Noble, "price stablization" in housing? ROFLOL. There might be areas close to the bottom (areas that didn't appreciate much), but IMO in most areas prices have a long way to fall. I think some areas have a few years of price declines still ahead.
Greenspan also thinks the inventory problem will be gone by early '09 - he must not be looking at the record existing home inventory, record vacant homes, record foreclosures, etc. It will take some time to work off the excess inventory.
Greenspan Says U.S. Home Prices May Stabilize Later This Year
That is pretty funny - I suppose he could be right... if prices fall fast & furious between now and 'later this year'... I mean if they really get some giddyup-n-go it could happen.
I clicked on one of those cheapo mortgage things a month or so ago. I think there was something like a one month teaser rate and after that the ARM adjusted RAPIDLY. I'm thinking every month but don't really see how that'd be possible. In a few months though the ending rates were very high. I suppose they'll find some suckers to sign up for them.
As I am laughing while I write this, let Mrs. Blair make the first move. As the FDIC Chairwoman, let her commit her money first. Let her buy another home to help stablize the market before she commits my tax dollars.
The bill includes a new standard property tax deduction of up to $1,000 for couples and $500 for individuals that will benefit 28.3 million tax filers who do not itemize deductions on their returns.
It also includes $10 billion in tax-exempt bonds for local housing agencies to refinance subprime loans and provide new mortgages for first-time home buyers, $4 billion in grants for local governments to buy foreclosed properties and $100 million to expand counseling for homeowners at risk of defaulting on their loans.
In addition, it would give a $7,000 tax credit to purchasers of foreclosed homes and a new tax break for struggling home builders and other businesses, allowing them to claim current losses against taxes paid in prior, more profitable years. Officials said the proposals would cost taxpayers $15 billion to $20 billion.
Under the proposal, one of several emergency tax breaks being considered for corporate America, companies would for two years be allowed to carry back losses incurred in 2007 and 2008 against profits accrued over the previous five years, instead of the usual two year timeframe.
Some of the biggest beneficiaries would be Wall Street banks such as Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns Cos. Homebuilders, which have been punched by the housing slump after years of go-go profits, also stand to benefit. In fact, any company that is now struggling following years of healthy profits (that pumped up their tax bills) could in theory benefit.
Extending the carryback period "provides financial support for (corporate) taxpayers who are experiencing large losses," said Leslie Samuels, an assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy in the Clinton administration, now a partner at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York.
Randy Paschke, chairman of the accounting department at Wayne State University in Detroit, said investment banks' write-offs from mortgage-related losses are so large, "they probably wouldn't get all their taxes back with just a two-year carryback."
If you borrowed a ton of money to build spec houses in Miami and reported $2 billion in profits between 2002 and 2007 but gave up all those profits by notching a $2 billion loss this year, the extended carryback has a great deal of value. If you've been building affordable housing in Wichita, Kan., and booked $300 million in profits in those years, and then, through careful management of costs, managed to eke out a $5 million profit this year, it has no value. The big public homebuilders, whose shares rallied on the news of this potential tax break, didn't pay any windfall taxes on the bubble-era earnings. Why should they get an extraordinary post-bubble windfall?
inally, in many instances, the largest shareholdersand hence the biggest beneficiariesare the managers who made the decisions that caused the losses. Toll Brothers, which is now racking up losses after years of profits, is valued at close to $4 billion. Founder Robert Toll has 17.5 million shares of Toll, worth about $440 million at current prices, which works out to about 11 percent of the company. At Hovnanian (first quarter loss $131 million), members of the Hovnanian family own at least 15 percent of the outstanding stock, according to Yahoo Finance. These companiesand their extraordinarily wealthy managersstill possess the financial heft to finance the recoveries from their self-inflicted wounds.
April 7 (Bloomberg) -- Tribune Co. and Dole Foods Co. may need to draw down on bank lines to avoid default, causing a new drain on bank capital, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.
The companies currently don't have enough cash and committed credit to cover debt repayments over the next two years and may have to resort to credit lines or ``potentially face severe financial difficulty,'' said Greg Peters, the head of credit strategy at Morgan Stanley in New York.
For lenders including Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co., prospects that the 80 companies with revolving credit lines of more than $1 billion will start drawing them down threatens to further erode balance sheets that have been hammered by losses from securities linked to U.S. home loans. Banks are restricting lending after $232 billion of credit losses and writedowns from subprime-mortgage related debt.
There's a real game of chicken going on between banks and the corporations as to whether you should tap,'' Peters said on a conference call for investors today.This is a very big deal.'
`It will not be until early 2009 that we will get close to having eliminated most of this'' home inventory, Greenspan told a conference in Tokyo today sponsored by Deutsche Bank AG and co-hosted by Bloomberg LP. ``But it is very likely that home prices will stabilize well before that.''
The health of the U.S. housing market is tied to broader financial markets that rely on bundling mortgages to sell as securities, Greenspan said. His successor, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, and other Fed officials have highlighted declining home prices as a major economic risk that may further hurt household wealth and consumer spending.
Once the markets start to stabilize, especially if the real economies don't go into a severe recession,'' thenwe can expect a recovery to begin to take place,'' Greenspan, 82, said via satellite from Washington. ``It will be slow, it will be hesitant.''
He said the extent of damage stemming from the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market won't be known for months.
Yesterday, in a Financial Times piece headlined The Fed is blameless on the property bubble,'' Greenspan wrote that the evidence isvery fragile'' that Fed interest-rate policy added to the U.S. bubble and that ``it is not credible that regulators would have been able to prevent the subprime debacle.''
Worst Credit Crisis
Greenspan said today that ``the current credit crisis is the most wrenching in the last half century and possibly more.'
These internet originators have been a problem too its unbelievable to me they are back already. When I go on my AOL account over the weekend Im seeing no-doc, low-doc, bankruptcy okay, a $200,000 loan for $800 a month. They are back. It is just amazing to me.
My apologies if this is a repost of now old news. KKR avoids default by giving away 1/3 of its REIT holdings to cancel CP it issued.
Here's how to play high finance Monopoly, when holding a losing hand!
KKR Financial Sells Interest in REIT, Gets Out of Mortgage Business
April 1, 2008
By: Dees Stribling, Contributing Correspondent
KKR Financial Holdings L.L.C., an affiliate of buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. specializing in debt investments, has agreed to sell a controlling interest in its real estate investment trust, KKR Financial Corp.
At the same time, the company agreed to relinquish mortgage-backed securities to creditors who hold about $3.5 billion in its commercial paper.
KKR Financial Corp. holds a portfolio consisting of residential mortgage loans and mortgage-backed securities, corporate loans and debt securities, commercial real estate loans and debt securities, and other asset-backed securities. Upon the closing of the REIT's sale to Rock Capital 2 L.L.C., probably in the second quarter of this year, the entity will have completed its conversion to a limited liability company. KKR declined to specify the precise terms of the sale.
When KKR Financial was formed, it was set up as a REIT and initially invested about 35 percent of its equity capital in RMBS. KKR Financial Corp. began converting to a limited liability company structure last May, and at that time discontinued investing in mortgage-related investments. In August of 2007, the company wrote off its entire investment exposure to mortgage-related investments to the tune of about $243.7 million.
The move to sell its REIT came as part of a larger exit strategy from mortgage-related businesses for KKR Financial Holdings. KKR has also struck an agreement with holders of $3.5 billion worth of its commercial paper, issued by the two asset-backed conduits sponsored by KKR Financial Corp. The agreement provides for the noteholders to receive the collateral in the facilities in exchange for terminating the outstanding notes without default. http://www.commercialpropertynews.com/cpn/content_display/finance/mortgage-banking/e3i9c99d90cc70466f5fef6841b6e76a2cd
" I just don't understand why they are still offering these kinds of loans. Didn't they learn their lesson? They created a bubble, lost a fortune in the crash, we bailed them out, made sure they got their bonuses and capital, slashed interest rates, and saved the banks. Why are they doing this again!"
Circa early 2000's, my boss looked my way and asked me 'what's your favorite short' ... without hesitation, i said AOL...'i followed with, they will lose more market cap in the next year than any company in the market' ...
the day was the day they market had a MOC of 7million shares. Never higher. I retired shortly after.
It will not be until early 22222009 that we will get close to having eliminated most of this home inventory. It is very likely that the earth will fall into the sun well before that.
If Rock Capital 2, LLC can get itself affiliated with a primary dealer (as in Black Rock?), then the Fed Reserve will take that crap and exchange it for real money!
Maybe the Federal Bureau of Investigation should watch what happens with this $3.5 billion of severely degraded MBS garbage?
Maybe the US citizen-watchdogs should watch what happens with this now $3.5 billion hot potato?
Someone's gonna get stuck. Watch out Mr & Mrs JQ Public. This one can easily be for you!
there's been a banking hurricane...losses are large and expected to grow...why don't you use your AOL dialup to increase insurance rates, Ms. Bank Insurance?
PAY ATTENTION: "But clearly as we go into the year and capital needs become greater, it may be more of an issue. And I think there will be some hard policy questions .at the end of the day, whats more important? Keeping the bank safe or adhering to these restrictions? I dont know. I dont think were there yet.
Geez. More damage to come, and the chairwoman of the FDIC, a bushie to her core, admits even more damage?
Ulp. Bad, folks, it's going to get really bad.
That sentence quotation should send anybody with a brain and an equity position in any bank to hit the sell button tomorrow. Banks and financial institutions are about to get a lot cheaper.
Housing is dead. Lending is dead.
To most of America, it might as well be the end of the world, 'cause it sure is going to feel like it in a short while.
Really? Historically high and inflated home prices are bad? I have started reading the book "Generation Gap", which goes into great detail regarding changing demographics, etc... and I'm convinced anyone born after 1970 shouldn't vote for either a Republican or Democrat. Both of these boobs of parties have destroyed the future of America. The only good thing, I suppose, is that we used all the money we spent to build a heckuva military... so no one will be able to forcibly make us pay back debt... not without pain on their own end.
Anyway... can anyone explain to this person born after 1970 why I should have to pay an inflated price for housing in America? And why everyone is trying to keep home values propped up and provide huge incentives through taxes to do so?
To most of America, it might as well be the end of the world, 'cause it sure is going to feel like it in a short while.
Gee Allen - and here I thought it was 'Morning In America'...
What do you think the chances are - considering she's a bushie - that she has no clue and is just 'watching clock' and 'covering ass'... not saying the content is right or wrong just sayin' she has no idea.
If she says is terrible and is only real bad... then she can say 'See we managed a bad situation pretty well'... If she says is real bad and it becomes terrible then she doesn't have a lot she can say - its just one more Bush Era Katrina...
Keynesians argue that in a modern industrial economy, many prices are sticky downward or downward inflexible, so that instead of prices falling in this story, a supply shock would cause a recession, i.e., rising unemployment and falling gross domestic product. It is the costs of such a recession that likely causes governments and central banks to allow a supply shock to result in inflation. They also note that though there was no deflation in the 1980s, there was a definite fall in the inflation rate during this period. Actual deflation was prevented because supply shocks are not the only cause of inflation; in terms of the modern triangle model of inflation, supply-driven deflation was counteracted by demand pull inflation and built-in inflation resulting from adaptive expectations and the price/wage spiral.
In the end, built-in inflation involves a vicious circle of both subjective and objective elements, so that inflation encourages inflation to persist. It means that the standard methods of fighting inflation using either monetary policy or fiscal policy to induce a recession are extremely expensive, i.e., meaning large rises in unemployment and large falls in real gross domestic product. This suggests that alternative methods such as wage and price controls (incomes policies) may be needed as complementary to recessions in the fight against inflation.
Parsing: "On a positive note, the Federal Government is not yet bankrupt (despite our best efforts), and to keep j6p from getting any more jittery, we're going to give you a heads up, we're spending your money (still)." Sounds nice when you call it "activist", almost as if someone was taking care of things, in advance.
We have every reason to be optimistic about the future.
But there is one great problem that rightly concerns every one of us, and that is, as you know, rising prices, and especially rising food prices. By the end of last year, we had brought the rate of inflation in the United States down to 3.4 percent. That gave us the best record in 1972 of any industrial country in the world. But now prices are going up at unacceptably high rates.
The greatest part of this increase is due to rising food prices. This has been caused in large measure by increased demand at home and abroad, by crop failures abroad, and as many people in various areas of the country know, by some of the worst weather for crops and livestock that we have ever experienced. But whatever the reasons, every American family is confronted with a real and pressing problem of higher prices. And I have decided that the time has come to take strong and effective action to deal with that problem.
Effective immediately, therefore, I am ordering a freeze on prices.1 This freeze will hold prices at levels no higher than those charged during the first 8 days of June. It will cover all prices paid by consumers. The only prices not covered will be those of unprocessed agricultural products at the farm levels, and rents.
Bair has been saying for some time that only a massive solution can solve the mortgage crisis, that the service and lender industry cannot solve the crisis on a mortgage by mortgage basis that the problem is national and can only be solved on that scale. She at least has some idea as to the scope of the problem understands that the Homeowners cannot service their debt which leads to very unpleasant bank write offs and BK. Shelia is one of the few at the top that seem to understand what's at sake and she admits that coming up with any viable solutions seem remote given the scope and danger's its presents but she is trying to raise the alarm bells but few are are responding.
Small U.S. banks will have to raise tens of billions of dollars this year to cover bad loans, and must choose from three unappetizing options: selling stock or bonds, selling assets -- or selling themselves.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based BankAtlantic Bancorp Inc formed a new subsidiary last month to hold its bad loans, while selling some 1.9 million shares of Stifel Financial Corp to raise about $71.5 million.
Those needing capital shouldn't wait, experts said.
"There is going to be crowding," MacDonald said. "People who are first in line, all things else equal, are going to stand a better chance of raising capital on better terms than people who are late to the party."
If the asset valuation proves that the bank is undercapitalized (capital-to-assets ratio less than 4 percent), and especially if it is found to be critically undercapitalized (ratio below 2 percent), examiners will inform bank management and directors, in writing, of the amount of capital that must be injected to recapitalize the bank. The bank is given the opportunity to produce a plan to gather the necessary capital, and if critically undercapitalized, is warned that it will probably have no more than 90 days in which to gather the needed capital.
@Anonymous at 12:30 a.m. - didn't someone say here earlier (prior thread) that Walmart was jacking up lots of prices today? Could some companies be preparing for such an order by having high prices on their records now, even if they reduce them in the interim? Actually planning ahead for a freeze. Creepy.
PALO ALTO, Calif. (Map, News) - Palo Alto police are looking for a bank robber who favors a decidedly slow-speed getaway vehicle - an electric wheelchair.
Police say a wheelchair-bound man in his 60s with gray hair and a beard held up the Wachovia Bank branch at the Stanford Shopping Center late this afternoon with a black handgun.
After the stickup, he left in his wheelchair and was last seen motoring down a nearby street toward El Camino Real, a major thoroughfare.
The nation's top hauler of container rail freight, BNSF Railway Co., is parking miles of rail cars in Montana and elsewhere because there isn't enough freight to keep them rolling.
Cars that often carry 40-foot containers of goods shipped from Asia stand like an iron fence between the Missouri River and this Montana burg known for world-class fly fishing. They stretch as far as Sandee Cardinal can see when she stands outside her home on the river's west bank between Helena and Great Falls.
"What is that but a symbol of how America is down in the dumps right now?" Cardinal asked as she gazed at the cars that haven't moved for about three months.
Thanks for this. As I have head bowed so low as it pinned between my knees...I can not help but to utter the words GFY (go f*** yourselfs')....This is an indication that even the regulators are behind the times...
AOL is trying to reinvent itself as an internet portal. A lot of people who started out on the net with an AOL account still use it that way. They do tend to be older (somewhat like my Mother-in-law who isn't very clear on the distinction between AOL and Internet, but IMs like crazy and forwards a lot of high-graphic emails around).
Anyone else think Bush is not all there these days; kinda makes me a little uneasy that so many retarded things are going on at breakneck speed, in an effort to trash America beyond repair; also liked Franks coming out of the blue in his new effort to legalize pot! Just what we need, a little chaos to help take our minds off the war, the economy, the economy, housing, war, the economy, war, housing, etc.... Yah, why not shock people with retardation and attention deficit bullshit!
The president's decision to act unilaterally in sending the free trade agreement disregards three decades of established precedent under fast-track legislation and demonstrates yet again his disrespect for Congress," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel said they could not support the Colombia pact "under present circumstances."
"The president's apparent disregard for the economic insecurity faced by millions of struggling American families highlights a misplaced set of priorities," Rangel and Pelosi said in a joint statement.
Bruce Raynor, head of Unite Here, a 465,000-member union representing workers in the apparel and textile industries, said it was an outrage for Bush, during a time of economic crisis, to send Congress a trade agreement "with a country that has one of the most ruthless records of repression of the trade union movement."
In March, the number of persons unemployed because they lost jobs increased
by 300,000 to 4.2 million. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed
job losers has increased by 914,000.
The civilian labor force rose to 153.8 million over the month, offsetting a
decline in the prior month. The labor force participation rate was 66.0 percent
in March and has remained at or near that level since last spring. Total employ-
ment held at 146.0 million. The employment-population ratio was little changed
over the month at 62.6 percent. The ratio was down from its most recent peak of
63.4 percent in December 2006. (See table A-1.)
The number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons, at 4.9 million
in March, was little changed over the month, but has risen by 629,000 over the past
12 months. This category includes persons who indicated that they were working
part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find
full-time jobs. (See table A-5.)
Persons Not in the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)
About 1.4 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to
the labor force in March. These individuals wanted and were available for work and
had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as un-
employed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
Among the marginally attached, there were 401,000 discouraged workers in March, about
the same as a year earlier. Discouraged workers are defined as persons not currently
looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them.
The other 951,000 persons classified as marginally attached to the labor force in
March cited reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
The best description of The FDIC comes FDIC v. Howitz...
It starts with
"This is a cautionary tale where the emperor has new clothes -- a bandit's mask. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sought to hold Charles Hurwitz individually responsible for all losses at United Savings, even though he had no obligation to the thrift or the government. Unable to focus its claims and unwilling to disclose its records in this suit -- one that it brought -- the FDIC surreptitiously paid another agency to bring a parallel administrative claim against Hurwitz, several companies, and other people. Later -- much later -- the FDIC dismissed its claims here. Hurwitz and two companies have have asked that they recover their costs of defending the suit. They will recover their costs because the record reveals corrupt individuals within a corrupt agency with corrupt influences on it, bringing this litigation."
It concludes with....
As George Barnard Shaw said, "power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power." These people discarded the mantle of the American Republic for the cloak of a secret society of extortionists. If the vice president called, they responded. If a congressman called, they responded. If a lobbyist called, they responded. They answered every call but that of duty and honor.
The agency became more of a cosa nostra than res publica."
And I do think we need to have more activist approaches.
I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
And I think it will be something we need to be honest with the American public about.
Because up to now we've been lying and that isn't working anymore.
We do need more intervention.
Because everything we've tried so far hasn't worked and generally made things worse. You know the old joke about insanity; insane is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome.
It probably will cost some money.
When I say money I mean your money and when I say some I mean sh¡tloads.
This translation of FDICspeak to English is provided by AOL, the preferred portal of federal chairpersons since 2007 when the internet was discovered.
Hey, did anyone see this item in the aussie news? Disgruntled mobmen sending a fix-it man around the world to recover money they lost in the opes collapse. heres the link
Can you please apply your wonderful snarky wit to a post about it? This is just making me sit at work and giggle.
Hmmm, I wonder if he will use verbal and moral persuasion, or capital "P" persuasion? sigh. I guess that is something that only The Mortgage Pig knows.
rsj,
I'm sure Tanta has in the past resorted to sending over a few of her boys to straighten out reluctant debtors who were unclear as to the exact nature of the terms of the transaction.
Ohhhhh. ok, so basically not only will I get cutting snark about the difficulty in telling the boyz from the mobmen, but an insiders knowing critique and explanation of the PROPER way to go about it.
Somehow I think a 3 page spread in a large paper is just not how it is done.
Thank you Rob Dawg for pointing this out to me.
hehehehe, still chuckling. When i first saw it I was wondering if it was an Aussie version of the onion so I asked on another forum I post on and a poster from aussie said nope, it is for real.
Lenders have been sending very strong messages to consumers.... "we screwed up the market. we're going to waste your real estate portfolio. Yea, we know the comp down the street sold for $1 mil last month, but we want to dump this REO for $700K today. Keep paying us please so we can sell your loan and make bonus. But if you don't, its ok we'll make you another loan soon (see our ad).
" its not nice to walk away from a home loan and your obligations even though most of our CEOs are doing the same as we speak..."
I always threw away any business cards or resumes that had AOL accounts on them. I worked in the internet industry. If you didn't have the sense to not have an AOL account, I wouldn't deal with you.
Now, I'm off to do my cash out refi closing this morning. After I have a few drinks with my new found wealth, I need to park it somewhere. Any ideas? Mr. Greenspan?
Investors should resist the temptation to time the bottom in global financial stocks based on their perceived undervaluation, said Merrill Lynch chief investment strategist Richard Bernstein, who views "bottom fishing" of financial stocks as risky.
"We continue to suggest underweighting financial stocks because of the myriad of risks facing the sector. This applies to financials in a global context, not simply to U.S. financials," Bernstein wrote in "The RIC Report."
It will not be until early 2009 that we will get close to having eliminated most of this'' home inventory, Greenspan told a conference in Tokyo today sponsored by Deutsche Bank AG and co-hosted by Bloomberg LP. ``But it is very likely that home prices will stabilize well before that.''
VS
Rosner: The housing market woes in the US will not be over before 2010, regardless of what legislative initiatives come out of Washington. The fundamental reason why we are having these problems in the US is that real wages and incomes have not kept pace with home prices since the 1960s and that's what drove demand for these affordability products. Unless the Congress wakes up and let's home prices correct so that we restore some balance between wages and affordability, this problem will remain for years to come.
The IRA: That implies a 40-50% cut in home prices from peak levels and an insolvent US banking system.
Rosner: Yes, long term trends in home prices suggest that we will revert to the peak levels of the previous cycle. That implies that we are going back to the pre-1991 peak home price levels.
Anyway... can anyone explain to this person born after 1970 why I should have to pay an inflated price for housing in America
I'll give an answer. My parents bought their present house in 1969 for the princely sum of 29,500. They say they debated hard because it was sort of expensive at the time. I bought my first property in late 1989 for 140,000. So please don't expect me to cry for you since you were born after 1970. Somehow every generation feels screwed by what came before, but there is nothing new under the sun. Since you were born later, I'll explain to you the magic of using inflation-adjusted dollars to get an idea about what the cost is if you want to do comparisons with the past. It's like my mom telling me that milk was .25 when she was a kid, to which I always retored, yes but you were making 100 a week then.
Since I've worked in the tech space since Hector was a pup, I can tell you that we used "AOL user" as a way to explain everything. You know, the most idiotic emails in tech support sent around for everyone's amusement always had "AOL" in them, or we'd say "figures...AOL user".
So if someone hasn't figured out they don't need AOL for anything by 2008, you expect me to take what she has to say about anything seriously? She should start getting activist on her computer first. Or perhaps "failure to keep up" best describes the government regulatory agencies in general.
Tough issues here: government agencies see every crisis as a chance to expand their mandate. They mean well, of course, and they also assume that they are smarter than everybody else, which may or may not be true.
The irony is that they cause unintended effects when they expand their 'activism'. They become enablers and they stifle change.
The best thing, long term, is for a lot of people who got themselves into problems to be allowed to burn up... but nobody in the US can stand to watch the pain.
Yep. They have been threatening for a while. One reason I stay away from gold. Store of value until some large player notices it stored too much. Just like any other store, that has no other practical purpose.
Just like any other store, that has no other practical purpose.
Oh now you've done it! What you just said is like putting honey on the sidewalk...the bugs will be all over the place now yelling about how glod never loses its value and is the only store and how everything is messed up because we don't have the glod standard anymore!
This message is brought to you by Soylent red and Soylent yellow, high energy vegetable concentrates, and new, delicious, Soylent green. The miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world.
"I have asked the IRS to eliminate penalties for early withdrawals from retirement accounts. Spending like there is no tomorrow is a sure way to ensure there IS a tomorrow."
Tuesday April 8, 9:25 am ET
Washington Mutual to Receive $7 Billion Capital Investment, Lose $1.1 Billion in 1st Quarter
SEATTLE (AP) -- Washington Mutual says it will receive $7 billion in new capital from an investment group led by private equity firm TPG.
The new investment will boost the Seattle-based bank's capital at a time when it has been hit hard by rising delinquencies and defaults among mortgages. The bank said it will lose $1.1 billion during the first quarter and take a provision for loan losses of $3.5 billion.
In an effort to further shore up its capital position, Washington Mutual will cut its quarterly dividend to 1 cent from 15 cents. It will also no longer purchase mortgages from brokers and close all its freestanding home loan offices.
The idea that you are better if you have some super hot internet connection is garbage
Are you an AOL user? It's not about the connection it's about the service. It's completely and utterly useless and has been since around 2000. The only possible excuse is that you live in a rural area that is not served by high-speed access. It's not even about price, as broadband is pretty comperable. MAYBE you have an old email address and you don't want to change it. But to say "checked my AOL" just points to someone that pays no attention to the real world. I think that's the issue here...especially for someone in a position who SHOULD.
I'm not getting it. What's wrong with an AOL account? It's free, it's short, and in my case I have my name as email, which I can no longer get with any other major provider.
Fair, go open a google mail account. I have one and it is my full name too. You can use some variant thereof. It's free. So is hotmail, yahoo mail and any email you get with a broadband subscription.
I hate to say this, but when someone sees AOL on an email address, it gives the same reaction that someone gets when they have a W04 sticker still on the back of their car...
summary... open a line of credit to direct deposit your entire paycheck into, have that pre-pay the entire amount into your mortgage balance, then live off the line, until your next check, i'm sure they make the spread on the line vs the mortgage, until you get negagative carry, then i'm sure they'll tell you to stop spending so much friggin money. that should be good for about 3g's a customer , about 9 months, until a new perp comes along.
Yep. They have been threatening for a while. One reason I stay away from gold. Store of value until some large player notices it stored too much. Just like any other store, that has no other practical purpose.
Do you think the foreign buyers that will end up with that "Store of value" will feel the same way? We keep shovelling them our money, i.e. high oil prices and foreign reserves, now we are forced to sell them our gold to prop up our govenments and you just dismiss it as we "stored too much" anyway? What we are witnessing is a transfer of wealth not a devaluation.
Sam writes:
Do you think the foreign buyers that will end up with that "Store of value" will feel the same way? We keep shovelling them our money, i.e. high oil prices and foreign reserves, now we are forced to sell them our gold to prop up our govenments and you just dismiss it as we "stored too much" anyway? What we are witnessing is a transfer of wealth not a devaluation.
How about we store too much food and not transfer that? Hunger is the ultimate leverage...just saying.
"What we are witnessing is a transfer of wealth not a devaluation"
Look, I like gold. It's pretty and shiny. I just happen to feel pricing is entirely arbitrary, simply because it has no real world use. Beany babies are cute too.
i am now beginning to believe they are in some manner retarded.
In Boston, "retarded" is still politically correct but you have to say it like we do "reTAHded". When someone does something stupid, you look at them incredulously and say "What are you, reTAHded?" So the convesatioon would go like this:
What born-and-bred American dopes are or are not told, or are incapable of figuring out, is: Who are the winners and who are the losers in all the interventions by the USG and the Fed? Not to mention the contradiction in principles.
Winners, invariably, are bad guys and irresponsible segment of the American population. Losers, naturally, are honest and hard-working Americans.
And we want to over-throw and install governments in other countries? What a bunch of hypocrites. We ARE the most corrupt and morally bankrupt country in the world today.
Aluminum producer Alcoa Inc (AA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday that first-quarter profit was cut in half from a year ago, as higher energy costs and a weak dollar offset a surge in the metal's price.
This report states that the falling dollar helped to cut profits. In other words an increase in manufacturing due to a falling dollar will be offset by the higher value of foreign currencies.
If you want to imitate Jas Worried, just sprinkle your post with "American dopes", "capitalist swine", "stupid, lazy Americans" or similar things. He hasn't yet figured out that such things means anything else you say pretty much doesn't get heard...the thing most of us learn after we stop being teenagers. Evidently, he hasn't socially progressed past that phase.
Maybe Big Brother will buy all the excess inventory and then open the borders to everyone, provide entitlement housingto these new "Americans" and destroy the American middle class once and for all. Then we can be the underpaid third world and they can move all the factories back to the USA.
You know, that's actually a great conspiracy theory Dollar! We've foisted off our debt to the rest of the world and made them eat it, devauling our dollar in the process, and now we're taking their manufacturing back here because it's suddenly cheaper to make things here, thereby displacing all the gains in the developing nations and taking the profits back to the US where we'll start the cycle again! Brilliant!
"no-doc, low-doc, bankruptcy okay, a $200,000 loan for $800 a month. They are back. It is just amazing to me."
Aren't those the loans the Fed makes now? Sounds like Bear Stearns and JPM.
I thought that was why the Fed was out there on its balance sheet, currency-trashing rampage, to make sure loans like these continue until it all falls apart. Maybe I'm missing something?
Ipodius, It would be such a relief if there was some secret master plan to all this.
By the way I was born after 1970 and bought my first house in 1999. Sold it when I realized few of my neighbors could afford to buy the house they are in. Genreally you are right about housing always seeming expensive, but this time it is different!
A friend of mine, journalist Wanye Madsen, has reported on a text circulating in Washington called the "C and R Document." He receives lots of leaks, is very reliable and considers his source rock solid, although he has not personally seen the confidential document. Evidently Pelosi has seen it. The C stands for the conflicts with other nations that could arise should the U.S. default on its debt. The R stands for the revolution that might result from trying to stick U.S. taxpayers with the bill. WSJ reported last year that Treasury has meltdown scenarios, but without details. These may not come from Treasury. Madsen surmises these two scenarios may have been a final warning from David Walker.
I find it funny how most people who claim the citizens of the United States and lazy and stupid are....
writing it while at "Starbucks"sipping a late, on their "PC" running "Windows XP", listening to their "Apple" ipod, while simultaneously reading their "Gmail" looking for any new posts that might have been placed on their "Facebook" profile.
Anonymous writes:
"There's something scary that the chairwoman of the FDIC still uses an AOL account."
it could be worse, she could have been using a dial up modem and netzero. That what happens when the fdic outsources its IT dept to a non speaking H1-B perso
The return of the NINJA loan.
"And I think it will be something we need to be honest with the American public about."
Never going to happen.
CR,
Not sure if you've called for "price stablization" in housing yet but Greenspan is.
Greenspan Says U.S. Home Prices May Stabilize in 2008 (Update4) - Bloomberg.com
Best,
As Leonard Cohen wrote, "Democracy is Coming, to the USA"
Only in Amerikka...
When did Sheila become Secretary of HUD?
There's something scary that the chairwoman of the FDIC still uses an AOL account.
"Liars and cheaters and thieves! Oh, my!"
Noble, "price stablization" in housing? ROFLOL. There might be areas close to the bottom (areas that didn't appreciate much), but IMO in most areas prices have a long way to fall. I think some areas have a few years of price declines still ahead.
Greenspan also thinks the inventory problem will be gone by early '09 - he must not be looking at the record existing home inventory, record vacant homes, record foreclosures, etc. It will take some time to work off the excess inventory.
Best Wishes.
DCRogers, good point. Is AOL still in business?
Best Wishes.
"There's something scary that the chairwoman of the FDIC still uses an AOL account."
LMAO - OMG
"It probably will cost some money." - Sheila Bair, April 7, 2008
Really, ya think?
Bolt of the blinding obvious. She should reserve that one for the top of her tombstone.
The Wegmans across Waxpool Rd from AOL is still busy at lunch time. The campus itself doesn't have much traffic.
From Noble's link above...
Greenspan Says U.S. Home Prices May Stabilize Later This Year
That is pretty funny - I suppose he could be right... if prices fall fast & furious between now and 'later this year'... I mean if they really get some giddyup-n-go it could happen.
I clicked on one of those cheapo mortgage things a month or so ago. I think there was something like a one month teaser rate and after that the ARM adjusted RAPIDLY. I'm thinking every month but don't really see how that'd be possible. In a few months though the ending rates were very high. I suppose they'll find some suckers to sign up for them.
"Greenspan Says U.S. Home Prices May Stabilize Later This Year"
WTF?? Well he did come out and endorse McCain this past week so this have a hint of politics to it.
There aren't words to describe what a sewer of a person Alan Greenspan is.
I take some comfort that history will not treat him as kindly as the press has for the past 25 years.
Maestro. Pfft!
Correction: festering sewer.
Tanta and CR, thanks for the laugh.
As I am laughing while I write this, let Mrs. Blair make the first move. As the FDIC Chairwoman, let her commit her money first. Let her buy another home to help stablize the market before she commits my tax dollars.
and thats all the flat earth news today
This is bad news IMHO: OT on FDIC, but connected:
The bill includes a new standard property tax deduction of up to $1,000 for couples and $500 for individuals that will benefit 28.3 million tax filers who do not itemize deductions on their returns.
It also includes $10 billion in tax-exempt bonds for local housing agencies to refinance subprime loans and provide new mortgages for first-time home buyers, $4 billion in grants for local governments to buy foreclosed properties and $100 million to expand counseling for homeowners at risk of defaulting on their loans.
In addition, it would give a $7,000 tax credit to purchasers of foreclosed homes and a new tax break for struggling home builders and other businesses, allowing them to claim current losses against taxes paid in prior, more profitable years. Officials said the proposals would cost taxpayers $15 billion to $20 billion.
Expired
Under the proposal, one of several emergency tax breaks being considered for corporate America, companies would for two years be allowed to carry back losses incurred in 2007 and 2008 against profits accrued over the previous five years, instead of the usual two year timeframe.
Some of the biggest beneficiaries would be Wall Street banks such as Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns Cos. Homebuilders, which have been punched by the housing slump after years of go-go profits, also stand to benefit. In fact, any company that is now struggling following years of healthy profits (that pumped up their tax bills) could in theory benefit.
Extending the carryback period "provides financial support for (corporate) taxpayers who are experiencing large losses," said Leslie Samuels, an assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy in the Clinton administration, now a partner at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York.
Randy Paschke, chairman of the accounting department at Wayne State University in Detroit, said investment banks' write-offs from mortgage-related losses are so large, "they probably wouldn't get all their taxes back with just a two-year carryback."
If you borrowed a ton of money to build spec houses in Miami and reported $2 billion in profits between 2002 and 2007 but gave up all those profits by notching a $2 billion loss this year, the extended carryback has a great deal of value. If you've been building affordable housing in Wichita, Kan., and booked $300 million in profits in those years, and then, through careful management of costs, managed to eke out a $5 million profit this year, it has no value. The big public homebuilders, whose shares rallied on the news of this potential tax break, didn't pay any windfall taxes on the bubble-era earnings. Why should they get an extraordinary post-bubble windfall?
inally, in many instances, the largest shareholdersand hence the biggest beneficiariesare the managers who made the decisions that caused the losses. Toll Brothers, which is now racking up losses after years of profits, is valued at close to $4 billion. Founder Robert Toll has 17.5 million shares of Toll, worth about $440 million at current prices, which works out to about 11 percent of the company. At Hovnanian (first quarter loss $131 million), members of the Hovnanian family own at least 15 percent of the outstanding stock, according to Yahoo Finance. These companiesand their extraordinarily wealthy managersstill possess the financial heft to finance the recoveries from their self-inflicted wounds.
Congress' latest dumb idea to fix the housing crisis. - By Daniel Gross - Slate Magazine
AOL account, at least she didnt say compuserve. Who uses AOL???
Here's a friggn bank story:
Tribune, Dole May Need to Draw Down Bank Credit Lines (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
April 7 (Bloomberg) -- Tribune Co. and Dole Foods Co. may need to draw down on bank lines to avoid default, causing a new drain on bank capital, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.
The companies currently don't have enough cash and committed credit to cover debt repayments over the next two years and may have to resort to credit lines or ``potentially face severe financial difficulty,'' said Greg Peters, the head of credit strategy at Morgan Stanley in New York.
For lenders including Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co., prospects that the 80 companies with revolving credit lines of more than $1 billion will start drawing them down threatens to further erode balance sheets that have been hammered by losses from securities linked to U.S. home loans. Banks are restricting lending after $232 billion of credit losses and writedowns from subprime-mortgage related debt.
There's a real game of chicken going on between banks and the corporations as to whether you should tap,'' Peters said on a conference call for investors today.This is a very big deal.'
Who uses AOL???
The same ones that still have a 486sx
`It will not be until early 2009 that we will get close to having eliminated most of this'' home inventory, Greenspan told a conference in Tokyo today sponsored by Deutsche Bank AG and co-hosted by Bloomberg LP. ``But it is very likely that home prices will stabilize well before that.''
The health of the U.S. housing market is tied to broader financial markets that rely on bundling mortgages to sell as securities, Greenspan said. His successor, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, and other Fed officials have highlighted declining home prices as a major economic risk that may further hurt household wealth and consumer spending.
Once the markets start to stabilize, especially if the real economies don't go into a severe recession,'' thenwe can expect a recovery to begin to take place,'' Greenspan, 82, said via satellite from Washington. ``It will be slow, it will be hesitant.''
He said the extent of damage stemming from the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market won't be known for months.
Yesterday, in a Financial Times piece headlined The Fed is blameless on the property bubble,'' Greenspan wrote that the evidence isvery fragile'' that Fed interest-rate policy added to the U.S. bubble and that ``it is not credible that regulators would have been able to prevent the subprime debacle.''
Worst Credit Crisis
Greenspan said today that ``the current credit crisis is the most wrenching in the last half century and possibly more.'
The last time I checked my AOL account, it was 1996.
Too much "activism" and you get Molotov cocktails...
AOL!!! Oh my good, who is running this country?
These internet originators have been a problem too its unbelievable to me they are back already. When I go on my AOL account over the weekend Im seeing no-doc, low-doc, bankruptcy okay, a $200,000 loan for $800 a month. They are back. It is just amazing to me.
Lol
AAHahahahaha bahahahahahaaaaabahahahahaaa LOL!
She should try Netzero....sounds more appropriate.
My apologies if this is a repost of now old news. KKR avoids default by giving away 1/3 of its REIT holdings to cancel CP it issued.
Here's how to play high finance Monopoly, when holding a losing hand!
KKR Financial Sells Interest in REIT, Gets Out of Mortgage Business
April 1, 2008
By: Dees Stribling, Contributing Correspondent
KKR Financial Holdings L.L.C., an affiliate of buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. specializing in debt investments, has agreed to sell a controlling interest in its real estate investment trust, KKR Financial Corp.
At the same time, the company agreed to relinquish mortgage-backed securities to creditors who hold about $3.5 billion in its commercial paper.
KKR Financial Corp. holds a portfolio consisting of residential mortgage loans and mortgage-backed securities, corporate loans and debt securities, commercial real estate loans and debt securities, and other asset-backed securities. Upon the closing of the REIT's sale to Rock Capital 2 L.L.C., probably in the second quarter of this year, the entity will have completed its conversion to a limited liability company. KKR declined to specify the precise terms of the sale.
When KKR Financial was formed, it was set up as a REIT and initially invested about 35 percent of its equity capital in RMBS. KKR Financial Corp. began converting to a limited liability company structure last May, and at that time discontinued investing in mortgage-related investments. In August of 2007, the company wrote off its entire investment exposure to mortgage-related investments to the tune of about $243.7 million.
The move to sell its REIT came as part of a larger exit strategy from mortgage-related businesses for KKR Financial Holdings. KKR has also struck an agreement with holders of $3.5 billion worth of its commercial paper, issued by the two asset-backed conduits sponsored by KKR Financial Corp. The agreement provides for the noteholders to receive the collateral in the facilities in exchange for terminating the outstanding notes without default.
http://www.commercialpropertynews.com/cpn/content_display/finance/mortgage-banking/e3i9c99d90cc70466f5fef6841b6e76a2cd
" I just don't understand why they are still offering these kinds of loans. Didn't they learn their lesson? They created a bubble, lost a fortune in the crash, we bailed them out, made sure they got their bonuses and capital, slashed interest rates, and saved the banks. Why are they doing this again!"
Circa early 2000's, my boss looked my way and asked me 'what's your favorite short' ... without hesitation, i said AOL...'i followed with, they will lose more market cap in the next year than any company in the market' ...
the day was the day they market had a MOC of 7million shares. Never higher. I retired shortly after.
ohGata-That was classic!
It will not be until early 22222009 that we will get close to having eliminated most of this home inventory. It is very likely that the earth will fall into the sun well before that.
--Alan Greenspa
Yesterday, you held short term CP.
Today, you hold long term, unsaleable CP.
If Rock Capital 2, LLC can get itself affiliated with a primary dealer (as in Black Rock?), then the Fed Reserve will take that crap and exchange it for real money!
Maybe the Federal Bureau of Investigation should watch what happens with this $3.5 billion of severely degraded MBS garbage?
Maybe the US citizen-watchdogs should watch what happens with this now $3.5 billion hot potato?
Someone's gonna get stuck. Watch out Mr & Mrs JQ Public. This one can easily be for you!
The best part is, she still uses dial-up.
Whoops.. this should read...
Yesterday, you held short term CP.
Today, you hold long term, unsaleable MBS.
there's been a banking hurricane...losses are large and expected to grow...why don't you use your AOL dialup to increase insurance rates, Ms. Bank Insurance?
PAY ATTENTION:
"But clearly as we go into the year and capital needs become greater, it may be more of an issue. And I think there will be some hard policy questions .at the end of the day, whats more important? Keeping the bank safe or adhering to these restrictions? I dont know. I dont think were there yet.
Geez. More damage to come, and the chairwoman of the FDIC, a bushie to her core, admits even more damage?
Ulp. Bad, folks, it's going to get really bad.
That sentence quotation should send anybody with a brain and an equity position in any bank to hit the sell button tomorrow. Banks and financial institutions are about to get a lot cheaper.
Housing is dead. Lending is dead.
To most of America, it might as well be the end of the world, 'cause it sure is going to feel like it in a short while.
Someday this war's gonna end...
Really? Historically high and inflated home prices are bad? I have started reading the book "Generation Gap", which goes into great detail regarding changing demographics, etc... and I'm convinced anyone born after 1970 shouldn't vote for either a Republican or Democrat. Both of these boobs of parties have destroyed the future of America. The only good thing, I suppose, is that we used all the money we spent to build a heckuva military... so no one will be able to forcibly make us pay back debt... not without pain on their own end.
Anyway... can anyone explain to this person born after 1970 why I should have to pay an inflated price for housing in America? And why everyone is trying to keep home values propped up and provide huge incentives through taxes to do so?
So MBIA gets downgraded on friday after hours and nothing in this morning's financial news? Was it just me, or was there a complete lack of coverage?
Funny how the regulators think the time to mobilize, is now. WTF were they getting paid to do all this time?
AOL - LMFAO!
awgee: Maybe tomorrow?
Fitch Downgrades MBIA-Insured Bonds
Expired
To most of America, it might as well be the end of the world, 'cause it sure is going to feel like it in a short while.
Gee Allen - and here I thought it was 'Morning In America'...
What do you think the chances are - considering she's a bushie - that she has no clue and is just 'watching clock' and 'covering ass'... not saying the content is right or wrong just sayin' she has no idea.
If she says is terrible and is only real bad... then she can say 'See we managed a bad situation pretty well'... If she says is real bad and it becomes terrible then she doesn't have a lot she can say - its just one more Bush Era Katrina...
Keynesians argue that in a modern industrial economy, many prices are sticky downward or downward inflexible, so that instead of prices falling in this story, a supply shock would cause a recession, i.e., rising unemployment and falling gross domestic product. It is the costs of such a recession that likely causes governments and central banks to allow a supply shock to result in inflation. They also note that though there was no deflation in the 1980s, there was a definite fall in the inflation rate during this period. Actual deflation was prevented because supply shocks are not the only cause of inflation; in terms of the modern triangle model of inflation, supply-driven deflation was counteracted by demand pull inflation and built-in inflation resulting from adaptive expectations and the price/wage spiral.
In the end, built-in inflation involves a vicious circle of both subjective and objective elements, so that inflation encourages inflation to persist. It means that the standard methods of fighting inflation using either monetary policy or fiscal policy to induce a recession are extremely expensive, i.e., meaning large rises in unemployment and large falls in real gross domestic product. This suggests that alternative methods such as wage and price controls (incomes policies) may be needed as complementary to recessions in the fight against inflation.
dry,
we have a lot of air under the curve about to hit.
More will be evident in the next couple of weeks.
going to bed now- gotta get my beauty rest.
Someday this war's gonna end...
Parsing: "On a positive note, the Federal Government is not yet bankrupt (despite our best efforts), and to keep j6p from getting any more jittery, we're going to give you a heads up, we're spending your money (still)." Sounds nice when you call it "activist", almost as if someone was taking care of things, in advance.
Aaah, I see the screw up fairy has visited us again.
We have every reason to be optimistic about the future.
But there is one great problem that rightly concerns every one of us, and that is, as you know, rising prices, and especially rising food prices. By the end of last year, we had brought the rate of inflation in the United States down to 3.4 percent. That gave us the best record in 1972 of any industrial country in the world. But now prices are going up at unacceptably high rates.
The greatest part of this increase is due to rising food prices. This has been caused in large measure by increased demand at home and abroad, by crop failures abroad, and as many people in various areas of the country know, by some of the worst weather for crops and livestock that we have ever experienced. But whatever the reasons, every American family is confronted with a real and pressing problem of higher prices. And I have decided that the time has come to take strong and effective action to deal with that problem.
Effective immediately, therefore, I am ordering a freeze on prices.1 This freeze will hold prices at levels no higher than those charged during the first 8 days of June. It will cover all prices paid by consumers. The only prices not covered will be those of unprocessed agricultural products at the farm levels, and rents.
1 By Executive Order 11723 of June 13, 1973.
Richard Nixon: Address to the Nation Announcing Price Control Measures.
Bair has been saying for some time that only a massive solution can solve the mortgage crisis, that the service and lender industry cannot solve the crisis on a mortgage by mortgage basis that the problem is national and can only be solved on that scale. She at least has some idea as to the scope of the problem understands that the Homeowners cannot service their debt which leads to very unpleasant bank write offs and BK. Shelia is one of the few at the top that seem to understand what's at sake and she admits that coming up with any viable solutions seem remote given the scope and danger's its presents but she is trying to raise the alarm bells but few are are responding.
Small U.S. banks will have to raise tens of billions of dollars this year to cover bad loans, and must choose from three unappetizing options: selling stock or bonds, selling assets -- or selling themselves.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based BankAtlantic Bancorp Inc formed a new subsidiary last month to hold its bad loans, while selling some 1.9 million shares of Stifel Financial Corp to raise about $71.5 million.
Those needing capital shouldn't wait, experts said.
"There is going to be crowding," MacDonald said. "People who are first in line, all things else equal, are going to stand a better chance of raising capital on better terms than people who are late to the party."
If the asset valuation proves that the bank is undercapitalized (capital-to-assets ratio less than 4 percent), and especially if it is found to be critically undercapitalized (ratio below 2 percent), examiners will inform bank management and directors, in writing, of the amount of capital that must be injected to recapitalize the bank. The bank is given the opportunity to produce a plan to gather the necessary capital, and if critically undercapitalized, is warned that it will probably have no more than 90 days in which to gather the needed capital.
@Anonymous at 12:30 a.m. - didn't someone say here earlier (prior thread) that Walmart was jacking up lots of prices today? Could some companies be preparing for such an order by having high prices on their records now, even if they reduce them in the interim? Actually planning ahead for a freeze. Creepy.
PALO ALTO, Calif. (Map, News) - Palo Alto police are looking for a bank robber who favors a decidedly slow-speed getaway vehicle - an electric wheelchair.
Police say a wheelchair-bound man in his 60s with gray hair and a beard held up the Wachovia Bank branch at the Stanford Shopping Center late this afternoon with a black handgun.
After the stickup, he left in his wheelchair and was last seen motoring down a nearby street toward El Camino Real, a major thoroughfare.
Idle cars signal a downturn
The nation's top hauler of container rail freight, BNSF Railway Co., is parking miles of rail cars in Montana and elsewhere because there isn't enough freight to keep them rolling.
Cars that often carry 40-foot containers of goods shipped from Asia stand like an iron fence between the Missouri River and this Montana burg known for world-class fly fishing. They stretch as far as Sandee Cardinal can see when she stands outside her home on the river's west bank between Helena and Great Falls.
"What is that but a symbol of how America is down in the dumps right now?" Cardinal asked as she gazed at the cars that haven't moved for about three months.
Thanks for this. As I have head bowed so low as it pinned between my knees...I can not help but to utter the words GFY (go f*** yourselfs')....This is an indication that even the regulators are behind the times...
Good to hear these comments from Bair about her AOL account.
I've been wondering for a few years now if anybody at the top had access to a TV or the internet.
It seems to me that , if they had, they would have known there was a collosal problem brewing in the lending industry.
At least now we know that somebody, Bair, is "on top of the situation".
Too bad nobody in Congress has a TV or uses the internets yet.
AOL is trying to reinvent itself as an internet portal. A lot of people who started out on the net with an AOL account still use it that way. They do tend to be older (somewhat like my Mother-in-law who isn't very clear on the distinction between AOL and Internet, but IMs like crazy and forwards a lot of high-graphic emails around).
"its unbelievable to me they are back already... They are back. It is just amazing to me.
You can say the same thing about cockroaches.
Re: Activism"
"Bring out your dead"
YouTube - Monty Python-Bring out your dead!
And for the latest in Home Equity Extraction... From Foreshadowing To Foreclosure For A Marquee Loft Off Van Ness at SocketSite™
Remove the kitchen before forclosure.
Anyone else think Bush is not all there these days; kinda makes me a little uneasy that so many retarded things are going on at breakneck speed, in an effort to trash America beyond repair; also liked Franks coming out of the blue in his new effort to legalize pot! Just what we need, a little chaos to help take our minds off the war, the economy, the economy, housing, war, the economy, war, housing, etc.... Yah, why not shock people with retardation and attention deficit bullshit!
The president's decision to act unilaterally in sending the free trade agreement disregards three decades of established precedent under fast-track legislation and demonstrates yet again his disrespect for Congress," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel said they could not support the Colombia pact "under present circumstances."
"The president's apparent disregard for the economic insecurity faced by millions of struggling American families highlights a misplaced set of priorities," Rangel and Pelosi said in a joint statement.
Bruce Raynor, head of Unite Here, a 465,000-member union representing workers in the apparel and textile industries, said it was an outrage for Bush, during a time of economic crisis, to send Congress a trade agreement "with a country that has one of the most ruthless records of repression of the trade union movement."
You want friggin (fuc-ing activism Sheila, my man, here, try this on:
Third Grader at Center of Teacher Attack Plot Speaks - ABC News
http://safehaven.com/article-9879.htm
scroll down to the section:
Economic Structure and the "Liquidationist Thesis"
This is a good read.
Here's an actual link for doug nolands latest piece.
I'm still fuzzy on this data:
In March, the number of persons unemployed because they lost jobs increased
by 300,000 to 4.2 million. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed
job losers has increased by 914,000.
The civilian labor force rose to 153.8 million over the month, offsetting a
decline in the prior month. The labor force participation rate was 66.0 percent
in March and has remained at or near that level since last spring. Total employ-
ment held at 146.0 million. The employment-population ratio was little changed
over the month at 62.6 percent. The ratio was down from its most recent peak of
63.4 percent in December 2006. (See table A-1.)
The number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons, at 4.9 million
in March, was little changed over the month, but has risen by 629,000 over the past
12 months. This category includes persons who indicated that they were working
part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find
full-time jobs. (See table A-5.)
Persons Not in the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)
About 1.4 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to
the labor force in March. These individuals wanted and were available for work and
had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as un-
employed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
Among the marginally attached, there were 401,000 discouraged workers in March, about
the same as a year earlier. Discouraged workers are defined as persons not currently
looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them.
The other 951,000 persons classified as marginally attached to the labor force in
March cited reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
Employment Situation Summary
The best description of The FDIC comes FDIC v. Howitz...
It starts with
"This is a cautionary tale where the emperor has new clothes -- a bandit's mask. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sought to hold Charles Hurwitz individually responsible for all losses at United Savings, even though he had no obligation to the thrift or the government. Unable to focus its claims and unwilling to disclose its records in this suit -- one that it brought -- the FDIC surreptitiously paid another agency to bring a parallel administrative claim against Hurwitz, several companies, and other people. Later -- much later -- the FDIC dismissed its claims here. Hurwitz and two companies have have asked that they recover their costs of defending the suit. They will recover their costs because the record reveals corrupt individuals within a corrupt agency with corrupt influences on it, bringing this litigation."
It concludes with....
As George Barnard Shaw said, "power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power." These people discarded the mantle of the American Republic for the cloak of a secret society of extortionists. If the vice president called, they responded. If a congressman called, they responded. If a lobbyist called, they responded. They answered every call but that of duty and honor.
The agency became more of a cosa nostra than res publica."
https://www.filesdirect.com/info/N.aspx?ece16503f0014393875a941dbca415f7
i can has teh aolz andz teh transparenzies?
What's that supposed to mean -- "activist approaches"?
Weve got a real problem.
Bendover.
And I do think we need to have more activist approaches.
I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
And I think it will be something we need to be honest with the American public about.
Because up to now we've been lying and that isn't working anymore.
We do need more intervention.
Because everything we've tried so far hasn't worked and generally made things worse. You know the old joke about insanity; insane is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome.
It probably will cost some money.
When I say money I mean your money and when I say some I mean sh¡tloads.
This translation of FDICspeak to English is provided by AOL, the preferred portal of federal chairpersons since 2007 when the internet was discovered.
Hey, did anyone see this item in the aussie news? Disgruntled mobmen sending a fix-it man around the world to recover money they lost in the opes collapse. heres the link
Gatto flies out to solve 'sticky' Opes problem
Hahahah you have got to read it. The real mobsters going after the wall st/investment wannabees. Bwhahahahahaha.
PS Dear Tanta
Can you please apply your wonderful snarky wit to a post about it? This is just making me sit at work and giggle.
Hmmm, I wonder if he will use verbal and moral persuasion, or capital "P" persuasion? sigh. I guess that is something that only The Mortgage Pig knows.
rsj,
I'm sure Tanta has in the past resorted to sending over a few of her boys to straighten out reluctant debtors who were unclear as to the exact nature of the terms of the transaction.
Ohhhhh. ok, so basically not only will I get cutting snark about the difficulty in telling the boyz from the mobmen, but an insiders knowing critique and explanation of the PROPER way to go about it.
Somehow I think a 3 page spread in a large paper is just not how it is done.
Thank you Rob Dawg for pointing this out to me.
hehehehe, still chuckling. When i first saw it I was wondering if it was an Aussie version of the onion so I asked on another forum I post on and a poster from aussie said nope, it is for real.
the world is getting stranger by the minute.
She uses AOL. Who could have guessed.
God help us.
the world is getting stranger by the minute.
As the recently departed Arthur C. Clarke said about the universe:
"Not only is it stranger than you know, it's stranger than you can know."
I'm sure Tanta has in the past resorted to sending over a few of her boys to straighten out reluctant debtors
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!
BBC NEWS | Business | IMF plans gold sale to raise $6bn
IMF gold sale official.
sdtfs,
Are you trying to say the four horsemen wear bunny slippers?
Hey - I still have a 486sx - it plays Transport Tycoon, one of the greatest games ever created. And one that can only be played using Windows 3.x.
Brought it as carry on luggage from the U.S. more than 15 years ago, back when Compaq was the company to beat for quality and price.
I think the financial world needs a few more standover men and toecutters to keep the levels of transparency up and leverage down.
Lenders have been sending very strong messages to consumers.... "we screwed up the market. we're going to waste your real estate portfolio. Yea, we know the comp down the street sold for $1 mil last month, but we want to dump this REO for $700K today. Keep paying us please so we can sell your loan and make bonus. But if you don't, its ok we'll make you another loan soon (see our ad).
" its not nice to walk away from a home loan and your obligations even though most of our CEOs are doing the same as we speak..."
They have no clue.
I always threw away any business cards or resumes that had AOL accounts on them. I worked in the internet industry. If you didn't have the sense to not have an AOL account, I wouldn't deal with you.
Now, I'm off to do my cash out refi closing this morning. After I have a few drinks with my new found wealth, I need to park it somewhere. Any ideas? Mr. Greenspan?
Investors should resist the temptation to time the bottom in global financial stocks based on their perceived undervaluation, said Merrill Lynch chief investment strategist Richard Bernstein, who views "bottom fishing" of financial stocks as risky.
"We continue to suggest underweighting financial stocks because of the myriad of risks facing the sector. This applies to financials in a global context, not simply to U.S. financials," Bernstein wrote in "The RIC Report."
Bottom fishing of global financial stocks risky: Merrill Lynch
| Reuters
It will not be until early 2009 that we will get close to having eliminated most of this'' home inventory, Greenspan told a conference in Tokyo today sponsored by Deutsche Bank AG and co-hosted by Bloomberg LP. ``But it is very likely that home prices will stabilize well before that.''
VS
Rosner: The housing market woes in the US will not be over before 2010, regardless of what legislative initiatives come out of Washington. The fundamental reason why we are having these problems in the US is that real wages and incomes have not kept pace with home prices since the 1960s and that's what drove demand for these affordability products. Unless the Congress wakes up and let's home prices correct so that we restore some balance between wages and affordability, this problem will remain for years to come.
The IRA: That implies a 40-50% cut in home prices from peak levels and an insolvent US banking system.
Rosner: Yes, long term trends in home prices suggest that we will revert to the peak levels of the previous cycle. That implies that we are going back to the pre-1991 peak home price levels.
From:http://us1.institutionalriskanalytics.com/pub/IRAMain.asp
What's that supposed to mean -- "activist approaches"?
Socialism
OT Big US student loan guarantor files for bankruptcy
It has more than $17 billion of outstanding loan guarantees.
Big US student loan guarantor files for bankruptcy
| Reuters
I saw this up-thread:
Anyway... can anyone explain to this person born after 1970 why I should have to pay an inflated price for housing in America
I'll give an answer. My parents bought their present house in 1969 for the princely sum of 29,500. They say they debated hard because it was sort of expensive at the time. I bought my first property in late 1989 for 140,000. So please don't expect me to cry for you since you were born after 1970. Somehow every generation feels screwed by what came before, but there is nothing new under the sun. Since you were born later, I'll explain to you the magic of using inflation-adjusted dollars to get an idea about what the cost is if you want to do comparisons with the past. It's like my mom telling me that milk was .25 when she was a kid, to which I always retored, yes but you were making 100 a week then.
You should listen to Sir Greenspan, he is a Knight. He knows. He has our best interest firstmost in his mind.
I want one of those loans, so I can be bailed out. This being responsible and living frugally is not paying. I want out.
Since I've worked in the tech space since Hector was a pup, I can tell you that we used "AOL user" as a way to explain everything. You know, the most idiotic emails in tech support sent around for everyone's amusement always had "AOL" in them, or we'd say "figures...AOL user".
So if someone hasn't figured out they don't need AOL for anything by 2008, you expect me to take what she has to say about anything seriously? She should start getting activist on her computer first. Or perhaps "failure to keep up" best describes the government regulatory agencies in general.
ipodius, your mom was making $100/week as a kid?
You plural anon, or if you are from the South, substitute "y'all". If you are from Jersey (or Revere or Medford in MA), use "youse"
Tough issues here: government agencies see every crisis as a chance to expand their mandate. They mean well, of course, and they also assume that they are smarter than everybody else, which may or may not be true.
The irony is that they cause unintended effects when they expand their 'activism'. They become enablers and they stifle change.
The best thing, long term, is for a lot of people who got themselves into problems to be allowed to burn up... but nobody in the US can stand to watch the pain.
Who's to say that lenders should renegotiate with homeeowners since it's better for them to "take a small loss than a larger loss in foreclosure?"
...only people who think housing is near a bottom. If prices fall 50%, they'll have to take multiple haircuts. I think they know this.
Hey, the PHeD discovered AOL!
Pretty soon they'll notice the housing crisis.
Teri Bankrupt.
Can't spell festering without TERI!
I'm surprised that no one else has remarked that AOL has always stood for: A**holes OnLine. Each new example only serves to re-enforce the notion.
ipodius,
Almost (for the Southern idiom) - as was made clear to me a few years back - the plural is actually "all y'all".
Anonymous Bosch, been meaning to tell you that you have one of the better online monikers! Works on a number of levels.
Holy crap
Citigroup, Wells Fargo May Loan Less After Downgrades (Update3) - Bloomberg.com
"IMF gold sale official."
Yep. They have been threatening for a while. One reason I stay away from gold. Store of value until some large player notices it stored too much. Just like any other store, that has no other practical purpose.
Just like any other store, that has no other practical purpose.
Oh now you've done it! What you just said is like putting honey on the sidewalk...the bugs will be all over the place now yelling about how glod never loses its value and is the only store and how everything is messed up because we don't have the glod standard anymore!
Shhhhhh!!!!!
Bosch,
AOL Time Warner is wracked internally with vicious politics. Makes sense they'd be selling personal info the way they do.
"Holy crap"
It'll be another great day on Wall Street!
This message is brought to you by Soylent red and Soylent yellow, high energy vegetable concentrates, and new, delicious, Soylent green. The miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world.
...
"I have asked the IRS to eliminate penalties for early withdrawals from retirement accounts. Spending like there is no tomorrow is a sure way to ensure there IS a tomorrow."
--- President George W. Bush, April 16th, 2008
In the long run, surgical removal is the treatment of choice for severe hemorrhoids, according to a review of previous studies.
Last bloomberg link is an eye openner. Thanks anon.
All this crap about AOL is a bit silly.
The idea that you are better if you have some super hot internet connection is garbage
The internet might make a person less of an idiot than they were
OR more of an idiot than they were.
The advantage of the internet is it gives all an equal chance to be the idiot we want to be.
But we are no better either way.
More truth is to be found far far from this place.
IMF Says Financial, Economic Losses May Swell to $945 Billion
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBCSyLv7HQmU&refer=home
"The advantage of the internet is it gives all an equal chance to be the idiot we want to be."
I haven't seen a decrease in spam offers for sub prime loans at all. The spambots continue working when their masters are no longer employed.
I am even seeing an increase in "solve your debt" spam from Chinese sites.
Washington Mutual Raising $7 Billion
Tuesday April 8, 9:25 am ET
Washington Mutual to Receive $7 Billion Capital Investment, Lose $1.1 Billion in 1st Quarter
SEATTLE (AP) -- Washington Mutual says it will receive $7 billion in new capital from an investment group led by private equity firm TPG.
The new investment will boost the Seattle-based bank's capital at a time when it has been hit hard by rising delinquencies and defaults among mortgages. The bank said it will lose $1.1 billion during the first quarter and take a provision for loan losses of $3.5 billion.
In an effort to further shore up its capital position, Washington Mutual will cut its quarterly dividend to 1 cent from 15 cents. It will also no longer purchase mortgages from brokers and close all its freestanding home loan offices.
Perhaps the last transmissions distant aliens will receive from Earth will be an infomercial for sub prime loans.
I haven't seen a decrease in spam offers for sub prime loans at all. The spambots continue working when their masters are no longer employed.
V'ger
The idea that you are better if you have some super hot internet connection is garbage
Are you an AOL user?
It's not about the connection it's about the service. It's completely and utterly useless and has been since around 2000. The only possible excuse is that you live in a rural area that is not served by high-speed access. It's not even about price, as broadband is pretty comperable. MAYBE you have an old email address and you don't want to change it. But to say "checked my AOL" just points to someone that pays no attention to the real world. I think that's the issue here...especially for someone in a position who SHOULD.
4822...
on that point, i just received info on this from a friend, asking what i thought.
united first financial.
United First Financial | UFIRST ® | Money Merge Account® Program | Money Merge Account Program by UFirst™
open a line of credit to advance pay your mortgage... oy vey
it will never end.
I'm afraid to even click on that link .... LOL ... make sure your virus checker is running!
I'm not getting it. What's wrong with an AOL account? It's free, it's short, and in my case I have my name as email, which I can no longer get with any other major provider.
Fair, go open a google mail account. I have one and it is my full name too. You can use some variant thereof. It's free. So is hotmail, yahoo mail and any email you get with a broadband subscription.
I hate to say this, but when someone sees AOL on an email address, it gives the same reaction that someone gets when they have a W04 sticker still on the back of their car...
y, no need...
summary... open a line of credit to direct deposit your entire paycheck into, have that pre-pay the entire amount into your mortgage balance, then live off the line, until your next check, i'm sure they make the spread on the line vs the mortgage, until you get negagative carry, then i'm sure they'll tell you to stop spending so much friggin money. that should be good for about 3g's a customer , about 9 months, until a new perp comes along.
i have some friends with AOL emails for some reason i am now beginning to believe they are in some manner retarded.
Such is the power of the internet:-(
things that rhyme with "ckecked my aol"
check the oil on my leased car
dialed my rotary
savings bonds for g-kidz
stepped on a pop-tab
barely 9:03 am:
Yep. They have been threatening for a while. One reason I stay away from gold. Store of value until some large player notices it stored too much. Just like any other store, that has no other practical purpose.
Do you think the foreign buyers that will end up with that "Store of value" will feel the same way? We keep shovelling them our money, i.e. high oil prices and foreign reserves, now we are forced to sell them our gold to prop up our govenments and you just dismiss it as we "stored too much" anyway? What we are witnessing is a transfer of wealth not a devaluation.
Sam writes:
Do you think the foreign buyers that will end up with that "Store of value" will feel the same way? We keep shovelling them our money, i.e. high oil prices and foreign reserves, now we are forced to sell them our gold to prop up our govenments and you just dismiss it as we "stored too much" anyway? What we are witnessing is a transfer of wealth not a devaluation.
How about we store too much food and not transfer that? Hunger is the ultimate leverage...just saying.
OT- don't know if anybody confirmed this yet, so sorry if you already knew.
It is official re/ WAMU getting out of wholesale. Just talked with an account executive who has been briefed.
Wholesale lending will be discontinued.
Gov't Expects Gasoline to Peak at $3.60
hmmm....fodder door ope
"What we are witnessing is a transfer of wealth not a devaluation"
Look, I like gold. It's pretty and shiny. I just happen to feel pricing is entirely arbitrary, simply because it has no real world use. Beany babies are cute too.
i am now beginning to believe they are in some manner retarded.
In Boston, "retarded" is still politically correct but you have to say it like we do "reTAHded". When someone does something stupid, you look at them incredulously and say "What are you, reTAHded?" So the convesatioon would go like this:
Let me give you my email...blahblah@AOL.com
rolls eyes What are you, reTAHded?
--
"We do need more intervention."
What born-and-bred American dopes are or are not told, or are incapable of figuring out, is: Who are the winners and who are the losers in all the interventions by the USG and the Fed? Not to mention the contradiction in principles.
Winners, invariably, are bad guys and irresponsible segment of the American population. Losers, naturally, are honest and hard-working Americans.
And we want to over-throw and install governments in other countries? What a bunch of hypocrites. We ARE the most corrupt and morally bankrupt country in the world today.
Jas
OT a reflection on manufacturing income:
Aluminum producer Alcoa Inc (AA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday that first-quarter profit was cut in half from a year ago, as higher energy costs and a weak dollar offset a surge in the metal's price.
Alcoa says energy costs, weak dollar halve profit
| Reuters
This report states that the falling dollar helped to cut profits. In other words an increase in manufacturing due to a falling dollar will be offset by the higher value of foreign currencies.
What born-and-bred American dopes
That's where I stopped reading. I'm now officially tired of his complete and utter waste of electrons. I'll just filter out all posts.
I see so now if i dont talk proper i am reDAHded.
I must a spent my youth with my eyes closed!!
Death to the system!
You are either with Jas Jain or with the enemy
or sumink like that. I must quit this day time drinking:-(
If you want to imitate Jas Worried, just sprinkle your post with "American dopes", "capitalist swine", "stupid, lazy Americans" or similar things. He hasn't yet figured out that such things means anything else you say pretty much doesn't get heard...the thing most of us learn after we stop being teenagers. Evidently, he hasn't socially progressed past that phase.
Maybe Big Brother will buy all the excess inventory and then open the borders to everyone, provide entitlement housingto these new "Americans" and destroy the American middle class once and for all. Then we can be the underpaid third world and they can move all the factories back to the USA.
You know, that's actually a great conspiracy theory Dollar! We've foisted off our debt to the rest of the world and made them eat it, devauling our dollar in the process, and now we're taking their manufacturing back here because it's suddenly cheaper to make things here, thereby displacing all the gains in the developing nations and taking the profits back to the US where we'll start the cycle again! Brilliant!
"n the event of a case not being settled, Gatto said clients lose the ''minimal'' upfront fee."
And the men he's traveling to see lose a couple of fingers, perhaps a kneecap.
"no-doc, low-doc, bankruptcy okay, a $200,000 loan for $800 a month. They are back. It is just amazing to me."
Aren't those the loans the Fed makes now? Sounds like Bear Stearns and JPM.
I thought that was why the Fed was out there on its balance sheet, currency-trashing rampage, to make sure loans like these continue until it all falls apart. Maybe I'm missing something?
I have one and it is my full name too.
Ipodius_Crowninshield_Endicott@gmail.com ?
Shnaps, you forgot Cabot
I use AOL
But after all the commentary here I may have to go out back and shoot myself
Ipodius, It would be such a relief if there was some secret master plan to all this.
By the way I was born after 1970 and bought my first house in 1999. Sold it when I realized few of my neighbors could afford to buy the house they are in. Genreally you are right about housing always seeming expensive, but this time it is different!
from rgemonitor
A friend of mine, journalist Wanye Madsen, has reported on a text circulating in Washington called the "C and R Document." He receives lots of leaks, is very reliable and considers his source rock solid, although he has not personally seen the confidential document. Evidently Pelosi has seen it. The C stands for the conflicts with other nations that could arise should the U.S. default on its debt. The R stands for the revolution that might result from trying to stick U.S. taxpayers with the bill. WSJ reported last year that Treasury has meltdown scenarios, but without details. These may not come from Treasury. Madsen surmises these two scenarios may have been a final warning from David Walker.
Written by lenny on 2008-04-08 10:40:05
I find it funny how most people who claim the citizens of the United States and lazy and stupid are....
writing it while at "Starbucks"sipping a late, on their "PC" running "Windows XP", listening to their "Apple" ipod, while simultaneously reading their "Gmail" looking for any new posts that might have been placed on their "Facebook" profile.
YouTube - US Government Immorality Will Lead to Bankruptcy
Anonymous writes:
"There's something scary that the chairwoman of the FDIC still uses an AOL account."
it could be worse, she could have been using a dial up modem and netzero. That what happens when the fdic outsources its IT dept to a non speaking H1-B perso