Bits Bucket For March 21, 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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The Treasury Department is expected to unveil early next week its long-delayed plan to buy as much as $1 trillion in troubled mortgages and related assets from financial institutions, according to people close to the talks.
The plan is likely to offer generous subsidies, in the form of low-interest loans, to coax investors to form partnerships with the government to buy toxic assets from banks.
This is the “plan”.
They are trying to pull a Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach by offering “low-cost loans”.
ROTFLMAO
You’ll be able to get most of these “negative assets” (loosely speaking) for much cheaper later, as in why would you want to? Or let’s just wait and see who wishes to lose their money on this “plan”, and let’s short those f**kers too!
Wow, this is the best that the Candy-Crappin’ Unicorn™ and Turbo-Tax Timmay™ came up with?!?
BWAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHHHHH!!!!!
Yes We Can’t Endure Tim!
I vant Volcker.
One rather admirable aspect about the constitution of Obama’s economics team: He started out with a large pool of heavy hitters, any of whom could be quickly vetted to fill any positions which opened on short notice.
Such as his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, who was a Director of Freddie Mac. Funny how the top recipients of contribution money from AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc, were Dodd, Obama, and Barney Frank. “Thoroughly vetted” or thoroughly corrupt? I think its obvious that the stench from these appointments came from the rotten character of the appointees.
No breath of fresh air there!
I was referring specifically to the economics team. Is Rahm Emmanuel part of that? I think not, but please correct me if I am wrong.
Newsflash:
This “corruption” didn’t just happen overnight NOR DID it occur within the last 60 nights.
It happened over 8 EIGHT(8) LONG YEARS of Bush/Cheney and the neo-con anti-reg and “no-see-um” regime polices with roots going back your real Master of the Universe…Ronny Raygun.
But it is most refreshing to see the growth and sprouting of Halos, the sudden sham outrage, moral respectability, and personal accountability Demands of our once sleeping (?)conservative friends.
Oh…and Welcome to the effects of “Trickle Down Economics” in another GOP Recession America
OK WE GET THE POINT.
Forget about the 8 years of Billy and Hitlary that set the stage for all this. Forget about the slogan “It’s the economy stupid” that mocked anyone who thought there was anything more important in life than the stock price inflation. Forget about the Dem-led Congress that pushed for and continues to cheer on every bubble and bailout in sight.
Republicans = evil. Democrats = virtuous and wonderful. WE GET IT.
Oh come one LehighValley, you can go back further than that. Let’s take a look at senior Bush years, Reagan years, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eishenhower.
Republicans = evil. Democrats = virtuous and wonderful. WE GET IT.
Well, about dam*n time.
Hahahahaa!
A month of Volker would drive a stake in the heart of any economy remaining on the table; he destroyed jobs and industries at Reagan’s behest. Obama’s a bit smarter than that.
Volcker is just one of many creepy “world planning” BILDERBERGERS in Obama’s star chamber - along with Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, Kathleen Sebelius, Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross, Hillary’s husband, the rejected Tom Daschle.
Volcker is a Democrat and was appointed Fed Chairman in August 1979 by Carter and reappointed in 1983 by Reagan. Sure, he’s not a libertarian like I am, but he has cojones the size of watermelons and it is impossible that this administration would appoint anyone more capable of dealing with the problem as forcefully and credibly as he would, IMO. He has big-time international stature and, with all the screwing around we’ve been doing, some of that can go a long way right now. All IMO, of course.
The Bilderbergers have both Democrats and Republicans.
I did not have on my glasses when I saw this byline, which I read to say “Treasury’s bad-ass_d plan nears unveiling”.
It sounds as though liquidity injections to prop up toxic asset prices are key to the effort. Will more subsidies be injected later on to prevent the overvalued prices from dropping back to their fundamental value?
Treasury’s bad-asset plan nears unveiling
Private-investor partnerships with government key to effort
By Edmund L. Andrews
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
2:00 a.m. March 21, 2009
WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department is expected to unveil early next week its long-delayed plan to buy as much as $1 trillion in troubled mortgages and related assets from financial institutions, according to people close to the talks.
The plan is likely to offer generous taxpayer subsidies, in the form of low-interest loans, to coax private investors to form partnerships with the government to buy toxic assets from banks.
To help protect taxpayers, who would pay for the bulk of the purchases, the plan calls for auctioning assets to the highest bidders.
The uproar over American International Group’s bonuses has not stopped the Obama administration from plowing ahead. The plan is not expected to impose restrictions on the executive pay of private investors or fund managers who participate.
Known as the “Public-Private Investment Partnership,” the Treasury plan is perhaps the central component of President Barack Obama’s program to rescue the nation’s banks from a mountain of money-losing assets that are weighing down their balance sheets, crippling their ability to make new loans and deepening the recession.
I call horsesh!t on this whole assumption that markets are dumb and can’t figure out what toxic assets are worth. This appears to be yet another ploy to funnel public monies into the hands of needy bankers. Markets may not be perfectly efficient, but they are not as inefficient as these guys claim.
Thank you Professor Bear!
The current economic effort coming out of Washington DC, looks more like the work of sixth-graders high on White Widow and and Kahlua, than anything Volker would touch with somebody else’s ten foot pole.
It looks like Volker was brought on board for a non-speaking cameo appearance to boost ratings with the over-50 crowd, not actually contribute anything.
“It looks like Volker was brought on board for a non-speaking cameo appearance to boost ratings with the over-50 crowd, not actually contribute anything.”
No kidding. IMO, he’s the only one on the entire team with the cojones and the experience to get it done. Reminds me of the doc who had to perform surgery on himself in “Master and Commander.” It doesn’t require experience OR guts, it requires experience AND guts.
Reminds me of the doc who had to perform surgery on himself in “Master and Commander.” It doesn’t require experience OR guts, it requires experience AND guts.
and all hemorrhaging is CONTROLLABLE…..EVENTUALLY
Also, with no effort on the government to control the toxicity of these assets, this is double doomed!
After all, deadbeat mortgage holders are being treated like heroes: No investigation for fraud, moratoriums on foreclosure, huge tax breaks. So the toxic assets created from their dirty mortgages are even more toxic than they needed to be. If people were being held accountable for their obligations, then maybe these toxic derivatives would have some value. That won’t happen because Obama’s core constituents are deadbeats and freeloaders.
This appears to be yet another ploy to funnel public monies into the hands of needy bankers.
It is. It was from the get go. It has been since last year.
The whole plan was and still is a soft landing for the well connected then throw the rest of us under the bus.
Agree that it was “the plan,” but think it started many, many years ago.
Tightening up my tin-foil hat now.
It’s funny how all the bankers are for the free market’s ability to set prices, until what they hold the free market deems is worthless.
IAT
Laughable.
Who in their right mind would want to form a “partnership” with our government to purchase toxic assets?
Gee..just what I’d want. To deal with mounds of additional paperwork, corrupt business “partners” and mother hen political cronies that talk a good game but accomplish nothing. Yes, let’s invest in “property” that later on the government could very easily “sell” at a whim to some other future highest bidder - once you have turned the original property into a productive entity, or course.
Eudemon,
You’re kidding, right? If I understand it, only the CONnected are going to get access to those toxic assets. And, they’ll get their hands on them with a guarantee that means they lose nothing. What does this accomplish? It transfers ownership from the banks to the new owners. The banks are thus freed of those obligations, in essence being rewarded for their insolvency. Who pays? Us taxpayers (with a symbolic payment from the new owners — NO, not you and me, the connected owners). Then, the new owners (NOT you and me, the CONnected) will own these assets. If the assets drop in value, the CONnexted lose virtually nothing. Who loses? Us taxpayers. If I were CONnected, I’d have only 8 words for this deal — where do I sign for this free money?
IAT
“And, they’ll get their hands on them with a guarantee that means they lose nothing. What does this accomplish? It transfers ownership from the banks to the new owners.”
The banks also get the value of the downside risk guarantee priced in to what they sell for to the subsidized, guaranteed investors. Since without ever needing to undergo the Buffett valuation test (”sell a few shares of the toxic assets to figure out their market value”) nobody knows the actual market value of these toxic assets. Hence we will never know how large a windfall the banks reap when they get to offload them to a new owner at a price which is artificially inflated by the effects of subsidies plus a Treasury-provided downside risk guarantee.
Excellent read.
The Big Takeover
The global economic crisis isn’t about money - it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution
MATT TAIBBIPosted Mar 19, 2009 12:49 PM
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover
Leigh
From the article:
“The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That’s $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second.”
This pig should have been put to death last year. Over $61 billion, in just one quarter! I know we’ve been over this before, but this is absurdly wicked. They are rogue parasites, living off the taxpayer, thumbing their noses at authority, and continuing on with the same old shenanigans. The $167 million in bonuses turned out to be $218 million. Each and every honest, hard-working American should be angry as hell about this. This is beyond outrageous- it’s criminal and sadistic.
Wonderful article Leigh. Used to be a subscriber to Rolling Stone years ago. I may have to look into subscribing again.
Amazing article, read it last night. New detail that blew me away was that the AIG toxic asset impresario- “dumpy bald guy who thought he was Brad Pitt” –was a former lackey of Michael Milken. The blogosphere is running hard with this story today, which is a good thing, since this AIG bonus debacle is the tip of the iceberg.
While some of the facts in this article are shaky (very few in fact, nothing to worry about) the overall information is dead on.
It was all planned and contrived long ago… and we bought it hook, line and sinker.
For more information, you can google “Gangs of America” by Ted Nace. Probably the best definitive history of the rise of corporations starting with the early guilds centuries ago. It really is an easy, totally fact based, referenced and interesting read and doesn’t become biased until the last chapter.
BTW,
Thank you for the posting.
Thanks ladies and gentlemen.
Leigh
WASHINGTON, March 20 (Reuters) - U.S. congressional budget experts on Friday offered a darker economic and budget outlook, projecting a breathtaking $1.8 trillion deficit this year, which could complicate President Barack Obama’s efforts to win passage of his $3.55 trillion budget for 2010.
The Congressional Budget Office’s projected deficit for the 2009 fiscal year ending on Sept. 30 would amount to 13.1 percent of expected gross domestic product — a level not seen since World War Two. In January, the budget office had forecast a $1.2 trillion deficit for fiscal 2009.
The CBO also forecast a deeper economic downturn this year, projecting a contraction of 3 percent in 2009 before the economy begins to recover in next year.
The budget experts at CBO forecast the deficit would ease to almost $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010 — or 9.6 percent of forecast GDP.
Since Obama took office in January, his administration has been shoveling out billions of dollars in a bid to reverse a steep downward spiral in the U.S. economy and prop up the struggling financial system.
“Although the economy is likely to continue to deteriorate for some time,” the CBO said, the government’s $787 billion economic stimulus package “and very aggressive actions by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are projected to help end the recession in the fall of 2009.”
The CBO projected that following its forecast steep economic contraction this year, the economy will grow 2.9 percent next year and 4 percent in 2011.
In January, CBO had forecast the economy to shrink 2.2 percent this year before growing 1.5 percent in 2010 and 4.2 percent in 2011.
The massive deficit forecasts come after Obama submitted in February his $3.55 trillion budget plan for fiscal 2010, which includes huge new programs to address health care and curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The White House predicted Obama’s budget priorities would not be affected by the forecasts of bigger deficits.
“Even with those numbers, the four key principles of the Obama budget will be met,” said White House budget director Peter Orszag, referring to investments in health care, education and clean energy as well as cutting the deficit in half by the end of Obama’s first term.
Damn the deficits, full speed ahead!
MR. CHRISTIAN! RAMMING SPEED!!
“When the Treasury sells bonds to China, no new dollars are printed. Instead, China prints yuan which it then uses to buy treasuries. This effectively allows America to export its inflation to China. However, now that we will be printing the money ourselves, the full inflationary impact will fall directly on us.”
- Schiff
“This effectively allows America to export its inflation to China.”
But the inflation wasn’t exported to China; the inflation was kept right here in the good ol’ USA in the form of pumped-up RE prices. The pumped-up RE prices were then extraced in the form of equity withdrawls which in turn pumped-up the economy.
Now that all this RE pumping is over the economy is deflating, and the trillions of dollars the administration is pumping into the economy won’t come close to offsetting this deflating.
extraced = extracted
“Now that all this RE pumping is over the economy is deflating, and the trillions of dollars the administration is pumping into the economy won’t come close to offsetting this deflating”.
I do agree, but the fact that, what? $50 trillion or so have gone poof, it will not stop TPTB from their continued debasement of our currency. The digital press will keep right on pumping. At some point I would think inflation will seep back into the system.
“At some point I would think inflation will seep back into the system.”
“The system” is broken. I was watching McLaughlin last night and it was almost pants-fillingly scary to listen to the pundits admit that this whole “interconnected” globalist system is trash, that it is a failed system. Essentially, that’s why AIG was bailed out. To pay off Goldman and the Eurobanks. On the backs of the taxpayers.
The heck with inflation or deflation. Let’s make the currency shark’s teeth. Or gourds, like Haiti did back in the day.
The heck with inflation or deflation. Let’s make the currency shark’s teeth. Or gourds, like Haiti did back in the day.
Those shark’s teeth will inevitably inflate or deflate in value. Changing the monetary symbol to something concrete and finite (as opposed to digital ones and zeroes) might help for a while, but we’d still have hoarders and hedgies and specuvestors and all the other market players who make capitalism so … capitalistic.
The currency depends largely on trust. If you don’t trust the currency, short it. The financial system also depends on trust. Many have been successfully shorting that one too.
“At some point I would think inflation will seep back into the system.”
Agree, but we are a long way from that point. There are still trillions of dollars destined to vanish, after this massive vanishing is when the inflation will hit.
But by thiat time the spending culture of Americans will have transformed just as the spending culture of the depression era Americans was transformed.
“”But by thiat time the spending culture of Americans will have transformed”"
True, but that won’t be all that is transformed. What will it transform into is the question and all of the options are not good.
Editorial suggestion:
“At some point I would think inflation will
seeproar back into the system.”Prediction: When a tsunami wave of inflation roars in a couple of years from now, many top policymakers will be heard to say, “Nobody could have seen it coming.”
“At some point I would think inflation will seep roar back into the system.”
Mortgage interest rates @ 14+ % (Kilroy was here!)
“Bring it on…. Fat Boy FED!”
…the last line uttered: “Kill the Beeeeeaaaasssssssstt!”
Mortgage interest rates @ 14+ % (Kilroy was here!)
BRING IT!!!!!!!! I have a pile of turdly dollars looking for yield.
There is no doubt of the massive manipulations of markets that border on frauds. It’s been the wild west years with bad guys, rustlers and the Wall Street King Rats running the calling the shots with congress acting like Sgt. Shultz.
From FIRE , naked shorting and equity derivatives, you name it, the lack of regulation, monitoring and strong effective enforcement has brought this country and the world to it’s freakin knees.
The system here in “River City” may not be broke, but it’s in a helleva lot of trouble because of a bunch of slick CON men were helping us with our “Investment” troubles.
IMHO, nothing is really going to help his recession and economy until the new sheriff in town lays down the real law of the land and his administration smokes a lot of these badmen
“the new sheriff in town”
This is what concerns me. He is cute, and that counts for a lot, but so far, every day has been an apology, a back pedal, a bufoonery, a denial, a reversal, an insult, a broken promise, etc., etc.
I don’t see a whole lot of big boy stuff.
Blue Skye
..and IMO, behind the (CUTE)backhanded compliments, which you assuredly give Obama while tearing him down, you sound like someone that doesn’t like this black Dem President and just doesn’t have the nerve to just come out and say so. It’s REALLY okay to say that !
I never had any problems saying that I didn’t like Raygun, BushI, BushII/Cheney or ANY of their GOP Criminal, Thug and Hoodlum corporate friends.
Have the courage to say what you really feel, the truth will set you free. By the way, Obama really is TRYING to close Gitmo
Well Mikey,
On the cute side, it really is true that he looks like a good enough fellow, maybe except the way Drudge keeps portraying him (and other Dems) with the head back rolling in laughter next to disaster stories. Meaning that he has the basis for popular affection, in a JKF sense. And it does count for a lot with the popular opinion. Should work for his advantage.
I wasn’t keen on having the supposedly most left liberal Congressman as CIF, but honestly he is our President now. I voted. I didn’t vote for him, but by voting I own the outcome along with everyone else. So, I want the best outcome. My secret hope, as I’ve posted before, is that he bring the kids home from war, and quickly. I don’t think that anybody right now could lead the country around the inevitable. I think some people’s expectations of him were from the start humorously unrealizable. I do think he represents a corrupt machine. I do think he is wasting valuable ammunition. I really do think that he is acting immaturish and unisightful, and it is surprising me and not in a good way.
I heard some commentary on the radio today that Obama has been on the defensive so far the whole time. This is a better way to express what should be a worry to us all.
I joke about a lot of things, but skin color isn’t one of them. You won’t get much traction on that with me. Nor with the idea that I must mean something opposite to what i said.
Prison camps are an awful thing.
Oh no — RE does not inflate, it creates “wealth effects.” (Apparently the latter can either be positive or negative.)
Combotechie,
This is one of the reasons this HBB has so many interested and interesting people - there is always more than one way to read a situation, especially complicated and important situations involving the economy, currency, and politics.
I’m in that camp that sees future deflation occuring primarily in those assets requiring constant debt service, like homes and commercial real estate, of course. Also expensive toys like fancy autos, boats, civilian aircraft.
I don’t see any way to reverse the monetary debasement and accompanying inflation, which will first manifest itself in the gold-silver/ dollar equation.
In my view, the Fed implicitly signalling it will be buying trillions worth of T-Bonds and thereby monetizing our debt permanently, Wednesday, was a sentinal event.
It will mark the beginning of the most pronounced decline in the value of the dollar, bull market for PMs and bear market for T-Bonds, ever witnessed on Planet Earth.
But I truly appreciate your deflationary point of view; believe it will continue for some but not all assets, and wish everyone the best of luck coping with whatever comes our way.
Where do headline stock market indexes fit into your inflation/deflation dichotomy? And how does the Fed buying T-bonds create a bear market (unless you are talking about over the next decade or more)? They are artificially propping up demand, which has a tendency to make asset prices go up, at least in nominal terms.
PB,
OK, with earnings essentially disappearing, P/E ratios are climbing to infinity. Lower stock prices across the board will result - lower headline index numbers for the foreseeable future.
The paradox of the T-Bond market is that when you artificially prop up a price, others tend to hit your bid. The Fed will just be giving the rest of the world a chance to unload, and they will. Very much like five or six non-swimmers from a capsized life-boat climbing on top of the one really good swimmer, in their panic. It isn’t long before they are all headed for the bottom. For the bonds, it won’t be next week, but much sooner than 10 years, IMHO.
Interesting set of posts, guys. Thanks for taking the time.
“I’m in that camp that sees future deflation occuring primarily in those assets requiring constant debt service, like homes and commercial real estate, of course. Also expensive toys like fancy autos, boats, civilian aircraft.”
Cobalt -
I hadn’t thought of this, but now that you’ve said it, it seems patently obvious. Since credit will be tough to get for those who don’t save, your line of thought appears as a gimme. We’ll see, of course.
Don’t forget to factor in the deflating effect disappearing jobs will have on the economy. A lot of these jobs are dependent on “assets requiring constant debt service”.
When jobs disappear then wages disappear as well which cause demand to evaporate, which causes more jobs to disappear, and on and on.
“Lower stock prices will result…”
… which will cause still more damage to already severly damaged “wealth”.
There is excess capacity in labor, excess capacity in housing, excess capacity in autos, excess capacity in manufacturing, excess capacity in commodities. Output is going off a cliff.
There is a huge shortage of viable lenders and credit, however. They blew their load expanding capacity beyond our needs. Temporary money printing will keep things circulating while we adjust.
Agree, MM. Good post.
Just what is it the Federal Reserve is doing that’s different, and worrisome? In buying $300 billion worth of long-end Treasurys, it is directly monetizing U.S. government debt. This is what the Federal Reserve did during World War II to finance U.S. government borrowing. Who is it that’s issuing the Treasurys which the Fed will monetize? The U.S. Congress. Ultimately, Congress must step forward and take the blame for its wild-west approach to preventing a necessary economic contraction and postponing the day of reckoning.
Julian Delasantellis puts it this way: “The story being ignored is the US Federal Reserve effectively telling foreigners, such as the Chinese, that the US does not need their money; it will print its own.”
Economist Puru Saxena further explains: “Politicians borrow money when it buys them a loaf of bread and they repay it when the same money is worth only a slice of bread!” In other words, the federal government borrows massive amounts of money today and pays it back in the sweet bye and bye with cheaper dollars whose purchasing power was purposely damaged by inflation. That’s why the Federal Reserve is trying to get inflation going again!
“…pays it back in the sweet bye and bye with cheaper dollars whose purchasing power was purposely damaged by inflation. That’s why the Federal Reserve is trying to get inflation going again!”
I have a simpler mindset - that this is the only reason the Fed exists.
From now on I am paying all my bills in Zimbabwe currency.
Sounds like a good idea. The trick is convincing others it’s a good idea.
Short the dollar and/or beat inflation.
California
real estateunemployment always goes up. And it’s “obvious” that only federal stimulus can fix it. Obviously.California jobless rate climbs to 10.5 percent
San Diego County rate inches up to 8.8%
By Dean Calbreath (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer
1:43 p.m. March 20, 2009
The jobless rate in California soared to 10.5 percent last month, as the state lost 116,000 jobs spanning nearly every sector of employment, according to data released Friday by the California Employment Development Department.
It is the highest unemployment rate since the recession of the 1980s and economists say it seems poised to top the 1982 high of 11 percent, which was the state’s highest jobless rate since the Great Depression.
Steven Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto, said he expects unemployment to continue rising for at least six months, even if federal stimulus efforts are successful.
“The longer term outlook obviously depends on the success of national policies to boost employment and stabilize the housing and banking sectors,” he said.
Good thing housing prices can be “stabilized” when unemployment is nearing “the worst its been since the Great Depression.”
Been out on the street quite a bit lately, checking out houses and traffic.
Traffic is through the roof (has been pretty busy since Feb. 2008 around here). Houses are selling very quickly, and the better areas have lost perhaps 15-20% on average. Still about double pre-bubble pricing. Gotta keep waiting out the fools, I guess, which is not easy when the spouse gets restless.
Why do they always put the less relevant statistic in the headline? The relevant one from the standpoint of the future foreclosure outlook and the prospect of the San Diego real estate market bottoming out is that February 2009 NODs are at an all-time record high.
Foreclosure moratoriums have a similar effect to what happens if a guy with constipation problems doesn’t bother taking his laxative for a few days. When he finally gets around to taking it again and the log jam is broken, you can bet there will be a massive dump. Sorry to be so gross early on a Saturday, but hopefully this metaphor illustrates the stupidity of hoping that foreclosure moratoriums are going to some how solve the housing market’s problems.
Foreclosure rate jumps but is still lower than in Feb. ‘08
By Emmet Pierce (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer
11:54 a.m. March 20, 2009
After dropping by 12 percent in January, the number of foreclosures in San Diego County increased by 11 percent last month, signaling a return to business as usual after a self-imposed slowdown by the mortgage industry.
“I think there is backlog of foreclosures that have been delayed by the legislative process and what amounted to an industrywide moratorium for a couple of months” said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of the RealtyTrac research firm.
The MDA DataQuick research firm on Friday reported 1,232 foreclosures within the county in February, an 11 percent jump over January, but a decline of 6.4 percent from February 2008, when the total was 1,316.
DataQuick also said there were 3,471 notices of default, which mark the start of the foreclosure process, a record since the firm began collecting data on defaults in 1992. It was an increase of nearly 24 percent over January and an increase of 17 percent over February 2008.
Dustin Hobbs, spokesman for California Mortgage Bankers Association, noted that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and several major loan servicers had stopped foreclosures during the holiday season. The recent implementation of Senate Bill 1137, which requires loan servicers in California to take more steps to prevent borrowers from losing their homes, contributed to a delay in foreclosure activity.
“It’s not unusual that we are seeing foreclosure activity going up,” Hobbs said. “Whether this is permanent remains to be seen. There was a huge backlog.”
I need book suggestions.
I’ve read in the past 3 months:
1. The Money Game
2. Where Are the Customers Yachts
3. The Intelligent investor
4. Reminiscences of a Stock operator
Currently reading: The Creature from Jekyll Island
Read last year The great crash 1929 Kenneth Galbraith
That’s my total sum of education in economics/market.
Need a good macro economics book
And I am in desperate need of trading primers.
(I do want to trade in the future)
I’ll take any suggestions.
I want to educate myself.
“(I do want to trade in the future.)”
“I’ll take any suggestions.”
Here’s one: Re-read “Reminiscences” and pay particular attention to how many traders, including Livermore (or Livingston), went broke.
An adage: “If you don’t know who you are Wall Street can be a very expensive place to find out.”
This is very good advice.
I should have clarified.
My interest is more in long term trades (5+ years) on indexes on the long side.
I leave the day trading to you guys.
“mikey’s Wall Street guide to gambling with a Crooked Deck”
New $49.99 - used $2.95 Amazon.com
Stockcharts — John Murphy.
Read marketing texts instead of macro. Marketing focuses on the structure of markets and the behaviors (competitive, consumer, and organizational) among participants within markets. Macro is too far removed from the action. Micro is applicable to decision making, however, particularly break-even analysis, revenue curves and so on.
I was considering purchasing the Create from Jekyll Island until I read up more on the author’s other beliefs. You may want to check out his wikipedia entry (or a more reliable source).
He believes vitamin B17 cures cancer but is being held back by a conspiracy involving the American Cancer Society, the FDA, and the AMA.
He also believes he knows where Noah’s Ark is buried.
I’ll look elsewhere for an education on the Federal Reserve.
http://www.amazon.com/Remarkable-Medicine-Been-Overlooked-Autobiography/dp/0826410693
Jack Dreyfus, the “Lion of Wall Street” and founder of the Dreyfus Fund, spent $80 million of his own money and thirty years of his life campaigning to get the FDA and medical establishment to recognize the benefits of the anti-seizure drug, Dilantin, for mood disorders. While most of his book is about how Dilantin was a “miracle drug” for pulling him and many others out of severe depression/anxiety/OCD disorders due to out-of-whack body electrical activity, his insights into the markets and how he rose from modest beginnings to make a fortune on Wall Street make the book well worth the purchase price. He was one of the very few admirable characters on Wall Street.
Muir,
” The Creature from Jekyll Island” ought to be required reading in every Econ 101 course in the country. Most people have no idea what the Fed is or where it came from.
My current suggestions for anyone interested in getting a better handle on economics, financial trends, govt policies on economics:
1. Freakonomics
2. The Great Crash of 1929 (which I note you read last year)
3.The Wealth of Nations
4.The Road to Serfdom
If nothing else, they have all had wide circulation.
Have a good one!
Thank you Cobalt.
Very helpful.
Thank you bink.
Thank you mrktMaven,
I ordered the book.
And thx Mikey and combo and David.
Locust
Historical account of locust invasions in the 1870s on the great plains. Farmers everywhere were going bankrupt and starving to death. I find it interesting how different the response of government was back then. The attitude was that if farmers were starving it was their fault for not working hard enough. It was a real struggle to get any kind of social relief at all. Compare to today where falling house prices are a national emergency and the federal government needs to guarantee everyone a 600,000 loan just to keep house prices stable.
In the 1870’s, the wealth of the aristocrats was not dependent upon the good health of the lowly farmer. Today, the values of the lowly peasants’ houses have everything to do with the financial health of the aristocrats.
Is this the same one that explains what happened to the Rocky Mountain Locust, a mystery which wasn’t explained (or even looked into) for decades, and which had to be solved with Cold Case methods?
The Constitution and The Federalist (All the problems now were addressed once already, and yes, a lot of economics/human action in both - especially money)
The Wealth of Nations - Smith
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money - Keynes
The Fallacies of the “New” Economics (refuting above) - Hazlitt
The Economic Consequences of the Peace - Keynes
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto - Marx/Engels
Human Action - Mises
The Theory of Money and Credit - Mises
Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles - de Soto
Ehh… you mean there’s nothing between the “dummy” series and Mises?
By the way, I have had Mises bookmarked for quite a while.
Anyways, I appreciated your sense of humor.
Read the Rolling Stone article that Leigh posted. Excellent writing.
YES!!!!!!!!
I read it yesterday.
It was AWESOME.
Even after reading our posters links here in the HBB for years, I found it very informative and clear.
Also, I felt hopeful that this is finally getting into more media.
Thank you BayAreaGal!
This is good e-mail stuff isn’t it?!
Yes it is Muir.
I wasn’t intending to be humorous, but what can I say. Wittier than I thought apparently.
Excellent suggestions, kerk.
Not sure my longer post on the subject will show up, but NODs for San Diego County hit a record high of 3,471 in February. This amounts to an annual NOD issuance rate of 3,471 * 12 = 41,652, which is more than three times the current MLS inventory (SD ZipRealty dot come = 13,689), and we still have the tsunami crest of Alt-A and prime ARM resets to work through over the next two years. How the local real estate market will absorb the resulting foreclosure inventory glut remains to be seen.
I guess it is time to order some of Neil’s good ole’ fashioned popcorn and get comfortable in the easy chair…
Below I will post a stupid Newsweek article that goads Americans to throw caution to the wind and spend money like there is no tomorrow. The cumulative effects of the Fed’s War on Savers and signaled intent to escalate it juxtaposed against a backdrop of rampaging job losses has American households between Iraq and a hard place — hardly the time for a carefree trip to the mall.
Americans increasingly fearing financial ruin
Money matters depress consumers, studies find
By Jennifer Waters
MARKETWATCH
2:00 a.m. March 21, 2009
Americans are in a collective state of financial depression, as many admit they could cover their bills for only two months at most if they found themselves suddenly jobless, a nightmare that more and more worry may come true.
The results of a bevy of surveys found that a growing number of consumers are only a couple of paychecks away from a household collapse, even as many scramble to shore up savings. Rainy-day funds appear to be a distant memory as households burn cash to cover food and energy bills as well as mortgage and car payments.
A large number of households say that even one missed paycheck would spell financial ruin. And even in households that remain well-off, the surveys show a festering fear that financial problems are lurking.
“This is flashing so bright red,” said Paul Ballew, senior vice president of Nationwide Insurance Co. “Roughly 60 percent of the population was ill-prepared (financially) before the meltdown.”
Does this really seem like sound advice when many American households are two paychecks away from financial ruin, with increasing risk of unemployment to boot? It appears to me as though our economy faces a collective “Paradox of Spendthrift.” And a return to the kind of foolish too-big-to-fail-insured risk taking which dug us into the hole in which we find ourselves will only serve to dig us in deeper.
Thank you very much, J M Keynes.
COVER STORY: ECONOMY
Stop Saving Now!
As consumers hibernate and investors hoard cash, the economy is withering. This new age of thrift is understandable. But for a recovery to take hold, Americans will need to start taking risks again.
By Daniel Gross | NEWSWEEK
Published Mar 14, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Mar 23, 2009
I agree with you. The great thing about thrift is that it makes people become humble. A preponderance of thrift in a soiety makes a humble society. A prepondrance of credit goes hand in hand with dishonesty. It’s no wonder we have corruption at all levels. The danger in this is totalitarianism waiting in the wings.
Yep.
The great thing about thrift is that it makes people become humble. A preponderance of thrift in a soiety makes a humble society.
Wha…? I just don’t get your chain of thought. Maybe enforced thrift makes people become humble. Poverty certainly makes people become humble. And what’s so great about being humble anyhow? Humble people have to take crap they don’t wanna take and in some cases shouldn’t oughtta have to take. Perhaps I don’t understand what you think ‘humble’ means, semantically.
I like my work. I like my money. I enjoy playing a game with myself to see how much fun I can have, how much truly excellent food I can eat, how many big bright books and pretty flower bulbs and other things I can get, while yet saving as much as possible and wasting as absolutely little as I can. It’s not humbling or unpleasant, because I think it’s a very fun game. And as a delightful result of that fun game, I have some decent savings built up and would be fine if I didn’t work for a year. Maybe even longer, if I stopped buying books and Persian carpets, which I probably should, seeing as how the load bearing walls in my house are starting to groan under the weight of the bookshelves.
Anyway, my point is, so BECAUSE I’ve been thrifty, I don’t have to worry or fret or have trouble sleeping or kiss-a*ss nearly as much as many are now having to do.
I don’t have to be humble, in other words.
+1
I had exactly the same response but you said it all.
I bid on a used Jaguar in New Jersey this morning ($6500), but somebody outbid me on it this afternoon, so that’s that. This afternoon we’re going to look at a 1BR HUD condo for sale for $15K, and the realtor told me she just repriced it down to $13,900. It’ll give me a place to stay after we sell this house we’re in to get out from under the mortgage. I work too far away from where we’re going to be moving to to do a 54-mile each way in the winter. This condo’s in a good neighborhood, and I’m familiar with the development. I can crash there weeknights in the winters. It’ll be a cash sale if we like it. The house we’re in now is going on the market as soon as our tenants move out of our retirement home this summer. We’re moving up there. No mortgage on that place. This condo model used to sell for $70K and up, before Great Crash. It’ll rent at about $ 650 per month if we feel like renting it out. The office condo is (finally) going to the sheriff sale on 4-29-09. Hope some lucky dog will buy it. Actually, it’ll be at half the price that other ones in the same development are priced at. We’re getting out from having a 2nd full-sized house because, well, we’re just sick of it, and the neighborhood is slowly going down hill with all of the repos. My attorney stepsister is listing it, and it’s going for dirt cheap. Goodbye house. We’re getting rid of all buildings in our life as much as possible, and pretty much not letting loose of much cash. ( Well the Jaguar was a deal, but, husband wasn’t too happy about my low-ball bid. There’ll be another one anyway ).
I understand the bargain hunting, Olygirl. We’ll see how the condo turns out.
Where’s your retirement home again?? Sorry.
I understand the bargain hunting, Olygirl. We’ll see how the condo turns out.
Well, I don’t bargain hunt for used Jarguars, so there’s that– partly because one would look stupid parked here in the forest— and I don’t want a condo, and I personally become terribly excited when I find a box full of old dishes and knives in the Free Pile at a yard-sale, but other than that, I understand yer!
Yeah! Bargains rule!
How does sensible or even forced austerity equate into becoming “humble” towards another person or people ?
Have we been neglecting ANY required daily bows and grovelling to someone ?
You’re so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain
I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? Don’t you?
Carly Simon wrote the song for ME one rainy night in DC while Tayler was playing to 8 people in a Foggy Bottom bar just up from GWU!
Being humble…just isn’t in MY nature
Being humble…just isn’t in MY nature
I’m pretty sure that all of us previously somehow sensed this.
WooOhoooooooooooh ….I heard it on the radiooooo
“Humble” isn’t part of the typical elitist’s lexicon.
I save money like mad - I have enough to not work for about 12 years. Yet I know exactly what humble means. It runs counter to the mindset of “where’s mine?”
Eudemon posted:
““Humble” isn’t part of the typical elitist’s lexicon.
I save money like mad - I have enough to not work for about 12 years. Yet I know exactly what humble means. It runs counter to the mindset of “where’s mine?”"
No. Humble is not feeling the need to boast about one’s financial position to strangers, no matter what the situation. Methinks you’ve got a lot to learn.
No Mr. Smokey Bear, you have “pride” mixed with “bragging.” Eudemon has pride. Think of the people of equal income to Eudemon who could also have saved for 12 years but decided to spend. They show off in their Boxsters and Lexuses and grotesque mansions that are now worth little. Eudomon probably does not dress like someone who has 12 years worth of savings. He’s probably ignored by attractive women while they go for guys wearing Rolex watches and dress the GQ way.
I have seven years worth of living expenses where I don’t have to work. That is pride.
Grizzle -
Just because I can make it for 12 years or so with no income hardly means I’m rich. It may mean that I don’t spend much. See?
For instance, I take no joy in shopping or eating out and avoid both like the plague. I use dial-up Internet (still!). I don’t have a wide screen TV of any sort. No IPod. My car is 10 years old. Blah…blah…blah.
I decided a long time ago that time was more important to me than things. If I lose my job, time is not my enemy.
Because I’m a tightwad, I was about to take a 45% shave in income to do what I really want to do for now, which is to teach.
I am the person deciding what to do with my time.
BILL:
It’s no such much a pride thing (though there is some of that), but it’s a freedom thing. I’ve been a gatherer of Freedom Chips for many years.
“able to take a 45% shave….”
How I wish computer programs would stop “fixing” my typos for me! Annoying.
To add to the above — IMO, there’s little better in life knowing that you can wake up on any given day….decide that you no longer want to work for a given employer….and quit the same day! Without worrying about your next job.
I did that very thing twice, once when I found out how unethical my bosses were (I actually quit a week later) and another time because I decided travel Europe for six months. (Naturally, I stayed at modest digs in Europe. Equivalent to a $30-40 hotel in Las Vegas.)
Not going out to lunch or dinner five times a week has its rewards!
Gross is right in the sense that until we start spending again there will be no growth. The elephant in the room of course is all the debt/capital we’ve wasted building excess houses and malls that needs to be paid back.
No spending = no growth
No growth = no jobs
No jobs = no money to spend
Uh oh.
I guess trying to force down the wages of the avg consumer over the last 30 years, in the largest consuming nation on the planet, that is a 75% consumer driven economy, down to 2nd world levels may not have been such a good idea, huh?
Lather, rinse repeat ad nauseam.
I guess trying to force down the wages of the avg consumer over the last 30 years, in the largest consuming nation on the planet, that is a 75% consumer driven economy, down to 2nd world levels may not have been such a good idea, huh?
——————-
BINGO!!!!!
Who is enriched when we go into debt?
Everything becomes more expensive when you take out loans to pay for it.
Why is this society so beholden to debt?
MONEY CULTURE
Goldman Sachs, Welfare Queen
Wall Street’s most storied firm is surviving on taxpayer dollars.
By Daniel Gross
Mar 19, 2009 | Updated: 8:46 p.m. ET Mar 19, 2009
Losses spur Feds to seize 2 wholesale credit unions
By Mark Maremont
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
2:00 a.m. March 21, 2009
In the latest move by federal authorities to prop up the nation’s banking system, regulators late yesterday seized control of the two largest wholesale credit unions in the United States after finding that their losses on mortgage-related securities were larger than previously thought.
U.S. Central Corporate Federal Credit Union in Lenexa, Kan., and Western Corporate Federal Credit Union in San Dimas, which have a total $57 billion in assets, were taken into conservatorship by federal regulators.
Michael Fryzel, chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, the industry’s federal regulator, said the seizure was necessary to maintain the integrity of the credit-union system and protect the insurance fund that backs up deposits in thousands of retail credit unions.
The affected institutions don’t serve the general public. They provide critical financing, check clearing and other tasks for the retail institutions. These wholesale credit unions, known in industry parlance as corporate credit unions, are owned by their retail credit-union members.
The vast majority of regular credit unions, the bank-like cooperatives familiar to millions of account holders nationwide, are considered financially sound. Credit unions have more than 90 million members nationwide.
U.S. Central and Western Corporate have been grappling for more than a year with large paper losses on a slew of assets, mostly mortgage related. In January, regulators moved to prop up U.S. Central with a $1 billion infusion after it took big write-downs on some of the securities.
Save the Credit Unions!
Conde Nast Portfolio - 15 hours ago
Mar 20 2009 8:41PM EDT
Save the Credit Unions!
The good news is that the two largest corporate credit unions — cesspits of toxic waste which loaded up on mortgage-backed securities for no good reason and in violation of their raison d’etre — have been “conserved” (taken over) by the NCUA, the credit-union equivalent of the FDIC, which has finally woken up to the fact that the current management at these shops is utterly incompetent and can’t be trusted.
The bad news is that the NCUA is still committed to the disastrous decision it made back in January, to whack 56 basis points off the net worth of every federal credit union in the country, as well as reducing those credit unions’ return on assets by 62 basis points, in an attempt to bail out these selfsame untrustworthy corporates.
NCUA believes that the actions to conserve the two corporates, in tandem with established plans to enhance liquidity and generally stabilize the corporate network, represent the most cost effective and prudent alternative available to the credit union industry.
Today’s decision is proof, if proof were needed (and frankly it wasn’t) that the old plans — which essentially involve member-owned and well-run retail credit unions being forced to bail out a bunch of sharks and gamblers — were not only misguided but also woefully insufficient. I’m particularly mindful here of the small community development credit unions like the one I live next door to and sit on the board of, LES People’s.
We were always extremely assiduous in our loan underwriting, our asset quality is very high despite the fact that our membership has very low credit ratings, and our operating income has never been higher. Yet this proposal from the NCUA would force us to expend extremely precious and hard-fought-for capital in order to bail out the wastrels at the likes of WesCorp. At a stroke, it manages to redistribute capital from the people who really need it — the poor members of local-community credit unions — to faceless financial institutions which were lying to their regulator about their solvency all along.
Here are the facts about community development credit unions (CDCUs), and how they’ll be affected by the proposed bailout:
Last year, CDCUs nationally posted approximately $12.75 million in net income. Assuming all factors remain equal, a mandatory investment of 62 basis points translates into $28 million and would represent a net loss for CDCUs of $15.3 million in 2009, wiping out the modest gains made this year. The fallout from the economic downturn, coupled with the lack of capital, will result in a rapid reduction in community wealth, and for CDCUs, a crippling loss in earnings. We fear these challenges could permanently shutter dozens of CDCUs nationally.
Remember that all things are not going to remain equal: banks in general are suffering from rising delinquencies, and credit unions are no different. But after they’ve carefully built up capital cushions to protect themselves from exactly such an eventuality, it’s unconscionable for their regulator to then turn around and remove that capital cushion just when they need it, saying that a bunch of speculators with more money than sense managed to gamble it away in the RMBS markets.
The big question in Washington these days is simple: “How can we get banks lending again?”. Any sensible answer to that question must involve credit unions, which have proved themselves to be extremely responsible lenders. We should be bolstering their capital right now, rather than confiscating it.
Now that the NCUA has woken up and realized that the corporate credit unions are beyond redemption, its board must rescind its extremely harmful decision to ask the real, consumer-facing credit unions to bail them out. At the very least, come up with some way of recapitalizing the small but vital credit unions which will be worst hit by this misguided policy. It’s a nasty world out there, but they can be a hugely important force for good. If only you’ll let them.
Ben, I don’t post entire articles. This is one exception.
Leigh
test
I hope the post pipeline did not get constipated like the SD foreclosure pipeline, because I have some doozies in there
It looks like Ben unclogged it for you.
Unfortunately, reality is biting me in the lower extremities today, as I have the opposite problem from constipation. There must be some kind of bad karma coming back at me from that blog post above…
Thanks for the bowels update, PB.
Anyway, maybe it’s not karma, maybe you just oughtta stay away from those roving taqueria trucks. Do that before you get all kindly and lose yer growl, I urge you.
I think it was the Thai curry sauce that I put on those sautéed turkey breasts I cooked for myself last night for dinner. They went down very well, but they did not stay down well.
Ben’s Arizona Purple Haze adds a certain Mystic to the post pipeline Bear but it is always fun when your thoughts and wisdom finally emerge from the Other Side of the curtain
I hear Jimi Hendrix strumming his guitar has I post
Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don’t seem the same
Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why
‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky
Purple haze all around
Don’t know if I’m comin’ up or down
Am I happy or in misery?
Whatever it is that girl put a spell on me
Purple haze all in my eyes
Don’t know if it’s day or night
You got me blowin’, blowin’ my mind
Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?
Interesting. The latest e-missive from my Friendly Neighborhood Realtor doesn’t call attention to great deals or try to convince me to buy now (for once). Instead, he’s trying to convince me that his firm isn’t overleveraged and will be one of the last men standing:
@properties is well-positioned to take advantage of the inevitable market recovery. That’s because our growth — while extraordinary in market share — has been controlled, non-leveraged and almost entirely organic. Our largest investments have been in technology, training and marketing programs that assure our clients the best service, greatest exposure and strongest representation in the marketplace.
As a result, despite the challenging market, @properties increased its market share by 30 percent in 2008. In the city of Chicago, our ‘08 sales volume of $1.875 billion was second in the city only to a firm with three times as many agents.
Fecal matter also is “organic”.
As are mushrooms. I don’t know which is worse - this realtard, fecal matter or mushrooms. All are vile and rank high on my list of the World’s Most Heinous Things.
…or mushrooms. All are vile…
I. Am. Going. To. PRETEND. I. Didn’t. Hear. That.
*fearsome scowl *
And fecal matter is also good stuff.
And before unwholesome images arise in your various HBB brains, let me hastily explain: I was arguing with an ag. producer some months ago on the subject of whether or not cows should be allowed to poop in streams, even if the farmer is economically distressed and/or is a lazy a*sshole.
(Here’s a helpful hint: ‘No. They should not.’ )
And the farmer guy says snottily, well, why don’t YOU try to manage poop and make it harmless, and see how good YOU do? And I snarled in an unlady-like way: ‘I accept your challenge’.
And I did. So I have some exciting buckets of various poop sorts out by my garage, and thermometers, and little scoops, and we shall see what we shall see, when the pooping results are in! So there!
*What? I said, fooking NO!
I don’t need to tell you this, of course, but p00ps and mushrooms often flock together. Realtors and mushrooms, not so much. Realtors and p00p, well, that’s axiomatic.
At any rate, I hope you find a use for your “exciting buckets” that doesn’t involve Realtors.
Hey - fecal matter is wonderous for the growth of veggies and flowers. On that, we agree. (You’d be surprised at the extent I can grow crops, Oly). I’m also good at spotting edible wild things of various type growing in differing environs.
Take creeping snowberry, for instance. I imagine that’s commonplace around Mt Olympia. Makes a tasty jelly, but I prefer it in banana bread and almond-based confections.
Throw some sorrel into scrambled eggs or souffles - excellent.
Once your tummy is overly bloated from clams, smoke a stick of kinnikinick so that your innards cooperate.
See?
And I know what these flora actually look like!
Tell me more about fecal matter in buckets please - I am truly interested. Do they attract different types of decomposers? Rate of decay? Shelf life?
Don’t use all of it, though - the leftovers might be mighty useful in attracting burglars to your door (whom you can use as target practice for your new weaponry)!
Unless Olygal is an undercover poop agent for the DNR or some perverted h20 quality lab, she’s one strange girl
Tell me more about fecal matter in buckets please - I am truly interested. Do they attract different types of decomposers? Rate of decay? Shelf life?
Well, that’s the whole thingie, there, innit it? Different admixtures would yield different results, also sorted and layered by different quantities of admixtures, and depending on what the terrain is, should this be naturally treated only by heat, if it’s sloped terrain and on what kind of soil, and I gotta be keeping track of the temperatures to track decomp and all sorts of annoying crap… (Hahaha! Get it?)
However and also, results would all be ENTIRELY different in the heat of our brief but rain-less summers. So that’s a variable I just barely thought of last week. I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it earlier. And I’m getting tired of thinking of it. Besides, and this is the important thing, the other day I went out there at night to show someone my pretty bat-boxes I nailed to the garage and I tripped over a poop-bucket and spilled the mess on my feets, and boy! Good thing there was a hose handy, or no one would have let me back in my very own house! Jerks!
And all the bats flew away, with watering eyes…
Oh, it’s all just super tiresome. At this point I think it would be easiest for me to just go kill the annoying farmer* and make some numbers up.
*And put him in a compost pile. And studiously measure the rate of decomp.
HAhahahaahaHAHAAHAH!
*falls off rickety wooden chair laughing at my smartness, and the pleasingly ironic resolution to my situation *
Oooo…bats!
Somehow, I’m suddenly reminded of Yvonne Craig….
Anyway, those creatures are pretty keen - ’specially when they accidently fly into the side of your head in the dark of night. It’s a sign of good luck when they do so - because I say so.
You are aware of the means by which one keeps bats from defecating on sidewalks, etc., that might surround your house, yes? If not, use heavy kite string and make several criss-cross patterns in the corners of your abode (and in your belfries or other such timberwork). Bats don’t like webs, and, as a consequence, may flit and dash about dartily until they bump into your bat boxes and take residence there.
It’s a sign of good luck when they do so - because I say so.
Good enough for me.
You are aware of the means by which one keeps bats from defecating on sidewalks, etc., that might surround your house, yes?
(hiccup)
Oh, yeah, huh? This is good advice. Before you I had thought I just had to be sitting out there peacefully at night on my porch, sipping something cold and tasty, with a few candles flickering warmly, and my feets in my gray wool clogs and my head in my new little red cap, and the smell of moss and water rising up around me like an incense and THEN I would suddenly stand up and scream mightily,
‘You! Bats! Quit poo*ping on my stuff!’
*shakes head sadly at my ignorance *
What are you, anyhow, ‘Good Spirit’? Are you a biologist?
Ahhhh!
FINALLY someone here actually looked up (or already knew) what “eudemon” means! (It ain’t no stinkin’ sophmoric you-da-man stuff). Perhaps you are a eudemon yourself, intentionally masquerading as a semi-demonic mischief maker? “Good spirit” indeed.
Nah…I’m not a biologist, but rather a person who is at times fascinated by etymology. “Eu” is an interesting prefix that has a parlor magic all its own. Europe, eudemon, euphony, eulogy, euthanasia, eupotamic, euphoria, eucalyptus, eugenics.
Biology (and botany) is exciting stuff, but I’m no expert.
A most eximious subject. (Yeah, I threw that in just to be obnoxious).
And yes, try using heavy string to keep bats away from the house. I’ve spent days scrubbing bat guano from cement, and since it sounds like you might have done that before yourself, you know what a stubbornly Herculean task that is. Egad.
Get some cheapo hooks from a garage sale or two, pound those hooks into your house and tie cross-crossed string to those hooks. You’ll want about 5-8 strings per corner.
There’s likely some pictures of what to do on the ‘net.
Works like a charm, Oly. Really.
F Troop strikes again! Maybe he should have sent Clinton to Tehran with another one of those “That was easy buttons”.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29810371
Trouble in Credit Union Paradise:
WASHINGTON, March 20 (Reuters) - Regulators seized the top clearinghouse for U.S. credit unions, citing a critical deterioration in the finances of the provider of services to thousands of retail credit unions.
The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) took control of U.S. Central Federal Credit Union, a huge wholesale credit union with about $34 billion in assets based in Lenexa, Kansas.
It also seized Western Corporate (WesCorp) Federal Credit Union of San Dimas, California, another corporate credit union with $23 billion in assets.
Stress tests of corporate credit unions had uncovered an “unacceptably high concentration of risk” at these two institutions, the regulator said in a statement.
The immediate costs of the takeover are coming out of a $7 billion industry-maintained insurance fund, but will mean higher premiums levied on retail credit unions.
The action highlighted strains in the nonprofit banking sector that has recently been touted as a source of new lending, even as many for-profit banks limit their lending and receive billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded capital injections.
U.S. regulators also seized another three small banks on Friday, bringing the total to 20 so far this year.
U.S. Central and WesCorp were carrying the bulk of the soured mortgage-backed securities that have been causing woes to the corporate credit union industry, said NCUA spokesman John McKechnie.
“We’ve been intervening in the corporate networks… for several months now and it just got to a critical stage,” McKechnie said. “In the last couple of months the problems have moved from liquidity to be more capital and asset-based.”
In January the NCUA injected $1 billion into U.S. Central after the corporate credit union suffered dramatic declines in the value of mortgage-backed securities it had bought.
Corporate credit unions are the retail credit union’s credit union, providing services including lending, and check and payment clearance services.
Bauer Financial rates CU’s and Bank, using a 5 star system. Money & Markets and The Street.com are other options.
Boiling the taxpayer frogs. Way to go, Timmie!:
AIG bonuses ‘higher than thought’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7956903.stm
Just goes to show how irrational government policies lead to more of the same. We bailed AIG out, then have to make new tyrannical laws to stop the bonuses. Wouldn’t it have been preferable to allow them to fail to begin with?
Speaking of the bonuses, this is an absurd sideshow involving chump change, in the scheme of things.
The real story is the BILLIONS that are going to AIG, where the money is LAUNDERED and doled out to Goldman Sachs and various international counterparties. That is the real scandal.
Then, AIG takes the roll of the fall guy, while the big boys take their money and run.
Same comment I made a day or two ago.
But let’s show some respect … Big Boys is capitalized! As is Usual Suspects.
The Usual Suspects are the means whereby ‘capital’ (broadly defined) flows to the Big Boys …
OBWan is backpeddling on the bonus clawbacks. I guess his masters in the Bilderberg Group got to him…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_attendees#United_States
Ya thunk I was joking?
List of Bilderberg attendees
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
…
* Timothy Geithner[16], Treasury Secretary
* Lawrence Summers[17], Director of the National Economic Council
* Paul Volcker[18], Chair of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Much has been written lately about whether America is becoming a socialist country. Socialism refers to the economic and social system in which everything is owned by the government.
Nobody has been writing about whether the United States has become a fascist system. Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” wrote the following about fascism, many decades ago:
“Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.” Also: “Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership … the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens.”
Isn’t this what we’re witnessing today? The government bails out AIG, Citibank and others. The government now owns as much as 80 percent of many of these companies. Yet the government leaves these companies free to “profit,” to pay for executive bonuses, vacations and the like with federal tax dollars. These former capitalist companies are permitted to go on existing as before, only funded by government rather than private dollars. On the course set last fall by President Bush and now even more aggressively by President Obama and Congress, America is becoming a fascist country. It’s fair to say this, because once banks and major financial institutions are owned by the government (yet are still nominally “private” and “for-profit”), you have embraced fascism, by Ayn Rand’s definition.
People mistakenly equate the term “fascist” with racism and Hitler-like concentration camps. These are not the essence of fascism, although they are the byproduct of it. Why? Because fascism, no more than socialism, cannot possibly work as a rational economic system. It routinely denies individual rights and eliminates personal responsibility through the creation of a massive welfare state. As society falters under this fiscally and morally disastrous economic system, government takes over in other ways and ultimately restricts basic individual, human freedoms. It starts with the nationalization of banks and health care–and ends with speech, religion and who knows what else.
America, like pre-Nazi Germany, is forsaking economic liberty for what a majority apparently still believe will lead to greater welfare for all. Has anybody yet made the connection that it doesn’t work this way? If you allow former private companies to still operate at a profit, using billions of taxpayer dollars, you get fraud and abuse. This sets the stage for the Barney Franks of the world to step in and essentially turn the whole thing socialist, leading to nothing less than permanent economic stagnation like the former Soviet Union.
Fascism holds an unhealthy appeal to a once capitalist, free country now in denial about the cause and nature of its woes. As a whole, the people of the U.S. do not want to collapse into communism or socialism. The pretense of private profit and ownership with government actually running the show seems appealing, at first, to those seeking a “third way.” Yet as Ayn Rand warned, it’s impossible. Fascism is no better than the evil of socialism.
Fascism….. where government(us) is subservient to corporate interests. The corporatists are those free market yammering authoritarian thugs with names like Krupp, IG Farben, Mengele who partnered with global banking interests and fried tens of millions.
Does that enslavement ring a bell with anyone?
Does that enslavement ring a bell with anyone?
Yes, but I was going to do it to someone else, so that doesn’t count.
lainvestorgirl
Well stated. That’s one reason we would never buy into another HOA again. In reality, we had all the costs and illusion of ownership, but our property rights were dictated, including how we designed our backyard, and what color window treatments could be facing the street. The security of control over other’s taste, was a dangerous thing after all.
When ever a group or the govt. want to take away your individual freedoms, they always pitch it to you like an advantage. RFID in your driver’s license is an example.
I should add, this was borrowed from dr. hurd at the living resources (ayn rand) website.
HOA is why I won’t ever go condo again.
And I even served as president one year!
If you and your spouse can’t decide on a paint color, how are 50 different homeowner’s supposed to do it?
And then the real problem is the deadbeat dues payers who make it impossible to do necessary maintenance and more expensive for everyone else.
rant off
jsoca-
We lived in a SFH in one of those stucco canyon pretenious PUDs. It felt like an oversized townhome, even being on the corner, with 27ft to our neighbor’s house. HOA are totalitarian nightmares. There were so many rules, you felt like you had a landlord. The dues was reasonable, it was all the offspring of the yuppies who poured beer in the pool, tagged the club house, and cost us a bloody fortune. Next house, I’ll take a purple home on the street. HOA’s are dreadful. (East Ventura County-Thousand Oaks area)
RE: the United States has become a fascist system.
Necessary for the coming fight amoungst nations for control of the remaining vestiges of recoverable oil and other associated hydrocarbons which will start about 2010.
Tomorrow will NOT be better than it is today.
It’s no wonder J6P is losin’ his grip.
It’s a tough realism for a largely ignorant, spoiled, bankrupt populace to ponder.
The US is going to have shortages of natural materials, that’s for sure, but it’s not going to be helped by having this big, tyrannical government: that is what is going to CAUSE it, in two ways: First, no one is going to trade basic resources for worthless dollars, and, two, while we’ve been pumping up bubbles with our statist Fed and looting our treasury to make thieving politicians and banksters rich, China has been going around the world buying up mines and oil contracts.
” … no one is going to trade basic resources for worthless dollars …”
Lol, everywhere I look I see that is exactly what people are trying to do.
LOL
Shocking that people don’t care to see what’s in front of their noses.
Ummm … why are corporations scrambling for bailouts? Remind me again. What resource do they actually WANT?
They drive you to drink, you know!
They drive you to drink, you know!
And, like I said, I do know.
(hiccup)
The fundamental flaw in many discussions of this kind is the assumption that the top tier are citizens of any specific country. They are not. Further, they do not care about the citizens of any country. AIG executives wouldn’t care who bailed out the company — US taxpayers, Chinese child laborers, South African miners, whomever. They just want money, as much as possible. Further, nor do AIG executives feel any responsibility whatsoever to those citizens, nor to any specific system of government. Those executives — and I include in that every executive of a Wall Street firm for Fortune 500 company — only care that they have someplace to land their jets, and enough control to assure their personal protection and to check any revolutionary impulse that might threaten same. Everything else is just either gravy or irrelevant.
IAT
It is one heck of a feeding frenzy in this state-corporate fascist country. They are feeding on the freedom of future generations. All your children will be slaves. Thanks Barney Frank, Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson, GWB, Barry, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Bernanke, and Greenspan. All in the guise of keeping house prices over-inflated.
lagirl
Please stop this diatribe.
This blog is not the place for it.
There are dozens of blogs better suited for this.
See Ben’s post in FL post today.
While your language is not crude your posts are crude and insidious.
They invite crude responses.
If you want to post that the US is a fascist State there are much better places to post this.
You certainly have the right to post, and this is not my blog.
But it just seems the wrong place.
You are a small-minded little twit if you think this housing bubble wasn’t intentionally created and is a self-contained little story that is an end in itself, with no relation to the massive political shifts that are occurring in our country. Open your mind and see the bigger picture.
Open your mind and see the bigger picture.
Oh, if you insist, okayyyyyyyy. I shall bow to your obvious wisdom, well-reasoned arguments, and elan…..
* Opens mind. Mind promptly falls out onto splintery wooden desk with a little splatty sort of sound, but not too splatty, because it’s so tiny and was evidently poorly attached anyway. Olympiagal sets beer aside and picks up Santita’s corn chip and cautiously dabs at tiny little mind…*
Yumm! Twit-flavored!
You beat me to it about lainvestorgirl mind being open. You just said it much nicer than I.
What, you would eat my twit-flavored brains with a corn-chip!? Appalling!
* falls off chair laughing, again *
No, sorry, sorry…this is my 4th beer is my excuse. At least I’m a cheerfy drunk. With tasty twit-flavored brain-dip, even!
I agree with you here 100% lainvestorgirl.
Yawn. She’s not listening, Bill-ster. You should go find an older yet still incredibly attractive Brazilian woman, instead.
However…you are “listening” (reading). Who do you think is really the target of my heart?
“However…you are “listening” (reading). Who do you think is really the target of my heart?”
Barney Frank?
Hey!
*coughs out peanut-brain *
What makes her “diatribes” any different than all the other “diatribes” on this blog, Muir? Because you don’t like them?
Take away the passionate, driven individuals of all stripe, and there’s no reason to visit this board.
It’s a huge positive that many people here check each other’s train of thought, test each other, etc. We get smarter/wiser that way.
I am against all diatribes.
Left and Right diatribes.
I think it would be best to keep politics to a minimum in this blog.
What lavagirl misses, again and again and again, ad-nauseum, is that, it’s not a partisan mess.
She comes off as a self-centered spoiled brat by constantly harping on her hobby-horse.
It’s a huge positive that many people here check each other’s train of thought, test each other, etc. We get smarter/wiser that way.
And, more importantly, this way it’s more fun, and with more entertaining cussing and cruel snipes. Which is the reason I visit this blog.
I mean, what? I already know what I think.
If it’s not fun, I won’t do it.
Precisely.
Though I do think we ought to be mindful of Muir as well, just to be nice. I also like Muir’s input, even though I occasionally find the input baffling (and vice-versa, I’m sure).
BTW Oly — you and Bill ought to start your own sitcom. I’m am serious - truly, I am. You’re slight of hands toward one another often make for a hilarious read to us humble passersby.
I have a idea for the title: It [Just] Can’t Be Love.
“sleight” of hand….
Right on! I’m so sick of people bandying about the S-word, yet call a spade a spade and use the F-word (the other one) and they look at you as if you’re a bomb-throwing wingnut. Walks, talk, quacks . . . ergo, fascism. At the very least, protofascism.
Then bury your head in the sand and don’t fight this encroaching bigger government. Become a slave.
Become a slave.
Okay! Since you insist! But can I take my tasty brain-dip with me, when I go be a slave?
Funny,
I could swear about a month ago you were using the word comrade in your name when you were posting.
Big Tea Party going on right now in downtown Orlando - Lake Eola.
Of course, no local rag that I could find told about it in advance - heaven forbid, it might increase attendance.
That’s 11:54 EDT
The revolution will not be televised.
Gawd, I’ve always wanted to say that in context!
April 15 tea party at the SM PIer (and dozens of other cities) - there’s enough of us now that we don’t need the MSM
That’s on a Wednesday. Traffic will be heavy. Can’t get their in a timely manner from Torrance and still work an eight hour day. I’ll check the web for time in case it’s early morning or late afternoon.
Rats!…I’ll have watch Law & Order re-runs and wait for the next one
Here’s a belated local link to the Orlando activities. Imagine the crowds we’d have had if it had been jumped on by the media *before* it started until when it was close to over.
http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2009/3/21/thousands_rally_against_stimulus_plan_at_orlando_tea_party.html
Anyone know when and where the tea party will be held in either Sacramento or San Francisco?
Maybe when HELL freezes over?
There was a small one a few weeks ago in Sacramento… my parents went. I presume a bigger one will be held mid-April. At the Capitol, natch.
Lisa Feroli is the “name” behind the tea party there. The Freepers are all over this, too. The Floridans Unite website is registered to Lisa, but this has the stench of a faux grassroots movement i.e. an astroturf movement with GOP roots–if not funding.
Funny how the partisan GOP hacks are all over the “patriot”, “dissent” and “tea party” memes since Nov.’08.
And, no, I’m no DEM partisan hack either. Like farts–they all stink.
Then ask yourself why Dems are hardly ever in favor of tax protests (JFK was an exception). I’m no conservative. I’m very socially liberal. But I don’t boycott tax revolts just because of speculating that all the tax protesters are bible thumpers. That would be very retarded.
Oh Oh, I did a Barry..
The Chinese complain to the US about the safety of their US$ investments, and then a few days later the Fed announces that it is going to buy up bonds. Who really thinks this is a coincidence?
Law suit from Washington Mutual suing the FDIC:
http://tinyurl.com/cc4qe2
The Big Takeover
The global economic crisis isn’t about money - it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/1
Felon-turned-mortgage broker in more hot water
By Cary Spivak of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Mar. 21, 2009 12:06 p.m.
Billy Joe Cannon, a convicted felon turned mortgage broker, is in trouble with the law again.
Cannon was charged Friday with three felonies: Conspiracy to deliver cocaine and two gun charges, including possession of a firearm by a felon. The drug charge involves a 2005 transaction that came at a time when he still was working as a loan broker. The gun charges were for incidents that occurred last fall.
ha ha ha ..why doesn’t THIS surprise me ?
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/41626127.html
Yeah, right around the time I discovered the HBB, I bought a house from a New Jersey licensed “mortgage solicitor.” OK. OK. OK. Hold the giggles. His name is Gary Diamond, and you can see his face on the Florida Dept. of Correction’s Website section for supervised offenders. I complained to NJ’s Dept. of Banking & Insurance; “What the he{{ is this convicted criminal doing with a license to sucker people into time-bomb mortgages in New Jersey?” The bureaucrats’ response to me? “Shut up! We, and we alone, decide who possesses ‘good character.’ An individual who solicits over the internet someone he thought was a 14-year old girl still qualifies as having ‘good character’ here in New Jersey.”
Oh, well, I have heard– and hope– that every dog has his day. This dude’s still riding high, making big bucks by holding himself out as a “mortgage workout specialist.” I intend to bring him down hard, though, and with a little luck, I’ll succeed.
Well, you see in todays headlines, or subheadlines, that Fl and AK are looking at bestiality laws..
And Romania is looking to overturn the consensual incestual sex laws.
Well, now, have a calm day now.
Wow Jimbo..you’d think some guy caught stalking teen girls would for sex would be still be in jail and or at least under real close supervison so he would never have any un-monitored internet access ever again.
Also sounds like your NJ Banking and Insurance are a bad trip too. Good luck
Thanks, Mikey. I thought maybe I was the crazy one here in NJ. I’m glad to see this clown’s possession of a license strikes someone else as being a little, er, uh, remakable. Not here in Jersey, though.
Dweller, I’m calm enough. I’m just a dog waiting for his day.
Watching ABC nightly news, lead story bus load of people going to AIG bonus recipients homes yelling give the money back. Only problem, didn`t look like anyone on the bus besides the driver paid any taxes to begin with.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
DailyKos of course!
Off to see the queen, again.
Haven’t read either one. I will say, though, that I got ahold of “Ender’s Game” when I was younger, and that had a profound impact on me.
Oh, yeah? Explain.
LOL.
ROTFLMAO
+1 to desertdweller.
That was sensational!
Very good!
Well.
If I ever needed any justification for why I obsessively pore over the HBB, at the expense of other potentially valuable enterprises, you, desertdweller, have today, with one single post, entirely validated my obsessiveness.
Thanks.
Very good of you desertdweller to make a childish banter against A.S. Just like lots of peanut brain gallery types the last 5 decades. And you attracted a small flock of other peanut brains to laugh with you.
A.S. is the second best seller of all time, next to the Bible. You think you can write a better novel? Well start writing.
Wow Bill,
You really don’t have a sense of humor.
You think you can write a better novel? Well start writing.
(hiccup)
I’m gonna do it for you, desertdweller! And I’m going to call this noble effort: “A Small Flock of Peanut-Brains Laughing Together”.
Huh huh huh?! That’s a title with some majesty! Some gravitas!
*collapses laughing, all over again *
Anyway, Bill, as I remarked above, Lainvestergirl is evidently not listening to your gallant proclamations on her behalf. Hey, I know! Maybe you should become more vehement, in case she would like that!
That “peanut brain” discovery thing….it totally changed my opinion…..Ha.
I’m hungry right now. I want to eat a peanut or a brain.
Mmmmmmm … tasty!
Here, have a potato, instead. (hands him a potato)
I guess I am not the only feller on the planet who takes exception to the too-big-to-fail concept…
Wall Street Journal
* BUSINESS
* MARCH 21, 2009
Small Banks, Big Beefs
Community Bankers Gather, and Vent; ‘Give Ben a Squeeze’
By DAVID ENRICH and DAMIAN PALETTA
PHOENIX — There always is a rabid sense of the underdog at the Independent Community Bankers of America annual convention, where lenders from throughout the U.S. meet, many clad in shorts and golf shirts.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, below, both spoke at the Independent Community Bankers of America conference Friday, and were the target of many attendees’ ire.
But when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair arrived here Friday, they encountered an unusually feisty crowd: roughly 1,000 bankers were steaming mad about the financial crisis.
At panel discussions and in the halls of the Phoenix Convention Center, some bankers joked that Ms. Bair and other FDIC officials at the conference ought to wear bulletproof vests.
In a cavernous room where financial companies were hawking various services and technological gizmos, one vendor handed out small foam-rubber figurines of Mr. Bernanke, next to a sign that said: “Stressed out? Give Ben a squeeze.”
A small Ben Bernanke doll was handed out to convention attendees during the Independent Community Bankers of America National Convention and Techworld gathering.
Nearby, Charles D. Rogers, senior vice president at Tennessee Commerce Bank, passed out pink foam pigs that he said were meant for the “folks on Wall Street.”
Few of the bankers here ventured into subprime mortgages, instead carving out reliable niches such as catering to local businesses. These banks lacked the capital-markets operations that churned out the financial exotica now pummeling many financial firms.
Of the roughly 8,300 federally insured banks in the U.S., more than 8,000 are community banks. Relatively few of them have pocketed taxpayer capital through the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Among the bankers gathered in Phoenix, the No. 1 bogeyman is Citigroup Inc. A close second is Ms. Bair, whose plan to levy higher fees on banks to pay for the deposit-insurance system threatens to erode small-bank profits and capital cushions.
Giant banks like Citigroup “have tarred and feathered us,” said Bill McQuillan, chief executive of City National Bank in Greeley, Neb. A Citigroup spokeswoman declined to comment.
The mood at the conference was angry, reflecting the industry’s frail state overall and the guilt by association that community bankers are dealing with as larger rivals wobble.
Local lenders are in relatively strong shape. More than 95% of the nation’s community banks were well-capitalized at the end of last year, Mr. Bernanke said Friday.
Still, most of the 42 banks that have failed since the start of last year were community institutions. Many are getting burned by loans to finance real-estate development and construction projects that have gone belly up since housing markets collapsed.
Mr. Bernanke and Ms. Bair knew what they were walking into. Ms. Bair, for one, arrived at the convention center flanked by a government security detail.
“It’s nice to be back in America,” the Fed chairman said after taking the stage, his gray suit and blue tie making him appear much more pleasant than the villainous squeeze toy that he inspired. “No doubt this frustration has been heightened by the problems caused by financial firms that are too big or too interconnected to fail,” Mr. Bernanke said.
Mr. Bernanke was greeted with a standing ovation. In contrast, Ms. Bair got lukewarm applause when she walked onto the stage. But the audience roared its approval every time she spoke of the need to clamp down on the nation’s megabanks, saying the government should impose higher capital requirements and tougher penalties to discourage banks from becoming too big.
“It shouldn’t be rewarded,” she said. “It should be penalized.” She added that the government needs to “get these institutions to downsize.” Rigorous cheers erupted — and after the speech, she had won over some skeptics.
“She does recognize the difference between the too-big-to-fail banks and the community banks,” said Allie Knoll, president of Stratford State Bank in Wisconsin, wearing a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt. “I think the overall reception here was fairly positive.”
I want a Ben Bernanke squeeze toy. How can I get one? Are they available on e-Bay?