OT The Washington Post today had an article quoting SMR Research data that in 2005 and 2006 40% of mortgages for home purchases included piggyback loans. Have these numbers been out there for a while?
quartz: For sure - what do you think the infamous GSAMP (particularly putrid tranched-up MBS sold by Goldman Sachs) was made of - all low-doc or no-doc alt-A 2nd liens where the average CLTV was 97%!
Oh, I almost forgot - I got a piggyback loan in 2005.
(But it was fixed rate 30yr at 7%. Not bad for a second, w 95% CLTV. Wouldn't want to try that now. Almost wish I couldn't have done it then. I cleverly bought right at the top.)
Rumor has it I'm the only one in the whole country making payments
I like the word "redundancies", it's so nice and businesslike. It's not that people are being fired or laid off--the business is just removing some redundancies! I don't know how anyone could argue with that.
(Speaking of redundancies, I'm not sure that Yahoo! realizes that their entire company is redundant, and that they just missed their best opportunity to cash out.)
Hey the ghosts of the bulls are back posting comments on this blog. There are no Bulls left alive as far as I can see. Most of the stocks I was short are down over 50%. I hope they did not average down.
Anglo-Saxon disease of borrow-and-consume will take the system down. End of democracy is more or less guaranteed because it was a political system of the bankers and financiers, or the moneybags, who had behind-the-scenes control of the govt. Their game always was pushing debt, first for wars and now for consumption. Breeding dopes, to fight wars of the empire and now to borrow-and-consume, was a necessity.
There still are dopes in America who believe that American People choose, or own, the govt. Blind faith is hard to resist! Elections are nothing more than a game of entertainment to keep dopes happy and occupied and feel useful.
--
Needless to point out that there is a common culture, especially, the domination of the Debt Pushers. These parasites attached themselves to the host at the most critical point. The moneybags of NYC have a lot in common with the moneybags of London. Lot more than you can imagine!
No proof but Middle East oil money tends to flow through the English financial system which makes me believe that this money has been used to fuel much of the mortgage and commerical property binge in England, Spain etc. Sooner or later the various Royal families and their finacial advisors might suffer some losses as the big ship Europe sinks along with happy talk USA.
In case anyone interested missed it from the previous post:
Wow - Paul took a beating since his self-imposed silence for being a troll. It cost him $20 to the tip jar too! I hope all others feeling momentary remorse over intemperate commentary use the same method of repentance.
OK - here we go.
Marcus says Paul, I don't know what you're smoking, but I want some of that shit!
You want economic chaos, bro? Just look at any fiscal policy, budget, monetary policy, or balance sheet.
I'm sorry but I'm not feeling any economic chaos in Kalamazoo, MI. Black Swan Shiraz & Merlot. Very cheap - what does that tell you?
As for embarrassing, who the F are you - the Queen of England? Faux riche, prolly.
I live in MI so I can't be rich. We're reeling. I am divorced, rent, make $84K as a process engineer with big pharma. Thanks McDonalds!Seriously, I am concerned that the commentary is a little unmoored from the reality outside of Stockton, CA, Las Vegas, and Florida. I think the jury is still out on the seriousness of the problem. It is no doubt painful for many, but perhaps not at meltdown phase? I apologize if the wine affected exagerated the intensity of my rhetoric.
JG said Paul, get a clue: culture matters. There's a bit of difference (huge, actually, as you know), economically, between San Diego and Tijuana, though only 30 miles separates them.
OK, JG, you are probably correct, Since I live in MI, I will defer to your judgement on the difference between SD and Mexico.
However, Jas Jain said: NYC is a cesspool of Conflicts Of Interests (COI) as these people go to the same bar mitzvah celebrations, the same parties, the same clubs, the same synagogues, temples, churches, and their kids, future born-and-bred Crooks, go to the same schools.
My commentary was in response to this gross generalization and borderline slur. So sorry if that was not clear. There are many things that affect culture and I am sure that CR and Tanta don't want to have their business blog infected by culture wars. That is why I tipped the blog as a penalty for indulging.
I am a very liberal Democrat. I think the laizze faire economic policies of the last many years have
been misguided. They underestimate the capacity of our economy to cheat the naive.
The question, in my opinion, is whether we can solve it through regulation or religion. Since the GOP (or economic conservatives) have been in control of USA for most of the last 27 years, I tend to think that our current problems are a result of their policies. I could be wrong and am open to correction on this matter.
I guess this means I owe another $20 to the tip jar.
Paul | 02.09.08 - 9:01 pm | #
Interesting turn of events today, yahoo is reportedly to turn down the msft bid of $31, considering they were trading at $18 pre-bid, yahoo could potentially be indicative of what is currently taking place in the existing home market-
Most companies are run for the benefit of senior managers and their egos. I can't see any other explanation for Yahoo's behavior. If I was a shareholder I'd say f*-yeah to the M$ offer.
"Yahoo Inc.'s board plans to reject Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited $44.6 billion offer to acquire the Web giant, a person familiar with the situation says.
After a series of meetings over the past week, Yahoo's board determined that the $31 per share offer "massively undervalues" Yahoo, the person said. It also doesn't account for the risks Yahoo would be taking by entering into an agreement that might be overturned by regulators. The board plans to send a letter to Microsoft Monday, spelling out its position."
What will happen to Yahoo shares on Monday? And what rollover effects on NASDAQ? My guess is down on both. But what do I know? I would have guesses S&P at 1100 by now with all the potential hazards looming.
It's unclear whether Microsoft would be willing to pay such a premium, which would increase the value of its original cash and stock bid by more than $12 billion.
$12B gets you 60,000 person-years of programmers at $200K/yr (say $100K plus benefits and overhead and managers and whatnot). Jus' sayin'.
Both should have taken the money and run like hell.
Google will play Yahoo like a fish with talk of alliances, etc. Meanwhile, productive activity at Yahoo will drop as everyone is distracted by the possibilities offered by these mythical alliances, the legal hassles they require, the realities announced of layoffs, and the need to get one's resume and Rolodex in order.
The abundance of easy money catalyzed a sharp rise in home prices and boosted consumer spending. But it also drove people deeper into debt as they stretched to buy homes and live large. According to the most recent data from Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, total consumer debt in the U.K. stood at 164% of annual disposable income at the end of 2006, by far the highest level of any developed country. In the U.S., that number was 138%.
Imagine all the useful stuff you could buy with 40 billion instead of Yahoo. Multiple wind farms or solar fields. Invest in battery technology for electric cars. Hell build an operating system as good as Macs OS.
For reference, the ownership rate in the UK is at about 70%, with a total of 18M OO units. 45K foreclosures would be about 0.25% of the total OO units. I'm guessing that appreciation is holding the foreclosures down, unless there is definition problem that alters the count.
The financial sector accounts for more than one-fifth of all U.K. jobs. If the financial markets are heading for a major downturn, UK will sure suffer.
Roubini has two articles explaining the 12 reasons why the financial system is going to hell in a handcart and the 8 reasons why the Fed probably can't to anything to prevent it.
'Our problems are not that different from those of the US: we have very large personal debt, a housing market which has been overblown and is now weakening, and a huge trade deficit,' said David Kern, the BCC's economic adviser. The Institute of Directors will add to the pessimistic mood tomorrow, when it reveals that business investment plans have 'fallen off a cliff' in the past three months.
eoae99,
don't qoute wind farms as valuable investment...
the wind is great for moving ships across seas, pumping water from wells, ... but 4 lectric??? nahhhhhh
BoonDoggle | 02.09.08 - 10:20 pm | #
Wake up. These things are already on line. No, they aren't "the answer," but they can generate power by the hundreds of megawatts in many places. Out here in Washington state they work well in combo with gas plants and hydro. When the wind is blowing across the plains (as it usually is) you can save water behind the dams, and burn less gas. I want to stress that this is and will always be a small part of the power supply, but it does work, it is working, and more wind farms are going up. Installed Wind Capacity Surged 45% in 2007: AWEA Market Report
Microsoft has been following the typical US method of periodic model changes which are basically cosmetic. Vista musta been designed by a aerospace company cause it is years late way too heavy and can't meet initial specs. Probably the end of the Win line. Gates can see the computer software model changing to the internet but he hasn't been able to design a killer app.
If he can't use Yahoo M$ will, like IBM having to give up its consumer division and stick with slower commercial growth.
I recently bought an ASUS eee. A tiny but functional puter. All open source and works great.
I don't know the different names on the Wiki but Miller Group is self advertised as the UK's largest privately owned Housebuilding, Property Development and Construction business.
They bought Fairclough Homes from Centex in 2005.
On the flipside a Brit Company bought Centex Construction for US operations (I believe this was their commercial const. division)in March.
Centex also sold its subprime division to Fortress in July of 2006 for $575 million (about $500 million more than it was worth a year later).
LONDON (AFP) - OPEC could switch the pricing of oil from dollars into euros within a decade, secretary general Abdullah al-Badri told a weekly magazine.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could adopt the euro to combat the decline of the dollar, Badri told the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), published in London.
The UK is a small island, they tend to increase the velocity of trades and don't build out like the US can (same here is NZ), so the same house may be traded many times without an owner accually occupiing.
Jas jain,
Aussie, aussie yes you are correct, this is a global problem. Although aussie had a mini crash around 2004, so housing will not tank (in NSW at least, perth will) as badly.
Here in NZ we just had our realtor guys trumpeting the same type of lines the NAR was a year or so ago. Its deja vu all over again.
They are singing from the same song sheet, it will turn next month, blah blah blah.
Sentiment has changed, first home buyers have gone on a buying strike and the velocity of home sales and mortgage origination has dropped by a third.
We are seeing lumber mills close due to weak international timber prices (US driven), manufacturers being strangled by the high NZD and super high interest rates. CB rate is 8.5% but the carry trade keeps rolling along...
For those of us who remember the last crash, things are starting to look rather familiar. It's going to be a long grind down. Last time it took 6 1/2 years for real prices to bottom out, and 12 1/2 years to recover to the previous peak.
I checked the charts on the listed Homebuilders on Wikepedia: Almost all the UK Homebuilders are at 3-5 year lows. I missed that train.
Well we can still short any rally in the USA for the next year or so. One more year we are in business. I will look for some banks and mortgage companies and will report back.
CR/Tanta -
I have attended the SEC Speaks event on a number of previous occassions. I was there on Friday and Saturday (I actually got home about 2 hours ago from DC). I have seen a number of SEC Chairman's speaches. Most of them have been about 80%+ generalities and fluff. This year Christopher Cox was almost ALL business througout his speech and a scheduled 15 minute speech took approximately 40 minutes for him to complete. And IMO, the tone was much more serious...
Big ?: So many priorities means that they have no priorities. I can't imagine their staffing levels can handle all of those projects. How much of their funding can they dictate, vs. being hostage to Congress?
An interesting quote from the speach - "significant accounting questions in the subprime area, such as when off-balance sheet CDO-related liabilities will be forced back on to a sponsor's balance sheet."
A CMA report of mid-high-end residential properties in Ojai, CA, as of Feb '08:
Sales 5 months
Total Avg Orig'l Price Sales Price %
4 $2,717,000. $2,385,000 91%
(latest sale was 76% of OP)
(1 pending, at best 87% of OP, & probably much lower)
Listings Currently - 16
Listings = 2 Year's Last Year's Sales
Listings Off the Market (my guess - 16).
The overhang of unsold properties represents 4 years of sales.
Prices going up??
My guess: 50% haircut from OP will be the norm within the next 18 months. And at that price, they're no bargain.
At that price they won't be positive cash flow. So, 70% haircut is expected so there's a deal, finally.
And this in one of the lower-upper-class neighborhoods in the USA.
Does anybody besides me know that the NYT censors comments about Krugman's blog. WTF? Is this Nazi Germany? I respect NYT's refusal to deal -- that's their perogative. But when Krugman is advocating for Clinton, and he has a personal interest, I think he needs to disclose that (especially if people can't comment). I like K, but isn't this abuse of power of the worst kind?
Okay, Big ?, he's going to professionalize (sic) a method for returning the $5B they've seized but never returned to defrauded investors, and ramp up all kinds of enforcement that they haven't done for years and, now five years after Sarbanes-Oxley, they finally got the computers they need to deal with their new responsibilities, and they'll be watching those hedge funds closely, and meanwhile all their working groups have been working on proposals for new rulemaking submissions they intend to submit sometime this year and . . .
Wait a minute, he's managed to accomplish absolutely nothing in Bush's second term in office.
Big ? I have to agree with sportsfan. How can you claim to have the most transparent, efficient markets in the world when your own employees cannot even share documents? Cox may be doing well with the straightjacket budget Congress awards him, but galloping all over the globe when we have a banking and confidence crisis here? He lists these priorities like they are new problems. Hello, munis are not a new market. Hello, gathering fines is not a new task. Hello, computer systems that can talk to each other is not a new feature. Cox is a caretaker and a lameduck.
Big ? When you post again, if you post again, tell me again what Cox is going to do to those banks that had no writedowns in the fourth quarter in the face of no-bid markets for their portfolio holdings. My Answer: nothing, enforcement of SarbanesOxley is a nothingburger. Its as if the entire financial industry has a Sarbox exemption. The result is extremely damaged confidence in American markets. Thanks SEC.
Over a third of the nations community banks have commercial real estate concentrations exceeding 300 percent of their capital, and almost 30 percent have construction and development loans exceeding 100 percent of capital.
They require mutual funds provide the same accounting information in three different formats.
First, you have to send paper reports to shareholders, which are generated by printers using PDF files.
Second, you have to duplicate the hardcopy versions of your statements using an obsolete version of HTML on EDGAR. Many firms give up and just file TXT versions that look like a dogs breakfast.
Third, you have to file annual and sem-annual data as a N-SAR datafile. The datafile is created using an antiquated program that will only run under MS-DOS.
The fund shareholders pay the costs of producing each of these versions. Fund management has to waste its time proofreading them.
There are whole divisions of DC law firms that specialize in EDGARizing SEC filings, software vendors selling HTML editors with specialized code validity checking algorithms, etc.
The whole rest of the business world uses PDF files when they need to generate electronic copies of documents. They generate them using Word, Excel, and a $29.95 PDF writing program. If they want to get fancy, they use the printer's PDF files, which are true copies of what is being sent to shareholders and are generated using InDesign or Quark.
Now they SEC's latest brain spasm its that we will generate xBLR filings. That means we can toss all the expensive software that has been bought and paid for and buy brand new expensive specialized software. Then, we can retrain or replace all the staff who have to do the SEC filings.
Rant #2.
The delay in sending disgorgement funds to injured parties is probably related to the SEC's inability to figure out how much interest the funds have earned while sitting in the SEC's account, how to apportion the interest income to the injured parties, how to do the correct tax filings, and (because it has been years since the mess started) where to find the injured parties to give them their checks.
what were the governments inflation numbers??? Oh never mind...tooo late in the evening for a fairy tale
here are numbers for just this week from noland at prudent bear:
Platinum jumped 7% this week
Lead gained 5%
Copper jumped 7.5% (biggest gain in almost a year), increasing y-t-d gains to almost 16%.
Palladium rose to the highest price since 2002.
Sugar rose 5% on Friday
crudes 4% one-day surge.
wheat surged to yet another record high (up 30% y-t-d), this weeks 16% gain as the biggest in history. Prices are now up 140% y-o-y. soybeans rose 4% this week to a near-record increasing one-year gains to 80%.
Corn prices gained 2% (having doubled in the past two years), also trading at record highs.
coffee prices rise 5.8% this week to the highest level since 1999.
Am I late with this? It's the official, serious, but maybe bad big picture news. Rather than clip and muse alone... here for your snip sniping pleasure is the Vox Oracle, the Financial Stability Forum of the President's Working Group.
I moved from California to London two years ago (sold my house in January 2006 at what must have been the absolute top), and the feeling here in the UK now has a very similar feel to the US two years ago. You look around at house prices and wonder who's buying these places for this much money? I can understand prices in central London going through the roof driven by investment bankers and overseas investors, but places way out in the middel of nowhere, where the average income is max about 30,000 dollars, go for about 3/4 of a million dollars. I guess that not that many people in the UK have been to Stockton, CA, so aren't familiar with how a situation like that plays out. At the same time, supposedly respectable "economists" in the mainstream press continually argue that prices won't crash, but common sense seems to dictate the opposite.
Repossessions are low in the UK right now (they increased significantly on last year but from a very low base) though that's largely due to the recent run up in prices allowing people to refinance rather than lose the house. This was the exact same situation in the US in 2006. Prices have stopped rising now, so we'll see what happens last year.
Sovereign Wealth funds have a point, we do not regulate hedge funds, but yet wish to regulate them, hypocritical, absolutely. The bigger questions is in a regulated market, why we don't regulate hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds? You cannot regulate one aspect and not the other in a regulated market, this is ripe with conflicts of interest and also opens the domestic markets up to the potential for manipulation to promote self interest, ie commodities and artificially propping up the prices.
I would argue that much of the "inflation" fear is being driven by highly levered vehicles which are unregulated and sovereign wealth funds which are being passed down to the consumer increasing the financial pressure on families.
At the same time, it seems we have taken the posture of "enabler" due to the unwavering need to attract capital to bail our dumb asses out of this credit crisis spreading throughout our financial system. So, we have chosen to look blindly at what we know to be an unfair strain on our consumers caused by speculators and overseas funds attempting to protect their own interests.
" In addition, leaders of funds in Russia, the Middle East, China and other parts of Asia say that the Wests demand for regulations is hypocritical in light of the failure to regulate European and American banks and hedge funds. Some analysts blame that failure for the mortgage crisis and global economic strains."
Clyde - obviously you're right about the number of priorities and the staffing issues. The SEC has always been subject to the vagaries of the politics of Congress. They have excellent people but the problem that they have is that they are generally reactive, rather than proactive. But that is the nature of what they do. However, it was an ambitious speech and there were significant mentions of the subprime and hedge fund working groups during the Enforcement, Accounting, Market Regulation sessions as well. Specifically, MANY mentions of current insider trading actions concerning the hf working group. Also - many mentions of subprime and discussions of working with DOJ (and others).
THough, to be fair to Cox, he did inherit many of these issues from his predecessors good (William H. Donaldson) to bad (Harvey Pitt) to those who were publicly overrated (Arthur Levitt) who was in place during the tech bubble.
Despite having major respect for the org, I was left thinking that it is partially a CYA in the wake of the problems that are now and have been cropping up in the system during the past 9-12 months.
Having said all of that, I was impressed by what was discussed during the various sessions as to what the SEC actually did accomplish. I can't even begin to post it all.
On another note and a sign of continued stress in the HY markets, Solutia and Delphi seem to be having significant trouble obtaining exit financing in order to emerge from bankruptcy-
One other note and a request, if anyone has access to research or estimates of the amount of HY debt maturing in 08, 09, 10, 11, 12 and could provide links, it would be much appreciated.
"We expect that investment-grade maturities will average 156 bln usd a year and speculative-grade will average 92 bln a year between 2011 and 2014, based on our current maturity calendar. Maturities should spike in 2011, as a glut of bonds mature that were issued during the issuance bubble in 2001,' she added."
"Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States."
Big ? My apologies for being so strident, I believe my beef is with Congress, not you or Cox. I am a little too idealistic in thinking we can change the reactive nature of a regulatory body without lots of money, which is not going to happen during the GOP watch. Thanks for posting.
Hi,
I've been looking at GARP's FRM certification. What are your thoughts about this certification? Are there any alternatives?
I'm a techie with no financial experience. The course material sounds interesting. Even if i don't clear the exam, i'll be happy having spent time reading something i like.
The following excerpt is from two authors: "W. Michael Cox is the senior vice president and chief economist and Richard Alm is the senior economics writer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas."
In the article "You Are What You Spend", OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS; You Are What You Spend - NY Times
in the New York Times, they seemed to totally ignore Mortgage Equity Withdrawal syndrome http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/243/2888/640/GDPMEWQ22006.1.jpg
so richly documented in this blog (and comments) over the last year.
The top fifth of American households earned an average of $149,963 a year in 2006. As shown in the first accompanying chart, they spent $69,863 on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care and other categories of consumption. The rest of their income went largely to taxes and savings.
The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that an average of $18,153 a year. How is that possible? A look at the far right-hand column of the consumption chart, labeled financial flows, shows why: those lower-income families have access to various sources of spending money that doesnt fall under taxable income. These sources include portions of sales of property like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts. While some of these families are mired in poverty, many (the exact proportion is unclear) are headed by retirees and those temporarily between jobs, and thus their low income total doesnt accurately reflect their long-term financial status.
Clyde writes:
Big ? My apologies for being so strident, I believe my beef is with Congress, not you or Cox. I am a little too idealistic in thinking we can change the reactive nature of a regulatory body without lots of money, which is not going to happen during the GOP watch. Thanks for posting.
Clyde, obviously I agree with you. No matter how ambitious a regulatory agency is, it is subject to the vagaries of the politics of Congress and the Executive Branch. And there are so many more investment bankers, traders, hedge fund employees, mutual funds, etc than there are SEC or FINRA or state securities regulators.
REBear | 02.10.08 - 10:26 am | #
The CFA I think is more recognized.
Also because of the exams are in parts, its easier to get some parts under the belt.
That said, my thoughts would be to do the exam because you want to gain that knowledge.
I have been doing quant/techie stuff in the financial field since 1998. I was thinking of doing the CFA, just have piece paper to prove I knew what knew. Decided against it because of the downturn. The financial sector is going to contract (as you gather is the opinion of others on this site),
Just to be clear about my post last night, I wasn't attacking you for linking it here or for whatever you think about the individual or the agency.
I'm just fed up with what I see as a useless SEC many years after Enron, Worldcom and so on. What I can see of financial fraud in the markets is just the tip of the iceberg, yet it seems enormous and it also seems nothing is being done other than business as usual in NYC and DC, for which we all suffer accordingly.
I actually hope the SEC can accomplish something this year.
Donaldson's heart was in the right place, but he wasn't very effective; Cox's heart is in the right place, and he is fairly effective, but both suffered from the usual underfunding problems. As a matter of fact, the SEC was in the midst of a hiring freeze when they could've done a lot of good back in 2005, when the worst RMBS were beginning to be sold.
It's almost as if the subprime crisis was tailor-made to escape regulatory oversight, because for any unified response you'd need to have the SEC, the bank regulators, and the mortgage regulators all on the same page (and come to think of it, throw in the Department of Justice if you want to consider criminal charges). It's really no surprise that this whole thing blew up... but to blame just the SEC is foolhardy.
"Big ? writes:
Regarding Cox's speech,
... The SEC has always been subject to the vagaries of the politics of Congress."
Big? i must disagree...the chair of the SEC is not subject to congress as much as he or she is subject to the political objectives of the White House administration in power...President Bush appointed Chairman Cox.
"The price of wind power has dropped faster than the cost of conventional electricity generation. Wind power today costs about 20 percent of what it cost in the mid 1980s and is expected to decline further over the next 10 years"
As someone involved in the energy industry doing analysis on wind power to grid, I can tell you that your questions make as much sense as: what sound does yellow smell like?
The big problem with wind is its inconsistency and need to be backed up by conventional (thermal) power sources. Another large problem with wind is that it is typically negatively correlated with power demand. Lastly, wind suffers from the fact that it is best in places where there is nothing... including transmission.
This implies that if you could get a large, uncorrelated amount of wind generation, a large infrastructure to transfer the power, a good system for energy storage, and a reserve amount of backup thermal generation, that wind power would be quite effective. However, as an energy engineer, i will say that there are operational and economic barriers that make this difficult to achieve. They are by no means impossible for wind generation though.
I'm currently trying to learn more about this statement...
This remarkable and accelerating growth is driven by strong demand, favorable economics, and a period of welcome relief from the on-again, off-again, boom-and-bust, cycle of the federal production tax credit for wind power," he said
American wind farms will generate an estimated 48 billion kilowatt-hours of wind energy in 2008, just over one percent of U.S. electricity supply, powering the equivalent of over 4.5 million homes.
you guys are'nt serious about this being a quality investment, are you?
the science and tech are great, but don't try and sell me that this is a money maker...any more than tranche DD of sandystructures is gonna pay me timely.
i'm not trying to sell anybody on investing, personally, individually, in wind power.
however, i think it true that we will see significant increases in wind generated electricity...more than an average of 7%, yoy in the USA for two or more decades.
i judge we will see further development in nuclear, geothermal, clean coal, tidal, solar, and other energy sources...of necessity.
wind is a small but significant piece of the puzzle.
you are correct of course, that wind is not a stand alone source because the wind doesn't blow steady.
Shattering all its previous records, the U.S. wind energy industry installed 5,244 megawatts (MW) in 2007, expanding the nations total wind power generating capacity by 45% in a single calendar year and injecting an investment of over $9 billion into the economy, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) announced today. The new wind projects account for about 30% of the entire new power-producing capacity added nationally in 2007 and will power the equivalent of 1.5 million American households annually while strengthening U.S. energy supply with clean, homegrown electric power.
This is the third consecutive year of record-setting growth, establishing wind power as one of the largest sources of new electricity supply for the country, said AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher. This remarkable and accelerating growth is driven by strong demand, favorable economics, and a period of welcome relief from the on-again, off-again, boom-and-bust, cycle of the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind power.
Hey any one know of Any homebuilders to short in UK.
I know Of a Bank in Spain That I am heavily short right noe BBV.
OH I forgot to mention:
First to short the global crack-up boom.
OT The Washington Post today had an article quoting SMR Research data that in 2005 and 2006 40% of mortgages for home purchases included piggyback loans. Have these numbers been out there for a while?
House repossessions are expected to hit a 12-year high this year, with 45,000 owners seeing their homes taken away, experts warned yesterday.
That's amazingly low compared to activity in California (apples and oranges to some degree, but still).
I'm on IRC this very minute with folks in UK, who say the bubble hasn't really popped there, though they know it will.
quartz: For sure - what do you think the infamous GSAMP (particularly putrid tranched-up MBS sold by Goldman Sachs) was made of - all low-doc or no-doc alt-A 2nd liens where the average CLTV was 97%!
Oh, I almost forgot - I got a piggyback loan in 2005.
(But it was fixed rate 30yr at 7%. Not bad for a second, w 95% CLTV. Wouldn't want to try that now. Almost wish I couldn't have done it then. I cleverly bought right at the top.)
Rumor has it I'm the only one in the whole country making payments
I like the word "redundancies", it's so nice and businesslike. It's not that people are being fired or laid off--the business is just removing some redundancies! I don't know how anyone could argue with that.
(Speaking of redundancies, I'm not sure that Yahoo! realizes that their entire company is redundant, and that they just missed their best opportunity to cash out.)
Hey the ghosts of the bulls are back posting comments on this blog. There are no Bulls left alive as far as I can see. Most of the stocks I was short are down over 50%. I hope they did not average down.
--
Ausie!, Ausie!, Ausie!, next?
Anglo-Saxon disease of borrow-and-consume will take the system down. End of democracy is more or less guaranteed because it was a political system of the bankers and financiers, or the moneybags, who had behind-the-scenes control of the govt. Their game always was pushing debt, first for wars and now for consumption. Breeding dopes, to fight wars of the empire and now to borrow-and-consume, was a necessity.
There still are dopes in America who believe that American People choose, or own, the govt. Blind faith is hard to resist! Elections are nothing more than a game of entertainment to keep dopes happy and occupied and feel useful.
Jas
I remember years ago, a floor trader buddy told me that the US follows the UK in many cycles by 18-24 mos or so.
Probably outdated metric, but wonder...
Besides being the IMF economist, Ken Rogoff was also a heckuva chess player in his day.
--
Needless to point out that there is a common culture, especially, the domination of the Debt Pushers. These parasites attached themselves to the host at the most critical point. The moneybags of NYC have a lot in common with the moneybags of London. Lot more than you can imagine!
Culture Matters.
Jas
No proof but Middle East oil money tends to flow through the English financial system which makes me believe that this money has been used to fuel much of the mortgage and commerical property binge in England, Spain etc. Sooner or later the various Royal families and their finacial advisors might suffer some losses as the big ship Europe sinks along with happy talk USA.
In case anyone interested missed it from the previous post:
Wow - Paul took a beating since his self-imposed silence for being a troll. It cost him $20 to the tip jar too! I hope all others feeling momentary remorse over intemperate commentary use the same method of repentance.
OK - here we go.
Marcus says Paul, I don't know what you're smoking, but I want some of that shit!
You want economic chaos, bro? Just look at any fiscal policy, budget, monetary policy, or balance sheet.
I'm sorry but I'm not feeling any economic chaos in Kalamazoo, MI. Black Swan Shiraz & Merlot. Very cheap - what does that tell you?
As for embarrassing, who the F are you - the Queen of England? Faux riche, prolly.
I live in MI so I can't be rich. We're reeling. I am divorced, rent, make $84K as a process engineer with big pharma. Thanks McDonalds!Seriously, I am concerned that the commentary is a little unmoored from the reality outside of Stockton, CA, Las Vegas, and Florida. I think the jury is still out on the seriousness of the problem. It is no doubt painful for many, but perhaps not at meltdown phase? I apologize if the wine affected exagerated the intensity of my rhetoric.
JG said Paul, get a clue: culture matters. There's a bit of difference (huge, actually, as you know), economically, between San Diego and Tijuana, though only 30 miles separates them.
OK, JG, you are probably correct, Since I live in MI, I will defer to your judgement on the difference between SD and Mexico.
However, Jas Jain said: NYC is a cesspool of Conflicts Of Interests (COI) as these people go to the same bar mitzvah celebrations, the same parties, the same clubs, the same synagogues, temples, churches, and their kids, future born-and-bred Crooks, go to the same schools.
My commentary was in response to this gross generalization and borderline slur. So sorry if that was not clear. There are many things that affect culture and I am sure that CR and Tanta don't want to have their business blog infected by culture wars. That is why I tipped the blog as a penalty for indulging.
I am a very liberal Democrat. I think the laizze faire economic policies of the last many years have
been misguided. They underestimate the capacity of our economy to cheat the naive.
The question, in my opinion, is whether we can solve it through regulation or religion. Since the GOP (or economic conservatives) have been in control of USA for most of the last 27 years, I tend to think that our current problems are a result of their policies. I could be wrong and am open to correction on this matter.
I guess this means I owe another $20 to the tip jar.
Paul | 02.09.08 - 9:01 pm | #
Interesting turn of events today, yahoo is reportedly to turn down the msft bid of $31, considering they were trading at $18 pre-bid, yahoo could potentially be indicative of what is currently taking place in the existing home market-
Freakin INSANE DENIAL,
another example of having to wtfu.
Most companies are run for the benefit of senior managers and their egos. I can't see any other explanation for Yahoo's behavior. If I was a shareholder I'd say f*-yeah to the M$ offer.
WOW. Yahoo turned it down????????
Most incredible.
I hope there is a nice bounce in MSFT on Monday.
I need to unload the remaining shares I failed to sell in February 2000.
"Yahoo Inc.'s board plans to reject Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited $44.6 billion offer to acquire the Web giant, a person familiar with the situation says.
After a series of meetings over the past week, Yahoo's board determined that the $31 per share offer "massively undervalues" Yahoo, the person said. It also doesn't account for the risks Yahoo would be taking by entering into an agreement that might be overturned by regulators. The board plans to send a letter to Microsoft Monday, spelling out its position."
Yahoo's Rejection Pressures Microsoft To Mull a New Bid - WSJ.com
Microsoft should be so lucky.
If they bid more, they are insane.
They dropped $40b in market cap with the announcement.
What will happen to Yahoo shares on Monday? And what rollover effects on NASDAQ? My guess is down on both. But what do I know? I would have guesses S&P at 1100 by now with all the potential hazards looming.
terry was dumping by the truckload from $29-$31-
YHOO: Insider Transactions for Yahoo! Inc. - Yahoo! Finance
he must have pulled a lacker at the board meeting-
like to see semel argue "massively undervalues".
It's unclear whether Microsoft would be willing to pay such a premium, which would increase the value of its original cash and stock bid by more than $12 billion.
$12B gets you 60,000 person-years of programmers at $200K/yr (say $100K plus benefits and overhead and managers and whatnot). Jus' sayin'.
Jerry Yang of Yahoo is going to end up like the Fred Wang of Wang Labs.
Wang Laboratories - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Both should have taken the money and run like hell.
Google will play Yahoo like a fish with talk of alliances, etc. Meanwhile, productive activity at Yahoo will drop as everyone is distracted by the possibilities offered by these mythical alliances, the legal hassles they require, the realities announced of layoffs, and the need to get one's resume and Rolodex in order.
Credit Crunch Pounds U.K. Economy - WSJ.com
The abundance of easy money catalyzed a sharp rise in home prices and boosted consumer spending. But it also drove people deeper into debt as they stretched to buy homes and live large. According to the most recent data from Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, total consumer debt in the U.K. stood at 164% of annual disposable income at the end of 2006, by far the highest level of any developed country. In the U.S., that number was 138%.
Should have read:
"the reality of the previously announced of layoffs"
Sorry.
NorkaWest
P.S. Rumor has it that Fred Wang's sister took the money and ran. Guess she knew her brother. Smart lady. Very generous to charities.
Microsoft is willing to trade 10% of the most successful computer business ever for Yahoo?
This will never top time warner's fiasco with AOL, but it is borderline nutty.
Imagine all the useful stuff you could buy with 40 billion instead of Yahoo. Multiple wind farms or solar fields. Invest in battery technology for electric cars. Hell build an operating system as good as Macs OS.
For reference, the ownership rate in the UK is at about 70%, with a total of 18M OO units. 45K foreclosures would be about 0.25% of the total OO units. I'm guessing that appreciation is holding the foreclosures down, unless there is definition problem that alters the count.
UK Housing Review
Microsoft is willing to trade 10% of the most successful computer business ever for Yahoo?
I think it shows how deathly afraid MS is of Google. Scared sh*tless. Clutching at straws.
eoae99,
don't qoute wind farms as valuable investment...
the wind is great for moving ships across seas, pumping water from wells, ... but 4 lectric??? nahhhhhh
Doesn't or didn't Centex own the largest homebuilder in the UK?
This is a two'fer for Google:
They sooo PWNED Yahoo and Microsoft.
The financial sector accounts for more than one-fifth of all U.K. jobs. If the financial markets are heading for a major downturn, UK will sure suffer.
UK Home builders
Category:Housebuilding companies of the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
OT & Previous Thread Related (Financial Crisis):
Roubini has two articles explaining the 12 reasons why the financial system is going to hell in a handcart and the 8 reasons why the Fed probably can't to anything to prevent it.
The Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown: The Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster
RGE - The Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown: The Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster
Summarized by Yves at Nouriel Roubini’s Doomsday Scenario « naked capitalism
and
Can the Fed and Policy Makers Avoid a Systemic Financial Meltdown? Most Likely Not.
RGE - Can the Fed and Policy Makers Avoid a Systemic Financial Meltdown? Most Likely Not.
(UK) Credit crisis 'here to stay,' say top bankers
'Our problems are not that different from those of the US: we have very large personal debt, a housing market which has been overblown and is now weakening, and a huge trade deficit,' said David Kern, the BCC's economic adviser. The Institute of Directors will add to the pessimistic mood tomorrow, when it reveals that business investment plans have 'fallen off a cliff' in the past three months.
eoae99,
don't qoute wind farms as valuable investment...
the wind is great for moving ships across seas, pumping water from wells, ... but 4 lectric??? nahhhhhh
BoonDoggle | 02.09.08 - 10:20 pm | #
Wake up. These things are already on line. No, they aren't "the answer," but they can generate power by the hundreds of megawatts in many places. Out here in Washington state they work well in combo with gas plants and hydro. When the wind is blowing across the plains (as it usually is) you can save water behind the dams, and burn less gas. I want to stress that this is and will always be a small part of the power supply, but it does work, it is working, and more wind farms are going up.
Installed Wind Capacity Surged 45% in 2007: AWEA Market Report
AWEA - Projects
Microsoft has been following the typical US method of periodic model changes which are basically cosmetic. Vista musta been designed by a aerospace company cause it is years late way too heavy and can't meet initial specs. Probably the end of the Win line. Gates can see the computer software model changing to the internet but he hasn't been able to design a killer app.
If he can't use Yahoo M$ will, like IBM having to give up its consumer division and stick with slower commercial growth.
I recently bought an ASUS eee. A tiny but functional puter. All open source and works great.
UK Homebuilders
I don't know the different names on the Wiki but Miller Group is self advertised as the UK's largest privately owned Housebuilding, Property Development and Construction business.
They bought Fairclough Homes from Centex in 2005.
On the flipside a Brit Company bought Centex Construction for US operations (I believe this was their commercial const. division)in March.
Centex also sold its subprime division to Fortress in July of 2006 for $575 million (about $500 million more than it was worth a year later).
OPEC could ditch dollars for euros
LONDON (AFP) - OPEC could switch the pricing of oil from dollars into euros within a decade, secretary general Abdullah al-Badri told a weekly magazine.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could adopt the euro to combat the decline of the dollar, Badri told the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), published in London.
Yahoo! 404 - Page Not Found
Oooohhh, I wonder what's gonna happen on Monday now? I bet the market will go up!
We're all gonna die.
Theres one here Welcome to Holiday Retirement
DH,
The UK is a small island, they tend to increase the velocity of trades and don't build out like the US can (same here is NZ), so the same house may be traded many times without an owner accually occupiing.
Jas jain,
Aussie, aussie yes you are correct, this is a global problem. Although aussie had a mini crash around 2004, so housing will not tank (in NSW at least, perth will) as badly.
Here in NZ we just had our realtor guys trumpeting the same type of lines the NAR was a year or so ago. Its deja vu all over again.
They are singing from the same song sheet, it will turn next month, blah blah blah.
Sentiment has changed, first home buyers have gone on a buying strike and the velocity of home sales and mortgage origination has dropped by a third.
We are seeing lumber mills close due to weak international timber prices (US driven), manufacturers being strangled by the high NZD and super high interest rates. CB rate is 8.5% but the carry trade keeps rolling along...
Over here in the UK, we're just coming off of the price peak now.
Here's a review that contains the latest figures:
http://www.nationwide.co.uk/hpi/historical/Jan_2008.pdf
For those of us who remember the last crash, things are starting to look rather familiar. It's going to be a long grind down. Last time it took 6 1/2 years for real prices to bottom out, and 12 1/2 years to recover to the previous peak.
It's making me all nostalgic:
YouTube -
DH,
sorry to add, there won't be a big builder to short, short the finance companies.
'buy to let' is what you want to watch in the UK, these guys will suffer..
Buy to Let Mortgages - Paragon Mortgages
ask alice, she is very sharp:
UK Bubble
Thanks Norka,Stinky, and Andy
I checked the charts on the listed Homebuilders on Wikepedia: Almost all the UK Homebuilders are at 3-5 year lows. I missed that train.
Well we can still short any rally in the USA for the next year or so. One more year we are in business. I will look for some banks and mortgage companies and will report back.
CR/Tanta -
I have attended the SEC Speaks event on a number of previous occassions. I was there on Friday and Saturday (I actually got home about 2 hours ago from DC). I have seen a number of SEC Chairman's speaches. Most of them have been about 80%+ generalities and fluff. This year Christopher Cox was almost ALL business througout his speech and a scheduled 15 minute speech took approximately 40 minutes for him to complete. And IMO, the tone was much more serious...
If you haven't read it yet, I would recommend it.
SEC Speech: Remarks to the 'SEC Speaks in 2008' Program of the Practising Law Institute;
Washington, D.C.: Feb. 8, 2008
Big ?: So many priorities means that they have no priorities. I can't imagine their staffing levels can handle all of those projects. How much of their funding can they dictate, vs. being hostage to Congress?
Yahoo is doing MSFT a huge favor. If they simply wait a few months, they'll be able to pick up Yahoo for a fraction of the current price.
Just ask BAC about spending money too soon.
An interesting quote from the speach - "significant accounting questions in the subprime area, such as when off-balance sheet CDO-related liabilities will be forced back on to a sponsor's balance sheet."
Emphasis added.... When not if.
A CMA report of mid-high-end residential properties in Ojai, CA, as of Feb '08:
Sales 5 months
Total Avg Orig'l Price Sales Price %
4 $2,717,000. $2,385,000 91%
(latest sale was 76% of OP)
(1 pending, at best 87% of OP, & probably much lower)
Listings Currently - 16
Listings = 2 Year's Last Year's Sales
Listings Off the Market (my guess - 16).
The overhang of unsold properties represents 4 years of sales.
Prices going up??
My guess: 50% haircut from OP will be the norm within the next 18 months. And at that price, they're no bargain.
At that price they won't be positive cash flow. So, 70% haircut is expected so there's a deal, finally.
And this in one of the lower-upper-class neighborhoods in the USA.
Does anybody besides me know that the NYT censors comments about Krugman's blog. WTF? Is this Nazi Germany? I respect NYT's refusal to deal -- that's their perogative. But when Krugman is advocating for Clinton, and he has a personal interest, I think he needs to disclose that (especially if people can't comment). I like K, but isn't this abuse of power of the worst kind?
Okay, Big ?, he's going to professionalize (sic) a method for returning the $5B they've seized but never returned to defrauded investors, and ramp up all kinds of enforcement that they haven't done for years and, now five years after Sarbanes-Oxley, they finally got the computers they need to deal with their new responsibilities, and they'll be watching those hedge funds closely, and meanwhile all their working groups have been working on proposals for new rulemaking submissions they intend to submit sometime this year and . . .
Wait a minute, he's managed to accomplish absolutely nothing in Bush's second term in office.
Do you think they planned it that way?
Big ? I have to agree with sportsfan. How can you claim to have the most transparent, efficient markets in the world when your own employees cannot even share documents? Cox may be doing well with the straightjacket budget Congress awards him, but galloping all over the globe when we have a banking and confidence crisis here? He lists these priorities like they are new problems. Hello, munis are not a new market. Hello, gathering fines is not a new task. Hello, computer systems that can talk to each other is not a new feature. Cox is a caretaker and a lameduck.
sportsfan
I read chairman Cox's speech as well,
(thanks Big for the link),
and i also came away with the idea that there were lots of plans laid,
but didn't see much in the way of enforcement actions.
Big ? When you post again, if you post again, tell me again what Cox is going to do to those banks that had no writedowns in the fourth quarter in the face of no-bid markets for their portfolio holdings. My Answer: nothing, enforcement of SarbanesOxley is a nothingburger. Its as if the entire financial industry has a Sarbox exemption. The result is extremely damaged confidence in American markets. Thanks SEC.
Found this on Mish's site (along with great accompanying commentary, natch):
Consumers Wary -- Plan to Reduce Spending
Other great stuff on Mish's site:
Over a third of the nations community banks have commercial real estate concentrations exceeding 300 percent of their capital, and almost 30 percent have construction and development loans exceeding 100 percent of capital.
Mish's Global etc.
IMOH: The SEC is a real mess.
Rant #1.
They require mutual funds provide the same accounting information in three different formats.
First, you have to send paper reports to shareholders, which are generated by printers using PDF files.
Second, you have to duplicate the hardcopy versions of your statements using an obsolete version of HTML on EDGAR. Many firms give up and just file TXT versions that look like a dogs breakfast.
Third, you have to file annual and sem-annual data as a N-SAR datafile. The datafile is created using an antiquated program that will only run under MS-DOS.
The fund shareholders pay the costs of producing each of these versions. Fund management has to waste its time proofreading them.
There are whole divisions of DC law firms that specialize in EDGARizing SEC filings, software vendors selling HTML editors with specialized code validity checking algorithms, etc.
The whole rest of the business world uses PDF files when they need to generate electronic copies of documents. They generate them using Word, Excel, and a $29.95 PDF writing program. If they want to get fancy, they use the printer's PDF files, which are true copies of what is being sent to shareholders and are generated using InDesign or Quark.
Now they SEC's latest brain spasm its that we will generate xBLR filings. That means we can toss all the expensive software that has been bought and paid for and buy brand new expensive specialized software. Then, we can retrain or replace all the staff who have to do the SEC filings.
Rant #2.
The delay in sending disgorgement funds to injured parties is probably related to the SEC's inability to figure out how much interest the funds have earned while sitting in the SEC's account, how to apportion the interest income to the injured parties, how to do the correct tax filings, and (because it has been years since the mess started) where to find the injured parties to give them their checks.
The SEC. What a ##@##!! nightmare.
what were the governments inflation numbers??? Oh never mind...tooo late in the evening for a fairy tale
here are numbers for just this week from noland at prudent bear:
Platinum jumped 7% this week
Lead gained 5%
Copper jumped 7.5% (biggest gain in almost a year), increasing y-t-d gains to almost 16%.
Palladium rose to the highest price since 2002.
Sugar rose 5% on Friday
crudes 4% one-day surge.
wheat surged to yet another record high (up 30% y-t-d), this weeks 16% gain as the biggest in history. Prices are now up 140% y-o-y. soybeans rose 4% this week to a near-record increasing one-year gains to 80%.
Corn prices gained 2% (having doubled in the past two years), also trading at record highs.
coffee prices rise 5.8% this week to the highest level since 1999.
Cocoa gained 3.8% this week (37% 1-yr gain).
Prince William County Virginia (D.C.
suburb):
A total of 1,052 properties were sold.
592 (56%) were purchases by mortgage lenders (foreclosures).
157 (15%) were sold by mortgage lenders.
303 (29%) were regular sales or properties not bought or sold by banks.
http://tinyurl.com/2bth6a
Am I late with this? It's the official, serious, but maybe bad big picture news. Rather than clip and muse alone... here for your snip sniping pleasure is the Vox Oracle, the Financial Stability Forum of the President's Working Group.
Gulp!
http://www.fsforum.org/publications/FSFWGG7Interimreport5Febfinal.pdf
I moved from California to London two years ago (sold my house in January 2006 at what must have been the absolute top), and the feeling here in the UK now has a very similar feel to the US two years ago. You look around at house prices and wonder who's buying these places for this much money? I can understand prices in central London going through the roof driven by investment bankers and overseas investors, but places way out in the middel of nowhere, where the average income is max about 30,000 dollars, go for about 3/4 of a million dollars. I guess that not that many people in the UK have been to Stockton, CA, so aren't familiar with how a situation like that plays out. At the same time, supposedly respectable "economists" in the mainstream press continually argue that prices won't crash, but common sense seems to dictate the opposite.
Repossessions are low in the UK right now (they increased significantly on last year but from a very low base) though that's largely due to the recent run up in prices allowing people to refinance rather than lose the house. This was the exact same situation in the US in 2006. Prices have stopped rising now, so we'll see what happens last year.
Apparently they've discovered "Philadelphia lightning" in Camden town.
London landmark goes up in flames
Sovereign Wealth funds have a point, we do not regulate hedge funds, but yet wish to regulate them, hypocritical, absolutely. The bigger questions is in a regulated market, why we don't regulate hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds? You cannot regulate one aspect and not the other in a regulated market, this is ripe with conflicts of interest and also opens the domestic markets up to the potential for manipulation to promote self interest, ie commodities and artificially propping up the prices.
I would argue that much of the "inflation" fear is being driven by highly levered vehicles which are unregulated and sovereign wealth funds which are being passed down to the consumer increasing the financial pressure on families.
At the same time, it seems we have taken the posture of "enabler" due to the unwavering need to attract capital to bail our dumb asses out of this credit crisis spreading throughout our financial system. So, we have chosen to look blindly at what we know to be an unfair strain on our consumers caused by speculators and overseas funds attempting to protect their own interests.
" In addition, leaders of funds in Russia, the Middle East, China and other parts of Asia say that the Wests demand for regulations is hypocritical in light of the failure to regulate European and American banks and hedge funds. Some analysts blame that failure for the mortgage crisis and global economic strains."
Overseas Funds Resist Calls for a Code of Conduct - NY Times
Regarding Cox's speech,
Clyde - obviously you're right about the number of priorities and the staffing issues. The SEC has always been subject to the vagaries of the politics of Congress. They have excellent people but the problem that they have is that they are generally reactive, rather than proactive. But that is the nature of what they do. However, it was an ambitious speech and there were significant mentions of the subprime and hedge fund working groups during the Enforcement, Accounting, Market Regulation sessions as well. Specifically, MANY mentions of current insider trading actions concerning the hf working group. Also - many mentions of subprime and discussions of working with DOJ (and others).
THough, to be fair to Cox, he did inherit many of these issues from his predecessors good (William H. Donaldson) to bad (Harvey Pitt) to those who were publicly overrated (Arthur Levitt) who was in place during the tech bubble.
Despite having major respect for the org, I was left thinking that it is partially a CYA in the wake of the problems that are now and have been cropping up in the system during the past 9-12 months.
Having said all of that, I was impressed by what was discussed during the various sessions as to what the SEC actually did accomplish. I can't even begin to post it all.
On another note and a sign of continued stress in the HY markets, Solutia and Delphi seem to be having significant trouble obtaining exit financing in order to emerge from bankruptcy-
HIGH & LOW FINANCE; These Days, Even Cash Is Dubious - NY Times
One other note and a request, if anyone has access to research or estimates of the amount of HY debt maturing in 08, 09, 10, 11, 12 and could provide links, it would be much appreciated.
tia
S&P estimates-
"We expect that investment-grade maturities will average 156 bln usd a year and speculative-grade will average 92 bln a year between 2011 and 2014, based on our current maturity calendar. Maturities should spike in 2011, as a glut of bonds mature that were issued during the issuance bubble in 2001,' she added."
Slowing economy to raise risk in speculative-grade US corporate bond sector- S&P - Forbes.com
From the US Department of energy:
"Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States."
Wind and Hydropower Technologies Program: Wind Energy Resource Potential
So BoonDoggle is wrong when he/she writes:
eoae99,
don't qoute wind farms as valuable investment...
the wind is great for moving ships across seas, pumping water from wells, ... but 4 lectric??? nahhhhhh
BoonDoggle | 02.09.08 - 10:20 pm | #
Big ? My apologies for being so strident, I believe my beef is with Congress, not you or Cox. I am a little too idealistic in thinking we can change the reactive nature of a regulatory body without lots of money, which is not going to happen during the GOP watch. Thanks for posting.
Hi,
I've been looking at GARP's FRM certification. What are your thoughts about this certification? Are there any alternatives?
I'm a techie with no financial experience. The course material sounds interesting. Even if i don't clear the exam, i'll be happy having spent time reading something i like.
The following excerpt is from two authors: "W. Michael Cox is the senior vice president and chief economist and Richard Alm is the senior economics writer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas."
In the article "You Are What You Spend",
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS; You Are What You Spend - NY Times
in the New York Times, they seemed to totally ignore Mortgage Equity Withdrawal syndrome
http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/243/2888/640/GDPMEWQ22006.1.jpg
so richly documented in this blog (and comments) over the last year.
The top fifth of American households earned an average of $149,963 a year in 2006. As shown in the first accompanying chart, they spent $69,863 on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care and other categories of consumption. The rest of their income went largely to taxes and savings.
The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that an average of $18,153 a year. How is that possible? A look at the far right-hand column of the consumption chart, labeled financial flows, shows why: those lower-income families have access to various sources of spending money that doesnt fall under taxable income. These sources include portions of sales of property like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts. While some of these families are mired in poverty, many (the exact proportion is unclear) are headed by retirees and those temporarily between jobs, and thus their low income total doesnt accurately reflect their long-term financial status.
German IKB needs another 2 billion euros for bailout:
IKB needs 2 bln eur in additional capital guarantees - report - Forbes.com
creekside,
Krugman also has a short response to that article on his blog:
Income and consumption inequality - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com
Clyde writes:
Big ? My apologies for being so strident, I believe my beef is with Congress, not you or Cox. I am a little too idealistic in thinking we can change the reactive nature of a regulatory body without lots of money, which is not going to happen during the GOP watch. Thanks for posting.
Clyde, obviously I agree with you. No matter how ambitious a regulatory agency is, it is subject to the vagaries of the politics of Congress and the Executive Branch. And there are so many more investment bankers, traders, hedge fund employees, mutual funds, etc than there are SEC or FINRA or state securities regulators.
3 visitors online. Everyone must be at church praying for more bad news this week.
REBear | 02.10.08 - 10:26 am | #
The CFA I think is more recognized.
Also because of the exams are in parts, its easier to get some parts under the belt.
That said, my thoughts would be to do the exam because you want to gain that knowledge.
I have been doing quant/techie stuff in the financial field since 1998. I was thinking of doing the CFA, just have piece paper to prove I knew what knew. Decided against it because of the downturn. The financial sector is going to contract (as you gather is the opinion of others on this site),
'The current financial turmoil is serious, and persisting,' said Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary.
From Credit Crisis here to stay posted earlier in this thread.
Remember back in the good ole days when subprime was contained?
thanks sbarrkum. That was helpful.
Big ?, on the Cox speech:
Just to be clear about my post last night, I wasn't attacking you for linking it here or for whatever you think about the individual or the agency.
I'm just fed up with what I see as a useless SEC many years after Enron, Worldcom and so on. What I can see of financial fraud in the markets is just the tip of the iceberg, yet it seems enormous and it also seems nothing is being done other than business as usual in NYC and DC, for which we all suffer accordingly.
I actually hope the SEC can accomplish something this year.
CFA=Certified F*in AH***s
i don't need three years of tests and self study to learn how to lie and BS.
I can do that fine , right now , with the education that i have.
watch...
o-joe and seb's arguments are valid and rated AAA
boondoggle,.CFA
will,
i disagree...
a few thought's and assumptions.
would you go under heart surgery on wind power alone?
would you utilize wind power alone to pump the water up the grapevine to supply LA with water?
would you use wind power alone to smelt metals such as iron or aluminum?
Have you ever participated in wind sports?
why would you spread dis-info unless you were biased or ignorant?
Donaldson's heart was in the right place, but he wasn't very effective; Cox's heart is in the right place, and he is fairly effective, but both suffered from the usual underfunding problems. As a matter of fact, the SEC was in the midst of a hiring freeze when they could've done a lot of good back in 2005, when the worst RMBS were beginning to be sold.
It's almost as if the subprime crisis was tailor-made to escape regulatory oversight, because for any unified response you'd need to have the SEC, the bank regulators, and the mortgage regulators all on the same page (and come to think of it, throw in the Department of Justice if you want to consider criminal charges). It's really no surprise that this whole thing blew up... but to blame just the SEC is foolhardy.
"Big ? writes:
Regarding Cox's speech,
... The SEC has always been subject to the vagaries of the politics of Congress."
Big? i must disagree...the chair of the SEC is not subject to congress as much as he or she is subject to the political objectives of the White House administration in power...President Bush appointed Chairman Cox.
Boondoggle
the sign of a smart person is the ability to evaluate information and form a new opinion.
i'm wrong more often than right
you sir, are very wrong about wind power not being a smart investment.
let me recommend the articles below for your casual perusal, especially the last article.
"Wind Power World's Fastest-Growing New Electricity Source. Financial incentives, technology critical for further development"
Wind Power World’s Fastest-Growing New Electricity Source
"The price of wind power has dropped faster than the cost of conventional electricity generation. Wind power today costs about 20 percent of what it cost in the mid 1980s and is expected to decline further over the next 10 years"
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:r9bSI3X4D3sJ:www.cted.wa.gov/DesktopModules/CTEDPublications/CTEDPublicationsView.aspx%3FtabID%3D0%26ItemID%3D1308%26MId%3D863%26wversion%3DStaging+wind+generates+percent+electricity+washington+state&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&
"Wind power generates a new cash crop in state"
The Seattle Times: Local News: Wind power generates a new cash crop in state
"U.S. Wind Power Generation Grows by 45 Percent in 2007"
U.S. Wind Power Generation Grows by 45 Percent in 2007
with hope for the future. MT
BoonDoggle,
As someone involved in the energy industry doing analysis on wind power to grid, I can tell you that your questions make as much sense as: what sound does yellow smell like?
The big problem with wind is its inconsistency and need to be backed up by conventional (thermal) power sources. Another large problem with wind is that it is typically negatively correlated with power demand. Lastly, wind suffers from the fact that it is best in places where there is nothing... including transmission.
This implies that if you could get a large, uncorrelated amount of wind generation, a large infrastructure to transfer the power, a good system for energy storage, and a reserve amount of backup thermal generation, that wind power would be quite effective. However, as an energy engineer, i will say that there are operational and economic barriers that make this difficult to achieve. They are by no means impossible for wind generation though.
Kahni,
thanks for making the point...
incosistency... sums it up nicely
as for P*ss
how dare you...
rofl
anyway...how does one defend the quality of an investment if it requires large subsidies and produces marginal benefit?
It's an intersting article...
I'm currently trying to learn more about this statement...
This remarkable and accelerating growth is driven by strong demand, favorable economics, and a period of welcome relief from the on-again, off-again, boom-and-bust, cycle of the federal production tax credit for wind power," he said
American wind farms will generate an estimated 48 billion kilowatt-hours of wind energy in 2008, just over one percent of U.S. electricity supply, powering the equivalent of over 4.5 million homes.
you guys are'nt serious about this being a quality investment, are you?
the science and tech are great, but don't try and sell me that this is a money maker...any more than tranche DD of sandystructures is gonna pay me timely.
i'm not trying to sell anybody on investing, personally, individually, in wind power.
however, i think it true that we will see significant increases in wind generated electricity...more than an average of 7%, yoy in the USA for two or more decades.
i judge we will see further development in nuclear, geothermal, clean coal, tidal, solar, and other energy sources...of necessity.
wind is a small but significant piece of the puzzle.
you are correct of course, that wind is not a stand alone source because the wind doesn't blow steady.
Shattering all its previous records, the U.S. wind energy industry installed 5,244 megawatts (MW) in 2007, expanding the nations total wind power generating capacity by 45% in a single calendar year and injecting an investment of over $9 billion into the economy, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) announced today. The new wind projects account for about 30% of the entire new power-producing capacity added nationally in 2007 and will power the equivalent of 1.5 million American households annually while strengthening U.S. energy supply with clean, homegrown electric power.
This is the third consecutive year of record-setting growth, establishing wind power as one of the largest sources of new electricity supply for the country, said AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher. This remarkable and accelerating growth is driven by strong demand, favorable economics, and a period of welcome relief from the on-again, off-again, boom-and-bust, cycle of the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind power.
Installed Wind Capacity Surged 45% in 2007: AWEA Market Report
@ Fredison, it seems very low to me too - but repossession figures have at least a 3 month delay coming out, so who knows how high they are right now.