over the place, like little kids with super-soakers on a hot summer day).

Normally, I'd scratch my head and wonder how a car company, in the middle of a world wide recession could catapult into the #1 biggest company in the world spot... but not anymore. It makes perfect sense.

In other news, General Motors continues to lobby Washington for all kinds of handouts, bailouts, failouts, whatever you want to call them. They need alot of money, like, yesterday. So does Ford.

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Side note: The Consumer Confidence Index showed the worst levels in history, so, obviously, today was the day to buy stocks... because happy days are here again. Anything you can get your hands on, just buy it. The Dow and S&P had their second biggest point gains in history. Also, makes perfect sense.

Now I'm going to go curl up in the fetal position in my Volkswagen Westfalia with a bottle of Thorazine. Good night.