Bits Bucket For March 20, 2009
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The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
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In a few areas, Great Depression unemployment rates have already arrived.
http://www.freep.com/article/20090320/BUSINESS06/903200365/Detroit+s+jobless+rate+hits+26-year+high+at+22.2+
If my grandparents were still alive they would say we are already in a Depression.
We are.
Detroit has 22.2% unemployment but a large fraction of the remaining are employed by the government.
The whole city is on life-support.
From local RE to hedge funds, this Whole Game has been rigged to Protect and Indemnfy the big time “Investor Class”.
It’s been this way for centuries and small time J6P is just re-learning THEIR Rules…once again
Well, shee-yat.
What you call the “investor class” is nothing more than the people who have the capital, and those who have the gold make the rules.
This could hardly be surprising to anyone who lives in, oh the freakin’ shocker, a capitalistic society.
(And no bromides from the peanut gallery how we’re really socialist, etc. - even the bailouts are proceeding along the same rule - those with gold to spare make the rules.)
BigV, you and Super Chicken, oops, the duck …noticed that one too
“It’s been this way for centuries and small time J6P is just re-learning THEIR Rules…once again”
“What you call the “investor class” is nothing more than the people who have the capital, and those who have the gold make the rules.”
“The rich rule over the poor,
and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
From Proverbs. Nothing new here.
Also, the U6 unemployment rate is more accurate than the U3 since it counts the marginally employed, etc. So, when comparing the Great Recesssion to the Great Depression unemployment rates, we need to use U6, though the real rates may be higher still.
I’m sure that once things get completely out of hand, they’ll stop publishing U6, just like they stopped publishing some of the money supply info when they started flooding the system with worthless paper.
What Government wants to publish distressing numbers, when it is so easy to lie and spread self-serving propaganda?
I don’t know if using Detroit as a proxy is all that useful. Kinda like saying Miami’s temp is 80 degrees in January so that means North Dakota is hot too.
Detroit is in such dire straits that I think it should be excluded from any conversation about the economy and just left do die already.
Good point.
California - 10.5%
National avg - 7+%
Forgot to add:
http://tinyurl.com/cd4xc9
AOL straw poll says 27%.
BAIR BREAKS RANKS
FDIC CHIEF CHALLENGES GEITHNER, TREASURY PLAN
Just as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner finds himself wrestling with the bear that’s mauling the US economy, he’s also tussling with another: Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
While regulators in Washington, DC, are presenting a united front publicly as they attempt to repair a badly damaged US financial system, sources said that behind the scenes Bair and Geithner are fighting tooth and nail over exactly how to get the job done.
And as the economic crisis has worsened, Bair has been the one to come out on top.
Indeed, Bair’s star is said to be rising as Geithner faces withering criticism over the government’s missteps in its attempts to jumpstart the credit markets and for allowing American International Group to hand out $165 million in bonuses after the beleaguered insurer received a total of $170 billion in federal rescue money.
Sources tell The Post that Bair and Geithner have been at loggerheads dating back to when Geithner ran the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Geithner has been painted as being too cozy with financial firms and unwilling to act decisively and take on big Wall Street players.
Bair, meanwhile, has earned a reputation of being a hawkish regulator, willing to play hardball with banks and opposing providing any subsidies to bondholders and shareholders, according to one supporter.
She was also one of the first regulators to promote measures designed to stop foreclosures and modify mortgages.
And yesterday, she criticized a Geithner plan to create a so-called “systemic-risk regulator” that would monitor banking and economic issues that threaten the economy, saying such a move “is not a panacea.”
She went on to say that the feds currently don’t have a system in place to handle the failure of non-bank financial systems like AIG. One of the duties of the FDIC is to oversee the orderly dismantling of failed banks, and sources said there are signs Bair might be trying to get the FDIC involved in unwinding companies like AIG.
People familiar with the matter said that Bair and Geithner’s feud has gotten so heated that at one point last year, before Geithner was confirmed as Treasury secretary, he suggested she be ousted as FDIC chairman.
Bair was originally appointed FDIC boss by former president George W. Bush, and her appointment doesn’t end until 2011.
Yet now it seems that the one on the hot seat is Geithner, while Bair soars, and in some circles gets chatted up as a possible Geithner replacement.
“Eventually, Sheila will be the way we go,” said Christopher Whalen, head of consulting firm Institutional Risk Analytics. “She could be the next secretary of the Treasury.”
To be sure, the Obama administration has expressed unwavering confidence in Geithner especially considering that he’s been in the job less than eight weeks.
However, Bair has started to gain support, even from those who once considered unseating her, sources said.
She represents depositors and smaller banks. He represents TBTF conglomerates. There is definitely going to be conflict. I hope depositors and smaller banks win. End TBTF.
TBTF?
2 BIG 2 FAIL
Too Big To Fail
or, Totally Botched, Totally F*ked
I like your definition much better.
Too Big To Fail, I would guess.
is Bernanke’s forehead too big to fail?
12:00 p.m. Bernanke: Fed pleased so far with new credit-easing policy
12:00 p.m. Bernanke: Fed to watch bank pay, bonus issues closely
12:00 p.m. Bernanke: Fed had no other choice than to rescue big firms
12:00 p.m. Bernanke to small banks: Don’t let fear drive loan decisions
The promise to watch bank pay, bonuses closely REALLY chapped my hide this morning. This whole day late and a dollar short routine is tired and worn out.
Watching is a “passive act”… I “watch” my speed limit… doesn’t mean I wont speed…
I saw her briefly on some show with Cramer(yuck) and a live audience for about 5 minutes til the nauseau overtook me and I had to change the channel. She is all about writing down the principal on Mortgages and Bankruptcy cramdowns. She does not beleive the problem will be solved until the principal on overvalued property Mortgages is reduced.
In the larger context, she is right. Lenders took absurd risks with other people’s money, and the economy can’t right itself until the bad debt is erased. How we get there and how quickly should be the discussion.
If there had been a structure in place to handle an orderly bankruptcy of AIG (perhaps with discretion to decide which credit default swap counter parties truely needed to be paid in full in order to prevent the collapse of the banking system - Goldman Sachs wouldn’t be on the top of my list), AIG could have actually been put in bankruptcy. And the old style regulated insurance company piece would have been sold at a decent price to help finance the thing. And, of course, they could have cancelled the absurd bonus payments and avoided this week’s DC circus. Not a bad idea if you could figure out a way to always have someone as cantankerous to the financiers as Sheila Bair to run it.
It was called the RTC and the Savings and Loans were liquidated in an orderly manner.
The problem here is that the counterparties that hold the other ends of these complex debt instruments of AIG are the Usual Suspects and would get stiffed in such a plan. This must not be allowed to happen.
There’s a pattern to all of this ‘bailout’ - it isn’t that hard to see …
“There’s a pattern to all of this ‘bailout’ - it isn’t that hard to see …”
+1 Exactly! Who says there isn’t royalty in this country?
‘There’s a pattern to all of this ‘bailout’ - Who says there isn’t royalty in this country’
It never ceases to amaze me how people are obsessed with the idea that they are a victim. Can you not get up this morning and pursue your dreams? I have no king. I get up every day and work on a business that I hope will both make a profit and be a part of the solution to this mess.
Whining about life being unfair is a waste of time, IMO. And wasting time while the biggest financial event of our lifetime is occurring? Well that’s just a shame.
You’re the man, Ben!
I love the cold water you throw out and the subtle slap of the face.
Thank you Ben.
I have never thought of myself as a victim of this financial mess.
But neither do I think that it is a waste of time to realize, reflect and understand that there is a class that is different than the one I belong to, a class that can change laws to suit their needs, a class that is, indeed, a privileged class.
Only understanding that and accepting that, can one move forward and see where one is and what can one do about it.
“Whining about life being unfair is a waste of time, IMO. And wasting time while the biggest financial event of our lifetime is occurring? Well that’s just a shame.”
+1000.
The primary reason AIG wasn’t liquidated in the way I described was most likely because people thought that even mentioning bankruptcy and AIG in the same breath would cause a global panic in the financial world that would dwarf what we have seen already by a factor of [fill in large number here] and not wanting to be accused of being socialists. I think a good panic would do the investment bankers a world of good, but some other results would have been a much faster seize up of ordinary credit, every remaining defined benefit pension system immediately going belly up, etc. This was done to slow down price discovery and cover it up a bit, but it wasn’t some grand conspiracy to give rich people ione more round on their unearned bonuses.
As for being accused of being socialists, they get that just for proposing a return of tax rates on very high earners to a level they paid a few years ago, so I don’t see why anyone worried about it.
Well said, Muir.
and the subtle slap of the face.
I missed the ’subtle’ part?
However, adding on to what Muir said: there is a class that is different than the one I belong to, a class that can change laws to suit their needs, a class that is, indeed, a privileged class.
I watched ‘The Gilded Cage’ on the teevee, talking about the super-super-rich, just a while ago and boy, was I piss*ed by the end of it. I mean, there’s little kids STARVING. You know, that dying thingie, where your mom watches helplessly because she has no food to give you, and your little body wastes away and you die and you get buried and you rot, for real and not a do-over, in this very own world. And then to sit and watch some of the gluttonous excesses of the super-rich, people just looking for exciting ways to spend a teeny bit of allllll that money—it was just repugnant.
Especially when so many of these super-rich just got born lucky. I mean, it’s not like they even did anything of value. I guess that’s not the repugnant part, that’s the astonishing part. The rupugnant part is the waste. I hate waste.
In that case, you shouldn’t see the documentary `Born Rich’.
Made by the heir to the J&J fortune. Got sued for it naturally but he had lawyers too and an iron-clad contract before he made it.
It’s obviously jejune because it’s made by a 20-something year-old but disturbing.
Of course, I see these brats all the time but you kinda have to learn to ignore if you live in NYC.
“It never ceases to amaze me how people are obsessed with the idea that they are a victim. ”
Sorry, Ben, but I can’t agree with you on this one; I think you’re misinterpreting our thoughts on the matter.
Our anger comes from the actions of a basically untouchable parasite class that is running our nation into the ground with corrupt policies that will only lead to runaway inflation along with other problems. This isn’t about people “whining” about being a victim - this about an angry population who expects the law to be followed so crooks stop selling out our futures so they can make a dishonest fortune. Also, I bet most folks here voted against them, for what little good that does.
It’s good that you have the time and resources to pursue your own business that will try to make something positive come of this mess; if anyone can do it, you’re probably the one, and I am grateful that people in this nation still have such opportunities. However, not everyone has the means to start their own business, and, despite your successes, every dollar you make from your own hard work will be worth a lot less in the future because of the inflationary policies of those in charge. Or, who knows - they could just “change the rules” in some fashion that would put you immediately out of business, take away your wealth, etc… it’s this type of nonsense that is leading to anger, not an expectation of handouts to “victims.”
Not everyone has the cash to start a business. And, even with a good business plan, there is no start up capital available. This assumes that everyone has such an idea, and doesn’t even address the fact that the playing field is not level for those that do. I don’t blame those who are upset because they were laid off and cannot find work in an economy driven into the ground by greed and corruption. I actually believe we need more whining and bellyaching by the general public. The louder the cries get, the more inclined we are to get better results from DC insiders who are NOT working in the people’s interests.
“It never ceases to amaze me how people are obsessed with the idea that they are a victim.”
I don’t think of myself as a victim, but I would like to see a rule of law reinstated in the realm of high finance to prevent the kind of destructive practices which have sprouted up in recent years on Wall Street like weeds in a field. Everyone on the planet suffers when a Wild, Wild West mentality takes over on The Street.
As others have said, you don’t have to think of yourself as a victim to believe that the herd of Wall Street fat cats and corporate welfare seekers could use some culling. This herd has eaten up much of the grass, and the government is talking about keeping the wolves at bay.
“I hate waste”
i have been thinking about that lately.
is waste relative?
i mean…is buying that extra yatch equivalent to the
$ 5.00 cappaccino i had after my over-priced lunch today?
I define victim as “a person against whom a crime has been committed”. Everyone can rightfully claim they are a victim of government abuse, theft, etc. Making “light” of these crimes by condemning others whom make the observation, “hey, he stole my lunch and now I am hungry” is very arrogant and ultimately the attitude that allows the crimes to be continued.
The problem are people whom are a “victim” of their own actions and want others to pay the price (be a victim) instead. These are people whom refuse to take responsibility for their own actions that I have no compassion for.
Considering that no matter how prosperous you are, the government policies (directed by the elite, not the people) are taxing your savings via monetary debasement, your income, and every sale you make. You can attempt to ignore the system and “live free”, but eventually you will run into the “law” and be thrown in jail. The government, through its regulation, taxes, and inflation have reduced the number of profitable ventures to the point where 20% are underemployed and 50% are living on the wealth stolen from the remaining 30%.
You don’t have to have a “victim mentality” to realize that you are a “victim”.
I haven’t lost any 401k wealth in this market crash, so I can’t claim victim status. On the other hand my money, that is hiding in treasuries, isn’t making anything either.
Right now I am able to live comfortably on 40% of my net income, and I am supporting two kids and a wife in an upper middle-class lifestyle, but I can’t do it in California; I hate the long winters at 47.3-degrees north latitude. However, it’s better to be cold than a FB’r, IMHO.
As for opportunities I’ll wait for 2012, thank you.
Have to agree with the others here that being angry about fraud and crime (and, yes, being victimized by it) is perfectly rational and necessary, if we ever expect to live in a safe, free, successful country with a viable middle-class.
There are some serious crimes being committed, and have been committed for a long time. These people need to be brought to justice, and their assets need to be seized so **some** reparations can be made.
Apathy is what got us into this mess in the first place. We NEED to be educated and ANGRY when people take over our goverment and change laws so they can profit at our expense.
This isn’t a recognizable American financial, RE and banking system anymore. It’s a taxpayer debt-funded cluster f**k orgy for bunch of incestuous lenders, hedge funds mgt and other related associates and investors.
It’s worst than an a hidden undergound winter nest of fat Rattlesnakes with all the slithering, sliding and latent and potential POISON just lying there.
Disgusting as a den of rattlers seem, THOSE snakes serve a purpose and I’d leave them alone. Most of the mutant snakes, vipers and friends listed above need to be destroyed.
“Somebody in the Gov’t get the gasoline and matches please!”
RE: It’s worst than an a hidden undergound winter nest of fat Rattlesnakes with all the slithering, sliding and latent and potential POISON just lying there.
Mikey~
The HBB fav’s and reg’s convey upon you, today’s
“Lingus and NYCBoy Award”!
Hey, say what you want about the coffee deficiency mikey rants
If I ask WHO is your boss and you say Sam that owns Banana Imports and Exports is the BOSS . Wrong !
If I ask someone else WHO is your boss and you say “I work for myself and I am the boss.” Wrong !
You JUST WORK for Sam and or yourselves. The REAL pecking order of BOSSES is God, the Gov’t and Wall Street.
There maybe a lot of princes, robber barons and rich noblemen in between you and your real BOSSES but you all really WORK for them one way or another.
PS…God has been AWOL, with no forwarding address, from the BOSS Equation for several years so don’t address your Personal Recession Grievances to mikey anymore.
Rant over
Tell us how you feel, mikey. ‘Cause I can’t tell.
mikey…” Clams Up”
for a little while
But who are the enablers that allow the fat cats to maintain their choke-hold, and continue to get laws passed that benefit them?
Our elected officials. Yet no one seems to acknowledge that in this thread.
Aim your venom at the right targets.
Yeah…I agree with Bill !
Just MAKE ME KING, and you won’t have all these annoying little voting and election problems
And who controls the schools, media, etc? Can you blame the average man if he was RAISED not to think for himself? About 2% of the population has escaped the media/government school brainwashing, the rest have been taught to have *no interest* in really understanding anything. The rest have been systematically taught habits of the mind that inhibit their ability to think critically and have confidence in their conclusions. The population is sold “packaged logic (fallacies)” that the vast majority are unable to challenge or even think about challenging.
The problem with democracy is that he who controls the schools and media is king and can control the masses. With out the support of the masses the 2% are labeled as terrorists and are unable to effect significant change.
Watch out Dan, a lot of people here think mandatory education (which most kids get at government schools) is a good thing.
mikey…” Clams Up”
Nyuk, nyuk.
From Bill in Carolina:
“But who are the enablers that allow the fat cats to maintain their choke-hold, and continue to get laws passed that benefit them?
Our elected officials. Yet no one seems to acknowledge that in this thread.
Aim your venom at the right targets.”
The elected officials are not the right target. The right target is the system that insures their continuous reelection.
OK, go ahead and try to press charges against, or tar and feather, a “system.”
Jeeez.
It’s called a revolution …
yeah, they should have allowed her to do more…she is the only one that makes sense in washington. geithner does not instill confindance, have you seen him at press conferences. i don’t have faith in his abilities. he has to go, they should put volker in his place! He will give us the real deal to fix this mess if it is fixable. AIG should have gone under and stiffed the foreign banks and then we could have sent the cash to the american banks like we have been doing anyhow. of course, then the foreigners would drop the dollar. we need to let these companies go under and stiff the counterparties because this huge gambling machine needs to end. the settled the lehman derivatives and others so what is the big deal to not let them fail. no one is lending anyone money anyhow, so why worry that no one will have faith in the counterparties!
Aren’t you afraid Volcker is just a little too old? Take some cajones to stand up to the ZIRP assclowns.
I, too, want Geithner gone. It’s apparent that he was working behind the scenes to ensure that AIG got those bonuses. This guy isn’t working for the people, he’s stealing their money.
I am starting to become very fond of Bair, especially since she has come out in opposition to allowing firms to qualify for free too-big-to-fail insurance, if only they can grow to sufficiently gargantuan proportions. Meredith Whitney and Ivy Zelman, watch out — you now have some serious competition in the ladies of high finance arena!
Where does TTT stand on the question of ending the failed Fed / Treasury sponsored too-big-to-fail insurance program?
I’m liking Bair more too…especially because she’s not afraid to say what needs to be said and because she seems to be far more articulate than the Treasury secretary. I think she would even make a great replacement for Timmay once he self-destructs. She probably even pays her taxes.
“Geithner has been painted as being too cozy with financial firms and unwilling to act decisively and take on big Wall Street players.”
Gee, who could have guessed??
Hey, “Turbo Taxcheat Timmy” doesn’t even bother to pay his income taxes - somehow, I think the “law” isn’t much of a concern for him. It’s all about the loot!
“Indeed, Bair’s star is said to be rising as Geithner faces withering criticism over the government’s missteps in its attempts to jumpstart the credit markets and for allowing American International Group to hand out $165 million in bonuses after the beleaguered insurer received a total of $170 billion in federal rescue money.”
This AIG bonus is not the issue. It never was the issue. The fact the the money (our money) is going out of the back door to Goldman, etc. is not the issue and never was.
The real issue is the total cost of doing this vs. how much we will get back. We will get back zero, and will owe, owe, owe.
It will cost $430 Billion dollars to bailout AIG and the counter parties. We will NEVER get the money back.
AIG was never worth that much as an insurance company. It was worth maybe $210 to $260 Billion depending if you are looking at 2004 or 2000.
So, you may like Sheila because she appears to talk straight and tell the truth. Ok. Fine.
I’m saying that no one in Washington, NYC, London, Bonn, Berlin, etc. are telling the truth… not in the case of AIG nor anything else. The numbers show they are lying to us.
Roidy
Does anyone know if foreclosure eviction notices are public record and posted anywhere, especially in Cook County, Illinois?
Generally they are. Have you checked with the county clerk? Often times those people can be more helpful than you would imagine. I get the feeling they have so little to do all day it’s a nice break when I come in asking for help with something.
Just put on your sweet-boy face and say ma’am (I heard yankee chicks don’t dig that…so YMMV) and you might get more help than you ever could have hoped for.
I should add I’m speaking in general terms for my area, I don’t know nuttin about cheekahgo
In Michigan, foreclosure notices are public record AND also have to be advertised in at least one local newspaper.
In Cook County it could be a regular paper like the Sun-Times or Tribune, or perhaps a smaller rag, or one paper aimed at the legal community, something like that.
There’s probably a few foreclosure notice services in your area as well. I just googled this one:
http://cook.ilfls.com/
What’cha gonna do, call in AWOL military personnel to keep the sheriff’s crews at bay?
Scroll down here:
http://cook.il.public-record.com/
If you’re researching a particular property, I find it easier to obtain the PIN (from Zillow, under “check all home facts” OR from the Cook County Treasurer’s GIS system) and then go to ccrd (dot) info. You’ll see any recorded deeds, mortgages, leins, lis pendens, etc.
Only works for Cook County. Lake is not online and DuPage (IIRC)charges you.
Dada is asking specifically about foreclosure EVICTION notices. I’ve never seen such notices published in our local paper- just the NODs/notices of sale.
“Does anyone know if foreclosure eviction notices are public record and posted anywhere, especially in Cook County, Illinois?”
Let me guess- you want to get a list of names of desperate people who you can contact and offer your “help” for a small fee. Yeah, I’m reading between the lines on you.
Will the world ditch the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency? A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, according to currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts. He said the proposal would create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket. Ditch dollar?
(It’s easy to understand why the Chinese and other holders of massive U.S. dollar-denominated debt would be nervous about talk like this.)
Just wait until the Euro self destructs…. The UN shouldn’t take more than 10-20 years to come up with a plan.
Skeptic,
So odd you should mention that. I commiserate over coffee once a week with a few guys from church one of which happens to be a swiss national. The subject of currencies came up when discussing the economy and he insisted that the Eur-ine would be the singular currency if there ever were to be one. I asked him what he based it on and he yammered about US$ currency inflation. This guy is a real gold bug too.
Have you been north lately? Whats the sentiment on the street in dumbA$$ country?
RE: a swiss national.
…et el.
Vee hate you fat, lazy, stoopid Amerikans!
pssst, hey Pierre….the Germans/Russians are coming!
Ah, bon monsieur, Viva la American! Kiss, kiss, kiss…
Je suis beaucoup rire
Oh my word. Ignorant american enragement…… swweet!
the euro has done very well amid this weeks turmoil; while $Gold was up nearly 10% within one day, euro gold price has been pretty stable around EUR 700/ounce (still a lot higher than it was a few months ago though …).
I agree that in the long run the euro will have the same problem as the dollar as a result of growing political pressure to drive rates to zero. But for the moment Uncle Ben is making sure that he has the least desirable currency to hold (for savers; the most desirable maybe if you are a debtor …).
“But for the moment Uncle Ben is making sure that he has the least desirable currency to hold (for savers; the most desirable maybe if you are a debtor …).”
I think he’s tryin’ to smoke me out, but it ain’t gonna work.
Markets for products and services all across the globe are still collapsing. Prices are falling. The plan is to increase my dollars at or greater than the rate the fed is increasing its dollars. Moreover, if it succeeds in lowering rates further, I intend to take advantage of lower funding costs and lower housing prices. Plus, rent dropped by 90 bucks.
Prices will keep collapsing until surplus stock is sold, then the lack of replacement stock (because it is not profitable to produce) will push prices up until it is profitable to produce things that are necessary.
“…Prices are falling.”
I’m watching the local Craigslist for a suitably desperate jet ski sale. My boat servicing guy says stay away from Sea Doo, but Yamaha and Honda make great PWCs.
Sea Doo. Kinda like Dog Doo when you think about it.
Bill,
Why not use the $2,000-$4,000 you will spend on a jet ski to do a natural gas conversion on your car or truck. Jet skis are just so 2006 being such a conspicuous consumption symbol. What’s the down side?
By the way - Battlestar Galactica tonight!
*Sob* the Grand Finale.
We still have the past 3 episodes to watch on Tivo, so will be recording BSG tonight. Fridays will never be the same after this.
*Sob* the Grand Finale.
I was trying to pretend I didn’t know that. Boo HOOOOOOOOO…
We need a support group, stat!
Yes. I believe it’s a two hour episode.
The only sci-fi left watching (my opinion) is Dollhouse and Sarah Connor Chronicles.
BSG, meh. Jumped the shark last season. Only the little woman still watches it.
“Lost”? . . . “Lost Interest” more like.
Even “Heroes” seems to be losing it, too.
Bring back “Firefly” and “Jericho”!!!
Bring back “Firefly” and “Jericho”!!!
Testify! I’m going to confess this, and I don’t wanna be teased, but the fact is, I almost actually cried when I learned Firefly was to be cancelled.
Okay, I admit it, I DID cry. But only like one tear per eye, not like sissy-girl sobbing or anything.
Hey, that was a great show.
Firefly was the best sci-fi ever. The problem with cable is it becomes very expensive to aggregate enough eye balls on a series to make it profitable over the long haul. Great shows get doomed before anyone ever finds out they exist.
No, no, Babylon 5 was the best science fiction ever. The best.
My husband and I were waiting to cancel our cable service until after BSG was over….we find most channels are a waste of money. The only thing that I’m afraid with this “grand Finale” is that I already know what’s going to happen.
My husband and I were waiting to cancel our cable service until after BSG was over….we find most channels are a waste of money.
Hah! Us, too.
We are Netflix-reliant, except for BSG and Turner Classic Movies. The movies aren’t enough of a carrot by themselves.
Wow, a single issue voter.
Not originally — but we’ve come to realize how much time we waste watching crap movies and other dreck just because it’s on. Netflix solves that dilemma for us quite nicely. We’ve also become increasingly concerned that aimless cable surfing will provide a bad example for the lad.
Sure, we’ll miss Anthony Bourdain and a few other things, but the interwebs will provide in times of great desire.
Netflix has done a deal with XBOX 360 to allow immediate download of some of the older and more popular movies for free if you subcribe to both Netflix and XBOX Live - IIRC about 12,000 or so - many of them the lifeblood of stations like TMC.
So, if you have Netflix and an XBOX, you’re laughing.
I’m not an XBoxer, but I’m planning on getting a Roku, a handy little device that allows the same streaming of Netflix movies direct to the boob tube.
I’ve heard good things about the Roku - tell us how is goes?
Fortunately, being married to a game developer, we can get tax deductions on things like consoles - not that we really need the excuse to be consoled-up the wazoo…
To answer a question from last night:
——————–
Comment by Professor Bear
2009-03-19 23:36:53
BTW, is it just me, or does it seem to others that we have moved on from the denial to the anger phase of the housing bubble stages of grief?
——————–
Yes.
On Wall Street - Anger phase
On home prices - Still in denial
To some extent. I would say there’s still deep denial as to the extent of the price falls - as evidenced by the still-incredible delta between asking and selling prices (I’m seeing generally 90-92% here in VA and in FL), however I don’t think there’s much denial that there was a bubble and that it’s now popping.
People who aren’t looking to sell their homes are at the anger phase already. They’re pissed that their home has lost value (as evident by the plummeting tax valuations - a mixed blessing), and they’re pissed at what’s going on in DC and Wall Street (I would fall in this category).
“On home prices - still denial”
I don’t believe it’s denial, it’s a Last Stand before the wipeout of the debt monkeys, lenders and servicers. They all seen the end of their train tracks and know what is coming around the bend. They’re just burning up the emergency brakes without slowing down the runaway train
Heck, here in Maryland I am sure that Denial is still in command. See, in Maryland, “everyone is rich because of DC.” and “housing prices are going to go right back up” after the BRAC. When the other bases close, everyone is going to rush to Maryland and buy a huge, overpriced house that they can’t afford just to keep housing prices up; military personel who will move in a few years on a new assignment will (of course) buy several such houses to maximize their “investment.” Yes, this is still the mindset here in Maryland… Argh!
Just another example:
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/8203-Harbor-View-Drive_Pasadena_MD_21122_1107663957
Yes, that’s right - you, too, can pay over $600,000 for a house that may or may not be finished… with a septic system?! Huh?!
Oh, and Pasadena has a median household income of about 1/10 of the price of this place (which may or may not be finished…)
Parts of DC, Maryland and Northern VA always seems to have a premium added to because of Gov’t and military. I’m just not sure were they crossed the line from DC area premium to complete insanity. I should have noticed it when I was a kid and they kicked us out of our townhouse and replace it with a multilevel Parking Lot !
Hell, they should have saved it and placed it on the DC Historical Register. We had hippies, MD’s, radicals, FBI and air traffic controllers with a basement Underground Paper all living happily together in that place
Perhaps it is a local thing. Denial still the mood of the day in the NY Boonies and in Ontario CA.
Denial in all of MA, even if parts of the state are starting to get double digit unemployent rates (official fudge numbers!).
My home town was front-page news in the Boston Globe. Why you ask? Well, it turns out that Fall River has 16 percent unemployment… sad. Of course, part of me can’t help but think that I should be able to get some cheap skilled labor to work on my house this spring/summer. As Combie likes to say, cash rules. Or in this case, cash under the table. Of course, all this is predicated on my continued employment.
On a side note, I say by late Fall housing prices will start to really drop around here. People are getting desperate out there.
We are not that far away.. I am in the Attleboro area, and they are getting killed with the Unemployment from RI.
The denial still runs deep though. I like to go to the “nice” neighborhoods and cruise around. 1 out of every 3 driveways has a contractor truck. Most of them are either plumbers, electricians, or GC’s…. I see the trucks mostly to the sides, never used.
I have told my co-workers to mail the keys. No need to suffer through an albatross that they bought in 2005 at the height in Abington for 330K.. Now worth 250K.
Grants Pass, OR local paper last night, front
page article about home prices rising. Back
section had 10 NOD, averaging about 25 a
week. Go figure
RE: RI.
Numero Uno in mortgage fraud on a per capita basis.
Guess that’s what happens when your main industry is the Mob.
I am in the Attleboro area, and they are getting killed with the Unemployment from RI
Same here. Fall River is less than 20 minutes from Providence, so we’re getting much of the spillover from layoffs and industrial decline from RI. Most locals I know work in and around Providence. I’m the only one I know living down here and commuting into Boston. You would think people would get desperate enough to expand their job search to the Boston metro area… my company just hired two developers and is searching for a third. I know it’s tough out there, but there are companies who are hiring…
Sure the commute is awful, but unemployment is worse in my mind.
Denial in inner DC burbs and better parts of the District. Only condos and outer burbs have really been hit hard.
I supply professional services to a DC metro-area realty firm. They are actually swamped with sales at the moment. Actually have a huge-ish credit on their account but are too busy to meet w me at the moment to sort it out.
Exactly. People are snapping up stuff after just a small price decrease on the assumption that this is as good as it is going to get. Plus there is a lot of churning in the outer burbs that have seen real price collapse. The traffic around here means that the difference between and inner burb and an outer one can be as little as 10 miles (translating to an extra 30 to 60 minutes on your commute).
An assumption that federal spending means huge increases in local jobs is part of it. Believe me, the congress critters will force as many of the new government jobs out into their states/districts as they can. There will be new jobs here, but not as many as people think. And I think you will see some offsetting job loss in contractors (with better pay).
Federal government news being the local news is also part of it. My guess is that we hear more about the various credits, rate subsidies, etc. than other areas. It is just part of the air the news media breathe here.
Denial in inner DC burbs and better parts of the District.
I’ve noticed that friends and family in Arlington, VA, still seem to feel somewhat insulated from the crash & burn, while other people I know in Springfield, Herndon, Manassas, etc., go glum and silent when the subject of real estate comes up.
The only people I still know in DC proper are long-timers who bought early — their attitude seems to be “I lived in DC when it was a lot rougher and more chaotic, I can do it again.” (None of the DC people have kids, though.)
go glum and silent when the subject of real estate comes up.
So you bring it up often, right? With the usual bromides about how it always goes up, etc?
C’mon, man, how will they learn otherwise?
It’s edu-ma-cational, and we’re for that on this blog, right, right, right?
I’m in Herndon, the residential price declines are nothing compared to the freakishness of all of the empty CRE. Truly breathtaking how much new office space is completely empty. Yet they continue to build.
I’m still in my laughing stage.
Combo,
This laughing stage will stay with us the whole time.
“Nobody could have seen this coming.” Bahahahaha.
Strawberry pickers buying $700,000 homes. Bahahahaha.
NINJA loans, “Everybody wants to live here”, “They’re not making any more land”, “Buy now or be priced out forever”.
Bahahahahahaha.
Give people millions of dollars to destroy perfectly sound companies. Bahahahahaha.
NOW IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY (or sell) A HOUSE
hahahahaha
Donald Trump abandons Mexico resort
Bajajajajajajaja.
A lot of the AIG executives have security posted outside their homes, according to reports. People are protesting or planning protests. Perhaps, the bailouts will end as a result.
Some TBTF proponents are relentless, however. It was only a couple weekends ago Winston said Dodd was trying to limit bonuses. I remember posting an article about it.
“Perhaps, the bailouts will end as a result.”
You are an optimist. Protests will have no effect. Pitchforks and torches, maybe…
I am. I’d like to see some of these dangerous too big to fail institutions wound down. They are unmanageable and inefficient. I prefer redundant small to medium financial institutions. They are more responsive and easier to shut down.
Personal security, of the compotent variety anyway, is costly. Maybe they’ll burn their bonus bucks on it.
Maybe this is where the Blackwater dudes went to work.
Chicagoland is holding on to denial about housing prices, at the same time they are angry with Wall Street, banks, and all levels of government.
What will “bargaining” look and feel like when we finally get to that stage? Will it be sellers/banks taking what they can get (that sounds more like acceptance) or will sellers be bargaining with mortgage holders, government, and sellers’ “Higher Power” to “end the pain”?
If the unemployment rolls continue to grow at the current rate, and if gas gets anywhere near $4/gal., and if we have a hot summer - look out in Chicago.
Tuesday was 70 degrees and the peeps went nutso.
I’m not seeing ANY denial in Florida any more, and in Georgia it is fading fast.
Got a note from an agent last night that a GA house we didn’t look at, because the original listed at $615K and never dropped below $500K during 2 years on the market, caved and took an offer of $250K cash. Closed last week. Bet that gets the neighbors’ attention.
Meanwhile, in central FL I think we’re at the resignation stage, where everyone knows that values are at 50% or so of peak and may continue lower, but if they can afford the payments they watch TV and try to forget about it. The only stuff that is selling has a view or waterfront or is really, really cheap.
No one, not a single person I talk to, thinks the market is anything but in the tank. The rah-rah now is to look at the bargains out there.
I got an email from an agent about a house in Marietta that was originally listed for $900K, now listed for $500K and said the bank would entertain $300K offers.
Now that’s what I’m talking about…still think $300K is too much since this house backs on to a very busy street and has no yard to speak of. But still encouraging.
I think Detroit is getting a very sly stimulus package.
The potholes around here are getting so big that they will soon just swallow fuel-efficient cars altogether. Our Civic is getting hammered. Camrys and Civics will -SHOOP!- just disappear into these vast crevasses. We’ll all be forced to buy Hummers and Escalades to get anywhere.
Touche Detroit. Instead of spending stimulus, a not-spending-stimulus-on-road-repair stimulus.
The potholes around here are getting so big that they will soon just swallow fuel-efficient cars altogether.
The potholes are unusually bad in Chicago this year, too. They’re big, they take longer to fix, and a lot of the patches seem halfassed and unlikely to last through another season. I recently had to have some suspension work done on my car, and I have no doubt that our beloved potholes contributed significantly.
Detroit and Chicago have nothing on Milwaukee area potholes.
We have to make out a FAA “Flight Plan” to cross our freakin potholes !
Testify Mikey!
Leigh
Eagle WI
wouldn’t you love a job w Geithner at Treasury ?
some of the few gov workers that don’t bogey out the door at 4pm
Federal employees who leave at 4:00 PM show up at 7:30 AM.
Who will win? Does it matter? Taxpayer’s gonna pay either way.
AIG unit sues Countrywide over loan losses
AIG’s United Guaranty unit alleges BofA’s Countrywide misrepresented loans in Calif. lawsuit
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A unit of embattled insurer American International Group Inc. filed suit against mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. in California federal court Thursday, alleging Countrywide misrepresented the health of loans that the company insured, resulting in massive losses.
United Guaranty Mortgage Indemnity Co. filed suit in U.S. District Court, accusing Countrywide of breach of contract, fraud, negligence, and unfair competition and business practices.
This is actually hysterically funny. I’m going to enjoy watching this one play out. Oh, I hope they actually have the documentation somewhere. I’d like to see the rating agencies brought in for their share of the fun too.
Watch for the super biggie lawsuits between the banks, lenders, the hedgies and investors start popping up all over.
That cover charge and “price to make whole” in that 4 Star Circus should prove to be another expensive entertainment ticket for Taxpayers
“Watch for the super biggie lawsuits between the banks, lenders, the hedgies and investors start popping up all over.”
Of course, for every 268 people in the US there is one lawyer. I think we have a whole hellva lot more lawyers than there is meaningful work for them to do.
And talk about biting the hand that feeds you………….
AIG sues government for the return of 306 million in tax payments
http://tinyurl.com/dfsnbw
Wouldn’t it be wiser for AIG to go after whoever rated these mortgages as safe?
Why are the ratings agencies out of the limelight completely?
They should go after the tan man himself - Mozillo.
We need Tan Man back in the industry!
He’s the only one willing to lend at a break-neck speed. He’d get credit flowing again, that’s for sure.
“Why are the rating agencies out of the limelight completely?”
Because they were bare-assed naked and IN BED with their corrupt Wall Street Bandit Friends with benefits and just got word that somebody has a really big time STD ?
“Countrywide misrepresented the health of loans”
That was 2007 headlines. Get a clue, AIG!
Now, now, Kim. It does take a while to do the prep work for a really big civil law suit. And this one is a doozy. I promise, this is going to be fun. The rating agencies should jump in too. They based their analysis on the quality of the securities on what the mortgage originators told them. The whining back and forth (”You lied to us!” “Well, you believed us when it was obvious we were lying and never asked to examine the underlying paper at all. That was irresponsible and doesn’t meet your profession’s standards!”) should be epic.
Yep polly, looks it will shape up to be an epic for the ages!
This is just like in the movies when the Zombies start feeding on themselves when there’s no alive left to eat.
I love zombie movies!
Me too! Braaaiiiiins!
Well, Elanor, that’s not much of a surprise- you are playing with brains everyday!
LOL, Grizzly!
Seriously, my profession has put me off eating raw fish and organ meats forEVER.
Guess what, Elanor, I just wrote a zombie story, featuring you. (And, as a bonus, it allowed me to tap busily away at my computer, so it even looked like I was working.)
Anyway, I will post it as soon as you let me know if it would aggravate you to, in the story, be eaten? Would that bother and offend you? It didn’t start out with you being eaten, but I mean, you know, this IS a zombie story. Things often end that way, with zombies, as we all know all too well, to our cost…
*shakes head sadly at the crude ways of zombies *
You know, I often don’t know how my stories will end either, which makes it interesting to me, as well, to see what will happen.
So, my point is, if being eaten will turn out to bother you, I’ll go change the name to ‘Anne’ or else ‘Betsy’.
Olygal, as long as I get to blow a few zombie heads away with a shotgun before I’m eaten, I’m cool with that.
Olygal, as long as I get to blow away a few zombie heads with a firearm before I get eaten, I’m cool with that.
Olygal, at some point my two duplicate responses may show up.
AAAAACK !!! The spam filter, it makes me craaaazy!
‘ZOMBIE NOVELS’: FEATURING ELANOR
by Olympiagal
Elanor changed her career plans. She had been occupied for some years with poking around in people’s diseased bits, but she had always dreamed of being a serious writer. So she decided to be a zombie novelist. Not a zombie herself, fook, no, but to write for the zombie market. Zombies, surprisingly, are avid readers even though they have the attention spans of fruit-flies, or even less, even.
The average zombie novel was something like this:
The zombie came in.
‘Oh, no!’ shouted Bill and Pamela. ‘A zombie!’
Everyone ran around and around awhile and made a big freakin’ mess of their apartment.
The zombie caught them and ate them all up.
He threw the bones in the compost.
‘I liked that,’ thought the zombie. I’m going to do it again on Friday’.
The End
You see? The zombies liked catching and eating stories, or love stories, or catching and eating love stories, but they did not like westerns, for some reason, or any literature having to do with Jesus. Jesus stories reminded them they were ungodly and unnatural. Elanor kept this in mind when she wrote the novels for zombies. She would drink a beer and grab her notebook and, pow! An hour later she’d have a story!
The only hard part was the book tours, when she’d have to do the signings. Imagine a whole line of enthusiastic zombie fans holding all two hundred of your books and dropping fingers and noses and leaking all over in excitement. It reminded her of the old days, probing icky organ thingies. ‘Must I always be dealing with icky organ thingies?’ she would wonder, as she flicked aside stray fingers and autographed books.
No, Elanor didn’t care for it. It probably contributed to her decision to stop writing zombie novels and to set her sights yet higher. She told her publisher she wanted to write seriously. ‘Something about modern French poetry,’ she said. Her publisher rolled her eyes.
When Elanor’s decision to stop writing zombie stuff was broadcast in the Supernatural Times there were a lot of very upset zombies. Other disappointed fans would have emailed and written and wept and urged her to reconsider, but these were zombies. They’re kind of high-strung and impetuous.
A couple of them lurked in the shrubs around Elanor’s posh new apartment and when Elanor came out to wait for the taxi to the airport, with her suitcase full of notebooks and pens and gum and spare beer? The angry fans burst out and ate her. Elanor did blast the heads off a few of them with her shotgun before they got her, so that part’s pretty satisfying at least. Although, dammit, her last sight was of…you guessed it…icky organ bits.
They also ate the suitcase and the notebooks and the pens and the gum and the beer.
Then they ran away into the night.
THE END*
*Hmmm. You know, there’s some sort of moral here, I think, but dam*ned if I can think what it is.
It’s destined to become a classic, Oly! The movie rights alone will earn you bazillions.
Elanor, I’m soooo glad yer not piss*ed you got ate.
What about zombie dolls?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/plush/ac4a/
AIG bites the hand that feeds.
A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments
http://tinyurl.com/dfsnbw
So, “O” will give $145M to Ca to fix up vacant homes, and help FB’s. Why can’t DC fine the banks, if they don’t comply with a demand to keep their properties up. What am I missing here?
“Now, I’m also pleased to announce that today California will be receiving $145 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide additional help to communities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. ” (Applause.)
Recent visit-townhall mtg in So Ca.
Property maintenance is a sunk cost. Make it more costly for banks to hold properties and they will dump. DC has been trying to prevent dumping. You know my position, loosen the foreclosure and bankruptcy laws, and let’s get this over today, and begin the healing phase tomorrow.
I’m being flooded with calls about developers and REITs having problems with collateral calls on swaps and about to declare bankruptcy because of interest rates plummeting (e.g., the massive purchase of treasuries). Everything the administration tries to do to “help” makes it much, much worse, as they dont understand derivatives and the secondary market for debt.
That’s the ironic part of the fed’s actions. Because there are lots of people who use pay fixed swaps to hedge, a big decline in interest rates means that collateral payments require huge new mark to market losses and collateral requirements, with no offsetting gains on debt (you’re not allowed to mark your debt’s value down). That was a big factor in the GSE’s capital erosion.
Agreed.
I give you a better equation for today:
QE + accounting discount rates + pensions = clusterf*ck
Enjoy the law of unintended consequences. They never quite think these things through, do they?
I would love to see an analyst publish the mark to model after changes in interest rates, revised foreclosure rates based on the economy, price drops, and a decreased market for selling the paper to hedgers, the Chinese, etc. Did I miss anything else a good analyst would want to know?
I hope that their new and improved “models” work better than coal mine retention “dirt” dams
I believe FPSS was making the same point yesterday.
Yep, this is just a very specific case of a general principle about the derivatives market.
But there are gonna be much larger goose to fry soon. Bigger contracts, more disaster.
“I’m being flooded with calls about developers and REITs having problems with collateral calls on swaps…”
Tim, can you elaborate on what developers and REITs are using these instruments to hedge against? I’m unfamiliar… I’m guessing they are hedging against interest rate increases—are they over-doing it, or does their business really require it?
Floating rate debt swapped to a synthetic fixed rate is cheaper than fixed rate debt usually by greater than 50 basis points (i.e., 0.50%).
Here is an example. Developer needs fund to build an apartment project. Banker says I can give you 6.0% fixed rate loan or a 5.25% synthetic fixed rate loan. The synthetic fix works as follows, the Developer takes out variable rate loan tied to LIBOR, and enters an interest rate swap under which swap provider agrees to pay LIBOR back to the Developer in exchange for 5.25%. Loan and swap payments occur on the same day. The net effect of this is that the Developer is only paying 5.25% as the LIBOR it is paying under the variable rate note is cancelled by the LIBOR payment owed to the Developer under the swap. To enter into the swap, however, the Swap Provider requires Developer to enter into Credit Support Annex which provides (note that is a over-simplified, but the general concept is accurate) that if interests rate falls you have to post the present value of the difference between 5.25% and the current value of a LIBOR swap applied to the principal amount of the loan with the same terms under today’s conditions as “Exposure,” which equates to the termination payment due if the swap terminated early (note not all parties enter into a CSA and some have Thresholds for which they get a credit depending on their ratings). In essence, if that 5.25% swap would now be priced at 3.0%, the present value of 2.25% of the principal amount of the loan would have to be posted to collateralize the Developer’s obligation to pay the termination amount if the swap terminated early.
If, as is currently happening, downgrades are occuring (eliminating any applicable thresholds), and interest rates are falling, Developers and REITs have to post collateral they don’t have and could otherwise spend on profit producing enterprises. At the same time, the collateral they have posted to satisfy such collateralization obligations, such as mortgage notes, is also declining in value. The determination of Exposure and mark-to-market on the value of the collateral posted usually occurs daily. As we deleverage, each week, Developers under such programs are getting calls we need another $2,000,000, etc. posted, at the same time their business is in trouble. The lowering of rates accelerates the need to post more collateral and the downward spiral as collateral posting obligations eat up all available cash, choking the Developer until he dies.
Tim, thanks for that detailed post. What a disaster!
TIM, I would also like to thank you for that detailed post. That makes me wonder if the next bandaid from the FED is to extend loans directly to the developers?
““O” will give $145M to Ca to fix up vacant homes, and help FB’s. Why can’t DC fine the banks, if they don’t comply with a demand to keep their properties up. What am I missing here?”
Arnie beat O’Bama in arm wrestling, so O has to cough up.
Government run Houseing Maintenance. That will be efficient. Say $400.00 to mow the lawn
That would be the “no bid”contract price to Haliburton. I think we can do better now.
‘So, “O” will give $145M to Ca to fix up vacant homes, and help FB’s.’
My ear heard the NPR reporter say “$145 billion” this morning, which nearly caused me to wreck my car!
LMAO!!!! If you had wrecked your car, I hope you would have sued the government for damages. I’m sure you could have found a lawyer to take the case.
In another article they mention the $ will be used to fix up vacant homes, and to help FB’s.
“So these funds will be used to buy up and rehabilitate vacant and foreclosed homes and resell those homes with affordable mortgages — and to provide mortgage assistance and rehabilitation loans for low-income and middle-income families.”- Obama
OK, I found it. I need coffee. I wish they would let the market get back to equilibrium. I am getting sick of waiting to re-enter, but refuse to give $ away.
By spending money to make homes more “affordable” to a select group you make them more “unaffordable” to everyone else. I don’t understand why so many people can’t see this for what it is, an extremely ugly form of bigotry and self interest. Non-intervention is the only fair affordable housing program (except for maybe the most basic of shelter, e.g., a cot in a group home).
Most of the homes in urban Ohio are in unlivable neighborhoods. Fixing them up and giving them away for ZERO would attract only the the most desperate, unemployable crime ridden demographic. In reality, this same demographic is being pulled to new suburban vistas of bank owned (or, soon to be) homes to work their magic; wash, rinse, repeat. The new talk around here is to move out of the county entirely; back to the woods and the fields and the plow. Wasnt that an old 60’s song??
“The new talk around here is to move out of the county entirely; back to the woods and the fields and the plow. ”
I live in Ohio (between Cincy & Dayton) and I tried this. Problem is, Ohio income tax laws and the reality that local governments are owned by developers means that the sprawl will soon reach you, no matter where in Ohio you move to.
Notr until the next bubble they won’t.
Recent news reports in DC area is that the economy has finally stopped sprawl in its tracks (exageration, but there certainly has been an impact) and our bubble has barely started bursting.
Oh, I dunno. I’ve done the Detroit to Columbus drive a number of times and I love driving through all that farmland. One could probably spend a lifetime somewhere in there and never become a suburbanite.
LOL. Today Show is zeroing in on Countrywide and Mozillo. Mortgage fraud in Boston - whoddathunk?
Gad what a freak.
The woman in Boston has actually already lost her house, Today just missed the news.
She ran the physical training business out of her home, she never made a SINGLE BLOODY PAYMENT despite the Today show hyping the reason she lost her home is that her income on the stated income loan was 7300 when in reality it was 2300 (humm…white out anyone?)
Total puff piece. The woman is a fraudulent liar playing the race & ignorance card for her own benefit.
Maryland has risen to #5 in mortgage fraud among the 50 states (or 53 if you’re into the “new math”) in the union. Considering the hair-brained idiocy and greed I see every day, this makes sense to me. And we’re close to DC, a big-time fraud circus show!
So, SKF. Bought some at 105 (never expected that order to be filled so quickly, but I’m new at this game).
What do you esteemed HBBers think is a reasonable goal for selling it?
I’ve played SKF for awhile now, and it’s impossible to say. Most of my biggest SKF gains were just daytrading, sometimes as fast as a few hours or less.
You didn’t mention how much you bought, what your trade commissions are, and what your risk/reward ratio is. For me, I’m usually happy with a 5% score (after commissions) in a single day. Yesterday hit that within an hour (not SKF), and today looks to be the same.
I do wish for more volatility, at least it’d be a more fun experience.
I’ve been wrestling with the same question…then I saw on yahoo finance that Bernanke is set to give a speech today at noon EDT. So I’m gonna hold on to it, we may hit 150 by 1. lol
I am a huge fan of trialing stops to lock in profits or avoid disasters in these ETFs. I can’t always be checking an don-line so I’d rather have the bird in hand then the SKF in the bush when the government decides to do the next crazy thing.
Where/how do you determine your stops?
“What do you esteemed HBBers think is a reasonable goal for selling it?”
170 if you’re really patient.
Realtistically though, its a traders market, and you’ve got a nice little profit already. Use a trailing stop and let it run.
Words of wisdom regarding the trailing stops, thank you. No need to let excessive greed spoil the fun!
If only the financial wizards on Wall Street believed in that mantra.
Trailing stops actually entered into your system?
Yeah, that’s smart. Just give the market makers your profits when they take you out. You know they’re aware of those positions, right?
Ugh. If you’re going to day trade, get a freaking 3G mobile PDA. Set your own watch on the stock price on ANOTHER trading desk (not the one you trade with), and if it hits limit/gap prices are hit, sell off manually.
I would never set my own stop*, it’s a great way to lose out on some big gains.
*except if I am on an international flight.
Back off, I’m a scientist!
My earlier reply which got eaten by the internetz said it’s small potatoes, fun money, emphasis on the FUN. I’m learning, OK? So just calm down already.
Oh, well in that case, trailing stops are fine.
I just hate seeing people lose out on opportunities because they weren’t aware that entering ANYTHING into your trading desk app means someone can see it. It’s not just paranoia — from 1998 to 2003 I consulted with Bear Stearns and their trading desk app developer, and they constantly told their broker dealers to monitor those entries to earn more money. Sad, but both companies are gone.
I actually had a trailing stop entered on my flight back from CDG this week, and it sold — and bounced immediately back. No big deal, maybe a $400 profit shortfall, but imagine if I was positioned 5X that? Ouch.
AB,
I solved your anagrams yesterday. Are you going to make good on the reward you promised?
NOS I’ve replied FOUR times to this between yesterday and today but the freaking spam filter pumps me out, ugh.
Email me. It’s my published name without periods at my website in my URL. Let’s try this again. GRR.
NOS I have posted FIVE times now with various ways to get my email address. None of them made it through the spam filter.
F’ing stupid spam filter. Create log-ins for regulars, Ben.
Nice buy, newbie.
I owe it to the wisdom of HBBers, Blano. That, and beginner’s luck. As has been said before, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But it’s small change I’m playing with.
I liked your line…”Back off, I’m a scientist!’
I am gonna steal it
Me, too. Even though I’m not a scientist. But I enjoy lying, so I guess that’ll do.
It’s from Ghostbusters. One of my favorite movies ever.
Just following advice from HBBers, Blano. It’s small change, gotta start with baby steps. Or maybe stick with them.
Sigh. Comments are in a time warp today.
Growing stocks of unsold cars around the world (13 pictures)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/gallery/2009/jan/16/unsold-cars?picture=341883578
Too many houses, too many factories, too many cars.
RE: Too many houses, too many factories, too many cars.
You left somebody off the list.
Just started reading, Mike Ruppert’s, “Crossing the Rubicon, the Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil”.
Ugly, ugly…
According to Ruppert, seems about 4 billion people need to die off quick to balance the equation of resource equilibrium.
My close bud’s premise was 3 billion.
Ah, WTF is a billion people here or there, anyway.
If they’d knock about 15 grand off the price of a new one…I’d buy one.
“If they’d knock about 15 grand off the price of a new one…I’d buy one.”
+1 not that I need one, but if the price is right I’d jump on it.
My old one has 37k, 4 wheels and provides still provides me with fast, dry and adequate transportation. Plus I quit trying to dazzle the “cheerleaders” in JR HS and found out that…I don’t really didn’t have try to impress …anyone
well, my wife and I are expecting an addition to the family, and her mustang is just impractical.
I’m torn between new and used. Theoretically, a year or two old vehicle would be the best financially, but they seem to be somewhat difficult to come by. Who wants to sell a good, 2-year old vehicle?
Dealers buy lightly used rental / fleet vehicles a year old or less. I bought a 2008 Nissan Altima with 16,000 miles last summer. Dealer had bought it along with a bunch of others at auction.
Mikey, I have bought two commodity cars (high production volume, long provenance, no surprises, all the kinks worked out) used from Enterprise. Both were in fabulous shape, had less than 15K miles, and were dirt cheap compared to my weeks’ long research. If you’re willing to go to minivan-land, that is the kind of thing that you can get for a song.
What a waste of resources. What’s all this storage costing the car manufacturers?
With all the cars purchased forward (in advance of need-HELOC $), they didn’t see this coming? I guess they had to keep those assembly lines humming. I am waiting for the new technology in cars, like a plug in. Then I’ll replace my 14 yr old Volvo.
Cars are truly a waste of $.
I am waiting for a decent usable public transportation system. But unfortunately it probably won’t happen in my lifetime (or in Texas).
Cars are a waste of $ and driving is a waste of time (and a major source of stress). I like to read while getting from point A to point B, not worry about whether the moron in the giant pickup truck is going to run me off the road.
Public transportation is a waste of time, a HUGE burden on the environment, and creates poverty instead of helping it.
Consider this: employees want higher wages, employers want lower wages. Employers need to attract employees who will work for them, which for lower paying jobs means people who can get to their business location. If there is public transportation, the poor can take a “cheap” subsidized ride for over an hour to get there. If there isn’t, they either have to live closer ($$$) or drive ($$$). If they can’t afford either, they won’t work there. This means employers have a burden to PAY MORE to get them there by any means possible. Public transportation = lower wages.
Consider this: public transportation is run by public bureaucrats who love new administration buildings and are under no pressure to keep the thermostat in these buildings low. My company has worked on 4 public works projects in a decade, and they’re ALL huge money pits of waste. How many people figure how much it costs to build, maintain, and air condition/heat the administrative centers of public transportation departments? Public transportation = bad for environment.
Consider this: public transportation is a HUGE loss of a person’s time who is unfamiliar with what their time costs them. Waiting for the bus/train, dealing with transfer tickets, having to walk from the final station to their destination. The system doesn’t work. In the FEW situations where a private company started providing cheap transportation, it was ALWAYS cheaper than the public one, and usually brought the worker to their end point directly. Public transportation = inefficient.
Don’t get me started on seeing 3 empty buses in a row holding up private traffic either.
Dada,
Are you high?
I like this analogy….
I have thought about it this way. I can get from point a to point b in my car in as straight and efficient fashion as possible, and my car, when at point b, is shut off, and NOT polluting…
If I were to take Public transportation, I would have to take 2 trains, and 2 buses… Now, what public transportation advocates fail to see, is that when the train is heading full into the jobs, it has to first head EMPTY out to pick up the passengers, thereby doubling fuel consumption.
While my car is parked and shut off, this same train has to continue to provide service, even though it is empty, yet it still costs money to run in the form of conductors, ticket salesmen, switch track operations, etc…
And lets not get started on buses in circular routes that are barely used… But run every 15 minutes or so… What a load of pollution into the environment!
I heard that a long, long time ago in a … that trolleys worked.
Alas, the PTB decided this was not to be.
If waste is to be considered, let’s take into account the cost of roads, their maintenance ahhh OH and YES, Urban sprawl, you know something that’s been like mentioned here a gazilion times….
Why people don’t see a car as an expense and not an asset is beyond me. A car is purely functional yet people personalize them and even take pictures with them. A toilet is similarly functional, and much more important, but no one takes pictures with them.
Ha, ha license fees, insurance, and gas are all going up too. I keep my bike thank you, too much opportunity out there to waste my dough on car.
The Industry has done a great job of taking out the “point A to point B” mentality of vehicles, and making a it lifestyle/status symbol. I’ll stick with my bike as much as I can too.
BTW, my toilet is a Gerber Ultra Flush 21-312 with pressure assist. I upgraded the holding tank insulation and decked it out with an oak seat. I’ll upload some pictures on google and post a link when I get a chance.
Sorry, I take pictures of my toilet. I even have a picture of me sitting on it.
I consider the flushable toilet to be the greatest invention in the history of healthcare.
Don’t believe me? Go look at the palace at Versailles and see what the kings and queens did before it!
RE: I consider the flushable toilet to be the greatest invention in the history of healthcare.
Crane’s summer estate is just down the road.
http://www.thetrustees.org/pages/287_castle_hill.cfm
He sure reaped the benefits!
Can’t begrudge him a thing.
Sorry, I take pictures of my toilet.
But do you take pictures FROM your toilet? That would special!
The flush toilet IS the most important invention in human hygiene.
Truly amazing pictures, and this one was quite close to home:
“7 / 13
Newly imported cars fill the 150-acre site at the Toyota distribution centre in Long Beach, California”
European Industrial Output Plunges by Most on Record (Update2)
March 20 (Bloomberg) — European industrial production dropped by the most on record in January as the deepest global recession in more than six decades forced companies to cut output and curb investments.
Production in the euro region fell 17.3 percent from the year-earlier month, the biggest decline since the data series began in 1986, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. The January plunge exceeded the 15.5 percent drop forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey. From the previous month, output fell 3.5 percent.
European manufacturers are cutting production, scrapping investments and firing workers as the worsening slump curtails orders for products from eyeglasses to automobiles. ThyssenKrupp AG, Germany’s largest steelmaker, yesterday said it may eliminate more than 3,000 jobs after demand for the metal plunged.
“The dreadful industrial-production figures for January confirm that the euro-zone recession is deepening rapidly,” said Martin van Vliet, senior economist at ING Bank in Amsterdam. “Further macroeconomic stimulus is urgently required.”
EU leaders meeting in Brussels rejected charges that they aren’t doing enough to counter the worldwide recession. “Good progress” is being made in implementing stimulus plans already pledged, according to the draft of a communiqué to be issued after the summit ends this afternoon.
The euro-area economy will contract 3.2 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund forecast yesterday, worse than the 2 percent slump it projected in January.
Commercial/multifamily debt hits $3.5 trillion…
Money continued to flow into the commercial/multifamily sectors during 2008, with commercial banks holding the largest share of mortgages – at 44 percent of the $3.5 trillion year-end total, according to data released by the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The fourth quarter commercial/multifamily mortgage total included an increase of $23 billion, up 0.7 of a percent from the third quarter, while multifamily mortgage debt alone grew to $900 billion, an increase of $5.4 billion, or 0.6 of a percent, from the third quarter.
Year-over-year, commercial/multifamily mortgages increased by $166 billion, up 5 percent from the end of 2007.
“Counter to what many expected, investors increased their holdings of commercial and multifamily mortgages during the fourth quarter,” said Jamie Woodwell, the MBA’s VP of commercial real estate research, in a statement.
The Washington, D.C.-based trade association comprising more than 2,400 companies involved in real estate finance, analyzed Federal Reserve Board “flow of funds” data to compile the report.
Commercial banks, thrift institutions and life insurance companies, along with government sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, extended additional credit during 2008, lending more in new commercial and multifamily mortgages collectively than they saw paid off or paid down on existing loans.
The split between owner-occupied versus income properties was fairly even among the top 10 commercial (non-multifamily) lenders, with 48 percent owner-occupied properties and 52 percent being income property loans.
I thought credit was supposed to have frozen up?
(scratches head)
P.S. - what news source are you quoting?
Trying to find the link, it ran in the Atlanta paper yesterday.
BTW this coincides exactly with what I was talking about yesterday, and what I’ve been arguing with various people about all along. Credit is “frozen” only in relation to recent history - the bubble period. Relative to normal credit markets of the past, it’s not frozen.
For instance w/regards to commercial mortgages - the 2008 Q4 rate was $35.5 Billion. That’s way lower than the previous few years, where borrowing rates were up in the $250B - $280B range.
But guess what? Those were the bubble years. Before 1997 commercial mortgage was way below $35 Billion, in fact was negative for a while. It typically ebbs and flows along with the business cycles - it peaked at $86B in 1988 before the early-90’s recession. Before that the highest peak was only $18.7 Billion in 1977.
“Credit is “frozen” only in relation to recent history - the bubble period. Relative to normal credit markets of the past, it’s not frozen”.
That’s about it in a nut shell! I have yet to run up on anyone I know that is having any trouble borrowing if needed.
“P.S. - what news source are you quoting?”
Link:
http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2009/03/16/daily57.html
San Diego People:
On Thursday, April 2nd there’s going to be a big auction at the convention center with supposedly 182 homes going on the block (about 25% already seem to be pulled. Registration begins at 5pm and the auction itself at 6:30.
http://www.auction.com/auction-details.php?auctionID=H-071#; Click on the April 2 date for a list of the houses being sold that day.
I’m going to attend (not close to considering buying yet) to get an idea of what the emotion is out there and how the whole auction process works. Does anyone want to attend and maybe do dinner somewhere downtown prior?
I plan on attending a couple open houses this weekend to see how a specific property shows and what the final price is as opposed to the opening bid. It should be an educational experience to say the least.
If you’re interested e-mail me at sd.re.b at hotmail dot com.
I’d join you, but I will be out of town. Keep me posted on similar opportunities in the future.
“I’m going to attend (not close to considering buying yet) to get an idea of what the emotion is out there and how the whole auction process works.”
I’ve never been to a REDC auction, but the footage from one Chicago auction indicated the men were overdressed, the women were underdressed, and the audience looked disinterested.
Please post on your own experience - I think a lot of HBBers will be interested in hearing about it.
Now the “work” done in Washington, DC is defined as “how much money did they spend or commit, that doesn’t even exist?”
“Today we spend a trillion, next year a quadrillion - we are the mighty defict spenders, no one can stop us!”
I have in a frame in my office some 20 and 50 million Mark notes from Germany in 1923.
If you don’t think hyperinflation and economic depression can exist at the same time, watch carefully over the next few years.
It is also possible to die of thirst in the middle of the ocean, as ironic as that might seem to a pre-schooler.
“It is also possible to die of thirst in the middle of the ocean, as ironic as that might seem to a pre-schooler.”
That brings about a good analogy. The Fed is pouring tons and tons of fresh water into that ocean, but it’s not doing any good - why? It’s mixing with the already-toxic salt water, and thus just adding to the general pool of toxic water.
What’s needed isn’t to add fresh water to the existing ocean - what’s needed is a brand new ocean. A new ocean (if such a thing could exist) would actually not be salty - it takes millenia of buildup from minute salt levels from rivers.
Good morning crew, I’m allowing myself my “once per week” internet rumination (in an effort to stay sane).
Darrell’s comments a few weeks back about Kubler Ross being a daily, iterative process resonated with me. This week has been no exception. I’m not surprised at the circus all of this his become, and I cycle through all the emotions on a daily basis.
If anyone has words of encouragement, I’d appreciate it. My littleman is keeping me in check, otherwise I think I’d be wandering around the streets mumbling to myself, throwing wine bottles (I’m a refined drunk) until getting tased.
Don’t tase me bro!
Deep breaths. Lots of them. And keep repeating to yourself “this too shall pass.”
Yes, it may pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass. Pickling your liver won’t help it pass any faster. And when the darkness starts to take over hug the little man (a lot!), be glad your wife didn’t just die because she fell over on a bunny slope, and remind yourself that health is wealth.
Pollyanna
Your alive, you have your health, you have family and friends that love you very much.
Get out among people. Go sit somewhere with your littleman and listen to the laughter of kids.
Tell yourself how blessed and lucky I am to be alive.
This too will pass, and at the end of it (or hopefully sooner), you will realize you are a bright young man with a beautiful family and the resourcefulness to stay afloat in a sea of financial turmoil.
Muggy,
I recommend digging in dirt and tending plants. Moving stones and bricks around the landscape is good too.
If you don’t want to work the yard of a place you don’t own, plant a square foot gardening bed or a mini-garden in a washtub, set up one of those hanging tomato growing devices, or at least hang up a freesia and tend it.
Littleman would probably like a little garden too.
One good thing has come out of US misguided FP in the ME of the last few years. I have, this spring, finished digging out the grass in my ENTIRE front yard and replaced it with native plants and ground covers, with stone and brick borders.
When I had grass, I didn’t tend it because I don’t care for grass lawns and my yard always looked crummy. Now it’s beautiful, especially this season when everything’s growing and blooming. But the process was less about transforming my landscape and more about going out and digging and making regular visits to a really beautiful organic nursery - just trying to keep my sanity.
Now it’s raised bed veggie garden in back, and I’ll probably start digging up grass and installing some native plant beds back there too. There’s enough misguided mess going on to keep me busy for the next few years…
I also recommend installing bird feeders, bird houses, and bird baths, and maintaining them. Littleman would probably enjoy that too.
I’m not trying to sound all “Better Homes and Gardens-ey.” I guess it’s that fostering and appreciating life and beauty in my immediate surroundings has helped me “maintain” during these difficult times.
Absolutely super advice, hippy. I HAVE to have a garden. The inside of my head itches if I don’t.
Yeah, Muggy! Follow this advice, and hip is right about mini-Muggy’s probably love of gardening, too. Think of all the mud and worms he can eat! Vitamins for a growing lad!
Think of all the mud and worms he can eat! Vitamins for a growing lad!
There’s been research recently that suggests we hippies have been right all along — mud & worm pie (in moderation, of course) is good for a lil’ human critter’s immune system.
Is that why YOUR little boy looks so perky and darlin’, ET? And does his mom share your enthusiasm for worms and mud?
Ah, that reminds me. My little brother used to like to eat dead flies off the windowsill in the greenhouse. He thought they were deliciously crispy. Little tasty black snacks. When he was discovered and thoroughly rebuked he secretly kept on doing it, just did it on the sly. We learned this years later.
And look at him! A great big sturdy specimen! A great big sturdy specimen covered all over with scars and dents. I wonder if the flies are to blame? I’d like to think so.
“Ah, that reminds me. My little brother used to like to eat dead flies off the windowsill in the greenhouse. He thought they were deliciously crispy. Little tasty black snacks. When he was discovered and thoroughly rebuked he secretly kept on doing it, just did it on the sly. We learned this years later.”
Are you sure you’re not a frog? I mean we have a duck on here, who at least is open and honest about his feathered condition, so why not a frog? It would explain so much - from all the kissing and licking of frogs you do to your fascination with wallowing in the dirt and lying in the drizzle. And let’s face it; every frog with siblings has siblings that eat flies. Granted most prefer them alive and kicking as they are swallowed but perhaps your brother is a gourmet frog who needs a change in texture on occasion to satisfy his palate.
Yes, the more I think about it the more sense it makes.
Good morning crew, I’m allowing myself my “once per week” internet rumination (in an effort to stay sane).
See, once a week internet would make me LESS sane.
Anyway, San Diego RE bear, SanFranGal, and PB all gave great advice. +100 guys.
Also, Muggy, I say you need to go hang out in the woods, by yourself, or the beach just for a little bit. But an unhurried little bit, maybe with a blanket and a beer, (just 1 or 2, NOT cases of beer, or wine, since you’s so elegant-like) and just stare at trees. Get away from the stupid bald monkeys that can be so very irritating.
That’ll soothe ya.
once a week internet would make me LESS sane
No kidding. My inlaws want to do a family vacation so it looks like we’re going to FLA in late May. FIL sent out a spreadsheet with different attributes for a place to stay and we were supposed to place a value (to indicate importance) of 1-5 (where 1 is not important and 5 is very important). Mine looked like this:
On the beach: 1
Age of property: 1
Price: 5
resort: 1
condo: 1
home: 1
pet friendly: 1
pool: 1
#BR/BR: 1
location (city): 1
wi-fi: 5
We can all crowd into a 2 room shack 50 miles from the beach for all I care. As long as it got wifi and its cheap.
FIL sent out a spreadsheet with different attributes for a place to stay and we were supposed to place a value (to indicate importance) of 1-5 (where 1 is not important and 5 is very important).
Wow. This is a real spreadsheet? And he’s gonna actually collate them and industriously add up the results instead of drawing a little picture of a leprechaun riding a bunny on one of the pages, and then just use the whole lot as kindling for a fire?
See, family vacation with your FIL would make me so incredibly much less sane as to, as to…I don’t know. Prolly my head would asplode, and splatter nutty pink goodness all over the interior of the appropriately decorated cabin. +1.
So, you know what? If yer really going to be in a cabin with a FIL who produces spreadsheets like this, then I vow to be here for you, in late May, to talk to you down from killin’ everyone.
*leans over and solemnly circles the date on the calendar *
Seriously! That is too much even for me.
My criterion: is it nice enough? ok, let’s go.
It’s worked out perfectly so far.
It’s a real spreadsheet. I had to add wifi. To be kind, he’s trying to be thoughtful of everyone. It’s a big improvement from the days when they (my wifes parents) would try to set her up on days with other people.
We get along fine for the most part, but they do drive me a little nutty. A full week together will probably try my patience.
But I’ll have internet, some (a thirty pack or 3) of Anheuser’s finest and a big (BIG, like the half-gallon size) bottle of makers to keep me company.
Plus I plan to be studying for the cpa exam…so I’ll have a good excuse to seclude myself any time I want.
But I’ll have internet, some (a thirty pack or 3) of Anheuser’s finest and a big (BIG, like the half-gallon size) bottle of makers to keep me company…(and) I’ll have a good excuse to seclude myself any time I want.
Oh, well, then. You’ll be fine.
“Anheuser’s finest…”
Anheuser has a “finest?” If they do, then why don’t they market and distribute it?
That’s awesome. I don’t do family vacations anymore — vacation is to get away from family. I also stopped doing significant “going with someone else” vacations.
I have no problem going on vacation myself at the same time as others, but I make it very clear that it is MY vacation. I work hard and I deserve some peace.
One of my favorite things to do on vacation is to meet new people. Why would I want to seclude myself in my own clique when there are so many interesting folks out there?
For me, price is less important than location: I like to be able to walk only a block or two to anything I might need.
“..FIL sent out a spreadsheet with different attributes…”
I’d just “amend” it thus:
local Dive Bar = 5+
Whatever happens afterwords…I can adjust to…if I make it back.
On the beach:
Age of property:
Price:
resort:
condo:
home:
pet friendly:
pool:
#BR/BR:
location (city):
wi-fi:
Muggy dude, you’re in Florida…..keep walking those sandy beaches until the perma-smile returns. I’d love to be down there.
Rent the movie “Marley and Me” and watch it a few times this weekend. (P.S. Like I assume your little boy was, I was born on the Florida coast myself…)
Muggy: Saw your post yesterday; couldn’t respond because I was at work. I don’t post often, but I check in regularly enough to have seen at least two pix of your little boy. I think he’s great. Take this for what it’s worth.
I have three boys of my own. Have you ever heard the saying, “Be careful how you act, because you’ll eventually become the person you act like you are.” Something like that. Well, act normal, even if you are not– especially if you are not. You gotta do it for the little guy. I did it for my guys; they think I’m a regular Ward Cleaver. This tack probably isn’t for everyone; some people have to be authentic all the time. I don’t. I wear masks all the time and know myself well enough to know I do. Wearing masks ain’t all that bad, so long as you know it. You don’t have to kid yourself, but there’s something to be said for kidding others. Hope this makes sense; again, take it for what it’s worth.
Hang in there.
Jimbo
Fed move helps homeowners but problems remain…
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Borrowers applied for home mortgages in droves on Thursday, a day after the Federal Reserve pledged to buy up more than $1 trillion in bonds, but even historically low interest rates cannot cure the U.S. housing slump.
The Fed’s stunning move helped to slash 30-year mortgage rates to near 4-3/4 percent from over 5-1/4 percent early Wednesday and from 6.0 percent just four months ago, spawning a race by home owners to cut their monthly home loan payments.
But with unemployment at a 25-year high, a record stockpile of unsold homes, and rigid lending standards still in place, a lasting housing recovery remains a long way off, industry experts said.
“It’s been insane today. A lot of borrowers locking in between 4 1/2 and 4 7/8 percent, primarily refinancings,” said Bob Moulton, president of Americana Mortgage Group in Manhasset, New York. “This is what we’ve all be waiting for.”
Some sizable barriers temper this optimism, though.
“Until you have all those foreclosures out of the system, I don’t think you’re going to see the housing turnaround happen,” Moulton said. “It’s a big backlog. This will help, but we still have a ways to go.”
One in every 440 U.S. households with loans got at least one foreclosure filing in February, up 30 percent from a year earlier, despite various state and corporate moratoriums, according to RealtyTrac.
American home prices have toppled more than 26 percent since their peak nearly three years ago, according to Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller indexes.
I know lots of people refi-ing. I did it myself two months ago. That’s not going to help the housing market jack-squat.
Long term it’s only going to make things way worse.
- It’s borrowing from future lending, since interest rates can’t possibly go significantly lower.
- It’s locking people in their current homes, who won’t be willing to give up a low rate in order to move later.
- It’s reducing the future revenue of the banks, who make money on these spreads.
In short it’s a lose-lose-lose game the Fed’s playing. I’ve never seen such incredible disregard for the future in order to try to stem bleeding in the short term.
It’s locking people in their current homes
This is an unmitigated disaster for the vast majority of people (statistically) because you are now locked to that region’s economic situation.
And if you’re on a sinking ship, you’re going down.
Yep. Along those lines - here’s an article from yesterday showing how migration in the U.S. has dropped sharply. On the surface one would think that with rising unemployment there would be *more* migration - but not so since so many people are tied to their homes.
WSJ - U.S. Migration Falls Sharply
Good/interesting article, Thanks!
This warms my heart! It means more opportunities for contract engineers (1099’s and W2s). Have car, suitcase, laptop computer. will travel to my next gig even if it’s on the opposite coast and be ready to start within a week! I did exactly that in 2002. Motorola had massive layoffs and most Phoenix engineers chose to be unemployed 5 months instead of take a job on the east coast. They were locked into their houses, kids locked into schools, spouses locked into jobs.
For most people, it will be like the point after the Titanic struck the iceberg when the less well-off realized there were only enough life rafts for the wealthy on board.
Hey, maybe they can have “Sanctuary Districts” for everyone once the jobs vanish and nobody can afford to live without the dole…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine)
Gawd I miss that show. DS9 was my favorite Star Trek series.
This is an unmitigated disaster for the vast majority of people (statistically) because you are now locked to that region’s economic situation
This is SO true — it is also why I have generally never bought property more than 1X annual income. When it comes to living assets, I’m a hoarder and make sure a place is cash-flow positive even if I’m going to be living in it. But I also have no problem moving on a whim if there’s economic reasons to go.
The past 7 years has been horrid because I have been unable/unwilling to buy property in cities with economic factors that would entice me to move. I should have just rented, but I have an internal disgust with the idea. Instead I’ve travel-worked, passing on the high cost of hotels and flights to my clients.
If the market wasn’t messed with by the Fed, Congress, and the Banksters, guys like me would be setting up shop in more cities, employing/contracting more folk, and pushing up the economy in a realistic fashion instead of the unrealistic one. It’s like the corporateurs who are still paying for F fare tickets on airlines when their company’s stock is losing 30% per annum. No concept of where to spend money wisely. Then again, most corporateurs are not entrepreneurs but Yale-bred intellectuals who “deserve” to fly full fare first class 3X per week.
Agreed. In the future inflation is going to be a problem. Tell me how people can take on such debt when interest rates rise 3 % points…
It’s not good planning.
My counter plan is to increase or keep my share of all the extra dollars the same. Does anyone have a better plan?
I guess that means housing prices will just have to fall further when the inevitable interest rate increases occur, doesn’t it?
I understand that short to intermediate term, people need to relocate for economic opportunity. But maybe, just maybe, if it remains too difficult to move for too many, communities might need to figure out how to pay more attention to real economic development. Staying put and being rooted isn’t a bad thing, it’s actually a good thing.
I’d bet that this is what will happen:
- Interest rates stay low for a loooonng time, trying to re-inflate the bubble.
- It doesn’t work. Prices flatten eventually, and probably even continue to rise, but are still down relative to inflation.
- Inflation starts *really* getting out of control.
- The PTB are faced with two choices: A. raise rates to battle inflation, or B. keep rates low and battle pitchforks
- The PTB decide to give up on the private housing market. Rates are raised to combat inflation, making private housing unaffordable once again.
- However - to offset that what do they offer? Socialized housing. I’m not talking subsidized “affordable housing” or section 8’s like we have today, I’m talking full-on government-owned housing.
- Where does the government get this housing? Foreclosures that happened during the bust primarily, for single-family houses. The rest is dorm-style government-built.
You watch.
I’ve felt since the beginning (when I became aware of the bubble - about 3 years ago) that one of the outcomes of this bubble is going to be a massive increase in socialized housing. It hasn’t happened yet (that I’m aware) - but give it a couple more years and I’ll bet we’ll start to hear more and more about it.
I’d bet you’re probably not far off the mark with your projections. I do think the end result, no matter what, is continuing downward pressure on the price of homes.
At least as far out as this 50+YO cares. I plan to settle somewhere for good in the next 3-5 years as things bottom out, and then stay put until I’m no longer able.
I don’t know that we’ll need any special “socialized housing” programs. All that has to happen is for the FHA (and/or Freddie/Fannie), in perpetuity, to continue to offer little-or-no-down loans and artificially low interest rates, to people who clearly can’t afford the payments and will default. Then, the statutes and regs will be constructed so that it will be next to impossible to evict the deadbeats, but it won’t matter, since Uncle Sam is picking up the tab.
The end result is the same as intitiating some program that would be hugely controversial by definition. And I’m hearing that, at least with regards to lax FHA loan standards, this is already happening.
Dutch bubble update:
the Dutch Kadaster, the official registry of homeprices (dating back to the 18th century or so), in february 2009 recorded the first official decline in homeprices after starting to track national homeprices in 1995. Probably it is the first decline since 1980 (the last Dutch housing crash). They say the Dutch housingmarket has topped, but it is only a small decline at -0.5% yoy.
Sales activity increased slightly from the record lows in january, probably as a result of strongly declining mortgage rates. Adjustable rate loans are at just 2.25% here now, and very popular with Dutch homebuyers - probably over 70% of all mortgages. As mentioned earlier this week, the Dutch have the highest amount of mortgage debt relative to GDP in the world and the level is probably still increasing.
It remains to be seen if the price decline will stick. Realtors organisation NVM (who don’t track all home sales, but only about 70% of total volume) registered some minor price declines in 4th quarter 2008, but those were followed by another mild upswing.
Henry Hazlitt was a leading editorialist for the New York Times from 1934 until 1946. He closely covered the Keynesian-inspired Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944. He wrote that the attempt to fix exchange rates and peg world currencies to the dollar which in turn was fixed to gold would not and could not last..
Hazlitt saw that this was not a real gold standard but a complete fake. It did not offer convertibility in a manner that would instill monetary discipline. It trusted governments to maintain a sound money policy with no means of guaranteeing that they would do so. He said, then, that this was not a viable system, and predicted its complete breakdown in time.
Instead, he urged that every country be responsible for the soundness of its own currency. Only that system would produce stability of over time.
He said that the result of trusting governments and tying their fates together would be inflation and the collapse of what remained of sound money.
It’s hard to imagine that such truth-telling thoughts on monetary systems would have appeared as New York Times editorials – not op-eds but the actual editorial position of the paper itself
Sadly, it didn’t last. Tremendous pressure was applied to the New York Times to stop opposing the agreement. Hazlitt would not give in, and kept writing and calling it as he saw it. No one could refute him. In the end, of course, he was pushed out, and the paper reversed its stance.
It’s not enough to be right. You must get the timing right too. Hazlitt was too early.
The absurd system concluded for a long time with a mega-boom in the 60’s followed by the crash, and exiting the gold standard in 1971.
Unfortunately (for them), you can only go off the gold standard once.
Hence, the current fiasco.
You might want to credit Jeffrey Tucker and mises dot org for this spiel.
Tucker is an anarcho-capitalist such as I, and we both abhor copyright. Hence, no need for attribution.
Although I also recognized it immediately as his.
Long-term (say, within the next 20 years) my wife and would like a cabin in the mountains along the mogollan rim. This is based primarily on how much we enjoyed going up to Summerhaven on Mt. Lemmon. We had some friends in Tucson that bought some land in Colorado like 20 years and over a period of years they had built a place to which they escaped the summer heat for a few months every year. Someday in the indefinite future we’d like to do that too.
Anyway, I noticed Summerhaven seems to be in a bubble of its own. I remember looking at a really nice place up there in the late 90s that was around 200k. I was a broke rookie at that time though, and 200k was actually pretty expensive. The fires hit just before the bubble peaked. After the fires I noticed nobody built modest little places, it’s all huge $700,000 places now. Is it like this in all the mountain towns?
I’ve been watching the AZ craigslist listings and am seeing a fair number of cabins (and.or raw land) show up (especially on the PHX board) but they’re either really expensive or wayyyyy out there. I like to think that as Phoenix implodes people will start dumping niceities like their weekend cabins. Anyone have any contact with this scene? Do you see increased volume of land/cabins in Summerhaven, Lakeside, Pinetop, Payson, or Flagstaff showing up on the market? Going into foreclosure or being dumped at firesale [hah!] prices?
maybe people are putting more value on remote areas now that the sh** is starting to hit the fan?
Summer haven is nice I never bothered to check prices though. I have notice many homes and foreclosures in Payson a few months ago when I was there. Ask Ben he lives in Flagstaff AZ I think its crashing there too.
Speaking as a full-timer in the high desert cowboy country (about 60 miles from Flagstaff), I’d say that the number of for-sale signs on the rural acreage out here has exploded. Nothing is selling, of course. Lots of wishing prices, though, as the brokeass sellers keep looking for that last “greater fool”.
We rarely get the weekenders from Phoenix visiting their parcels anymore. It feels like we are the lone caretakers of some vast game preserve. A vehicle passing on the road is a red alert event.
Think of a spinning dryer with tumbling articles of clothing. The clothes are markets. Heat is passion for things - demand. The spinning barrel is credit-money. The more heat there is the faster the barrel turns and the faster the barrel turns the more heat there is.
Right now the barrel is barely spinning and there is little heat; as a result, the clothes have fallen near the bottom 1/2 of the barrel. In an attempt to create heat, the fed is spinning the barrel but at a much slower rate than normal. If it didn’t spin the barrel at all, the clothes would fall further, probably below 1/3 of the barrel.
The fed can spin all it wants, but until our passion for things returns, markets will remain soggy.
I prefer the swirly twirl analogy..
The water is the exploding inventory of houses….. The turds? Why FB’s and realturds of course!
:exeter pushes handle down for the Royal Flush.
The passion is still there, the means are not. (amongst typical consumers)
It would seem that bottom will be when the passion finally dies.
I like that analogy. And another part of it could be, say, for instance, were you leave a pocket full of gold-covered chocolate coins from St. Patrick’s Day in your pants pocket by accident. What part of the analogy is that? And once I almost washed a pet rat. It got out and decided it wanted a nap in the laundry basket. I still shudder to think of it…
Oh, and what’s the dryer sheet represent? The fragile hopes of idiot investors?
Yes, I’m taken with this analogy, for sure!
a pet rat?
That’s what caught your attention?
Mine were the gold-covered chocolate coins. Was it real gold (it’s edible!) and dark chocolate?
Also, the fragile dryer tissue. That piece of symbolism went far too.
“Also, the fragile dryer tissue. That piece of symbolism went far too.”
Too far??? That was my favorite part of the analogy! The image of idiot-investor hopes tumbling, tumbling, smacked from the left, smacked from the right, throw up and down and round and round—-it’s perfect!
Freshly minted Knife-catchers added to the soggy mix.
Too far???
Not “too far”, “far too” as in “it went far as well.” That was praise.
See, those close-reading skills they may or may not have taught you in English class are really necessary!
Too far??? That was my favorite part of the analogy! The image of idiot-investor hopes tumbling, tumbling, smacked from the left, smacked from the right, throw up and down and round and round—-it’s perfect!
Yeah! And it’s ‘Meadow Fresh’ scented investor hopes, too!
Mine were the gold-covered chocolate coins. Was it real gold (it’s edible!) and dark chocolate?
Nope, just regular chocolate gold-foil covered coins, from World Market. Luckily only a few of them. Boy, was I mad. It could have been worse. It could have been a very clean, fluffy, and ‘meadow-scented’ dead rat.
And I do know that gold is edible! And of course you would know that. I think it’s a tremendous thing. In the past, when Alad would really get going and other posters would jump in and say ‘You can’t eat gold’. Well, sure you can. It just doesn’t have too many calories, for instance. Oh, yeah, but I always intended to tell the story, which I will now tell, of how a couple years ago I had a good idea and got some gold foil (real gold) from the craft store, incredibly thin sheetlets and took some pretty Fuji apples and used a thin wash of lemon jell-o painted on the apples with a pastry brush, and then carefully applied the gold foil to the apples. Golden apples! The apple showed through in patches here and there. Wow, they were so pretty, you can’t even believe!
It was from, you know, the Yeats poem, which has the lines:
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among the dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
I gave them as gifts, along with a pretty card with the poem printed on it. One of my most pleasing efforts, if I must modestly say so myself.
Anybody got an aspirin?
You can get edible gold and silver in fancier Indian grocery stores. It’s called: varak.
You kinda have to apply it on the object and peel off the wax paper (like a sticker.) You get one shot only. You snooze, you lose.
I read once that W B Yeats was ass-deep into mysticism and the occult.
Could HE have conjoured up our Olygal
Funny, I didn’t know (or at least didn’t remember) the Yeats poem. “Golden Apples of the Sun” always makes me think of the Ray Bradbury story of the same title.
read once that W B Yeats was ass-deep into mysticism and the occult.
Could HE have conjoured up our Olygal?
Nope. My idjit parents just fornicated. Oh, wait, it’s not fornication, if’n you do it after you get married for Time and All Eternity* in the Mormon temple.
*Or else 12 extremely rough years, in my mom’s case. Almost an Eternity, from MY point of view…
Anyway, I quite appreciate your thought. It makes me feel mystical and elfy like and stuff.
*pats own fluffy head in a mystical and approving fashion *
Say, where’d YOU come from, anyhow, mikey?
So you believe nobody is buying because they don’t want to (don’t have the passion) as opposed to inability to get credit to buy?
After getting whacked, there is no eagerness to pay yesteryear’s prices for houses. Likewise, there is no eagerness to lend to people getting whacked.
Well said. Discussion here a few years ago on indicators market has bottomed: bank loans begin exceeding comps.
California government is really working hard to stimulate the economy.
.25 percent income tax rate increase: Check
1 percent sales tax increase: Check
24.4 percent Workers Comp increase: Check
100% increase on LCD display recycle fees: check
Makes me want to run out and buy a house so I can be anchored down here!
Oops, CA sales tax increase = 1 percentage point, not 1 percent.
Equals 12.9% increase in our county.
At least the weather is nice.
BWAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Well it depends on what part of the state you live in FPSS. Right now it’s foggy with some wind. Some other parts of the Bay Area will get to the high 70s.
True, true.
SF is perenially cold. I have to shop for a sweater every time I go there. I ALWAYS forget how cold it gets there even in summer.
In fact, since I come there often, I have quite the collection of sweaters and coats bought in SF.
You think I would’ve learnt by now but nooooooooooooo!!!
Right now it’s foggy with some wind. Some other parts of the Bay Area will get to the high 70s.
Whenever I visit the Bay Area, I’m amazed by all the microclimates.
Even within San Fran, it seems like the temperature and sunshine levels vary neighborhood by neighborhood. Once you cross a bridge to Marin or East Bay, it’s an entirely new ballgame. It’s something I like about the area a lot, really, because it helps compensate for the lack of seasons.
Every morning I would walk down a steep set of blocks in my friend’s house in SF.
The house was freezin’ cold and flooded with fog. Four blocks down (where the coffee-shop) was, it was bright, sunny and hot.
Jacket on, jacket off; jacket on, jacket off.
“The coldest winter I ever experienced was summer in San Franciso.”
- Samuel Clemens
Speaking of California problems - they’re trying to unload San Quentin prison for $2 Billion. Problem is there are still 5,200 inmates in there, plus it has CA’s only gas chamber. So if they want to sell it (it’s prime waterfront overlooking the city - truly it is an awesome location), they’ll have to build a new prison. Why do I get the feeling the new prison wouldn’t cost much less than $2 Billion, once you include the logistics of moving everyone etc.?
Well, don’t you know?
There are a lot of “millionaires” just wanting to buy RE.
LOL
Yeah. For reference - San Quentin is 432 acres. So we’re talking about $5 Million per acre; not to mention tear-down costs (not cheap for a prison I’m sure; it ain’t no old barn).
Sorry but no way Ar-nay. It’s nice property - but not *that* nice, especially given the state of the market. That’s not an area that you can build hi-rise condos either, which would be about the only way to justify paying that much for land.
(P.S. - my long division coming along?
)
Your long division is doing just fine. See, I’m full of good ideas like that?!?
I do me my orders-of-magnitude real quick, feed it through my BS-meter and voilà! 99% of the time you don’t even need to look up “real” data!
Whenever I visit the Bay Area, I’m amazed by all the microclimates.
Even within San Fran, it seems like the temperature and sunshine levels vary neighborhood by neighborhood.
It’s like that here, too. It’s all the water, messing up predictability. I’ll be at home and wisely put on an anorak, ’cause it’s freakin’ raining sideways, then drive a few miles down to the Island Market and get outt’n my car and everyone’s running around in shorts, with their pale hairy legs winking in the bright sun. Well, bright by PNW standards, anyhow…
California isn’t the only state having trouble allocating federal money. Alaska government is being stymied by Stupah Payling, who wants to reject stimulus funds because “we won’t be able to complete the programs and jobs that it starts”.
Uhh, come again?
The largest chunk of money she is rejecting is to fix the state’s broken education system, which is critical if we are to have any home grown industries once oil money runs out. I can’t think of any other state that is totally beholden to the naked national political ambitions of such an ignorant governor. I guess too many teachers in this state weren’t voting ‘pro-America’ enough for her.
Gov’ner Grandma “Sarah the Barracuda” has to help raise a father-less grand child, changing diapers…wonder what People magazine will pay the Palin family for those?
I thought that was very funny, too. After all the pompous ‘traditional Christian values’ jibba-jabba.
Hey, how’s that ‘abstinence only’ sex-ed stuff workin’ out fer yer, Sarah?…Sarah…?
Now, it wouldn’t be funny if an innocent baby was gonna suffer for it, but there’s plenty of resources available for it, so I can go ahead and thoroughly enjoy the situation without reservation.
Did anyone catch the “new baby boom” in the MSM lately? The stat that caught my eye was the “40% of babies born to single mothers”. So . . . we are literally becoming a nation of bastards.
“…we are literally becoming a nation of bastards”
King George to the Pilgrims: “…Get rid of those bastards! send them to America & Australia”
My sister Julie, consumate manufacturer of stupid dreams, wasn’t married to her significant other, so yes, my little nephew Pace was a bastard. A chunky little drool factory. Imagine my pleasure when at the wine store I came across a nice Chardonnay with the promising lable of: ‘Fat Bastard’.
I bought a case and put it by, to give to him upon his reaching drinking age. Which is, like what, 8? 9?
I hope he’s not skinny by then, because that would totally ruin things.
Some great little brews have funny names. I like Flying Monkey(KC), Spotted Cow and Fat Squirrel( New Glarus,WI) beers with some meals. Wines cheap or expensive, even Bull’s Blood, they ALL WORK well ;
“Cardinal Zin” in screwtop. A gorgeous wine.
AIG Larry Summers and the Politics of Deflection
F. William Engdahl
Mar 19, 2009
Finally US authorities have gotten ‘tough’ with the predator financial institutions. The world has been waiting for such decisive intervention since an unending series of Government bailouts of financial institutions began early in 2008 amounting to now trillions of taxpayers dollars. Now, with the world’s largest insurance giant, AIG, the White House Economic Council chairman, Larry Summers has expressed ‘outrage.’ President Obama himself has entered the fray to promise ‘justice.’ US Senators have threatened a law to change the injustice. The only problem is they are all exercising ‘politics of deflection,’ taking attention away from the real problem, the fraudulent bailout.
The issue is over AIG announcing it was obligated to pay its traders in its high-risk London unit a sales bonus totaling $165 million for the year. Obama Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner has announced a novel strategy for ‘justice.’ AIG will ‘reimburse’ the taxpayers up to $165 million for bonuses the company is giving employees. AIG will pay the Treasury an amount equal to the bonuses, and the Treasury will deduct that amount from the $30 billion in government (taxpayer) assistance that will soon go to the company. But he said that the Obama administration hasn’t given up on efforts to recoup the money from the employees who got the bonuses. Good luck.
Larry Summers is the man directly responsible for the mess. As Clinton Treasury Secretary from 1999-January 2001 he shaped and pushed the financial deregulation that unleashed the present crisis. He was Treasury Secretary after July 1999 when his boss, Robert Rubin left to become Vice Chairman of Citigroup, where Rubin went on to advance the colossal agenda of deregulated finance directly.
As Treasury Secretary in 1999 Summers played a decisive role in pushing through the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act of 1933 that was instituted to guard against just the kind of banking abuses taxpayers now are having to bail out. Not only Glass-Steagall repeal. In 2000 Summers backed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that incredibly mandated that financial derivatives, including in energy, could be traded between financial institutions completely without government oversight, ‘Over-the-Counter’ as in where the taxpayer is now being dragged. Credit default Swaps, at the center of the current storm, would not have been possible without Larry Summers and the Commodity Modernization Act of 2000. He is now the White House Economic Council chairman, mandated to find a solution to the crisis he helped make along with Tim Geithner, his friend who is Treasury chief. Foxes should never be asked to guard the henhouse.
Theatre of the absurd or deflection?
This all makes great food for tabloid headlines and popular outrage. They can write that elected politicians are finally acting in taxpayer interests. Until we look a bit more closely. Paying $165 million in employee bonuses or any amount for a company that is in the middle of a multi-trillion dollar fraud that is bringing the world economy down with it is ‘outrageous.’
The problem is the tax bailout haemmorrhage will go on. The reason is the Obama Administration like its predecessor refuses to take consequent action with AIG, despite the fact today the US Government owns at least 80% of AIG stock, bought for $180 billion of, yes, taxpayer dollars. To demand AIG ‘pay back the government’ is absurd as the government is in effect demanding it pay itself back with its own money. The latest claim that the Treasury will subtract the $165 million bonus money from the next $30 billion tranche it will give AIG says it all.
Anyone catch Obama on Jay last night? Damn he is a likable guy. Really funny too. Spoke at length about AIG, and the crisis. He didn’t do a cheerleading stunt like chimp did, but he actually spoke frankly about the situation, and understood it. But somehow he was reassuring as well. Having someone competent running the country will do that.
He must be the only honest guy in DC. More impressed every day with Obama. Somebody pinch me.
but when is he going to do something about these bonuses (and fire the people responsible for the mess, like Geithner)?
and when is he going to tell America that they can’t spend themselves out of this mess?
“and when is he going to tell America that they can’t spend themselves out of this mess”?
He won’t, the poor fellow hasn’t a clue whats going on, the only thing the guy is good at is reading aloud, but once away from the teleprompter he’s a consistent screw up.
He made one of his many gaffs on Leno’s show, popping off a stupid remark comparing his bowling skills to the special Olympics.
…a bushie conservative wouldn’t understand an Obama “gaff”.
Obama speaks in accepted English, not “Texicany Imbecility”
“…popping off a stupid remark”
In 3rd grade it went like this: “”takes one to know one!”
Relax. He is only one guy, and in case you haven’t noticed there are a lot of Bush-created fires to put out.
and there’s a lot of Bush-related cronies that should be kicked out of his government …
“and when is he going to tell America that they can’t spend themselves out of this mess?”
He’s not.
Caught it, and it was all cheerleading of the worst kind (note, I think the guy is an exceptional speaker). Putting on the happy face doesn’t give me hope in his confidence of the situation.
I don’t want a President who can talk nice, I want a President with one quality only: the ability to use the veto pen constantly without getting a cramp in his or her wrist.
If Obama understand the oath he took (he does not, nor has any recent President), he would understand that the veto pen is his only job. He could save the economy with $100 worth of Bic pens from Staples.
“…I want a President with one quality only: ”
Since you don’t vote, and you’re 35…the chances of you getting what you want by the age 102 is like what… 6 kazillion to 1?
Mr Bear, can you provide a more accurate number?
HAhahahaahahAHAHAHAH!
I can’t provide a number. I can only snort this here strawberry Twizzler stick into my girlish nostril.
Oh, well. We all serve as best we may, right?
A lot of folks felt the same way about the decider, you may choose not to believe it, but it’s true.
Look where this cult of personality stuff has gotten us.
“A lot of folks felt the same way about the decider”
Yeah, but those people were complete morons. Who cares what they thought, or still think? So liking our president classifies as a cult now?
Get serious.
I am absolutely serious. People are too easily awestruck by staged spectacles - critical thinking is no longer an American virtue - just go with the crowd no matter what.
In 2002 people gave a blank check to gov’t to go after the baddies overseas. Today the net is buzzing with people cheering gov’t on against the baddies at AIG.
Goebbels would have a field day in this society.
This is serious. The Obama admin has already done more damage to the U.S. and world economy than the Bush admin did in 8 years.
Are you serious, or just unable to admit the facts?
Every aspect of the ObamaNation so far, reeks of incompetence, corruption, greed, and egomania.
Coupled with the Marxist agenda, he is simply terribly bad news in a can.
“…The Obama admin has already done more damage to the U.S. and world economy than the Bush admin did in 8 years.”
And he did it all by himself… in exactly…60 Days! He must a have a force field shield negating the Cheney-Shrub Shadow Legacy Effect!
So which camp are you “officially” in?:
Cheney-Shrub: “We really want him to succeed, we really do.”
Rash Limpbaughs: “I want him to fail!”
“I’m Opie ™ Obama…and I approve this remembrance.”
You are right again as usual cobatblue.
All of those big, articulate Harvard black guys in suits are dead- ringers for Marxist/Commie revolutionaries. You can spot them a mile away man. His nice, well educated black wife and daughters agenda must have been a dead give-away too. Damned sneaky, those black Marxists !
Don’t forget to double-bolt the door and sleep with your anti-commie field gear, white power hotline and your AK-47 close to your bed tonight
Consider yourself pinched.
Obama is a narcissistic Kenyan Marxist who is only a Precedent at best; and a dangerous Chicago mobster with Secret Service protection and a deluded gaggle of groupies at worst.
About as “likeable” as Stalin or Hitler.
Hey, if trying to get a date with Ann Coulter, you’re whispering “sweet nothings” in her ear is not bad…but don’t be to quick with that tongue action.
LOL, Hwy50!!!
Obama is a narcissistic Kenyan Marxist who is only a Precedent at best; and a dangerous Chicago mobster with Secret Service protection and a deluded gaggle of groupies at worst.
Perhaps you should look up “narcissistic” (sic), “Kenyan” (sic), and “Marxist” (sic), then perhaps you should do a little reading about Chicago machine politics.
Look up “socialism” and “conservative” while you’re at it — odds are you use those terms incorrectly all the time as well.
Perhaps you should look up “sic” while you’re at it. It is from the Latin, meaning “so it is”. It suggests that someone misspelled the word preceding it. I didn’t. My words are all spelled correctly.
It may also suggest an arcane use of the word or phrase. My meanings are current and relevant:
1. Narcissistic - Obama is a self-absorbed teleprompter puppet with a dose of megalomania.
2. Kenyan - According to his Grandma, who said she was there when it happened, he was born in Kenya, not in Hawaii.
3.Marxist - Obama is putting into practice the socioeconomic engineering principle espoused by Marx, Engels, and Lenin - “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
Are you one of his deluded gaggle of groupies?
It’s commonly thought that “sic” is used to indicate an incorrect spelling — it can do that, but so much more. It is actually used to indicate that it exactly reproduces an original text (yours, in this case), and is most typically used to show that original text is in error. It can be used in reference to spelling, grammar, style, context, or usage.
Thanks for trying, though!
I’m enjoying this more every day.
Seeing sub-reptiles like you squirm, gives endless pleasures.
I like Bammy, he got game.
Dont anyone here try to kid yourselves….
USA IS GOING HARD LEFT….sell, sell, sell….
He has two choices for the worlds largest “floating” financial ship:
Let it slowly get hammered by the Cheney-Shrub “Financial Legacy Effects” until the “perfect” storm drags it into the abyss…
or
Dead reckon it full “speed ahead” on to the shallow shoals of the coast…whereby the last lingering group of “Day-Traders” keeps asking themselves: “It ain’t “moving much” these days is it?”
Actually, he could just veto the gigantic social engineering spending the Democrats slapped together, fire Geithner, and look for some quality in his Admin instead of the same failed Clinton-era retreads that keep crawling onto the scene like cockroaches..
Please fire Geithner!
Bernanke: Exec Compensation Must Be Monitored- AP
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says banking supervisors must pay “close attention” to compensation practices as they examine the soundness of financial institutions. In remarks prepared for a meeting of smaller “community” banks in Phoenix, Ariz., Bernanke says regulators have observed that “poorly designed compensation policies can create perverse incentives that can ultimately jeopardize the health of the banking organization.”
He also got an ovation for “too-big-to-fail”
Mr. Bear, just think we as a nation…are just around the corner from solving our systemic financial problems! Now, could you please elucidate why a cup of coffee @ Denny’s is $2.39, while a gallon of Chevron Textron gasoline is is a $1.98?
Thanks in advance!
Your friend always, Hwy
Uncle Ben is a bit late in joining the blame party …
as for the bonus monitoring, maybe they can leave that to S&P and Moody’s? No doubt they could assure J6P that there are no outrageous bonuses anywhere, even while bonuses keep skyrocketing everywhere…
Yeah he made points with the Kennedys too with that Special Olympics crack. Or did they even show that? I just read about it in the blogs today.
LOL.
Bernanke: Exec Compensation Must Be Monitored- AP
Monitoring ?…Hell’s Bell’s…He SHOULD have been jumping on their chests with both feet while his regulators beat their heads on a frigg’n Wall Street curb
Dear Ms. Whitney,
I have currently received no communication from either yourself, or a member of your staff, regarding my proposal of March 18. I can only reluctantly conclude at this time that you have made the decision to pursue other opportunities.
I can only fault myself for doing an inadequate job of presenting my case for a relationship.
I can only wish you well in your ongoing business and personal life. If you eventually reconsider my proposal, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Signed,
X-GS-fixer
P.S…….In anticipation of an immediate startup of our relationship, I acquired a few items of equipment and some inventory. I currently have a 3X “Godzilla” suit (recently dry-cleaned), 20 gallons of green Jello, and two dozen gerbils in excess of forecast requirements. Any assistance in disposing of this surplus property would be appreciated.
What?!? No enema kit?
I still had the receipt. Got a refund.
Actually, I was thinking about something MUCH more creative, than the “traditional” use for gerbils.
Did you buy Turbo-Tax with the refund?
Turbo-Tax?
Refund was from Walgren’s.
PetSmart won’t take the Gerbils back. Something about “behavioral issues” making them difficult to resell……that, and some “cosmetic deficiencies”. So they are my posse.
This is in “Red State” country. Their “issues” might not be a problem in other locales.
Walgreens sells TT.
You should’ve really used that refund to buy a bank or two. Who knows? One of them employees might’ve gone in for your “ideas”.
Most of my ideas “look good” on paper…..
It’s when I try to implement the “paper plan” when the trouble usually starts.
LOL…
Ahead of a major bond sale next week by California, Fitch Ratings on Thursday cut its “A+” rating on $47.4 billion of state general obligation debt to “A” with a stable outlook, citing falling revenues and the weak economy in the most populous U.S. state.
Oh, and all the “high net-worth” Cali-muni-bond buyers just got Cali-fornicated!!!
BWAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHHHHHH!!!
Yup…Surf’s Up …and that little move of rating magic HIT them ..where the Sun Doesn’t Shine
astonishing sometimes…
what the filters do.
get a big red nose,
and some floppy shoes,
a squirting flower….
gonna squirt it on you.
After I learned the fed would be sending a trillion new dollars through the air, I decided to build a bigger net.
Rhode Island strip club to host job fair
Jockeying for pole position: Rhode Island strip club to host job fair for dancers, staff
Eric Tucker, Associated Press Writer
Friday March 20, 2009, 8:26 am EDT
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Here’s a job opportunity you won’t need to buy a new wardrobe for.
Hoping to take advantage of Rhode Island’s floundering economy, owners of the Foxy Lady strip club in Providence plan to hold a job fair on Saturday.
They say they’re looking to fill around 30 positions, from strippers and waitresses to disc jockeys and bartenders, at that club and two others in Massachusetts.
“I need more managers, I need more competent staff, and I need more attractive waitresses to go along with the ones I have right now,” said co-owner Tom Tsoumas.
The naked truth is that Rhode Island’s economy is among the worst in the nation, with an unemployment rate of 10.3 percent in January.
The Providence club isn’t immune from the recession but is still drawing customers willing to drink and pay for lap dances, said manager Bob Travisono.
“It’s taken a hit,” he said. “It’s not as bad as restaurants and stuff like that. In times like this, they seem to drink their sorrows away.”
Tsoumas said he hopes some who might shun strip clubs when the economy is good might consider shedding their clothes now — or at least working as a floor host or bartender.
Someone should tell this chick about those gigs:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090318/world/expensive_divorce_1
HARTFORD, Conn. - Former United Technologies Corp. chief executive George David … and Swedish countess Douglas-David married in 2002. They signed a post-nuptial agreement in 2005 that would give the 36-year-old Douglas-David US$43 million when the couple divorces.
The 67-year-old businessman wants the court to uphold the agreement. His wife says the money isn’t enough to maintain her $53,000-per-week living expenses.
Looks like the stock market’s having second thoughts about the helicopter drops.
At some point there’s a crossover between the value of the money dropped vs. the cost of gas to run the Huey - maybe we’ve reached that point.
I’d stick with the Uncle Ben’s flying copters.
I don’t have faith in the Better Nature of our Angels on Wall Street deleveraging any money drops my way
Did anyone else notice the voice-over’ed one-sentence blot-out that they did on the Bernanke interview? It was at 3:10 in the 2nd of 3 version that I watched on YouTube (the one posted by VoiceOfAmericans2008).
The script went something like this:
BB: “They are not going to fail. But what we can do, should it be necessary, is to try to wind it down in a safe way.
VOICE OVER OF ONE SENTENCE HERE WHILE THE BB VIDEO ROLLS IN THE BACKGROUND.
BB: For example, in the case of AIG, we prevented a bankruptcy, because of the chaos that would create, but we are also demanding that AIG divest itself–sell off its subsidiaries and use the proceeds to pay back the government.”
I’d really like to hear the one sentence that 60-minutes decided to blot out… Or did the Fed ask that that one bit be edited out?
Sure to be featured on an upcoming episode of: “Lives of the Desperate
Housewives of The O.C.”
http://morewithlesstoday.com/
Oh, the humanity!
How to go from $750,000 per year to $7.50 per hour delivering pizzas:
http://tinyurl.com/cdummn
(Hint: Have a house in Florida and try to run a hedge fund.)
After a lengthy and fruitless job search, the Karpmans were shocked to find themselves in financial dire straits, with zero savings, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and their home in foreclosure.
All that money and nothing to show for it.
What a maroon!!!
Actually, what I find most disturbing is the last sentence. They think there’s gonna be another bubble just around the corner to bail them out!
Every time they said Karpman it sounded like “Cartman.”
Respect mah authoritah!!!!!!
No mortgage payment in 2 years.
Kids still in private school.
The horror.
LOL! Barry went on TV last night without a teleprompter and made an idiot comment about the special Olympics…
Special Olympics bowler: I can beat the president!
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) - The top bowler for the Special Olympics looks forward to meeting President Barack Obama in an alley.
“He bowled a 129. I bowl a 300. I could beat that score easily,” Michigan’s Kolan McConiughey (KO-lahn Mc-KAHNA-he) told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
The athletic-minded president made an offhand remark Thursday on “The Tonight Show” comparing his weak bowling to “the Special Olympics or something.” He quickly apologized and told the Special Olympics chairman he wants to have some of its athletes visit the White House to bowl or play basketball.
McConiughey, who is mentally disabled, is just the bowler for the job. He’s bowled five perfect games since 2005.
The 35-year-old McConiughey has been bowling since he was 8 or 9. His advice for Obama? Practice every day.
I thought President Obama was awesome last night. But calling him Barry, which is obvious a racist remark, isn’t going to do your cause any good. The truth is…I laugh every time I read your posts because I know having a black president boils your blood.
Enjoy the next 8 years buddy! Try not to have a heart attack. LOL
How the hell is Barry a racist remark???
A new PC low we have here.
Blano,
Never try to reason with a Democrat high on PC. It’s like throwing spitballs at a battleship.
I had someone tell me the other day that just the act of pointing out, in any context, that black people tend to vote democrat, is racist.
Let me repeat that in case you missed it.
If you state the well-known fact that black people as a group overwhelmingly vote for democratic candidates over other options, you are racist (just a little, says he).
I’m certain black people are exempt from this rule.
But he’s likeable and funny and reassuring (see a couple posts above) so it’s all good.
I’m sure some people feel that way about Satan too.
According to the pols and polls, Chairman Mao was the cat’s meow in his day, too.
Looks like the updated CBO projections are a tad higher than previously expected. That measly $1.75T for this year was so last-month.
New #’s:
- $1.8 Trillion for 2009
- $1.4 Trillion for 2010
- Average of $1T a year for 10 years
- $2.3 Trillion over the 10-year projections from last month.
Well OK - I meant for that to show up below, not nested here. Dang Wordpress.
Hmmm - well it looks like they’ve removed parts of that article, including the $1.8 Trillion number. Here’s the WSJ article however.
Hopefully the WSJ has a little more journalistic integrity than the AP / Yahoo news, to not be editing out key pieces of data from an article after it’s been released.
BTW - the CBO’s estimates are based on a projection of a peak of 9.4% unemployment - late this year. Good luck with that! March is already in-like-a-lion - we’ll easily be at 8.5% this month. I’m wondering what big thing they’re expecting to come along and make things improve by the end of this year?
That being the case - expect more revisions to come as unemployment crosses 10%, then 11%, etc.
first we get algore’s “extra chromosome” .. next it’s BO’s “special olympics”.
Dems are a bunch of retards…
For all of you want-to-be Communists and Marxists out there, here is your Orwellian future.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-14-death-van_x.htm
Enjoy.
“Sixty-eight different crimes — more than half non-violent offenses such as tax evasion and drug smuggling — are punishable by death in China. That means the death vans are likely to keep rolling.”
The Chairmans runnin a helluva PR campaign, I like the ruling party in the next election cycle.
Those clever lil’ Gov’t commies…keep shopping at Wal-Fart America…we need to keep helping the Chinese to recycle their TOXIC waste via their “business” partners here in the good ol’ US of A!
Rumor has it that a company near Cheney’s home in Wyoming is trying to apply for “stimulus” money for a product very much like this Chinese one…but I don’t expect you’ll get Cheney to offer any verification…ever!
WOW.. We could really use a few “Bus System” routes like that Chinese one in DC and on Wall Street
I wonder if the list will include names & addresses?
In the “honest-to-goodness” public disclosure race:
Opie ™ Obama = 2
Cheney-Shrub = -6
“…To help ensure that special interests don’t stymie stimulus efforts, Obama said his administration would post on the Internet all requests by lobbyists who want to talk to any member of his administration about particular projects that would involve using the money from the Economic Recovery Act.”
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Write
U.S. regulator probing “rampant Ponzimonium”
BOSTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of people in the United States are under investigation for financial scams, many involving Ponzi schemes, a U.S. regulator said, calling the phenomenon “rampant Ponzimonium.”
While none are as mammoth as disgraced financier Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion fraud, multimillion-dollar “mini Madoffs” are proliferating from New York to Hawaii, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.
So far this year, the agency has uncovered 19 Ponzi schemes, which depend on an influx of new capital instead of investment profits to pay existing investors.
That compares with just 13 for all of 2008.
“Because of the economy, people are seeking redemptions more than they ever have and that’s making a lot of these scams go belly up,” Bart Chilton, commissioner of the Washington-based Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said in a telephone interview.
In the last month, his agency has pursued investment fraud in Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, Iowa, Idaho, Texas and Hawaii.
Chilton called the problem “rampant Ponzimonium” and “Ponzipalooza” — a play on the word “Lollapalooza,” an American music festival featuring a long list of acts.
Many of the financial scams are small but grew fast to support lavish lifestyles, like the suspected $40 million, five-year Ponzi scheme that came to light last month when a North Carolina man, Bruce Kramer, committed suicide.
Claiming he was an expert mathematician, Kramer is accused of persuading 79 people to invest in what he said was a foreign currency trading operation, Barki LLC. He promised monthly returns of at least 3 percent to 4 percent, the CFTC said.
Instead, he funneled money into a Maserati sports car, a $1 million horse farm and artwork while holding “extravagant” parties, according to a CFTC complaint released on Wednesday.
As the economy soured, Kramer struggled to find new clients to keep the scheme going. In the days before his suicide, his investors demanded their money back and grew suspicious when they couldn’t access their own funds, said Chilton.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission shares oversight of financial markets with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which also faces a swelling casebook of Ponzi schemes, including charges against Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, who is accused of bilking investors of $8.8 billion.
Those accused of the scams used the money for cars, boats, clothing, jewelry, homes and ranches, said Chilton. One bought his own island in Belize in Central America, he added.
“Some are easier to catch now because people are more vigilant than they have been,” he said.
Quelle surprise!
You didn’t exactly expect Greatest Credit Orgy in World History to NOT end like this, did you?
All bubbles end with the revelation of massive fraud. It’s how the game works.
You know - I *thought* it seemed like leather jacket sales had gone up more than usual recently.
Wait… never mind.
Nobody?….
(sigh)
“…Those accused of the scams used the money for cars, boats, clothing, jewelry, homes and ranches”
See, at least Warren Buffett had the good Nebraska sense to give Bill & Melinda 34 Billion $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ for charity! Good thing he didn’t own a dog with the name “Trouble”!
Just for a laugh….
Obama was informed that 2 Brazillian soldiers were killed in Iraq.
He turned to an aide and asked “how many is a Brazillian?”
Shrub: “He has weapons of mass financial destruction…&…he tried to kill my daddy!
BWAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
I didn’t know Obama was a blonde.
He’s half blonde.
No blonde jokes! Only IIIIIIII can deliver blonde jokes! Just like only Big V can talk smack about ducks.
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has negotiated the return of thousands of Lehman-logoed knickknacks that were mistakenly transferred to Barclays Plc through the sale of the bankrupt securities firm’s brokerage unit.
Tote bags, umbrellas, stress balls, Tiffany paperweights and other items now stored in closets and warehouses from New York to Chicago will be returned to Lehman and sold to pay creditors, according to a court filing yesterday. Lehman filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history in September and has about $200 billion in unsecured liabilities left to pay, Chief Executive Officer Bryan Marsal said Jan. 28.
As part of the arrangement, Lehman is barred from trying to sell the objects to Barclays’ employees, according to court papers. The investment bank may need a liquidator to move the logoed goods, which would fetch “a discount to their intrinsic value,” said Richard Kaye, chief marketing officer at Hilco Trading, which values and sells assets for companies, in a phone interview.
“A golf ball plays the same way no matter what it says on it,” said Kaye, who might offer Hilco’s services to Lehman, he said. “But does someone want to walk around with a logoed Lehman umbrella?”
HELL YEAH, TOTALLY!!!
I have a Lehman umbrella (”don’t ask! long story”) and it’s raining now. I think I will walk around with my logoed Lehman umbrella right now!
BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
“…stress balls,”
Surely they not referring to the one’s between their legs…
No, their wives snipped those off in the settlement.
Let the celebration commence…
Im calling the bottom of the 5th inning….only 18 months to go.
Wow! It feels like eternity which is forever worse than expected. Hard to believe we are any closer to the bottom than we were circa August 2007 when all manner of fire and brimstone began raining down on Wall Street.
OK, fellow compatriots, it’s Friday, and I’m outta here with some fun plans.
First, a quick trip to the public library.
Then, some noodles at a Japanese noodle shop.
And finally, off to a screening of Renoir’s Rules of the Game which I’ve always wanted to see on the big screen.
See, that’s what the city-folk do, and that’s why we pay the high rents for boxy apartments. We don’t like either of those two things but you don’t get to do stuff like this elsewhere on a weekly basis.
Oh, and no cars needed. Walking everywhere.
Well done!
Yes, good plans. Have fun.
kindled it.
Comcasted it on demand.
Kung Pow, delivered it….
oh, wait…..
VIRTUAL REALITY IS NOT REAL IS
it?
you should actually run that one ben…
its an interesting dichomity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/laissez-faire-capitalism_b_152900.html
from the commentariat:
“Here she describes Chairman Greenspan: Alan Greenspan, whose owl-eyed visage would adorn a Mount Rushmore of unregulated capitalists
One of her quoted sources: “…William Seidman, the longtime GOP economic advisor who oversaw the S&L bailout in 1991….” : “To make the market work well, you have to have a lot of rules.”
She concludes: It’s time to relegate free market fundamentalists to the same standing as Marxist ideologues: intellectual curiosities occasionally trotted out as relics of a failed philosophy.”
I can’t find the Credit Suisse report this guy is refering to, but this kinda answers my question from the other day about where these market bulls are seeing all the sidelined money.
Barron’s - Yet, a record amount of cash is sitting on the sidelines of the equity market. According to Credit Suisse, sideline cash totals $14 trillion - a record amount. The figure is based on money market funds, bank savings deposits, and treasury debt held by the public. The U.S. equity market capitalization totals just under $9 trillion.
Sooner or later the need for some return on capital will prompt some investors to buy equities. When it happens, the impact on stock prices could be huge.
What’ll be huger will be the impact on treasury prices.
“According to Credit Suisse, sideline cash totals $14 trillion - a record amount. The figure is based on money market funds, bank savings deposits, and treasury debt held by the public.”
I’d be really curious to see what percentage is treasuries, and follow that stat going forward. I don’t know if I’d consider treasuries to be money “on the sidelines”.
That’s why I wouldn’t be so quick to get back into the equities market. The treasury debt has to come from somewhere. Yeah the Fed can print all day long logistically - but realistically they have to stop before the pitchforks and torches come calling. Then the only choice is to raise rates to keep people from dumping treasuries to get back into equities.
Rock and a hard place.
“I’d be really curious to see what percentage is treasuries”
Me too. I searched the net for an hour looking for the Credit Suisse report to see the break down. I went to their website and was denied access to several areas there. If I do find it I will post a link here for you.
I found this (see link below) and it shows the weekly outflows/inflows of money from the markets starting from July 17th, 2008 to March 19th, 2009. They also have some graphs of the flows in and out.
http://www.trimtabs.com/site/fundFlow.php
Speaking of PC run amok:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7129997&page=1
I was taught as a child not to make fun of disabled people long before “PC” was invented. This incident speaks to character, or rather the lack thereof..
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has resisted the federal government’s state “stimulus” money. He dislikes the strings attached. So does Alaska’s governor, Sarah Palin. She intends to turn down nearly half of the federal stimulus funds allotted to her state.
“We won’t be bound by federal strings in exchange for dollars, nor will we dig ourselves a deeper hole in two years when these federal funds are gone,” said Palin. “Simply expanding state government under this federal stimulus package creates an unrealistic expectation that the state will continue these programs when the federal funds are no longer available. Our nation is already over $11 trillion in debt; we can’t keep digging this hole.”
The latest whine from our state gubmint/bedwetters is education spending will get cut. WTF? All of my life we have poured more and more money into the education ’system’ and it has yet to be ‘fixed’. Past time to try a different tack!
Sarah Palin is getting slammed in Alaska for her opposition to the funds.
Gov. Sanford is an opportunist. Now that his appeal to redirect 25% of the funds was rejected, he has threatened to reject the money altogether (almost $3 billion). And yet Sanford whined publicly and repeatedly about a DNC ad that targeted his stance on the stimulus money — he even appealed directly to Obama to have the ad pulled. Which is it, Gov. Sanford — proud of your position, or afraid that it won’t play well beyond the talk radio base?
A complete and utter failure! When they came out with this I thought the hedge funds would pile on in, but I guess it wasent such a good deal after all.
Fed’s TALF has 19 requests from smaller firms-source
REUTERS — 3:09 PM ET 03/20/09
NEW YORK, March 20 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve’s new program to resuscitate consumer credit received just 19 applications from hedge funds and firms that manage between $3 billion and $5 billion, fewer than expected, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Applications for loans from the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, were considered disappointing by investors and analysts, who were dismayed to see only $4.7 billion in funding was requested from the $200 billion program on Thursday.
The New York Fed declined to comment.
TALF is part of the Fed’s massive efforts to revive credit markets by lending money to investors who want to buy newly issued securities backed by assets such as credit card, small business, student and auto loans.
Investors requested $1.9 billion of loans to buy securities backed by auto loans and $2.8 billion for loans to buy credit card asset-backed securities, the New York Fed said on Thursday.
Is anybody shocked, SHOCKED by this at all??
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090320/AUTO01/903200457/Rattner++GM++Chrysler+could+need+more+than+21.6+billion
Way beyond SHOCKED, unfortunately not even surprised and kind of numb to the huge numbers which is what I am afraid most Americans are becoming. Just seems like we are handing out tens of billions of dollars like candy just to shut up spoiled kids who start crying for more as soon as they are done.
Nothing shocks me anymore!
I’m convinced they are all determined to drive the country into the ground at any cost, while making it look like they’re doing it for the greater good. Obama can do no wrong, he’s got great abs (and Michelle has great arms). He speaks so smooth and is such a likeable guy, so everything’s gonna be alright! They fixed the AIG thing up real good and are working for the people! Now we can go back to blaming all the bad stuff on Bush (who I also thought was terrible).
Got Pitchforks?
Financial Times
Man in the News: Tim Geithner
By Krishna Guha and Edward Luce
Published: March 20 2009 20:01 | Last updated: March 20 2009 20:01
On November 21 last year, the Dow Jones shot up by 6.5 per cent – its largest daily gain in weeks – after Tim Geithner was nominated as Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary.
The markets were relieved to see the back of Hank Paulson, George W. Bush’s last Treasury secretary, whose gaunt, sleep-deprived visage mirrored Wall Street’s fatigue. Mr Geithner represented a fresh technocratic approach in which they could believe.
Now, it seems, every time Mr Geithner opens his mouth the Dow heads in the opposite direction. Worse, perhaps, Mr Obama has got into the habit of expressing his confidence in Mr Geithner, a sure sign in more normal times that a public figure’s days are numbered.
Will the stock market finally capitulate if Geithner’s appointment does not work out?