If banks don't increase lending, Washington may turn up the pressure on them or try to retroactively impose guidelines about how the government capital is used regardless of the weak loan demand.
"Policymakers in Congress may overlook this and say 'We don't care. We want to you to lend the money out anyway,'" said Bert Ely, an independent banking analyst in Alexandria, Va. He added: "More strings are going to be put on this money."
Warsh is descriptively correct, but in an environment where most economic news seems bad, I believe he points to the single most bullish factor: it's impossible for everything to simultaneously decline in price relative to everything else, and the two main assets that are gaining in a relative sense - primarily the Japanese Yen and secondly the U.S. dollar - don't seem all that intrinsically attractive in and of themselves.
Would something as simple (complex repercussions) as having the entire tax code thrown out and implement the flat tax of 15% save the dollar/government?
All businesses and individuals regardless of income level.
Question:
There has been a bubble like output of lawyers in recent years. Granted not all lawyers choose to practice, and salaries are a barbell shaped distribution
Are there key industries for the legal workforce, or is it recession proof (provided they don't forget their different types of law)?
Does anyone know if lawsuits or court hours decrease in a recession?
Would something as simple (complex repercussions) as having the entire tax code thrown out and implement the flat tax of 15% save the dollar/government?
Great idea, but would harm/anger 2 key constituents:
a) tax lawyers & accountants that specialize in corporate & rich-guy tax shelters
b) the 44 million or so adult Americans who pay no taxes.
In the excerpts CR posted, Warsh left out one source of problems: regulatory capture and arbitrage. The fact that European banks were able to get around capital requirements by buying CDS's from AIG, enabling enormous leverage, is an example of regulators being asleep at their desks while financiers gambled essentially with the future of entire countries.
With Warsh's comments and looking back at Volcker's I would say that Obama should have his treasury and new FED head all lined up. If he went that way I am with him all the way! This much common sense of course will preclude both men from positions of power these days.
We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world.
And when the government marks down all the assets they've taken onto their books the banks can use their new liquidity to buy them back a a profitable discount. Money laundering measured in trillions.
Policymakers in Congress may overlook this and say 'We don't care. We want to you to lend the money out anyway,'" said Bert Ely, an independent banking analyst in Alexandria, Va. He added: "More strings are going to be put on this money."
Obviously Bert Ely is more they type of man we will get pulling the strings.
Send lawyers, guns, and money ,
Maybe I should one-up their niche and hire a firm to be available for class action lawsuits for people injured from bricks of $100 bills thrown by Bernanke's fleet of helicopters
And when the government marks down all the assets they've taken onto their books the banks can use their new liquidity to buy them back a a profitable discount. Money laundering measured in trillions.
So... we're effectively financing the process of our own financial destitution. Sweet!
Why are you printing the end of the world proclamations of Ron Lauder's underqualified son in law, Shrub's "special liaison" to wall street regulators?
EHP--hub is criminal attorney--busiest he has ever been. He does not think that he will see a reduction in cases, although I have told him that he might have to reduce fees due to the economy.
There is a credit and deleveraging contraction. Talk all you will about asset prices and how they all cannot go down, but when there is less credit and less leverage, say one half of what was in early 2007 then many assets will devalue downward. Maybe that is not quite what happened in the depression of the 1930s, as there were bank failures and 25% unemployment, so this one is different because this reduction will hit the pension plans, the 401ks, the household net worth because the house value is down, etc. etc. . There is now no credit and leverage expansion. So it just seems the contraction and deflation is underestimated by many because they are not measuring it the right way. If we see 10+ percent unemployment then that will be quite a slowdown and an additional shock to the system. Also folks were less interdependant in the 1930s, most knew how to grow vegetables and food or lived on farms, many were without electricity in rural areas. Now unemployment causes a wave effect through the interconnections in the economy greater than the 1930s. This is what I think is not well thought through or understood. If people see they cannot afford the extras and there are a lot more extras than in the 1930s, potentially there is more potential downside than the 1930s.
But then I do not know what will happen. If I did I would have no financial worries.
this also means that the taxpayer money being used to prop up folks Too Big To Fail
is money just flushed down the into the sewer....literally...just incredible waste and it will cost your kids and mine big time in the end.
deflating assets = no refinance = no credit economy = contracting economy = OMFG we are toast
at least a generation before anyone can borrow their way into the American dream (nay nightmare). seriously. they are only so many tourniquets you can apply when gang green sets in and moves from the limbs into the entire body. we should be amputating digits and limbs to save the head and heart.
We have been saying for a awhile now that everything was going down except essentials, i.e FOOD!
And these people are in charge?
Here's the rub. No one is lending because as Ssantelli slipped up and said, they are insolvent.
At this point, it is all about the last million dollar bonuses and trying to hang on long enough to get outta Dodge without a noose around the neck for this disaster of epic proportions.
Good grief. Why does anyone even think there is no lending?
Because as soon as money comes in, it goes to pay the bills. Don't pay the bills, BK that much sooner!
OH, when oh when will this game ever end?
Not so hard to figure this out at this point.
Money in = money into black hole. Therefore, no money to lend.
Yeah, like these guys are just gonna sit on money. These guys love to leverage money to make even more than to just sit on it.
Also on that chart, St. Louis Fed: Series: TOTALNS, Total Consumer Credit Outstanding
try YoY absolute change. Have a huge chunk of credit outstanding going back to 1990 where those assets' value have not been tested because more credit was poured on the fire each time there were rumblings. Now there is a long way to fall (unless there happens to be someone who has just saved lots and lots of money in cash with no investments of any kind and they are willing to step in and fill the gap)
We have a government whose 'solutions'
to the housing crisis are the same that they railed against a few months ago.
Teaser rates, pick a pay and negative
amortization loans! Only issued by the US government instead of Anthony Mozillo.
A government that wants to use its credit card because the cards of its citizenry are maxxed out.
To echo lawn grass, we are a lot less cohesive a society than what we were in the 1930's. More a polyglot boarding house than a nation. I don't see this ending happily.
EvilHenryPaulson writes: Question:
There has been a bubble like output of lawyers in recent years. Granted not all lawyers choose to practice, and salaries are a barbell shaped distribution
Are there key industries for the legal workforce, or is it recession proof (provided they don't forget their different types of law)?
Does anyone know if lawsuits or court hours decrease in a recession?
Just curious ponderings
I don't know if this answers your question but it is interesting: Woes that felled S.F. law firms shake industry
FTA:
"(10-31) 17:48 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. legal industry is going through its first big revenue shortfall in more than 15 years, and that unexpected slump helped cause the recent back-to-back dissolutions of two of San Francisco's top law firms, say experts in the business of law."
I always seem to be about 1/2 day behind on the comments but since I'm current at the moment wanted to follow up on a few of your posts in recent days:
1) I saw that you recently went to Bloomington, IN. I grew up in Indianapolis (but live in LA now) and have lots of family in southern Indiana, so if you have any questions about the area, just let me know. It did look to me like most of the commenters who responded with information were pretty accurate in their comments.
2) I was dissapointed that you didn't include Pato Banton in your list of reggae artists, though I maybe a bit biased as he was the officiant at my friend's wedding last spring.
3) Last night's South Park was outstanding. Had been disappointed with this season until last night.
Unit472 writes: Elect Obama? Yeah that'll set things right.
It's a civic ritual -- we have a new king now. Clearly not an auspicious time to stick with the present leadership, so a new Son of Heaven is procured by the arcane lottery of the Constitution.
I say he has the Mandate of Heaven and I think I am observing the obvious.
Sniping after the fact will not change the outcome, it will damage the legitimacy of the state. Do you want to fail the state to settle a political score? Maybe so, but don't kid yourself about disputing the succession -- it s 100% legitimate. Either accept your new Son of Heaven or set yourself against the executive, charter and throne.
i think we are going to see a liberalization of bankruptcy law and a rethinking of the whole 7-10 years before you can get credit thereafter.
surely if we are fundamentally a "Christian" nation...we will need to forgive a lot of debt just to get to a big reset....
otherwise this is going to be a nation of debt slaves and we might as well be building debtor's prisons just to house a lot of J6P families and even some amongst the professional class and of course retiring baby boomers whom will be peddling there Grateful Dead memorabilia and Bob Dylan boot legs just to buy groceries for the day.
i speak from experience. my mother moved in with us around the time the deflation started to kick in and her house went underwater.
Gatsby writes: 2) I was dissapointed that you didn't include Pato Banton in your list of reggae artists, though I maybe a bit biased as he was the officiant at my friend's wedding last spring.
Love Pato; got to see him when he was touring about a year ago. Great show, great man.
Gatsby: Thanks, man. We're still considering southern Indiana (and now southern Illinois). I may take you up on that.
The Pato miss is fair. But then would I have to include Eek? I saw a van full of rastas in Bloomington when I was there. It surprised me, even for Bloomington.
Not sure if this has been posted, but I think folks here will get a kick out of the "lost" Saturday Night Live bailout skit. Apparently it was supposed to be on a few weeks ago but got pulled.
Wait for the part where they start introducing the "victims" of the foreclosure crisis.
YLSP writes: Oh and we are not a "fundamentally Christian" nation...
Duh. That was a bunch of Republican crapola spewed when post-9/11 paranoia lent their attacks artificial weight. Also, to them, Christian meant Protestant, Babtist or more charismatic only need apply. Anyone else was a lib of some sort.
EvilHenryPaulson writes:
"Does anyone know if lawsuits or court hours decrease in a recession?"
I don't know about that, but I know that the attorneys that I use for business law are both very very busy right now. And at least some of it is litigation.
Bankruptcy (both personal and corporate) and securities litigation will be ridiculously busy for the next few years.
I'm kinda envisioning "class action" bankruptcies, there will be so many. Along the lines of mass weddings. "Bankruptcy petitioners A through F, please step forward."
"I would advance the following: We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."
You mean 25 years of low interest rates combined with excessive leveraged credit expansion produced inflated assets!! and they might be deflating away as we speak, hmmmm maybe all the hyperinflation talk is really in the rear mirror.
There is only one way out of this mess that I can see. In the bubble markets, 30 to 50% of homeowners are underwater, and the economy can't recover until this is dealt with.
I think the government will have to force banks to write down ALL mortgages to 90% of the property's current value. Obviously, this would bankrupt every major bank in the U.S., so the government will have to take the hit, probably to the tune of $2 to 3 Trillion.
Ater this reset / reboot, real estate markets and lending will get back to normal.
we are a lot less cohesive a society than what we were in the 1930's
Bullshit.
The 30s in the US had Communists openly advocating and inciting revolution, armed insurrection in the streets between unemployed and non-employers, armed warfare between police and drug dealers, a wonderfully vital with its attendant lynchings and cross burnings, and internment camps.
Now, if you're a man of weak convictions and having trouble explicitly saying "The US was better off because it was more white", then we have a different topic of conversation.
Look at Goldman's balance sheet. They are broke right now imo. Seriously. They increased their balance sheet by over 50% in the past few years. All with leverage too.
Exactly what assets could they have purchased that did not tank in value?
"Indeed, the problems associated with housing finance reveal broader failings, including inadequate market discipline, excessive reliance on credit ratings, and poor credit and liquidity risk-management practices by many financial firms."
Translation: The lying, thieving, greedy, unrestrained bastards acting as operatives in a financial world devoid of restraint have put not just us, but the entire world economy in a massive freaking ditch.
...I think the government will have to force banks to write down ALL mortgages to 90% of the property's current value. Obviously, this would bankrupt every major bank in the U.S., so the government will have to take the hit, probably to the tune of $2 to 3 Trillion.
This is underway in the form of the 700B downpayment by Hank et. al. However, they forgot to require the part where the cram down to 90% is supposed to happen. The banks were insolvent before the 700B handout.
Please return to the back of the line, we have bankers here waiting for their bonuses. Their spending will promote trickle down effects that will reflate the economy just in time for Christmas. NOT!
It's amazing that we're here, now, watching it happen. It's like seeing the assasination of JFK or the signing of the Declaration of Independence in person.
Just amazing. Think of how lucky we are to see an event of this much historical importance
Thanks everyone for the personal lawyer anecdotes. I still can't rationalize where all the recently graduated lawyers will find work to pay off their student loans though. Too many factory-schools pumped out too many, too quick. The only hope is high burnout rates of those doing well.
don't forget divorce settlements, they will trend way up.
canucklehead | 11.06.08 - 8:34 pm | #
I have heard of instances where divorce is put on hold because it was too expensive. Also dividing up an underwater mortgage is tough, so sometimes separated couples still live together.
Mental exercise: You are Barak Obama and the neeed is felt for you to talk direct to the people on TV (like FDR's fireside chats) on what they should do over the next several years to assist the country on recovering, particularly in regards to use of credit.
Supply your message to the people (abbreviated to essentials).
Mine:
Fellow Americans, we have built an unsteady foundation for economy by excessive reliance on credit, for our busineses, our financial institutions and for our homes and families.
There is danger of economic collapse if we don't use extreme care going forward on how we use credit.
For those who have wisely used credit and are able to regularly pay for credit extended without strain, you should continue as you have been doing, and not contract your spending as that spending is necessary for others to be paid for their goods and services.
For those who are deeply in debt, whether it be large credit card balances, or homes that are now worth less than the market value with mortgages that exceed your ability to pay and amount to substantially more than market value, you need to use credit counselors and bank mortgage lenders to find how to adjust your debts versus your current income. You will need to in many cases reduce your current spending to pay down some of your credit. In a smaller percentage of cases you may need to seek protection of the bankruptcy courts to put you on a course that leads to a fresh start. The US and State governments will be opening new centers staffed by specialists to assist you in assessing your options and beginning to restore your life to a balance of income, expenses, and savings.
For those who have a substantial amount of savings, and are current paying down your current credit and mortgage balances, you should proceed as your are, but be very cautious of extending your family deeper in debt. If you dramatically increase debt payment or savings, your actions may result in many of your family, friends and neighbors being hurt by lost jobs that lower consumption will result in.
Now is the time for each of us to conduct a thorough review of our financial condition, using available private and government counselling to provide you with outside options and opinions. You should take this opportunity to maintain or establish a firmer foundation for the difficult period ahead as we work our economy through past excessive dependence on credit.
You can contact a government hot line at 1-800-xxx-yyyy or via the web at Sorry. Page not found..
The entire banking system is founded on mortgages. Citi's off balance sheet assets are over $1 trillion. At least 70% of these "assets" are mortgage based. They are toast absent the taxpayer bailout.
The system is insolvent. What more proof do you need that the fed and treasury are totally incompetent?
Further translation: These same junge meisters, minus real world experience and driven by fear and unrelenting pressure from similar equipped supervisors, sucked at the teat of an opaque empire of derivative instruments designed to be forever obscure and never reconciled to a balance sheet, let alone a profit and loss statement with anything resembling the truth, have sucked the vitality of a once great economy and real nation of communities at the expense of the trust once placed in institutions of finance and banking. This trust will never return, never be granted to any, even if the Messiah himself were to descend from the heavens to rule for a millennium on earth.
This mess was facilitated by the banking regulations and accounting rules that allowed so much financial alchemy to take place off balance sheet. Hidden away, manipulated and contrived. Fictitious capital being magically produced from fees and management of a mountain of derivative toxic crap that was in fact fairytale money.
Blame the colusion between CB's,regulators, banks and various parts of Government in fabricating a self feeding Ponzi scheme that ultimately may impoverish most of the world.
This is why it is ludicrous that the same perpetrators will somehow be able to redeem themselves with some kind of solution.
You don't fire the privates in a failed army- REMOVE THE GENERALS!
JimPortlandOR,
Me:
Pay your bills or declare bankruptcy. It would be helpful if you made your choice asap. I can't legally suggest that you declare bankruptcy but I recommend you look up the definition of non-recourse loa
JimPortland - eminently sensible but there's way too much path dependence to see material change. The conversation on debt risk has failed, and the exposed are hoping against hope in absent MEW or HELOC that there's a white knight of goverment out there. There isn't, he's in black, and he carries a rather large wheat-cutting implement.
My first exposure to Bob Marley was mellow jaunt down to Parker's Pit (near Corydon) one fine November morning in 1980, in a VW van of course. It was Peak Color. The hills were flaming gold and red, one of the prettiest fall color seasons I can ever remember, anywhere.
Southern Indiana is redneck hippy paradise. You will never lack for killer bud.
EvilHenryPaulson writes:
"The only hope is high burnout rates of those doing well."
Lots of lawyers end up doing other jobs: one I know recently became an exec VP of a small company, another decided to become a mother and not to practice.
sm_landlord,
The reason behind my question is that even the cheapest law schools are expensive and most students do it on loans. There are only so many jobs with adequate income suitable for a law grad
with far less financial "innovation" there are far fewer financial jobs, and there will be an even larger pool of previously employed "talent" competing with the newly minted grads soon for those jobs that dont exist. Should be quite a competition. Now, if you were smart the past few years, you'd have focused your law education on real estate, and got a good background in economics as well to understand the massive fraud perpetuated. One day, I suspect, someone might actually be prosecuted for this racket.
They just hate to hear the tab is coming due. Bubble life as it was once known is over. Accept the new paradigm and move on.
Agree. That's why these guys are going off. WTF? Our budget is so bloated and the electorate so bipolar....Big time for Obama, yes on prop 8? Makes little sense. Needs to be split in two. Regardless, the Golden state is completely screwed for the foreseeable future.
we are watching the true nature of debt revealed. It's been hidden away behind grandiose economic theories and pontificating charlatans for decades, and historians have rewritten most of our collective knowledge so we could race forward once again into disaster.
The problem is debt.
The problem is false promises disguised as money, derivatives, contracts, benefits.
I am astounded by the power of cultural denial.
When will it finally crack and bend to reality?
re-post from previous thread for the Reggae folk..
Check out Pandora.com (click one of the reggae channels) . Seriously, not a spammer, just love the Irie. Found all kinds of guys I'd never known before.
Warsh is hardly Greenspan's sidekick: he is the newest GWB appointment to the Fed...with all the credentials that go with that (youth...inexperience outside the Financial Banking industry).
Some claim to fame for his pronouncements regarding liquidity and confidence...a noteworthy piece for its inability to highlight the essential character (wealth distribution) of the issue.
Coal is black (for all you blind people out there brailling along).
HARM wrote:
Would something as simple (complex repercussions) as having the entire tax code thrown out and implement the flat tax of 15% save the dollar/government?
Nah, way too logical and simple. Congress would loose its only real power which is to dole out tax benefits therby getting leverage and lobbyists. Way to logical.
Anonymous writes:
ot, Cali is completely screwed with Arnie's latest. Talk radio going OFF right now. Grey Davis redux?
They just hate to hear the tab is coming due. Bubble life as it was once known is over. Accept the new paradigm and move on.
As the resident California Doomsayer this is not ever off topic. You are correct. The outrage over another 1.5% sales tax increase is palpable. State spending has doubled in 9 years while services have visibly deteriorated. Local taxes and spending and services are even worse. The productive class is being driven out or underground.
Unit472 writes: Uppity white boy, read some European history from the 1930's. You might find it eeriely similiar to what you depict as the American reality.
The difference is that we're gonna swing the fascists when they grab for power.
Warsh is a dickheaded retard; why anyone would bother listening to him at even a very small, yet intimate hors d'oeuvres party, is hopelessly beyond my strained and much divided attention span. He got his job as a result of nepotism, just like FEMAs Brown -- WTF has he ever done or said, or written? Nothing!
This insult has been brought to you by: The Deschutes Brewery, in Bend Oregon - now serving Jubelale a fine festive winter ale with an ass kicking 6.7% Alc by vol.
Remember, don't drink and smoke pot or drink while on a cell phone
Local taxes and spending and services are even worse. The productive class is being driven out or underground.
Amen. The anger is becoming very noticeable.Our company, small though it is has stopped hiring Cali folk, instead only considering out of state remote employees. We're just way more competitive that way.
Kind of an internal outsourcing.
I have to repeat, shame on CA voters for not throwing the bums out.
Funky Kingston (Toots) playing now. Keeping things smooth
"What way of getting Lion Sun gives you the highest margin? "
Hi Byzantine. Don't worry about margin. Whatever is most convenient for you.
As for states: The last thing anyone should want is instability, and anyone who thinks they will benefit from it is asking for ruin. It leads either to catastrophe, or to a repression so severe and irrational that no one is safe, not even those who seek to benefit from it.
St.Theresa of Calcutta said something like this (paraphrasing): More sorrow has been caused by prayers answered than prayers denied.
We should create a debt syndicate. Investors would buy syndicate shares. The syndicate would buy distressed assets. The syndicate would buy distressed assets one at a time from firms that line up. The syndicate would buy distressed assets slowly, but not so slowly that those waiting to sell distressed assets become discouraged, and yet slowly enough that the syndicate's capital wouldn't be exhausted.
Ross writes:
Dawg 'the productive class is being driven out or
underground'.
Groundhogs is the new squirrils? They are small and damned tough to clean.
The problem is that all the meat has already been stripped off the productive class here in California. What makes me laugh is people thinking Prop 13 is anything that can be reworked without causing even more harm. If Prop 13 is seriously challenged housing will immediately drop more double digits.
well as a liberal whom attends both liberal Catholic and UCC churches
Debt forgiveness, counseling and community service could go a long way to dealing with how the unwinding of the New Finance is and will ruin a lot of good people whom put trust in professionals with fiduciary responsibilites on both sides of lending equation.
The same folks whom are asking for and receving taxpayer funded corporate welfare passing directly to bonuses and junkets.
For what it's worth, I voluntarily reduced my living standard over the past year. I'm in a little apartment instead of a house, I got rid of my car, I don't go shopping any more, etc.
I'm down to six boxes of possessions --- an amount so small, it fits in the trunk of my brother's car.
I mention this because my fear has just about vanished --- the bad news doesn't make me worry about where I'll end up as the crisis deepens.
I simply have nothing left to lose. Think of it as the opposite of procrastination.
You have world class caving and climbing easy driving distance, and you're 6-8 hours from world class whitewater. World class culture in Chicago, 3-4 hours north as well as fresh water surfing. Upper Michigan, 8 hours drive, more fresh water surfing.
And when I left the Southeast, you didn't have to make a stinkin $25/day reservation to camp. You might consider the Berea area of Kentucky, or Knoxville as well. Morgantown WVa is nice.
Seriously, the midwest and SE is chock full of hippies, live off the land types, alternative lifestyles of all stripes. The only one's that get any press are the Ma and Pa Kettle types. (As an aside, when I went to Ireland a few years ago, the big news was a man and his son going up for murder. They had beat the man's brother with a pipe and threw him down the well. Heh. Just like home.)
It's not the same as La Jolla or Half Moon Bay to be sure, but it's highly underrated. Land is cheap. It's really not that hard to go almost completely self-sufficient with a few acres of pasture, a wood lot, and enough sunny bottom land down by the creek to put in a garden.
Toyota's President Katsuaki Watanabe, 66, cut the company's forecast for net income by 56 percent yesterday after higher fuel costs and a credit crunch pushed industrywide October U.S. sales to the lowest level since 1983. Toyota followed Honda and Nissan in predicting larger-than-expected drops in earnings.
I can tell you how Im going to react to that CA sales tax rise. Im in NJ now. No tax on apparel purchases. Holiday shopping? I'll do it all when Im back east for Thanksgiving.
Just to piss these idiots off, I'll take every possible opportunity to stop buying stuff in state. Regressive, stupid, and in a way, a deserved tax. What kind of complete nincompoop populus votes yes on that train to nowhere? What does it take for us to realize that money isn't one of the state's agricultural products, growing on trees? I mean, we boot Gray Davis for a problem created by the "innovators" at Enron, then hire a total douche who spends the illusory proceeds and more of the backside of a double bubble, and then thinks that more of the same financial innovation can prevent the bubble deflating, while crashing the economy at the same time he tries to fix it. I swear, I knew californians were dumbasses when I moved out here, but I had no idea just how dumb.
As I mentioned in another thread, I did not vote for the President-elect, but anyone who wants him to fail needs to have his head examined. The way things are now failure is not an option.
Sounds like a new currency in the making. Or a new financial architecture for the world. Inflation can be brought back easily but you need the world's co-operation.
This stock crash will result in new trade barriers, isolationism and a move away from global derivative trading. I think there will be countries that will limit trading activity by foreigners and the reason for protectionism, will be based on not allowing outsiders to destroy the wealth of your country. Live local, invest local and take vacations with caution.
ppt report: you will recall we were looking for the cerberus formation today, instead we ended up with the double calf head, failure for one day. ppt period is 2-4pm we are commenting on the Dow average. Hank got a new Italian silk suit today and thrusted the water gun in the wasteband rather than the full bazooka(panzerfaust) forecasted by many distinguished linguists in the current period.
Geoff writes:
Just to piss these idiots off, I'll take every possible opportunity to stop buying stuff in state. Regressive, stupid, and in a way, a deserved tax. What kind of complete nincompoop populus votes yes on that train to nowhere? What does it take for us to realize that money isn't one of the state's agricultural products, growing on trees? I mean, we boot Gray Davis for a problem created by the "innovators" at Enron, then hire a total douche who spends the illusory proceeds and more of the backside of a double bubble, and then thinks that more of the same financial innovation can prevent the bubble deflating, while crashing the economy at the same time he tries to fix it. I swear, I knew californians were dumbasses when I moved out here, but I had no idea just how dumb.
Again, sorry if these are way ot....
Just looking into all of Arnie's other 'suggestions'. Pretty much taxing EVERY service out there. Think groceries are the only thing untouched.
Permanent taxes on everything you can imagine.
But hey, we've got to pay for his Nannie's appointment to the seeing eye dog commission somehow, yeah?
For the non-cali folk... we pay 9+% income tax, now (in LA) we're looking at 10"%. Add to that an insane biz climate and you'll get the picture.
100k/year is scraping by here now.
Sorry..no more rant. A glass of wine and things will be fine.
What exactly will Obama fix? Asset prices are too high. Doing anything or nothing won't change asset values going down. Keep our powder dry and be prepared to sweep up afterwards.
They were lamenting on CNBC that the investment banks HAVE to pay those bonuses to retain the top talent. WTF-You would actually want those bastards that said full steam ahead into the friggin' iceberg?
Yes, I posted some stuff earlier from Joseph Stiglitz and the idea of a single currency, but that is sort of like having a stock market without shorts and a bond with just a price and not a yield.
This thinking is wrong and it may sound good on an old Star Trek episode, but local culture and local innovation are far more important than global homogenization and a push for fascism.
Money Man writes:
They were lamenting on CNBC that the investment banks HAVE to pay those bonuses to retain the top talent. WTF-You would actually want those bastards that said full steam ahead into the friggin' iceberg?
Next period: bad news. Which cliche: buy the news or sell the news. Maybe both with leverage, insurance enhancements (CDS), oh well, let me bail you out
This mess is like nuclear fallout. Even if you survive ....everything left will be tainted and unproductive for years. I am out stocks until the corruption issue is purged....maybe for 3-5 yrs. Still think it will go below 6,000.
Wow - Joe Stiglizt huh? Not bad for a off the cuff comment.
I dont know about your comment but I am sure that a system of checks and balances can be created.
Say you created a current called .. ummm... "Hoo"
Now you can denominate every asset in "Hoos"
The dollar can trade against the "Hoo" in an open market.
I dont see why that would create imbalances that you speak of. But it would free the world of depending on the vagaries of the American economy entirely. Anyway _ i have no serious work on it.. just off the cuff comments to the Deflation folks on the board. My only point? Inflation can be brought back and not just by printing
Joke of the day
``The election is over, and I completely agree with President-elect Obama that we must now unite to get our economy going again and to keep the American people safe,'' Lieberman said.
After high school flew to Jamaica to relax and party with a friend who had set us up at "Hedonism II." Big mistake. Lots of saggy, naked new yorkers with bright red skin, glazed eyes and horrible breath.
Self declared mission: To see real rastas in their element. Hired guy to take us up to rasta village in the hills. He stopped after about 20 minutes at a little hut on the side of the road and said we should eat chicken or cake here. But what about rasta village? Oh no mon, he said, you don't want to do that. They would kill you. Friend ate chicken, and I ate cake. I started to feel intensely tired so I asked him to take us back. I went to bed and "woke up" about two days later, high as a kite. It took about another two days for effects to wear off. I remember crawling... lots of crawling. Down to the beach, into a hammock, out onto a pier in the middle of a raging storm.
Upside? I discovered Yellowman's music and introduced it to the United States.
A report by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. doesn't include privately negotiated credit-default swaps that insurers such as AIG, MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc. sold to guarantee securities known as collateralized debt obligations. It includes only a ``small fraction'' of contracts linked to mortgage securities, according to Andrea Cicione at BNP Paribas SA in London.
New York-based DTCC's data, released on its Web site Nov. 4, showed a total $33.6 trillion of transactions on governments, companies and asset-backed securities worldwide, based on gross numbers. While designed to ease concerns about the amount of risk banks and investors amassed on borrowers from companies to homeowners, the report may have missed as much as 40 percent of the trades outstanding in the market, Cicione said.
The data are likely to underestimate the amount of net CDS exposure,'' Cicione, who correctly forecast in January that the cost of protecting European companies from default would rise, said in an interview.A broadening of the coverage to the entire market is what investors really need.'' Credit Swap Disclosure Obscures True Financial Risk (Update3) - Bloomberg.com
ac wrote: "Intractable" is a scary word coming from the Anti-Maestro himself.
It might also be precisely correct. On one of these threads (or perhaps in a different blog), someone pointed out that one consequence of "spreading the risk around" was that evaluation of the credit-worthiness of any party became more complex. Their risk-exposure, you see, depended on the risk-exposure of every other party with which they had any sort of contract. It would not take all that many years of promiscuous dealing before an exact risk-assessment required knowing the details of every party and every financial instrument in the system. Perhaps we have hit that point, in which case we really could run into the problem of there not being enough computing power available to resolve the analysis.
ice uncle b...I gawked at Hedonism from the outside, after walking up, floating a foot above the sand, from Negril. A spectacle of the worst of the rest of the world planted smack in the middle of the best Jamaican beaches.
Get yourself a shack on the beach and chill.
Just dont go in the off season, (now) ...you'll be accosted non stop to buy something with the "respect mon!" shout out. Horrid.
Ken writes:
It might also be precisely correct. On one of these threads (or perhaps in a different blog), someone pointed out that one consequence of "spreading the risk around" was that evaluation of the credit-worthiness of any party became more complex. Their risk-exposure, you see, depended on the risk-exposure of every other party with which they had any sort of contract. It would not take all that many years of promiscuous dealing before an exact risk-assessment required knowing the details of every party and every financial instrument in the system. Perhaps we have hit that point, in which case we really could run into the problem of there not being enough computing power available to resolve the analysis.
Re: "The dollar can trade against the "Hoo" in an open market. "
No, no no .... you don't get to use the dollar, you trade those in for hoo's and you get a ratio exchange, i.e, you go to the IMF branch, give them your dollars and then they give you hoo's -- then, the guy behin you with Yen, turns in his stuff for his hoo's...
Hey, don't sell the Financiers short. They kept this bubble inflated far longer than it had any right to be and look at all the toxic crap they sold to foreigners. I mean the Gnomes
of Zurich are up their keisters in US subprime mortgage debt too.
Bear, you're totally speakin my language, man. Still wonder about cultural differences and what they might mean. That's what makes Oregon appealing. No concerns there really.
Windsurfing? Konookie: When I got to the end of the pier I found a giant lion headed man sitting under a sort of lean-to, smoking something that looked like a rolled up Sunday Times. You wahnt to smoke dis spliff wit me mon? No thanks, I said, but are you really the watersports director like your tshirt says? Yah mon. Can I go windsurfing? Yah mon, jus' be careful out there. Out I went. I don't know if I was careful or not. Is this what kitesurfing is like? Windsurfing, high as a kite? In a raging storm with 50 mph winds?
We all keep pretending money is real. Based on nothing but belief. Based on acceptance. Based on fantasy.
I let the angst over my children's future go. No way any of this can be paid back. Everyone really does understand it but they have a hard time seeing the other side of this change. So do I.
I do look around me and feel ok. I think there will be unrest and needless violence but the infrastructure and education level is there. The populous is armed but they will use those arms to protect not conquer. I don't see a large majority of the population losing their minds and going out in a rampage, looting, burning, destroying. Too optimistic, maybe.
I'm well armed, part of the establishment, I know my neighbors, I can provide food, water, and security for 6 months of total collapse. We'll move past this and still have civilization. Black Swans notwithstanding.
The country survived the Civil War, numerous threats to societal order. Many wars. We always pulled through. The expansion of Manifest Destiny was incredibly life threatening. Disease, starvation, murder, accidents...Life continued and a nation grew.
You know who will do the worst if the economy collapses. The managers who ran this society. Their identities will be crushed. The rules they understood and enforced will lead them to be unable to transition.
Relax. Enjoy life, splurge if you have extra. Enjoy the experiences you might not have in 6 months. And love, love deeply.
Or sit and comment on the fall on an economic blog. All equal choices.
Uncle Billy, Urbilaterian writes:
Windsurfing? Konookie: When I got to the end of the pier I found a giant lion headed man sitting under a sort of lean-to, smoking something that looked like a rolled up Sunday Times. You wahnt to smoke dis spliff wit me mon? No thanks, I said, but are you really the watersports director like your tshirt says? Yah mon. Can I go windsurfing? Yah mon, jus' be careful out there. Out I went. I don't know if I was careful or not. Is this what kitesurfing is like? Windsurfing, high as a kite? In a raging storm with 50 mph winds
50 is pretty insane. But ws is the most insane shiit in big waves/wind
"The global economy, other than traditional trade, is perhaps a mistake. Initially, investors believed that global diversification in equity ownership would shield investment portfolios from being all weighted with the home countrys stocks, thus protecting portfolios from large declines from corrections. In practice, the global economy now brings down all equities together. The global economy subjects each national economy to the mistakes made elsewhere."
I nominate Dr Seuss as guest speaker at the Nov 15 G20 meeting. He's clearly the best economist and political economy pundit of the last 30 years, based on the following works of powerful and immutable theory and demonstrated practice:
The Lorax - scarcity, and the merits of the snerkgelly hose, which is a reference to bringing SIVs, conduits, VIEs and dark pools all on book and transmitted as if you had smallish bees up your nose.
The Zax - congressional deadlock and how to move beyond position taking for the sake of it. See also gerrymanders and filibusters.
Pale Green Pants - for irrational bearish sentiment when ultimately the fundamentals of the economy are sound and we can all be friends.
Mrs McCave - for naming all of her 23 sons Dave, a useful handbook for path dependence and relations between operations and risk management, and with ratings agencies, branding every wacky product AAA.
The Sneetches - the fear of the Other, see also TED spread, interbank mutually assumed disssembling (MAD), and the bookies doing a number on currencies.
Should have the system back up and running in no time.
At one point in the hammock I heard a voice above me and thought I was dreaming. When I was able to focus enough I realized there was a man with a large plastic baggie, hanging upside down in the tree above me, trying to get me to buy pot. Apparently they're not allowed to wander around the club at night, so they swim in around the fences and then run and shimmy up the trees.
Sakakibara Says a Strong Yen Is in Japan's National Interest
By Patricia Lui and Susan Li
Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Japan will benefit from a strong yen because it will hold down prices for raw materials, said Eisuke Sakakibara, formerly Japan's top currency official.
I still believe a strong yen is in the national interest of Japan, particularly in this situation when raw material prices will increase,'' Sakakibara said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Singapore yesterday. The yen may rise to as high as 80 per dollar as so-called carry trades unwind, said Sakakibara, who was dubbedMr. Yen'' during his 1997-1999 tenure at the Finance Ministry because of his influence over currency markets.
Dunno about you fellas, but this doesnt strike me as the kind of person that belongs in this role. I mean, 38? Took some coursework in econ while doing public policy? Got a JD and dabbled some more in econ related? Did M&A at Morgan for 7 years? Bleh bleh....Guys like this are a dime a dozen. Who's he screwin? Ohhhh, yeh. I got it.
Notwithstanding my delight that a black man got elected president...
A worldwide belief that the US Govt. can save the global economy has formed and Obama is the essence of the bubble.
...Obama is, alas, a trailing indicator of the Roaring '00's economy. He's like a new toy that the white middle class has bought on their credit cards (and I do wonder how much of those small donations were on maxed out cards). But his base is only thinly held together by a fuzzy adulation that blurs social and racial and financial and political differences between them, rather than removes them.
No better high in the world than boxing training for 2 months; getting to the arena; getting your hands wrapped; weighing in for your weight class and seeing your opponent; your trainer telling you its time to go; the long walk to the boxing ring; the first bell; and a knockout victory.
Still gives me chills just thinking about those days!
That is right. A re-assessment of everything. Your SUV is not worth what you paid 10 years ago! Your house is not worth 3 times what you paid 4 years ago. Etc, etc.
Uncle...it was more than a handful of years when I went, and the "memories" are a bit foggy. I made a ton of mistakes there...like, trying to walk off the beach to the main road and go searching around for a place to eat. Uhhh, no. Walkign the beach at night...uhhh, nope. Unless 12 year olds grabbin your parts is your cup of tea. I guess times were tough then and there, but I suspect it hasnt changed much. But at least my experience was a bit more authentic.
Oh, and when they rub green stuff on your feet to ease the sunburn, they want money afterwards. They arent just being nice.
Read this, remember Volvo truck orders and you got an economy that went from 120MPH to 10MPH in 2 months. Gonna be peeling people of windshields everywhere.
Ship Orders Plunged 90% Last Month on Credit, Trade Slowdown
By Wendy Leung
Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Global ship orders tumbled 90 percent last month as the credit crunch damped world trade and made it harder for shipping lines to borrow money, according to Lloyd's Registers Group.
Shipowners ordered a total of 37 container ships, tankers and other vessels in October, compared with 378 a year earlier, Lloyd's Register Chief Executive Officer Richard Sadler said in an interview yesterday at a conference in Dalian, China.
I still believe a strong yen is in the national interest of Japan, particularly in this situation when raw material prices will increase,'' Sakakibara said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Singapore yesterday. The yen may rise to as high as 80 per dollar as so-called carry trades unwind, said Sakakibara, who was dubbedMr. Yen'' during his 1997-1999 tenure at the Finance Ministry
Well, personally, Im drinking my parents homemade wine at the moment. When I was a youngen, we'd steal it, and it earned the nickname PC. I'll let ya'll try and figure out what it stood for. Let's just say Im sippin it now.
Perhaps you and I and Jim could grab
a few pints together sometime.
I'm told I'm pretty entertaining after a beer, and I can rant pretty well. I would seriously be interested if this were to actually happen. My wife is sick of the topic..
Obama's economic transition advisor list is out. I don't like it. It looks pretty conservative - mostly Clintonites and CEOs. No Krugman, no Roubini, and I don't recognize any early opponents of the housing bubble or deregulation except Reich.
JJL, got to admit to recalling the adrenaline rush. Competition, eh? Never faced another man looking to take me out in organized, rules based fashion, though. Can only imagine.
I am open to alcoholic induced rants that still have some intelligent thoughts to them. fallon@pdx.edu not a student but an edu. and my spouse is sick of the political economy gab too. so i can commiserate. spammers, trolls, and yucksters will not be tolerated as all email autoforwards before reaching the final destination.
"[Policymakers] should be steady when financial market participants are fearful, and fearful when markets appear steady."
Governor Kevin Warsh, Nov 6, 2008
I note that the sources of the Federal Reserves policy errors during the Depression went much deeper than a failure to understand the role of money in the economy or the lack of reliable monetary statistics. Policymakers of the 1930s observed the correlates of the monetary contraction, such as deflation and bank failures. However, they questioned not only their own capacity to reverse those developments but also the desirability of doing so. Their hesitancy to act reflected the prevailing view that some purging of the excesses of the 1920s, painful though it might be, WAS BOTH NECESSARY AND INEVITABLE.
Remarks by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke
At the Fourth ECB Central Banking Conference, Frankfurt, Germany
November 10, 2006
so possibilities tomorrow are 2: hold, sell
this binary possibility is favorable to the simplistic mind of the early 21st century investor. Tamps down probability a bit, I'd say.
Is this tail fat or thin? I'd step on it
consequences
Nothing like facing another person, as equals, with no crap in the way; just skill versus skill. Crowd either behind you or against you makes no difference, you just want to win. I loved it so much, but the broken hands, broken noses, and time needs meant it was not a long term thing. Plus I was never good enough to go pro! Still, boxing is the most basic competition there is. Watch Aaron Pryor vs. Alexis Arguello form 1982 to see what beauty is.
"Ginsu the falling knife writes: http://bumperstickers.cafepress....umper/ 308179370"
Would I get a discount if I bought in bulk? I'm thinking about putting one on every Suburban/Tahoe/Escalade/Hummer I can find.
Bit off topic, but who here thinks the GMAC bank holding company announcement comes tomorrow, and is a way to give another small boost to the spin on the grim employment market announcement that somehow isnt as quite as bad as the story from GS that it would be -300k?
Id bet my arse that GS is bustin long tomorrow on its own manufactured rally.
Not a chance, it starts and then we grow moss for 9 months!
Re: Yup, here comes the rain....This was in my inbox this morning, "New information is strongly suggesting a stalled storm centered over the north to central Cascades trailing back across the Olympics to well offshore to the SW. Several inches of rainfall from this event could easily get rung out in the mountain areas as well as adjacent lowlands. Right now, the target zones for the most rain and runoff extend from Whatcom to King County westward through northern Grays Harbor to south of Forks." The WSDOT Blog: Watches, warnings and forecasts...
"We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."
We being the Central Banks. This means they are clueless about what to do other than
pump money in the financial system, 2. try and take crap off books (if possible) and
try and guarantee the largest collective amount of assets that we leveraged against: houses (more correctly land with improvements).
So 1 and 2 are not looking so good. So that leaves number 3. But the New Finance makes making the debt lenders whole very complex, figuring out who far down to guarantee the loss really just rolling dice, and preventing morale hazard nearly impossible.
Then there are the smaller investors whom are underwater on their rental (the one you kept because after the improvements the market tanked) and their owner occupied house.
If you can figure out how to make 3 work (perhaps a National Short Sale with the owners not subject to income gain). Then we could find some kind of a bottom.
Nothing like facing another person, as equals, with no crap in the way...
I loved it so much, but the broken hands, broken noses, and time needs meant it was not a long term thing. Watch Aaron Pryor vs. Alexis Arguello form 1982 to see what beauty is.
JJL
See here? When this man is starving and fighting for his life, you'll have to take the whole cannibalism thing much more seriously. You think he's ripping your face off with a potato peeler, but he thinks he's creating art.
This is why you need bear repellent. It's good for 30 feet of charging feral man.
Seen on CNBC tonight by some guy named Ross:
New Prez needs to;
1. Buy up homes
2. Loan unlimited money to auto industry
3. Make unlimited money loans to consumers regardless of payback possibility (not meaningful he said)
Ship Orders Plunged 90% Last Month on Credit, Trade Slowdown
That's a confirmation of what the Baltic Dry index is saying. We're likely headed into more regionalized trading which means less need for a single, centralized currency.
Interesting.
There's an implication from the derivatives failure, currency issues that "globalization" and Nassim Taleb's meanderings that "globalization" is a bad complexlty vs value tradeoff.
There's a limit to scalability of systems & organizations. One of my favorite examples is vacuum tube systems. If you tried to build one of today's $10 CPUs using vacuum tubes, it would fail almost immediately as the failure rate of each individual component is too high in such large numbers.
There is a limit to the scale of today's devices and software structures. I don't know what that scale is (nobody does, I think) but Microsoft's abandoment of Vista may be a data point.
Currently Smoking Cannabis,
I guess I left out "willingly". To face the prospect of conflict, on your own volition, without knowing the terms takes discipline and commitment; two qualities lacking today.
Can somebody explain to me how the crash of the baltic index and decline of shipping/imports is not going to TANK railroad stocks as well? I'd expect it to work with a delay.
Given the runup in railroad shares over the past year (tempered a bit lately), can somebody explain to me why it isn't a GREAT time to short BNI and other railroads?
If this guy is right, and I am afraid that he is, all debt has to be cut in half. Tough to be a lender but the fate of the country is at stake. We cannot survive every worker going broke. Bring on the jubilee!
Can somebody explain to me how the crash of the baltic index and decline of shipping/imports is not going to TANK railroad stocks as well? I'd expect it to work with a delay
Well, the spare railroad capacity in the US is already allocated to FEMA for movement of dissidents to "the camps".
Ha ha.
I hope.
Actually, I think you're right. But there's a couple of factors to consider....
1 - movement by truck is extremely granular and flexible but more expensive. With gas prices so high, there might be an corresponding increase in railroad movement versus decrease in trucking
2 - you don't know the percentage of railroad traffic that moves overseas cargo. I don't know it, either but you may want to verify it. If it's relatively small percentage, then what's reflected into railroads from overseas collapse may not be large, percentagewise.
3 - Holders of railroad stocks like Buffett and Gates may be willing to weather the downturn in expectation of an upturn in domestic production. You need to know their sentiment and percentage of holding to judge.
Sweet, I think I'll up my negative stake in railroads in the morning. Lots of meat on this bone!
albrt, given that they're your clients -- can you give any insight into what's going on now? Declining volumes etc? Or do they typically have a lot of forward contracts, or declining fuel costs that would offset the downturn?
What say you that North Carolina went to Obama because of all the Cali emigrants?
obama received 45% of all "white" votes and nearly half of voters 65 and older, traditionally a well of republican votes...and more than 2/3rds of all voters 30 and younger.
Even ponies?
Seventeenth?
That's bullish, right?
I thought assets only go up?
"fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."
Whew, I thought things were bad
It is all the fault of the cacaphonous cabal of clusterforking congress critters.
He didn't say the asset values would decrease.
"Intractable" is a scary word coming from the Anti-Maestro himself.
If we assess the fundamentals, we know the fundamentals are strong, so then fundamentally we should go up!
That;s right:
Up: clubs, can-openers, radiation detectors, home tattoo kits, hockey goalie masks, fancy grills for the offroaders circling the refinery
Down: everything else
How about this pearl of wisdom:
"Banks now have cash but few clients"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27579409/
If banks don't increase lending, Washington may turn up the pressure on them or try to retroactively impose guidelines about how the government capital is used regardless of the weak loan demand.
"Policymakers in Congress may overlook this and say 'We don't care. We want to you to lend the money out anyway,'" said Bert Ely, an independent banking analyst in Alexandria, Va. He added: "More strings are going to be put on this money."
Warsh is descriptively correct, but in an environment where most economic news seems bad, I believe he points to the single most bullish factor: it's impossible for everything to simultaneously decline in price relative to everything else, and the two main assets that are gaining in a relative sense - primarily the Japanese Yen and secondly the U.S. dollar - don't seem all that intrinsically attractive in and of themselves.
The value of every asset in the world is simply each assets replacement cost.
Jeez, we had to learn replacement cost accounting back in the 70's. Guess the world has unlearned it all.
So what's the replacement cost of Dick Fuld? Anyone...any bids?
Listen up lenders: You either start lending out $millions to unemployed Uzbekistani con-artists again, or we'll take back your bailout money!
Would something as simple (complex repercussions) as having the entire tax code thrown out and implement the flat tax of 15% save the dollar/government?
All businesses and individuals regardless of income level.
"We don't care. We want to you to lend the money out anyway"
No qualified borrowers? No problem! That never stopped the economy from booming until a couple of years ago.
Lend Lend Lend!!
Question:
There has been a bubble like output of lawyers in recent years. Granted not all lawyers choose to practice, and salaries are a barbell shaped distribution
Are there key industries for the legal workforce, or is it recession proof (provided they don't forget their different types of law)?
Does anyone know if lawsuits or court hours decrease in a recession?
Just curious ponderings
one man's asset is another man's clothes
literally. just ask Abercombie and Fitch or Nordstrom's.
if "we are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world"
then
we are talking about a serious deflationary sprial here folks. and no central banker can put a bottom on that no matter how hard they try.
or as I prefer to say:
WE ARE ALL DEFLATED NOW
buck up. should make some bargain shopping on HDTVs to watch the global economy slide in Hi-Res and life like color.
We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world.
That is a huge statement CR. You have come to some conclusions about the future I think.
Well, going to be a lot of new code written to model it.
Would something as simple (complex repercussions) as having the entire tax code thrown out and implement the flat tax of 15% save the dollar/government?
Great idea, but would harm/anger 2 key constituents:
a) tax lawyers & accountants that specialize in corporate & rich-guy tax shelters
b) the 44 million or so adult Americans who pay no taxes.
In the excerpts CR posted, Warsh left out one source of problems: regulatory capture and arbitrage. The fact that European banks were able to get around capital requirements by buying CDS's from AIG, enabling enormous leverage, is an example of regulators being asleep at their desks while financiers gambled essentially with the future of entire countries.
"We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."
YES, DAMN IT, YES! WHY IN HELL DID IT TAKE YOU GUYS SO F'ING LONG TO FIGURE IT OUT?
With Warsh's comments and looking back at Volcker's I would say that Obama should have his treasury and new FED head all lined up. If he went that way I am with him all the way! This much common sense of course will preclude both men from positions of power these days.
"... I would advance the following: We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."
In other words, the financial market has been putting on a vast global retelling of The Emperor's New Clothes for the past ten or more years.
And people are finally starting to listen to the little kid in the front row who keeps saying, "But he's naked!"
I am fearful.
We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world.
And when the government marks down all the assets they've taken onto their books the banks can use their new liquidity to buy them back a a profitable discount. Money laundering measured in trillions.
FT: Chinese hack into White House computer network.
Maybe they were just checking their account balances
Policymakers in Congress may overlook this and say 'We don't care. We want to you to lend the money out anyway,'" said Bert Ely, an independent banking analyst in Alexandria, Va. He added: "More strings are going to be put on this money."
Obviously Bert Ely is more they type of man we will get pulling the strings.
@ Evil Henry Paulson
I've got one for you:
"Firm Creates Niche From Helicopter Crashes"
OK, so maybe it's going to be a one-shot deal, but it should be a doozy
http://www.oreillylaw.com/media/Firm_Creates_Niche_From_Helicopter_Crashes.pdf
In other words...the money went poof!
Let me hear you say it....
D-E-F-L-A-T-I-O-N
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/fredgraph?chart_type=line&s[1][id]=TOTALNS&s[1][transformation]=pc1
Good chance of consumer credit growth finally going negative in a meaningful way for the first time on record (post-wwii)
Either the bills gets paid, or the debt defaults. There's nothing left to squeeze
proper link
come on...I know you Fed boneheads can do it.
Has Kevin Warsh hit puberty yet?
Also, how is Taleb only up 50% in this market? I guess the planet has to be wiped out for him to be up 100%. Here is his interview on CNBC today
Nothing found for 2008 11 Taleb-interview-on-cnbc
Darth Paulson,
"Deflation is a pathway to many abilities, some considered to be unnatural"
Paraphrasing Darth Sidious of course!
Now, repeat after me:
D-E-F-L-A-T-I-O-N I-S G-O-O-D.
Didn't seem to include the chart, EHP. I just get a helpful FRED interface asking for a data set. Was this me?
Hate trying to paste FRED links.
Send lawyers, guns, and money ,
Maybe I should one-up their niche and hire a firm to be available for class action lawsuits for people injured from bricks of $100 bills thrown by Bernanke's fleet of helicopters
And when the government marks down all the assets they've taken onto their books the banks can use their new liquidity to buy them back a a profitable discount. Money laundering measured in trillions.
So... we're effectively financing the process of our own financial destitution. Sweet!
DK writes:
D-E-F-L-A-T-I-O-N I-S G-O-O-D.
If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.
Why are you printing the end of the world proclamations of Ron Lauder's underqualified son in law, Shrub's "special liaison" to wall street regulators?
"We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."
Peak-Anything...I rest my case!!
EHP--hub is criminal attorney--busiest he has ever been. He does not think that he will see a reduction in cases, although I have told him that he might have to reduce fees due to the economy.
There is a credit and deleveraging contraction. Talk all you will about asset prices and how they all cannot go down, but when there is less credit and less leverage, say one half of what was in early 2007 then many assets will devalue downward. Maybe that is not quite what happened in the depression of the 1930s, as there were bank failures and 25% unemployment, so this one is different because this reduction will hit the pension plans, the 401ks, the household net worth because the house value is down, etc. etc. . There is now no credit and leverage expansion. So it just seems the contraction and deflation is underestimated by many because they are not measuring it the right way. If we see 10+ percent unemployment then that will be quite a slowdown and an additional shock to the system. Also folks were less interdependant in the 1930s, most knew how to grow vegetables and food or lived on farms, many were without electricity in rural areas. Now unemployment causes a wave effect through the interconnections in the economy greater than the 1930s. This is what I think is not well thought through or understood. If people see they cannot afford the extras and there are a lot more extras than in the 1930s, potentially there is more potential downside than the 1930s.
But then I do not know what will happen. If I did I would have no financial worries.
Byzantine Ruins,
Proper link for real this time
TOTALNS, Total Consumer Credit Outstanding, Monthly, Billions of Dollars, Not Seasonally Adjusted
Worthy of Fox or WSJ, but CR? I hope I'm missing something.
Argh!!!
St. Louis Fed: Series: TOTALNS, Total Consumer Credit Outstanding
That but do YoY % change
Yep, 'it all stinks and shines like rotten mackeral in the moonlight' but what are you gonna do?
Elect Obama? Yeah that'll set things right.
So... we're effectively financing the process of our own financial destitution. Sweet!
More like the Chinese are financing it with us as cosignatories for Uncle Sugar.
fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world.
oh my!
we've been schooled that value is determined by the all-seeing market. did the market have some cataracts?
that statement doesn't inspire the belief that 'the bottom has been reached'.
will a whistle blow when that reassessment is completed (like the all-clear after a nuclear attack)?
I hope Mr. Market doesn't read those words and believe them.
@Evil
Capital idea. Probably some class action to be had on pony bites
this also means that the taxpayer money being used to prop up folks Too Big To Fail
is money just flushed down the into the sewer....literally...just incredible waste and it will cost your kids and mine big time in the end.
deflating assets = no refinance = no credit economy = contracting economy = OMFG we are toast
at least a generation before anyone can borrow their way into the American dream (nay nightmare). seriously. they are only so many tourniquets you can apply when gang green sets in and moves from the limbs into the entire body. we should be amputating digits and limbs to save the head and heart.
Hey, there's a hurricane...headed for the Cayman Islands. Wrath of the gods?
Deflation!
Did the goobs in goobermint just get that memo?
We have been saying for a awhile now that everything was going down except essentials, i.e FOOD!
And these people are in charge?
Here's the rub. No one is lending because as Ssantelli slipped up and said, they are insolvent.
At this point, it is all about the last million dollar bonuses and trying to hang on long enough to get outta Dodge without a noose around the neck for this disaster of epic proportions.
Good grief. Why does anyone even think there is no lending?
Because as soon as money comes in, it goes to pay the bills. Don't pay the bills, BK that much sooner!
OH, when oh when will this game ever end?
Not so hard to figure this out at this point.
Money in = money into black hole. Therefore, no money to lend.
Yeah, like these guys are just gonna sit on money. These guys love to leverage money to make even more than to just sit on it.
As for assets being reevaluated...
That's goobermint speak, for...
WE ARE ALL SCREWED AND ON THE HOOK FOR THIS MESS.
Good luck and good night!
We sure went from
"nothing to see here" to
"let's get naked" quickly.
There is truly going to be blood in the streets of America. Peace be with you all.
Also on that chart,
St. Louis Fed: Series: TOTALNS, Total Consumer Credit Outstanding
try YoY absolute change. Have a huge chunk of credit outstanding going back to 1990 where those assets' value have not been tested because more credit was poured on the fire each time there were rumblings. Now there is a long way to fall (unless there happens to be someone who has just saved lots and lots of money in cash with no investments of any kind and they are willing to step in and fill the gap)
Wasn't Warsh an attorney before he landed at the Fed?
We have a government whose 'solutions'
to the housing crisis are the same that they railed against a few months ago.
Teaser rates, pick a pay and negative
amortization loans! Only issued by the US government instead of Anthony Mozillo.
A government that wants to use its credit card because the cards of its citizenry are maxxed out.
To echo lawn grass, we are a lot less cohesive a society than what we were in the 1930's. More a polyglot boarding house than a nation. I don't see this ending happily.
But....but...they said it was contained, so I went long?
Sell
Does anyone know if lawsuits or court hours decrease in a recession?
Depends on the field. Bankruptcy (both personal and corporate) and securities litigation will be ridiculously busy for the next few years.
Real estate and M&A, not so much.
EvilHenryPaulson writes:
Question:
There has been a bubble like output of lawyers in recent years. Granted not all lawyers choose to practice, and salaries are a barbell shaped distribution
Are there key industries for the legal workforce, or is it recession proof (provided they don't forget their different types of law)?
Does anyone know if lawsuits or court hours decrease in a recession?
Just curious ponderings
I don't know if this answers your question but it is interesting:
Woes that felled S.F. law firms shake industry
Woes that felled S.F. law firms shake industry
FTA:
"(10-31) 17:48 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. legal industry is going through its first big revenue shortfall in more than 15 years, and that unexpected slump helped cause the recent back-to-back dissolutions of two of San Francisco's top law firms, say experts in the business of law."
Completely OT: to CSC
I always seem to be about 1/2 day behind on the comments but since I'm current at the moment wanted to follow up on a few of your posts in recent days:
1) I saw that you recently went to Bloomington, IN. I grew up in Indianapolis (but live in LA now) and have lots of family in southern Indiana, so if you have any questions about the area, just let me know. It did look to me like most of the commenters who responded with information were pretty accurate in their comments.
2) I was dissapointed that you didn't include Pato Banton in your list of reggae artists, though I maybe a bit biased as he was the officiant at my friend's wedding last spring.
3) Last night's South Park was outstanding. Had been disappointed with this season until last night.
FT: Chinese hack into White House computer network.
Maybe they were just checking their account balances
Anonymous | 11.06.08 - 7:57 pm
Maybe they can find the missing emails.
Unit472 writes:
Elect Obama? Yeah that'll set things right.
It's a civic ritual -- we have a new king now. Clearly not an auspicious time to stick with the present leadership, so a new Son of Heaven is procured by the arcane lottery of the Constitution.
I say he has the Mandate of Heaven and I think I am observing the obvious.
Sniping after the fact will not change the outcome, it will damage the legitimacy of the state. Do you want to fail the state to settle a political score? Maybe so, but don't kid yourself about disputing the succession -- it s 100% legitimate. Either accept your new Son of Heaven or set yourself against the executive, charter and throne.
I guess this deflation applies to equities as well.
Well, not like anyone could've seen that coming, either!
When IPOs go for upwards of several hundreds per share, and the company doesn't really produce anything, well...you know how that's gonna end as well.
All I can say is go long on water, food, clothing, shelter, bicycles, guns, and ammo.
This could get ugly, esp. in cities like LA.
Oh my!
Ross writes:
It is all the fault of the cacaphonous cabal of clusterforking congress critters.
you give congress too much credit and wall street not enough
but then again it was credit that got us in this mess in the first place
Finally a voice of reason at the Fed.
Anybody watching the NIKKEI 225?
i think we are going to see a liberalization of bankruptcy law and a rethinking of the whole 7-10 years before you can get credit thereafter.
surely if we are fundamentally a "Christian" nation...we will need to forgive a lot of debt just to get to a big reset....
otherwise this is going to be a nation of debt slaves and we might as well be building debtor's prisons just to house a lot of J6P families and even some amongst the professional class and of course retiring baby boomers whom will be peddling there Grateful Dead memorabilia and Bob Dylan boot legs just to buy groceries for the day.
i speak from experience. my mother moved in with us around the time the deflation started to kick in and her house went underwater.
FT: Chinese hack into White House computer network.
I bet a certain Commander in Chief chose the password 'password' after being told not to...
Yes...its 1982 all over again...
FT: Chinese hack into White House computer network...
and don't find anything except porn, Family Circus cartoons, and maps of Paraguay
crispy&cole writes:
Yes...its 1982 all over again...
Well forget the lost decade.
Try the lost quarter of a century!!!!!!!!!
Anybody watching the NIKKEI 225?
-475 yawn
Nikkei down 475.
This is going to hell in a wheel barrow.
Hang Seng is getting smacked around too...
YLSP update:
I'm toast as someone mentioned before. TOAST! Will not be able to exit stockmarket until Thanksgiving!
Hooray for brokerage and relative stupidity and lack of urgency...
I have 615...
Oh and we are not a "fundamentally Christian" nation... just to throw a firebomb before leaving for CostCo...
If we hit spy 615, I will buy a pony. With wheels. Gotta love options.
"YLSP update:
I'm toast as someone mentioned before. TOAST! Will not be able to exit stockmarket until Thanksgiving!
Hooray for brokerage and relative stupidity and lack of urgency..."
well your stocks might go up a bit between now and then. it is quite a few days away. hopefully you will be alright.
Finally an uptick at -590. But wait, Toyota hasn't traded on an order imbalance indicating a 13% open down.
YLSP, if it all does go to hell make sure everyone know who was holding up the liquidation.
Bloomberg has a delay on its quotes.
http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/CF/FR/MKJ
Gatsby writes:
2) I was dissapointed that you didn't include Pato Banton in your list of reggae artists, though I maybe a bit biased as he was the officiant at my friend's wedding last spring.
Love Pato; got to see him when he was touring about a year ago. Great show, great man.
Hey Warsh.
IT'S THE LEVERAGE STUPID!
With minds like this at the fed is it any wonder we are facing financial collapse?
Don't worry about the Nikkei
They've already started pumping up the share cross-holdings between companies.
I think today's was sanyo (battery)/honda/toyota and who knows what else.
Soon there will be one share floating to rule them all
Gatsby: Thanks, man. We're still considering southern Indiana (and now southern Illinois). I may take you up on that.
The Pato miss is fair. But then would I have to include Eek? I saw a van full of rastas in Bloomington when I was there. It surprised me, even for Bloomington.
CSC,
in case you were unaware of the political party
http://www.marijuanaparty.com/index.en.php3
Not sure if this has been posted, but I think folks here will get a kick out of the "lost" Saturday Night Live bailout skit. Apparently it was supposed to be on a few weeks ago but got pulled.
Wait for the part where they start introducing the "victims" of the foreclosure crisis.
The Unedited “Forbidden” SNL Economic Bailout Skit
YLSP writes:
Oh and we are not a "fundamentally Christian" nation...
Duh. That was a bunch of Republican crapola spewed when post-9/11 paranoia lent their attacks artificial weight. Also, to them, Christian meant Protestant, Babtist or more charismatic only need apply. Anyone else was a lib of some sort.
EvilHenryPaulson writes:
"Does anyone know if lawsuits or court hours decrease in a recession?"
I don't know about that, but I know that the attorneys that I use for business law are both very very busy right now. And at least some of it is litigation.
"Do you want to fail the state to settle a political score? "
It's happened before, and invariably it does not end well.
Bankruptcy (both personal and corporate) and securities litigation will be ridiculously busy for the next few years.
I'm kinda envisioning "class action" bankruptcies, there will be so many. Along the lines of mass weddings. "Bankruptcy petitioners A through F, please step forward."
All of this effort and foolishness to save a dysfunctional monetary system. Really. We need to discuss alternatives.
This is swindle. A bailout of the wealthy and their ficticious asset based wealth.
What a sham.
Depends on the field. Bankruptcy (both personal and corporate) and securities litigation will be ridiculously busy for the next few years.
don't forget divorce settlements, they will trend way up.
"I would advance the following: We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."
You mean 25 years of low interest rates combined with excessive leveraged credit expansion produced inflated assets!! and they might be deflating away as we speak, hmmmm maybe all the hyperinflation talk is really in the rear mirror.
There is only one way out of this mess that I can see. In the bubble markets, 30 to 50% of homeowners are underwater, and the economy can't recover until this is dealt with.
I think the government will have to force banks to write down ALL mortgages to 90% of the property's current value. Obviously, this would bankrupt every major bank in the U.S., so the government will have to take the hit, probably to the tune of $2 to 3 Trillion.
Ater this reset / reboot, real estate markets and lending will get back to normal.
we are a lot less cohesive a society than what we were in the 1930's
Bullshit.
The 30s in the US had Communists openly advocating and inciting revolution, armed insurrection in the streets between unemployed and non-employers, armed warfare between police and drug dealers, a wonderfully vital with its attendant lynchings and cross burnings, and internment camps.
Now, if you're a man of weak convictions and having trouble explicitly saying "The US was better off because it was more white", then we have a different topic of conversation.
I'm floored. A Fed Governor is not a toxic asshat.
CC
Look at Goldman's balance sheet. They are broke right now imo. Seriously. They increased their balance sheet by over 50% in the past few years. All with leverage too.
Exactly what assets could they have purchased that did not tank in value?
Anyone? Beuhler?
What a sham.
Sticker (Bumper) - CafePress
"Indeed, the problems associated with housing finance reveal broader failings, including inadequate market discipline, excessive reliance on credit ratings, and poor credit and liquidity risk-management practices by many financial firms."
Translation: The lying, thieving, greedy, unrestrained bastards acting as operatives in a financial world devoid of restraint have put not just us, but the entire world economy in a massive freaking ditch.
I think the government will have to force banks to write down ALL mortgages to 90% of the property's current value.
Don't forget to calculate in if unemployment numbers shoot up. Regardless of equity issues, that's gonna cause some problems.
CSC: definitely like Eek as well. Though I'm far from a reggae guru.
...I think the government will have to force banks to write down ALL mortgages to 90% of the property's current value. Obviously, this would bankrupt every major bank in the U.S., so the government will have to take the hit, probably to the tune of $2 to 3 Trillion.
This is underway in the form of the 700B downpayment by Hank et. al. However, they forgot to require the part where the cram down to 90% is supposed to happen. The banks were insolvent before the 700B handout.
Please return to the back of the line, we have bankers here waiting for their bonuses. Their spending will promote trickle down effects that will reflate the economy just in time for Christmas. NOT!
it's the long-term credit cycle in motion.
It's amazing that we're here, now, watching it happen. It's like seeing the assasination of JFK or the signing of the Declaration of Independence in person.
Just amazing. Think of how lucky we are to see an event of this much historical importance
It's pretty cool, really
Crazy Al, Taleb keeps 90% cash. That's why he's up only 50%. It's the Black Swan concept, don't gamble, you'll be wiped out one day.
Thanks everyone for the personal lawyer anecdotes. I still can't rationalize where all the recently graduated lawyers will find work to pay off their student loans though. Too many factory-schools pumped out too many, too quick. The only hope is high burnout rates of those doing well.
don't forget divorce settlements, they will trend way up.
canucklehead | 11.06.08 - 8:34 pm | #
I have heard of instances where divorce is put on hold because it was too expensive. Also dividing up an underwater mortgage is tough, so sometimes separated couples still live together.
I didn't want to live in interesting times.......
Mental exercise: You are Barak Obama and the neeed is felt for you to talk direct to the people on TV (like FDR's fireside chats) on what they should do over the next several years to assist the country on recovering, particularly in regards to use of credit.
Supply your message to the people (abbreviated to essentials).
Mine:
Fellow Americans, we have built an unsteady foundation for economy by excessive reliance on credit, for our busineses, our financial institutions and for our homes and families.
There is danger of economic collapse if we don't use extreme care going forward on how we use credit.
For those who have wisely used credit and are able to regularly pay for credit extended without strain, you should continue as you have been doing, and not contract your spending as that spending is necessary for others to be paid for their goods and services.
For those who are deeply in debt, whether it be large credit card balances, or homes that are now worth less than the market value with mortgages that exceed your ability to pay and amount to substantially more than market value, you need to use credit counselors and bank mortgage lenders to find how to adjust your debts versus your current income. You will need to in many cases reduce your current spending to pay down some of your credit. In a smaller percentage of cases you may need to seek protection of the bankruptcy courts to put you on a course that leads to a fresh start. The US and State governments will be opening new centers staffed by specialists to assist you in assessing your options and beginning to restore your life to a balance of income, expenses, and savings.
For those who have a substantial amount of savings, and are current paying down your current credit and mortgage balances, you should proceed as your are, but be very cautious of extending your family deeper in debt. If you dramatically increase debt payment or savings, your actions may result in many of your family, friends and neighbors being hurt by lost jobs that lower consumption will result in.
Now is the time for each of us to conduct a thorough review of our financial condition, using available private and government counselling to provide you with outside options and opinions. You should take this opportunity to maintain or establish a firmer foundation for the difficult period ahead as we work our economy through past excessive dependence on credit.
You can contact a government hot line at 1-800-xxx-yyyy or via the web at Sorry. Page not found..
Pavel Chichikov writes:
It's happened before, and invariably it does not end well.
Hey there Pavel!
What way of getting Lion Sun gives you the highest margin?
It can be the thing they choose, and by all appearances they are considering it.
I think this is a mistake, they will both look bad and subsequently lose, but failing states are not the abode of wisdom.
Broward Horne writes:
Just amazing. Think of how lucky we are to see an event of this much historical importance
It's pretty cool, really
TRUE!!
Been telling my kids this for the last year. Truly historical. They'll be talking like their Depression era grandma by the time they're 30
The entire banking system is founded on mortgages. Citi's off balance sheet assets are over $1 trillion. At least 70% of these "assets" are mortgage based. They are toast absent the taxpayer bailout.
The system is insolvent. What more proof do you need that the fed and treasury are totally incompetent?
This is the biggest swindle in history.
I still can't rationalize where all the recently graduated lawyers will find work to pay off their student loans though.
If one works for the government or other qualified public interest group, Uncle Sam will forgive most of one's law school loans.
Further translation: These same junge meisters, minus real world experience and driven by fear and unrelenting pressure from similar equipped supervisors, sucked at the teat of an opaque empire of derivative instruments designed to be forever obscure and never reconciled to a balance sheet, let alone a profit and loss statement with anything resembling the truth, have sucked the vitality of a once great economy and real nation of communities at the expense of the trust once placed in institutions of finance and banking. This trust will never return, never be granted to any, even if the Messiah himself were to descend from the heavens to rule for a millennium on earth.
Uppity white boy, read some European history from the 1930's. You might find it eeriely similiar to what you depict as the American reality.
Not that I feel strongly about that.
This mess was facilitated by the banking regulations and accounting rules that allowed so much financial alchemy to take place off balance sheet. Hidden away, manipulated and contrived. Fictitious capital being magically produced from fees and management of a mountain of derivative toxic crap that was in fact fairytale money.
Blame the colusion between CB's,regulators, banks and various parts of Government in fabricating a self feeding Ponzi scheme that ultimately may impoverish most of the world.
This is why it is ludicrous that the same perpetrators will somehow be able to redeem themselves with some kind of solution.
You don't fire the privates in a failed army- REMOVE THE GENERALS!
Lawyers make their own work via slip and fall suits, excessive regulations, bogus liability claims etc.
We have more lawyers per capita than any other country. What a disgrace.
JimPortlandOR,
Me:
Pay your bills or declare bankruptcy. It would be helpful if you made your choice asap. I can't legally suggest that you declare bankruptcy but I recommend you look up the definition of non-recourse loa
When you owe more on an asset than it is worth, like a car for instance or a cardboard McMansion, you are upside down. We are all upside down now.
Mission Accomplished!
Greenspans bubble blowing little sidekick here needs to be drug out in the street and have his ass kicked.
Broward - nice phrasing.
Ginsu - no sheet, happening in my family too.
JimPortland - eminently sensible but there's way too much path dependence to see material change. The conversation on debt risk has failed, and the exposed are hoping against hope in absent MEW or HELOC that there's a white knight of goverment out there. There isn't, he's in black, and he carries a rather large wheat-cutting implement.
CC
So these aren't the 'smartest guys in the room?'
Hell, pretty much anyone can make a buck in the good times. It's the guys that can come through this clusterf**k strong who're the real smarties.
ot, Cali is completely screwed with Arnie's latest. Talk radio going OFF right now. Grey Davis redux?
CSC
My first exposure to Bob Marley was mellow jaunt down to Parker's Pit (near Corydon) one fine November morning in 1980, in a VW van of course. It was Peak Color. The hills were flaming gold and red, one of the prettiest fall color seasons I can ever remember, anywhere.
Southern Indiana is redneck hippy paradise. You will never lack for killer bud.
EvilHenryPaulson writes:
"The only hope is high burnout rates of those doing well."
Lots of lawyers end up doing other jobs: one I know recently became an exec VP of a small company, another decided to become a mother and not to practice.
CC,
Obama carries wheat-cutting implements?
OT: I love it. Bunch of people jumped into stocks last week. How's that working out?
I repeat: we won't find a bottom until the market timers have been spanked good and hard.
ot, Cali is completely screwed with Arnie's latest. Talk radio going OFF right now. Grey Davis redux?
They just hate to hear the tab is coming due. Bubble life as it was once known is over. Accept the new paradigm and move on.
sm_landlord,
The reason behind my question is that even the cheapest law schools are expensive and most students do it on loans. There are only so many jobs with adequate income suitable for a law grad
A. Long. Grind. Lower.
Velocity is a thing of the past. Where do USG tax receipts come from when they rely on transaction volumes ?
Increased rates, oh wait that screws the productivity.
We are all screwed
with far less financial "innovation" there are far fewer financial jobs, and there will be an even larger pool of previously employed "talent" competing with the newly minted grads soon for those jobs that dont exist. Should be quite a competition. Now, if you were smart the past few years, you'd have focused your law education on real estate, and got a good background in economics as well to understand the massive fraud perpetuated. One day, I suspect, someone might actually be prosecuted for this racket.
Anonymous writes:
They just hate to hear the tab is coming due. Bubble life as it was once known is over. Accept the new paradigm and move on.
Agree. That's why these guys are going off. WTF? Our budget is so bloated and the electorate so bipolar....Big time for Obama, yes on prop 8? Makes little sense. Needs to be split in two. Regardless, the Golden state is completely screwed for the foreseeable future.
EHP--re law school
Hard Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers - WSJ.com
I remember reading this story to my husband when it came out.
Re-regulation and stronger oversight will create many jobs for atty.'s in the private and public sector
we are watching the true nature of debt revealed. It's been hidden away behind grandiose economic theories and pontificating charlatans for decades, and historians have rewritten most of our collective knowledge so we could race forward once again into disaster.
The problem is debt.
The problem is false promises disguised as money, derivatives, contracts, benefits.
I am astounded by the power of cultural denial.
When will it finally crack and bend to reality?
Gold finally?
Damn, Bear. That sounds rad. I wish Indiana weren't so far from the beach.
re-post from previous thread for the Reggae folk..
Check out Pandora.com (click one of the reggae channels) . Seriously, not a spammer, just love the Irie. Found all kinds of guys I'd never known before.
Warsh is hardly Greenspan's sidekick: he is the newest GWB appointment to the Fed...with all the credentials that go with that (youth...inexperience outside the Financial Banking industry).
Some claim to fame for his pronouncements regarding liquidity and confidence...a noteworthy piece for its inability to highlight the essential character (wealth distribution) of the issue.
Coal is black (for all you blind people out there brailling along).
HARM wrote:
Would something as simple (complex repercussions) as having the entire tax code thrown out and implement the flat tax of 15% save the dollar/government?
Nah, way too logical and simple. Congress would loose its only real power which is to dole out tax benefits therby getting leverage and lobbyists. Way to logical.
Big time for Obama, yes on prop 8? Makes little sense.
The reason Prop. 8 passed in Cali is that minority voters voted yes on 8 big-time, (Blacks - 70%, Latinos 60%, while they were voting for Obama.
Anonymous writes:
ot, Cali is completely screwed with Arnie's latest. Talk radio going OFF right now. Grey Davis redux?
They just hate to hear the tab is coming due. Bubble life as it was once known is over. Accept the new paradigm and move on.
As the resident California Doomsayer this is not ever off topic. You are correct. The outrage over another 1.5% sales tax increase is palpable. State spending has doubled in 9 years while services have visibly deteriorated. Local taxes and spending and services are even worse. The productive class is being driven out or underground.
Upside Down writes:
The reason Prop. 8 passed in Cali is that minority voters voted yes on 8 big-time, (Blacks - 70%, Latinos 60%, while they were voting for Obama.
Sad...not that there's anything wrong with that.
Unit472 writes:
Uppity white boy, read some European history from the 1930's. You might find it eeriely similiar to what you depict as the American reality.
The difference is that we're gonna swing the fascists when they grab for power.
why did I fail?
Is it because a federal mandate will overcome the disbelief?
Merry Christmas everyone!
FT Alphaville » Blog Archive » The first IB Xmas card has arrived
EvilHenryPaulson writes:
Too many factory-schools pumped out too many, too quick. The only hope is high burnout rates of those doing well.
Like the children's song: I sue you...you sue me...we both sue the guy behind the tree. Well you get the idea. A legal circle jerk.
We're witnessing a fundamental reassesment of capitalism.
Warsh is a dickheaded retard; why anyone would bother listening to him at even a very small, yet intimate hors d'oeuvres party, is hopelessly beyond my strained and much divided attention span. He got his job as a result of nepotism, just like FEMAs Brown -- WTF has he ever done or said, or written? Nothing!
This insult has been brought to you by: The Deschutes Brewery, in Bend Oregon - now serving Jubelale a fine festive winter ale with an ass kicking 6.7% Alc by vol.
Remember, don't drink and smoke pot or drink while on a cell phone
Dawg 'the productive class is being driven out or
underground'.
Groundhogs is the new squirrils? They are small and damned tough to clean.
Rob Dawg writes:
Anonymous writes:
Local taxes and spending and services are even worse. The productive class is being driven out or underground.
Amen. The anger is becoming very noticeable.Our company, small though it is has stopped hiring Cali folk, instead only considering out of state remote employees. We're just way more competitive that way.
Kind of an internal outsourcing.
I have to repeat, shame on CA voters for not throwing the bums out.
Funky Kingston (Toots) playing now. Keeping things smooth
"What way of getting Lion Sun gives you the highest margin? "
Hi Byzantine. Don't worry about margin. Whatever is most convenient for you.
As for states: The last thing anyone should want is instability, and anyone who thinks they will benefit from it is asking for ruin. It leads either to catastrophe, or to a repression so severe and irrational that no one is safe, not even those who seek to benefit from it.
St.Theresa of Calcutta said something like this (paraphrasing): More sorrow has been caused by prayers answered than prayers denied.
We should create a debt syndicate. Investors would buy syndicate shares. The syndicate would buy distressed assets. The syndicate would buy distressed assets one at a time from firms that line up. The syndicate would buy distressed assets slowly, but not so slowly that those waiting to sell distressed assets become discouraged, and yet slowly enough that the syndicate's capital wouldn't be exhausted.
Ross writes:
Dawg 'the productive class is being driven out or
underground'.
Groundhogs is the new squirrils? They are small and damned tough to clean.
The problem is that all the meat has already been stripped off the productive class here in California. What makes me laugh is people thinking Prop 13 is anything that can be reworked without causing even more harm. If Prop 13 is seriously challenged housing will immediately drop more double digits.
"We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."
this is a (perhaps THE) fundamental point imho.
are not our values as human beings perhaps skewed and are being readjusted...and NEED to be readjusted?
is not this crisis a result of a crisis in values (and i'm defining values as not even moral values, but economic values)?
is it enough to begin thinking out of the box that we've imprisoned ourselves in?
perhaps the chinese were correct in this: in every crisis lies an opportunity...
well as a liberal whom attends both liberal Catholic and UCC churches
Debt forgiveness, counseling and community service could go a long way to dealing with how the unwinding of the New Finance is and will ruin a lot of good people whom put trust in professionals with fiduciary responsibilites on both sides of lending equation.
The same folks whom are asking for and receving taxpayer funded corporate welfare passing directly to bonuses and junkets.
For what it's worth, I voluntarily reduced my living standard over the past year. I'm in a little apartment instead of a house, I got rid of my car, I don't go shopping any more, etc.
I'm down to six boxes of possessions --- an amount so small, it fits in the trunk of my brother's car.
I mention this because my fear has just about vanished --- the bad news doesn't make me worry about where I'll end up as the crisis deepens.
I simply have nothing left to lose. Think of it as the opposite of procrastination.
I highly recommend it, to those who can.
So what breaks the worldwide love affair with Obama?
My guess is a million people march on Washington.
Imagine a group of homeless and hungry people that just grows and grows outside of the Whitehouse.
They sleep at night and chant all day "We are Hungry! We are Homeless! Obama Help Us!"
Maybe he will have his personal chef whip up some pop tarts for them.
CSC
You have world class caving and climbing easy driving distance, and you're 6-8 hours from world class whitewater. World class culture in Chicago, 3-4 hours north as well as fresh water surfing. Upper Michigan, 8 hours drive, more fresh water surfing.
And when I left the Southeast, you didn't have to make a stinkin $25/day reservation to camp. You might consider the Berea area of Kentucky, or Knoxville as well. Morgantown WVa is nice.
Seriously, the midwest and SE is chock full of hippies, live off the land types, alternative lifestyles of all stripes. The only one's that get any press are the Ma and Pa Kettle types. (As an aside, when I went to Ireland a few years ago, the big news was a man and his son going up for murder. They had beat the man's brother with a pipe and threw him down the well. Heh. Just like home.)
It's not the same as La Jolla or Half Moon Bay to be sure, but it's highly underrated. Land is cheap. It's really not that hard to go almost completely self-sufficient with a few acres of pasture, a wood lot, and enough sunny bottom land down by the creek to put in a garden.
NIKKEI 225 -5.85%
Toyota's President Katsuaki Watanabe, 66, cut the company's forecast for net income by 56 percent yesterday after higher fuel costs and a credit crunch pushed industrywide October U.S. sales to the lowest level since 1983. Toyota followed Honda and Nissan in predicting larger-than-expected drops in earnings.
I can tell you how Im going to react to that CA sales tax rise. Im in NJ now. No tax on apparel purchases. Holiday shopping? I'll do it all when Im back east for Thanksgiving.
Just to piss these idiots off, I'll take every possible opportunity to stop buying stuff in state. Regressive, stupid, and in a way, a deserved tax. What kind of complete nincompoop populus votes yes on that train to nowhere? What does it take for us to realize that money isn't one of the state's agricultural products, growing on trees? I mean, we boot Gray Davis for a problem created by the "innovators" at Enron, then hire a total douche who spends the illusory proceeds and more of the backside of a double bubble, and then thinks that more of the same financial innovation can prevent the bubble deflating, while crashing the economy at the same time he tries to fix it. I swear, I knew californians were dumbasses when I moved out here, but I had no idea just how dumb.
"blood in the streets..."
CSC, remember the doors song 'peace frog'?
been listenin to that alot lately.
lately however, been mixing that with the 5th dimension...
'let the sunshine....'
somewhere between the 2 is the perfect blend perhaps?
"The productive class is being driven out or underground."
Rob Dawg | Homepage | 11.06.08 - 9:03 pm | #
Rob,
I see they did a good job on the farmers this time around...
Leaving in 95 was the best decision I have ever made...
Chris
BTW...My company has moved all but the barest of minimums out of California.
EvilHenryPaulson writes:
so sometimes separated couples still live together.
Then expect murder rates to go way up, with the consequent increase in demand for criminal defense attorneys.
As I mentioned in another thread, I did not vote for the President-elect, but anyone who wants him to fail needs to have his head examined. The way things are now failure is not an option.
Sounds like a new currency in the making. Or a new financial architecture for the world. Inflation can be brought back easily but you need the world's co-operation.
They sleep at night and chant all day "We are Hungry! We are Homeless! Obama Help Us!"
Maybe he will have his personal chef whip up some pop tarts for them.
Longwaver | 11.06.08 - 9:12 pm | #
How about if the Feds buy a thousand railroad cars of Hot Pockets and cook them up for the masses?
This stock crash will result in new trade barriers, isolationism and a move away from global derivative trading. I think there will be countries that will limit trading activity by foreigners and the reason for protectionism, will be based on not allowing outsiders to destroy the wealth of your country. Live local, invest local and take vacations with caution.
Kona - I predict the exact opposite. We (the world) become even more integrated
Obama will handle this crisis better than McCain and/or Palin. For one, he's going to listen to Volcker . . . and understand what Volcker says.
Obama and Volcker know that ideology won't fix anything.
ppt report: you will recall we were looking for the cerberus formation today, instead we ended up with the double calf head, failure for one day. ppt period is 2-4pm we are commenting on the Dow average. Hank got a new Italian silk suit today and thrusted the water gun in the wasteband rather than the full bazooka(panzerfaust) forecasted by many distinguished linguists in the current period.
Geoff writes:
Just to piss these idiots off, I'll take every possible opportunity to stop buying stuff in state. Regressive, stupid, and in a way, a deserved tax. What kind of complete nincompoop populus votes yes on that train to nowhere? What does it take for us to realize that money isn't one of the state's agricultural products, growing on trees? I mean, we boot Gray Davis for a problem created by the "innovators" at Enron, then hire a total douche who spends the illusory proceeds and more of the backside of a double bubble, and then thinks that more of the same financial innovation can prevent the bubble deflating, while crashing the economy at the same time he tries to fix it. I swear, I knew californians were dumbasses when I moved out here, but I had no idea just how dumb.
Again, sorry if these are way ot....
Just looking into all of Arnie's other 'suggestions'. Pretty much taxing EVERY service out there. Think groceries are the only thing untouched.
Permanent taxes on everything you can imagine.
But hey, we've got to pay for his Nannie's appointment to the seeing eye dog commission somehow, yeah?
For the non-cali folk... we pay 9+% income tax, now (in LA) we're looking at 10"%. Add to that an insane biz climate and you'll get the picture.
100k/year is scraping by here now.
Sorry..no more rant. A glass of wine and things will be fine.
Hawley Smoot I don't think anyone not even Volcker 'know what to do'. At least not anything that can prevent an awful lot of pain and social upheaval.
How do you save GM and the UAW pensions? How do you maintain home prices? If someone knew why have they not spoken up.
Sometimes there are no solutions. Events just have to take their course.
What exactly will Obama fix? Asset prices are too high. Doing anything or nothing won't change asset values going down. Keep our powder dry and be prepared to sweep up afterwards.
They were lamenting on CNBC that the investment banks HAVE to pay those bonuses to retain the top talent. WTF-You would actually want those bastards that said full steam ahead into the friggin' iceberg?
Noble,
Yes, I posted some stuff earlier from Joseph Stiglitz and the idea of a single currency, but that is sort of like having a stock market without shorts and a bond with just a price and not a yield.
This thinking is wrong and it may sound good on an old Star Trek episode, but local culture and local innovation are far more important than global homogenization and a push for fascism.
Money Man writes:
They were lamenting on CNBC that the investment banks HAVE to pay those bonuses to retain the top talent. WTF-You would actually want those bastards that said full steam ahead into the friggin' iceberg?
Hahahaha..smartest guys in the room, remember?
Next period: bad news. Which cliche: buy the news or sell the news. Maybe both with leverage, insurance enhancements (CDS), oh well, let me bail you out
This mess is like nuclear fallout. Even if you survive ....everything left will be tainted and unproductive for years. I am out stocks until the corruption issue is purged....maybe for 3-5 yrs. Still think it will go below 6,000.
Wow - Joe Stiglizt huh? Not bad for a off the cuff comment.
I dont know about your comment but I am sure that a system of checks and balances can be created.
Say you created a current called .. ummm... "Hoo"
Now you can denominate every asset in "Hoos"
The dollar can trade against the "Hoo" in an open market.
I dont see why that would create imbalances that you speak of. But it would free the world of depending on the vagaries of the American economy entirely. Anyway _ i have no serious work on it.. just off the cuff comments to the Deflation folks on the board. My only point? Inflation can be brought back and not just by printing
Joke of the day
``The election is over, and I completely agree with President-elect Obama that we must now unite to get our economy going again and to keep the American people safe,'' Lieberman said.
My experience with the Jamaican economy:
After high school flew to Jamaica to relax and party with a friend who had set us up at "Hedonism II." Big mistake. Lots of saggy, naked new yorkers with bright red skin, glazed eyes and horrible breath.
Self declared mission: To see real rastas in their element. Hired guy to take us up to rasta village in the hills. He stopped after about 20 minutes at a little hut on the side of the road and said we should eat chicken or cake here. But what about rasta village? Oh no mon, he said, you don't want to do that. They would kill you. Friend ate chicken, and I ate cake. I started to feel intensely tired so I asked him to take us back. I went to bed and "woke up" about two days later, high as a kite. It took about another two days for effects to wear off. I remember crawling... lots of crawling. Down to the beach, into a hammock, out onto a pier in the middle of a raging storm.
Upside? I discovered Yellowman's music and introduced it to the United States.
CSC--Maybe you need to learn to kitesurf.
Even if you are in a state that is landlocked, you can still kitesurf.
PKRA 2007 Season - Kiteboarding | broadbandsports.com
A report by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. doesn't include privately negotiated credit-default swaps that insurers such as AIG, MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc. sold to guarantee securities known as collateralized debt obligations. It includes only a ``small fraction'' of contracts linked to mortgage securities, according to Andrea Cicione at BNP Paribas SA in London.
New York-based DTCC's data, released on its Web site Nov. 4, showed a total $33.6 trillion of transactions on governments, companies and asset-backed securities worldwide, based on gross numbers. While designed to ease concerns about the amount of risk banks and investors amassed on borrowers from companies to homeowners, the report may have missed as much as 40 percent of the trades outstanding in the market, Cicione said.
The data are likely to underestimate the amount of net CDS exposure,'' Cicione, who correctly forecast in January that the cost of protecting European companies from default would rise, said in an interview.A broadening of the coverage to the entire market is what investors really need.''
Credit Swap Disclosure Obscures True Financial Risk (Update3) - Bloomberg.com
Can I evaluate Pamela Anderson's assets?
Oh, they're a bubble too...
Never mind.
PSgirl writes:
CSC--Maybe you need to learn to kitesurf.
Best drug EVER...well, windsurfing is anyway.
ac wrote: "Intractable" is a scary word coming from the Anti-Maestro himself.
It might also be precisely correct. On one of these threads (or perhaps in a different blog), someone pointed out that one consequence of "spreading the risk around" was that evaluation of the credit-worthiness of any party became more complex. Their risk-exposure, you see, depended on the risk-exposure of every other party with which they had any sort of contract. It would not take all that many years of promiscuous dealing before an exact risk-assessment required knowing the details of every party and every financial instrument in the system. Perhaps we have hit that point, in which case we really could run into the problem of there not being enough computing power available to resolve the analysis.
"
They were lamenting on CNBC that the investment banks HAVE to pay those bonuses to retain the top talent. "
whew, sure glad we had top talent working...cant imagine how bad things would be if the second string was in there
ice uncle b...I gawked at Hedonism from the outside, after walking up, floating a foot above the sand, from Negril. A spectacle of the worst of the rest of the world planted smack in the middle of the best Jamaican beaches.
Get yourself a shack on the beach and chill.
Just dont go in the off season, (now) ...you'll be accosted non stop to buy something with the "respect mon!" shout out. Horrid.
saggy ... crawling, UB!
The last bubble has formed!!!
A worldwide belief that the US Govt. can save the global economy has formed and Obama is the essence of the bubble.
It won't be pretty when this last one pops...
Ken writes:
It might also be precisely correct. On one of these threads (or perhaps in a different blog), someone pointed out that one consequence of "spreading the risk around" was that evaluation of the credit-worthiness of any party became more complex. Their risk-exposure, you see, depended on the risk-exposure of every other party with which they had any sort of contract. It would not take all that many years of promiscuous dealing before an exact risk-assessment required knowing the details of every party and every financial instrument in the system. Perhaps we have hit that point, in which case we really could run into the problem of there not being enough computing power available to resolve the analysis.
STD??
Kona,
The jub ale is great. Though I prefer the Cinder Cone.
Are you in or near Portland?
Perhaps you and I and Jim could grab
a few pints together sometime.
Longwaver wrote
"We are Hungry! We are Homeless! Obama Help Us!"
Maybe he will have his personal chef whip up some pop tarts for them.
Longwaver | 11.06.08 - 9:12 pm | #
not necessary
dubya, the true Christian he, has just promised to return to DC from his ranch in paraguay and work soup kitchens for the homeless
Noble writes:
Kona - I predict the exact opposite. We (the world) become even more integrated
Dream on. No personal feelings, just not how that mechanism of power works at a time like this.
Re: "The dollar can trade against the "Hoo" in an open market. "
No, no no .... you don't get to use the dollar, you trade those in for hoo's and you get a ratio exchange, i.e, you go to the IMF branch, give them your dollars and then they give you hoo's -- then, the guy behin you with Yen, turns in his stuff for his hoo's...
Hey, don't sell the Financiers short. They kept this bubble inflated far longer than it had any right to be and look at all the toxic crap they sold to foreigners. I mean the Gnomes
of Zurich are up their keisters in US subprime mortgage debt too.
read & pondered the stiglitz.
starting to come around the global currency unit idea.
in fact we already have it, actually two -- officially, the SDR (via the IMF). unofficially, the dollar.
perhaps it could work in the most equitable way possible by being voluntary exchange unit (with or without incentive)?
and was dominated by a floating weight of total global currency %, thus only radically adjust in times of global inflation/deflation?
just some thoughts to throw out.
Bear, you're totally speakin my language, man. Still wonder about cultural differences and what they might mean. That's what makes Oregon appealing. No concerns there really.
And you guys don't have to go to Hedonism/H2 to do that.
Freedom Acres (909)887-8757 So Cal's Finest on-premis clubt/Fredom Acres (909)887-8757 So Cal's Finest on-premis clubt/Fredom Acres (909)887-8757 So Cal's Finest on-premis clubt/Fredom Acres (909)887-8757 So Cal's Finest on-premis clubt/Fredom Acres (909)
And CR made me promise to state that he is NOT the dude in the back right of the pic wearing the blue shirt. If anyone says it's him, they're lying.
Remember, don't drink and smoke pot
fallonPDX,
Are you in or near Portland?
Except for Treasuries. Other than getting valued higher than a year ago.
"Get yourself a shack on the beach and chill"
As the kids say these days: "Word"
Windsurfing? Konookie: When I got to the end of the pier I found a giant lion headed man sitting under a sort of lean-to, smoking something that looked like a rolled up Sunday Times. You wahnt to smoke dis spliff wit me mon? No thanks, I said, but are you really the watersports director like your tshirt says? Yah mon. Can I go windsurfing? Yah mon, jus' be careful out there. Out I went. I don't know if I was careful or not. Is this what kitesurfing is like? Windsurfing, high as a kite? In a raging storm with 50 mph winds?
sorry, denominated.
though dominated might be a freudian slip worthy of consideration as well.
smoke writes:
Remember, don't drink and smoke pot
I forgot that once and got my blunt soggy...Won't make that mistake again. Now I smoke first, then take a sip.
We all keep pretending money is real. Based on nothing but belief. Based on acceptance. Based on fantasy.
I let the angst over my children's future go. No way any of this can be paid back. Everyone really does understand it but they have a hard time seeing the other side of this change. So do I.
I do look around me and feel ok. I think there will be unrest and needless violence but the infrastructure and education level is there. The populous is armed but they will use those arms to protect not conquer. I don't see a large majority of the population losing their minds and going out in a rampage, looting, burning, destroying. Too optimistic, maybe.
I'm well armed, part of the establishment, I know my neighbors, I can provide food, water, and security for 6 months of total collapse. We'll move past this and still have civilization. Black Swans notwithstanding.
The country survived the Civil War, numerous threats to societal order. Many wars. We always pulled through. The expansion of Manifest Destiny was incredibly life threatening. Disease, starvation, murder, accidents...Life continued and a nation grew.
You know who will do the worst if the economy collapses. The managers who ran this society. Their identities will be crushed. The rules they understood and enforced will lead them to be unable to transition.
Relax. Enjoy life, splurge if you have extra. Enjoy the experiences you might not have in 6 months. And love, love deeply.
Or sit and comment on the fall on an economic blog. All equal choices.
even fresher from the source. they just opened a satellite brewery in Portland one block north of Powell's Books.
and folks whom want to live someplace great. i highly recommend Oregon.
good people. good beer. good times.
we even have the wind surfing capital of the world hood river with the very good Full Sail brewery in the same locale.
Re: youth...inexperience outside the Financial Banking industry)
You probably meant:
youth...inexperience outside the Financial Baking industry)
Uncle Billy, Urbilaterian writes:
Windsurfing? Konookie: When I got to the end of the pier I found a giant lion headed man sitting under a sort of lean-to, smoking something that looked like a rolled up Sunday Times. You wahnt to smoke dis spliff wit me mon? No thanks, I said, but are you really the watersports director like your tshirt says? Yah mon. Can I go windsurfing? Yah mon, jus' be careful out there. Out I went. I don't know if I was careful or not. Is this what kitesurfing is like? Windsurfing, high as a kite? In a raging storm with 50 mph winds
50 is pretty insane. But ws is the most insane shiit in big waves/wind
OT - Interview with Paul Craig Roberts
Dr. Ignacy Nowopolski: Is the Global Economy a Mistake?
"The global economy, other than traditional trade, is perhaps a mistake. Initially, investors believed that global diversification in equity ownership would shield investment portfolios from being all weighted with the home countrys stocks, thus protecting portfolios from large declines from corrections. In practice, the global economy now brings down all equities together. The global economy subjects each national economy to the mistakes made elsewhere."
Full Sail brewery used to have some amazing barley wine at XMAS -- which is amazingly powerful (and tasty).
But it would free the world of depending on the vagaries of the American economy entirely. Anyway _ i have no serious work on it..
This was the, umm, ecu?
Short answer - given that this is all fiat and we could establish one any time we wanted for the last 80 years, why haven't we done one already?
I nominate Dr Seuss as guest speaker at the Nov 15 G20 meeting. He's clearly the best economist and political economy pundit of the last 30 years, based on the following works of powerful and immutable theory and demonstrated practice:
The Lorax - scarcity, and the merits of the snerkgelly hose, which is a reference to bringing SIVs, conduits, VIEs and dark pools all on book and transmitted as if you had smallish bees up your nose.
The Zax - congressional deadlock and how to move beyond position taking for the sake of it. See also gerrymanders and filibusters.
Pale Green Pants - for irrational bearish sentiment when ultimately the fundamentals of the economy are sound and we can all be friends.
Mrs McCave - for naming all of her 23 sons Dave, a useful handbook for path dependence and relations between operations and risk management, and with ratings agencies, branding every wacky product AAA.
The Sneetches - the fear of the Other, see also TED spread, interbank mutually assumed disssembling (MAD), and the bookies doing a number on currencies.
Should have the system back up and running in no time.
CC
Tanks for da tips, Geoff Mon.
At one point in the hammock I heard a voice above me and thought I was dreaming. When I was able to focus enough I realized there was a man with a large plastic baggie, hanging upside down in the tree above me, trying to get me to buy pot. Apparently they're not allowed to wander around the club at night, so they swim in around the fences and then run and shimmy up the trees.
Sakakibara Says a Strong Yen Is in Japan's National Interest
By Patricia Lui and Susan Li
Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Japan will benefit from a strong yen because it will hold down prices for raw materials, said Eisuke Sakakibara, formerly Japan's top currency official.
I still believe a strong yen is in the national interest of Japan, particularly in this situation when raw material prices will increase,'' Sakakibara said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Singapore yesterday. The yen may rise to as high as 80 per dollar as so-called carry trades unwind, said Sakakibara, who was dubbedMr. Yen'' during his 1997-1999 tenure at the Finance Ministry because of his influence over currency markets.
Uh, I'll just get back to topic here and post this guys info :
FRB: Governor Warsh
Dunno about you fellas, but this doesnt strike me as the kind of person that belongs in this role. I mean, 38? Took some coursework in econ while doing public policy? Got a JD and dabbled some more in econ related? Did M&A at Morgan for 7 years? Bleh bleh....Guys like this are a dime a dozen. Who's he screwin? Ohhhh, yeh. I got it.
Kona,
Have you tried McMenamins Pear Brandy? Yummy!
Edgefield Distillery Edgefield Spirits brought to you by McMenamins
of course McMenamins brew is good too.
Japans failure with monetary policy is clear, its a generation of clarity.
Notwithstanding my delight that a black man got elected president...
A worldwide belief that the US Govt. can save the global economy has formed and Obama is the essence of the bubble.
...Obama is, alas, a trailing indicator of the Roaring '00's economy. He's like a new toy that the white middle class has bought on their credit cards (and I do wonder how much of those small donations were on maxed out cards). But his base is only thinly held together by a fuzzy adulation that blurs social and racial and financial and political differences between them, rather than removes them.
Ginsu: I've done the surfing in big waves, and the windsurfing in big winds, but didn't ever marry the two. One of my heroes does it all the time:
YouTube - Laird Hamilton - The greatest big wave surfer to have lived?
Laird for SecTreas
No better high in the world than boxing training for 2 months; getting to the arena; getting your hands wrapped; weighing in for your weight class and seeing your opponent; your trainer telling you its time to go; the long walk to the boxing ring; the first bell; and a knockout victory.
Still gives me chills just thinking about those days!
That is right. A re-assessment of everything. Your SUV is not worth what you paid 10 years ago! Your house is not worth 3 times what you paid 4 years ago. Etc, etc.
SUGAR got the crap beat out of it today, pounded down 7%
When people are stressed, what do they go for? Chocolate, sugar, wine," Tracey said. "I think wine will always do well during tough economic times. You look at Prohibition -- times were wicked tough, but people still found their alcohol."
New businesses find sweet spot in tough economy |
KVAL CBS 13 - News, Weather and Sports - Eugene, OR
- Eugene, Oregon
| Local & Regional News
Uncle...it was more than a handful of years when I went, and the "memories" are a bit foggy. I made a ton of mistakes there...like, trying to walk off the beach to the main road and go searching around for a place to eat. Uhhh, no. Walkign the beach at night...uhhh, nope. Unless 12 year olds grabbin your parts is your cup of tea. I guess times were tough then and there, but I suspect it hasnt changed much. But at least my experience was a bit more authentic.
Oh, and when they rub green stuff on your feet to ease the sunburn, they want money afterwards. They arent just being nice.
Read this, remember Volvo truck orders and you got an economy that went from 120MPH to 10MPH in 2 months. Gonna be peeling people of windshields everywhere.
Ship Orders Plunged 90% Last Month on Credit, Trade Slowdown
By Wendy Leung
Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Global ship orders tumbled 90 percent last month as the credit crunch damped world trade and made it harder for shipping lines to borrow money, according to Lloyd's Registers Group.
Shipowners ordered a total of 37 container ships, tankers and other vessels in October, compared with 378 a year earlier, Lloyd's Register Chief Executive Officer Richard Sadler said in an interview yesterday at a conference in Dalian, China.
Oh to live in a place where ganjamen fall from the trees. The center of the stone.
Monnnnnnnnnnn
Geoff writes:
Uh, I'll just get back to topic here.
What can be more on topic than figuring out good, local alcoholic beverages to drink while watching deflation in action?
Just think of the drinking games yet to be had.
Bottoms Up!
No REALLY you little yen-dollar bandits want to hear this:
Sakakibara Says a Strong Yen Is in Japan's Interest (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
I still believe a strong yen is in the national interest of Japan, particularly in this situation when raw material prices will increase,'' Sakakibara said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Singapore yesterday. The yen may rise to as high as 80 per dollar as so-called carry trades unwind, said Sakakibara, who was dubbedMr. Yen'' during his 1997-1999 tenure at the Finance Ministry
markets are places for needs to be fullfilled.
sugar? 10 pound bag goes for a year round my house.
Oh to live in a place where ganjamen fall from the trees. The center of the stone.
Pataya Beach, Thailand in the early 70's
Well, personally, Im drinking my parents homemade wine at the moment. When I was a youngen, we'd steal it, and it earned the nickname PC. I'll let ya'll try and figure out what it stood for. Let's just say Im sippin it now.
[If Prop 13 is seriously challenged housing will immediately drop more double digits]
Just wait for Obama's haircut to the mortgage basis ceiling for mortgage interest deduction. That number will come down to conforming from ? $1MM ?
Then vanish over time...
I'm told I'm pretty entertaining after a beer, and I can rant pretty well. I would seriously be interested if this were to actually happen. My wife is sick of the topic..
Obama's economic transition advisor list is out. I don't like it. It looks pretty conservative - mostly Clintonites and CEOs. No Krugman, no Roubini, and I don't recognize any early opponents of the housing bubble or deregulation except Reich.
Ub, JJL...
Laird is the man. HUGE balls.
JJL, got to admit to recalling the adrenaline rush. Competition, eh? Never faced another man looking to take me out in organized, rules based fashion, though. Can only imagine.
Global ship orders tumbled 90 percent last month as the credit crunch damped world trade...
BDI collapse was the Halley Smoot of our "generation".
FRB: Federal Reserve Board: Error Page warsh.htm
I recognize this cat from a bar I used to work in. 'Dabbled' has many connotations in this case.
Pear Brandy? Sounds interesting, might be good.
ova: Nana Entertainment Plaza (one of a few sister sites like Pattaya now) and Soi Cowboy
Class of 2004
I am open to alcoholic induced rants that still have some intelligent thoughts to them. fallon@pdx.edu not a student but an edu. and my spouse is sick of the political economy gab too. so i can commiserate. spammers, trolls, and yucksters will not be tolerated as all email autoforwards before reaching the final destination.
its not just a Russian en-wenchin.
Who has the tubbies? what are they moving, and why?
(and I do wonder how much of those small donations were on maxed out cards)
...yes enquiring minds want to know...
wonder how much his contributions went up after the stimulus checks came in???
"[Policymakers] should be steady when financial market participants are fearful, and fearful when markets appear steady."
Governor Kevin Warsh, Nov 6, 2008
I note that the sources of the Federal Reserves policy errors during the Depression went much deeper than a failure to understand the role of money in the economy or the lack of reliable monetary statistics. Policymakers of the 1930s observed the correlates of the monetary contraction, such as deflation and bank failures. However, they questioned not only their own capacity to reverse those developments but also the desirability of doing so. Their hesitancy to act reflected the prevailing view that some purging of the excesses of the 1920s, painful though it might be, WAS BOTH NECESSARY AND INEVITABLE.
Remarks by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke
At the Fourth ECB Central Banking Conference, Frankfurt, Germany
November 10, 2006
Uncle Billy, Urbilaterian writes:
Windsurfing, high as a kite? In a raging storm with 50 mph winds
Well, you might be able to kite in 50 mph winds if you are heavy. But, if you are light, forget about it--you would get blown into the stratosphere.
kitesurf the gorge - Google Videos
Well, personally, Im drinking my parents.....
UB,
You would think that if this guy wanted to push the envelope, he would surf in the nude and pit himself against Mother Nature and not hold back...
so possibilities tomorrow are 2: hold, sell
this binary possibility is favorable to the simplistic mind of the early 21st century investor. Tamps down probability a bit, I'd say.
Is this tail fat or thin? I'd step on it
consequences
How's the cannibalism in Oregon?
OK OK, I'll put down the alcohol and pick up an apostrophe.
Anonymous writes:
"[Policymakers] should be steady when financial market participants are fearful...
the OEA team:
don't sleep on Laura Tyso
we aint eatin the live ones, yet.
All it does is friggn rain here:
LOOD WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SEATTLE WA
532 PM PST THU NOV 06 2008
...THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SEATTLE HAS ISSUED A FLOOD WARNING
FOR THE FOLLOWING RIVERS IN WASHINGTON...
BOGACHIEL RIVER NEAR LA PUSH AFFECTING CLALLAM COUNTY.
SKOKOMISH RIVER NEAR POTLATCH AFFECTING MASON COUNTY.
1.5 BOE, come to heal, bitch!
We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world.
Huh. And here I was thinking that prices always reflected fundamentals.
I wonder if we should tell the economists.
Nothing like facing another person, as equals, with no crap in the way; just skill versus skill. Crowd either behind you or against you makes no difference, you just want to win. I loved it so much, but the broken hands, broken noses, and time needs meant it was not a long term thing. Plus I was never good enough to go pro! Still, boxing is the most basic competition there is. Watch Aaron Pryor vs. Alexis Arguello form 1982 to see what beauty is.
hang in there Washington, soon headed south I'm sure. Best of luck.
"Ginsu the falling knife writes:
http://bumperstickers.cafepress....umper/ 308179370"
Would I get a discount if I bought in bulk? I'm thinking about putting one on every Suburban/Tahoe/Escalade/Hummer I can find.
First material and positive citation and maybe industry medal for Obama is for contributions to the brewing industry.
Anheuser-Busch closed up today.
CC
fundamental values are sketchy?
WTF?
turn my bank account into zilch?
I blame it all on Global Swarming!
Maybe my al gore rythms are a bit off but there ain't been a freakin sunspot all year.
Gonna be a bunch of 3 dog nights.
Wheat in the teens! I need a new jonny jump.
Late to the party.
What say you that North Carolina went to Obama because of all the Cali emigrants?
I work in econ analysis in SoCal and we used the Raleigh-Durham area as a comp for Orange County.
Fellow employee moved there in summer 2007.
Bit off topic, but who here thinks the GMAC bank holding company announcement comes tomorrow, and is a way to give another small boost to the spin on the grim employment market announcement that somehow isnt as quite as bad as the story from GS that it would be -300k?
Id bet my arse that GS is bustin long tomorrow on its own manufactured rally.
"Snakes....why's it gotta be snakes?"
"Asps...very dangerous. You go first."
And hence, Im not in the market tomorrow.
seb,
Not a chance, it starts and then we grow moss for 9 months!
Re: Yup, here comes the rain....This was in my inbox this morning, "New information is strongly suggesting a stalled storm centered over the north to central Cascades trailing back across the Olympics to well offshore to the SW. Several inches of rainfall from this event could easily get rung out in the mountain areas as well as adjacent lowlands. Right now, the target zones for the most rain and runoff extend from Whatcom to King County westward through northern Grays Harbor to south of Forks."
The WSDOT Blog: Watches, warnings and forecasts...
have read no other comments, apologies if this is old...
... I would advance the following: We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world.
--
SCREAM THIS FROM THE HILL TOPS!!
Does anyone else hear Jas laughing?
Okay back on topic:
"We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."
We being the Central Banks. This means they are clueless about what to do other than
So 1 and 2 are not looking so good. So that leaves number 3. But the New Finance makes making the debt lenders whole very complex, figuring out who far down to guarantee the loss really just rolling dice, and preventing morale hazard nearly impossible.
Then there are the smaller investors whom are underwater on their rental (the one you kept because after the improvements the market tanked) and their owner occupied house.
If you can figure out how to make 3 work (perhaps a National Short Sale with the owners not subject to income gain). Then we could find some kind of a bottom.
Bottoms Up!
Nothing like facing another person, as equals, with no crap in the way...
I loved it so much, but the broken hands, broken noses, and time needs meant it was not a long term thing. Watch Aaron Pryor vs. Alexis Arguello form 1982 to see what beauty is.
JJL
See here? When this man is starving and fighting for his life, you'll have to take the whole cannibalism thing much more seriously. You think he's ripping your face off with a potato peeler, but he thinks he's creating art.
This is why you need bear repellent. It's good for 30 feet of charging feral man.
Seen on CNBC tonight by some guy named Ross:
New Prez needs to;
1. Buy up homes
2. Loan unlimited money to auto industry
3. Make unlimited money loans to consumers regardless of payback possibility (not meaningful he said)
OK, let the fun begin!
Ship Orders Plunged 90% Last Month on Credit, Trade Slowdown
That's a confirmation of what the Baltic Dry index is saying. We're likely headed into more regionalized trading which means less need for a single, centralized currency.
Interesting.
There's an implication from the derivatives failure, currency issues that "globalization" and Nassim Taleb's meanderings that "globalization" is a bad complexlty vs value tradeoff.
There's a limit to scalability of systems & organizations. One of my favorite examples is vacuum tube systems. If you tried to build one of today's $10 CPUs using vacuum tubes, it would fail almost immediately as the failure rate of each individual component is too high in such large numbers.
There is a limit to the scale of today's devices and software structures. I don't know what that scale is (nobody does, I think) but Microsoft's abandoment of Vista may be a data point.
fallonpdx,
Which are your favourite cities in the world in terms of how they manage growth?
...geeze...just got a flash from a jungle in 1969 with a bunch of stoners holding M-14s talkin' trash too......Gotta go....
Currently Smoking Cannabis,
I guess I left out "willingly". To face the prospect of conflict, on your own volition, without knowing the terms takes discipline and commitment; two qualities lacking today.
Yes, it is a Nietzchean economy, a revaluation of all values.
Confessional, sins of the father, the next shoe to drop, what are these things?
Is it just me, or did manipulation of the stock and oil markets reach a crescendo on Tuesday, only to vanish into the ether?
Can somebody explain to me how the crash of the baltic index and decline of shipping/imports is not going to TANK railroad stocks as well? I'd expect it to work with a delay.
Given the runup in railroad shares over the past year (tempered a bit lately), can somebody explain to me why it isn't a GREAT time to short BNI and other railroads?
New Prez needs to;
New prez needs to figure out a couple of things that virtually nobody touches on. The last two US depressions reduced the average workweek by 15-20%.
Products created == Products consumed.
Consumption Time + Production Time = (24 hrs - 8hrs) X 7 days X Population
So as productivity goes up, consumption must rise, too.
However, total time is finite.
Ergo, total production time must fall to
a) reduce rate of increasing production
b) allow more consumption time
Of course, it's how you distribute work & free time across the population that's the issue.
Nobody talks about that.
That's a core issue, though.
If this guy is right, and I am afraid that he is, all debt has to be cut in half. Tough to be a lender but the fate of the country is at stake. We cannot survive every worker going broke. Bring on the jubilee!
tomorrow will either have an epic sell off or it won't
Gavshire my man, YOU sir win the biscuit!
Very interesting post, Broward.
Thanks.
the biscuit is so tender, my complements
Currently Smoking Cannabis writes:
This is why you need bear repellent. It's good for 30 feet of charging feral man.
You, my friend, have a future in the octagon.
Just have to come up with a catchy name. Would you be willing to wear those night vision goggles?
"can somebody explain to me why it isn't a GREAT time to short BNI and other railroads"
Because they are my clients?
Because Buffet will be sad?
Because we may have a little rally into the end of the year?
Those are the only three I can think of.
you landed on Short Line, 200 or morgage the house.
Although many ponys may be given in any one day, there is only ONE true biscuit award and Gavshire is THE man.
could we have original comments, rather than copies?
Can somebody explain to me how the crash of the baltic index and decline of shipping/imports is not going to TANK railroad stocks as well? I'd expect it to work with a delay
Well, the spare railroad capacity in the US is already allocated to FEMA for movement of dissidents to "the camps".
Ha ha.
I hope.
Actually, I think you're right. But there's a couple of factors to consider....
1 - movement by truck is extremely granular and flexible but more expensive. With gas prices so high, there might be an corresponding increase in railroad movement versus decrease in trucking
2 - you don't know the percentage of railroad traffic that moves overseas cargo. I don't know it, either but you may want to verify it. If it's relatively small percentage, then what's reflected into railroads from overseas collapse may not be large, percentagewise.
3 - Holders of railroad stocks like Buffett and Gates may be willing to weather the downturn in expectation of an upturn in domestic production. You need to know their sentiment and percentage of holding to judge.
Good question, though.
This is horrible. When everything washes out, Buffett will only be worth like $5 Billion.
The choices you make, make you.
Sweet, I think I'll up my negative stake in railroads in the morning. Lots of meat on this bone!
albrt, given that they're your clients -- can you give any insight into what's going on now? Declining volumes etc? Or do they typically have a lot of forward contracts, or declining fuel costs that would offset the downturn?
Of course, it's how you distribute work & free time across the population that's the issue. Nobody talks about that.
Some people do, and they are called French socialists. And then there's the people in France who talk about it.
s_puttnick writes:
Late to the party.
What say you that North Carolina went to Obama because of all the Cali emigrants?
obama received 45% of all "white" votes and nearly half of voters 65 and older, traditionally a well of republican votes...and more than 2/3rds of all voters 30 and younger.
Barack Obama: Who voted for him? - Telegraph
deflation is buff"s friend, I'd say
of the real.
price means something with respect to security.