Eric Cantor: Betting against America

[Jefferson23]

Friday, Jun 18, 2010 15:01 ET

By Alex Pareene


According to his 2009 financial disclosure statement, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor is betting hard against U.S. Treasury bonds. The Wall Street Journal reports that Cantor bought up to $15,000 in shares of ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury ETF, an exchange-traded fund that "takes a short position in long-dated government bonds." Cantor is basically betting on future inflation.

But the best part of this is not that Eric Cantor obviously wants America to fail, it's that he's a bad investor -- inflation is nonexistent and the Fed will likely keep interest rates near zero for the rest of the year, and possibly beyond. Cantor bought the shares in December. According to the Washington Independent's Annie Lowrey, "the fund is down 31 percent this year."

(Cantor might assume that bonds will collapse, the government will default, and America will collapse into chaos because sometimes bullets randomly rain from the sky into buildings he rents.)

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/06/18/cantor_bets_against_america/index.html

[Billy Burnett]

1. I hate that bastard.

A good lamp post should be put to good use.

[Jefferson23]

2. A lamp post?

[Empathic_1]

3. Thank God he's not in charge of anything important!

Shew.

[RB TexLa]

4. If you think that is the direction T-bills are going to go what is wrong with

playing that position?

It's not assuming that the bonds would default, if he thought that he would buy CDS on them. The ETF he invested in is shorting positions on those notes.

[underpants]

5. Cantor inherited Bliley's seat and is a complete tool

I notice that his attempt at a Southern accent went away very quickly