"FirstFed readily admits it made the mistake of dropping its own standards in a misguided attempt to remain competitive '

But they were well intentioned and looking out for the ordinary people. Leave them alone, they're beyond reproach

It'll be interesting to see how much (extra and unecessary) damage is caused by letting this and other large institutions continue to operate, long after they should have been shut down.

Delay tactics can look brilliant in the short run. Let's examine this brilliant strategy in a year or two.

Bank Failure Tuesday? Hoocoodanode.

I have been pointing this out for some time now, and openly wondering why First Federal is still in business.

It would be a shame to see the last Option ARM lender go away, as is there are some valid cases for using that type of loan.
To their credit, they did see the cliff coming and started backpedaling early.
But watching them try to put on the brakes was like watching a Road Runner cartoon - you just know that Wile E. Coyote is going to go off that cliff no matter what he does.

ac,

Nice snark. Made me smile.

This market is teasing me, bringing down Put option prices to just above my bid price! I demand bargains!

Speaking of the OTS regulating FED - Who regulates the Fed ?

I'd like to put in a request for a 'retail sales and inventory' type of thread. We haven't surveyed the carnage in that sector for some time.

Goldman Sachs.

"But the thrift was also one of the first to pull back. By late 2005 and into 2006, managers made the decision to stop underwriting the riskiest loans and begin requiring proof of income. Within two weeks, their business dropped in half.

“We really cut back,” Heimbuch said. “We took a lot of grief for that. People were saying, ‘Why aren’t you lending? Everyone else is lending. What’s the matter with you?’ ”

In 2007, FirstFed originated just $300 million in single-family loans for its own portfolio – a move management said has helped it survive while its competitors could not.

Still, Giraldin pointed out, just a year of unwise lending has pushed the company to the brink of failure.

“Most of our pain and suffering comes from that ’05 production,” he said."

Gee, they saw the trainwreck coming and jumped ship just before it hit.

I wonder if they have a dead peasant strategy in place for cds?

Offshore fund writes 20x CDS exposure for their bonds- buys up the bonds on the open market- does a gift style refi in return for equity and blows the shorts out of the water.

I imagine this will be the new way to recapitalize- steal the money out of the short sellers' pockets.

Someday this war's gonna end...

Since Fri Jul 3rd is a holiday that leaves two possibilities. Corus is a furball that needs three days to unravel or the FDIC is out of money to pay holiday premiums.

"Keep the FED fine, but the trade off is ..."

Talk about talking my book. And a real shill, too.

The crisis IS the lack of regulation.

Bank XYZ is just some trademark with a tarp on it. You whack the main mole and two new mole rats emerge with the letters rearranged. They inbreed by design, all with allegiance to a select few mother-fuckers.

Don't get fooled again by too big to fail: in 3-card calvinball you have "red is the new black, in our significant judgment." No use letting all the banks fail if the bankers keep the Fed system running.

I'm noticing today that the Big Stimulus Impact is really starting now for oil prices and overpriced assets more generally.

Oil was up 3.5% today! As you can imagine, I can hardly wait till the "serious oomph" kicks in.

It's comforting to know that all the debt our gov't is racking up is being put to good use.

FirstFed might be a victim of Greater Fart Theory if we have State Failure Wednesday (SFW).

Even though you know your funds are within insured limits, why leave your savings in an institution that is obviously insolvent? If depositors moved their money it would force the FDIC to take action, would it not?

1c, If your book is short ICE, watch out.

It would be funny to get a look at the subscriber list for "Fraud" magazine, eh? Nice link, codeotis.

From the last thread:

@CR:

"RockyR, well - since this is what I believe (I agree with Hamilton), I think I should step up and say it. I know others disagree - and that is why I can't stay silent."

Right on, man. Good for you.

Scalia can surprise. Check out Melendez on lab tests.

Kunstler came to my law school and told us how each of the 9 would vote on the flag-burning case he was about to argue, with Scalia the swing for the First Amendment.

9 for 9.

rich (profile) wrote on Mon, 6/29/2009 - 1:12 pm

In regard to the last pigged thread, it's presumptuous of CR or anyone else on this board to judge Bernanke now. You don't know enough about what's really going on behind the scenes. I'm betting what you can't see is nasty.

Excuse me. You talkin' ta me? You talkin' ta me? Presumption? Of all the gall. There were just posted references going back 4 plus years expressing concern. Since then the biggest bubble bust of at least the last century. That Bernanke had a hand in getting us to where we are now is more than enough regardless of where we end up.

"It's a very tricky environment"

of course, the opposite is true, which is why the very wealthy had a truly horrible 2008 (much like their 1929). deflation isn't kind to the owners of the world.

the problem with that scenario is that when asset-appreciation wheels turn backwards, it doesn't necessarily help the working man with cash savings - it more often costs him his job. and that's the real crime, not so much the confiscation-through-inflation, but the way average people suffer due to the volatility.

The subscriber list for "fraud" magazine, an advisory newsletter with a $100 million a year per subscription charge, is the same as the BODs of the 15 largest meganational financial CONglomerates.

Noise alert:

"Mission Accomplished"
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops pulled out of Baghdad on Monday, triggering jubilation among Iraqis hopeful that foreign military occupation is ending six years after the invasion to depose Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi soldiers paraded through the streets in their American-made vehicles draped with Iraqi flags and flowers, chanting, dancing and calling the pullout a "victory."

"to keep the frogs in the boiling pot, no?"

the real problem in the past 5 years was a bit like mickey with the dancing mops - the middle class got a taste of wild asset inflation via real estate, and couldn't resist the urge to supplement stagnant wages with it. this is why some feel that capital gains should be confined to their social betters...

I still have around $400 with them & I hate 'em. They bought out the bank I used and failed my three requests to forward me a new ATM/Debt card. One would think banks are supposed to do it automatically. I guess they didn't need deposits at that time.
Will a bank like that survive in a long run. : ) Is anyone that lucky?

That Bernanke had a hand in getting us to where we are now is more than enough regardless of where we end up.

As they said in Monty Python And The Holy Grail....

Burn him anyway!!!

ICE Trust may become the bad bank when the Ponzi implodes, it has guaranteed, since receiving its NY Fed charter in March, hundreds of billions in CDS.

But we must end too big too fail, they all keep saying.

Hong Kong Banks ‘Killing Themselves’ in Mortgage War (Update1)
By Kelvin Wong

June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong high school teacher Chris Poon’s dream of buying his first apartment was dashed in December when banks refused to fund more than 50 percent of the HK$3.5 million ($450,000) purchase.

Poon, 33, tried again in May and got a loan covering 70 percent of the price for the 700-square-foot (65-square-meter) apartment in Hong Kong’s Sai Wan Ho district from BOC Hong Kong (Holdings) Ltd. The mortgage rate was 2.25 percent, down from the 3.5 percent that Poon was discussing with lenders last year.

Mortgage rates in the city are the lowest in at least 19 years, as far back as records are available, to offset slower demand for other types of credit during Hong Kong’s worst recession in a decade. Among developed economies, only Japan offers similarly cheap loans, as its central bank has kept interest rates below 1 percent for the past 14 years, said Leland Sun, founder of Pan Asian Mortgage Co.

“Hong Kong banks are killing themselves with the low rates,” said Sun, whose Hong Kong-based firm advises homebuyers.
Hong Kong Banks ‘Killing Themselves’ in Mortgage War (Update1) - Bloomberg.com

"Oil was up 3.5% today! As you can imagine, I can hardly wait till the "serious oomph" kicks in."

There was a point this morning at which Bloomberg ran a headline crediting rising oil prices and their benefit to oil companies for gains in the equity indices.

double double

and then the next year you could have a huge increase in the price of real estate

inflation pressure is not so random in its effects.

Real estate prices are driven by "affordability", which is a mixture of interest rates, area employment, loan programs (down payment, de-facto income ratios, qualifying on teaser rates, etc). Real estate isn't a commodity product, it is the source and sink of all wealth, the "mother of all monopolies" to quote Churchill from his LP days.

Commodity inflation in the absence of wage growth will put DOWNWARD pressure on rents and real estate, ceteris paribus.

"Otis I have made a large call of what I see as GS's bluff, and I'm prepared to call more."

Good luck shorting GS. As the government's broker, they will always have free money and better info.

Anyone shorting GS in this environment, where the government is completely captured by bankers, is implicitly shorting the US government.

Here's an Eye Opener ... from Naked Capitalism

Chinese Banks: "An Accident Waiting to Happen"

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is even more dour, thanks to the reading a less than cheery reports from Fitch:
China's banks are veering out of control. The half-reformed economy of the People's Republic cannot absorb the $1,000bn (£600bn) blitz of new lending issued since December.

Chinese Banks: "An Accident Waiting to Happen" « naked capitalism

I thought we were all supposed to die of SARS, or was it AIDS?
Fear 24/7/365.

Clinton stopped short of saying the Obama administration would demand the return to power of the deposed president, who was forcibly removed from the country on Sunday morning by the Honduran military.

What did I tell ya? The goal is to prevent creeping socialism in Honduras as a back door to Mexico.

Next move, Chavez. And it will involve troops or planes.

Chavez hasn't forgotten how the U.S. helped to steal a Presidential election from the Socialists in Mexico.

"Fear 24/7/365.
- the new growth industry"

Nothing new about it -- goes back to the beginning. But thanks to modern media, any 12 year old can now tell you 12-14 ways the world -- or a large part of it -- can end. Kind of distorts the discussion.

"Chinese Banks: "An Accident Waiting to Happen""

So, the Great Panic all over again? The world economy brought down by a new economic giant that doesn't know how to handle its new leadership role?

"His actions over the past two years have been guided by one and only one motive, that being to minimize the harm caused to ordinary people by the financial turmoil."

I do agree with Rob and debtfree. That has to be one of the worst sentences CR ever agreed to. It's like an ad or something.

Ok, folks:

1. The foreclosure judge in Palm Beach County has, right now 40,000 cases.
   More to come.!
2. There is another foreclosure judge, don't know how many she has.

3 Crist's big increase in filing fees is going to the court system, the judge said, but
she and all the other judges got a 2% pay cut. No court employees did. Of course
some of them got laid off, and no judges got laid off.

The one judge has summary judgments 3 days a week; the other one, 2 days per
week.

hummm, 150 days, 40k foreclosures, roughly 267 per day. And that's if
no other foreclosure filings happen.

It can't be done.

Do all you deficiency judgt freaks see why there aren't gonna be any deficiencies?

"That singles it out as the only facility among all Toyota's plants in the U.S. and Canada as the only unionized facility, making it the most expensive plant to operate in North America."

Reads like the LA Times has fired its copy editors. I expect that from the local medianews rag, but c'mon guys.

Bob Dodds ( any relation to Fred C.?) - of course, you're correct. I should have said, "The only growth industry"

ug99...

No money, court funding was actually cut.

I think they used cheaper appointed masters after the Fla land boom of '26 and during
GDI.

Judge said that 4 month service of process thing discussed before doesn't apply to Palm
Beach County. Maybe. . .

Don't forget these guys. They will definitely be the last one standing.

https://www.gmacrescap.com/newsarchive/REL-06-15a-2005.asp

It's now impossible to turn back the clock and have a fair election in Honduras, just as it is in Iran.

In Honduras, the big-business and pro-capitalist (e.g., U.S.) forces will get their man, just as the mullahs did in Iran.

You see, it's not really about democracy at all.

it's about which side of democracy you're on.

There's one fly in the U.S. ointment, and it's the relatively central and moderate South American states that don't like the precedent of successful military coups in this era. There hasn't been one in this hemisphere in more than a decade.

There's no doubt both the CIA and U.S. military are active in Honduras and saw things hitting a snapping point, so they blessed a coup. But Honduras is literally surrounded on all sides (except north) by socialist states. Venezuela can rightfully say that Honduras is in its sphere of influence, as much as the U.S. can. Dueling Monroe doctrines.

Oh, and I'm sure it's worser in Miami-Dade, it's just that it's spread out to all the
civil judges except probate and family lae.

An extra 4-5k cases per judge, plus all their car accidents and other stuff.

As I said, it can't be done.

Continuing what energycon's article said:

The decline in Hong Kong mortgage rates has spurred a recovery in the housing market, with home sales rising 42 percent by volume in May, the biggest increase since February 2008 , data compiled by the government’s Land Registry show.

Prices for so-called mass-market homes, or those smaller than 1,000 square feet, increased about 10.5 percent in the two months through May 31, after falling almost 25 percent during the second half of 2008, according to Hong Kong-based Centaline Property Agency Ltd.

Falling money market rates have underpinned the mortgage price battle. The three-month Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate fell as low as 0.33 percent on May 21, the lowest since January 2005, as the city’s central bank cut borrowing costs sold the local currency to keep it from appreciating against the dollar, boosting the supply of money in the banking system.

At 0.36 percent, the Hibor is 84 basis points lower than the equivalent London Interbank Offered Rate. The spread was 60 points on April 22, just before the Hibor began to plunge.

“Last year the banks sounded like they didn’t really want to lend me any money,” said Poon, whose mortgage plan from BOC Hong Kong was 2.75 percent below the bank’s prime rate. “This time it felt like they’ve got a price war going. Every bank I went to tried to tell me they could offer better deals than the others.”

$450,000 for a 700 sq ft place; and now they're increasing by 10.5 percent in 2 months.

This jives with other anecdotal evidence I'm hearing from my Asian contacts.

Now that's refreshing info!

This is one way to balance USA's massively overpriced housing -- by forcing excessive savings to shift to other countries, so that every country ends up having a bigger, more overpriced housing bubble than USA.

When the rest of the world bubbles up, USA houses will be cheap in comparison and we can start the whole party again.

Before you guys continue to complain about US govt/Fed's recklessness and moral decay, etc -- see this news clearly. This is in Asia.

I've said it before and I will say it again, The root of all credit-oriented excesses starts with a simple peg, which creates excess savings, and excessive and wrong investment / inflation in the wrong industries.

I think Code Otis, that any such attempts would be regarded as a lack
of due process. And how would you lump them? Different Plaintiffs, remember,
at least dozens, and maybe hundreds.

rich - the only thing we want to know here is, how can we make a buck off this? Any ideas?

HomeGnome,

Nice handle BTW - yes, it is black stem rust first seen in Uganda in 1999 - it has been slowly working its way towards the Eurasian breadbasket, where it is knocking on the door...it has been found in Iran, current drought conditions have slowed the spread.

Only real solution is breeding up a resistant strain(s ) of wheat and distributing the seed. Bad news is, takes a good five years, good news is, they have already started (google Borlaug and ug99). It's a race when cereal stocks globally are at very low levels...

How will the Obama can car compete?

• different demographic markets?

My son in Tampa sez it's dead.

Perhaps he shouldn't believe his lying eyes.

Florida is a penal colony. Every house an island media bunker where the only escape is in a four wheeled jail cell to a segregated shopping experience controlled by corporate colonists.

barfly (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Mon, 6/29/2009 - 5:23 pm
rrich - the only thing we want to know here is, how can we make a buck off this? Any ideas?
.--- - .. ... .... . .-. - --.. (homepage, profile) wrote on Mon, 6/29/2009 - 5:24 pm replyIgnore userAcetaminophen,
Helps with headaches and PMS, destroys your liver.

I was going to suggest trafficking in human livers, but then I realized you're talking about Honduras ....

"Dueling Monroe doctrines. "

Monroe's second term was at the same time as Bolivar's service as President of Gran Colombia.

"Bob - pretty sure the monarchy had something to do with it. No need to build consensus when there's an executioner on standby. "

Yeah, didn't say so because I didn't remember the details. But it was more of moral authority thing in a responsibility vacuum. The fire got out of control because the lord mayor of London feared he would be personally liable if he tore down any of the surrounding houses as a firebreak; he was just a businessman,being mayor was like being head of the Chamber of Commerce. So he went home and let the free market take care of itself.

The royals gained a lot of standing when the king at the time (can't remember which) dispatched his courtiers and a brother or two to take personal command of the firefighting.

When the only alternative to royalty is a spineles bunch of merchants who disavow any responsibility to anything, royalty's going to win every time. When spineless irresponsible merchants control your society... expect fire. Possibly a monarchy after. Certainly a populist.

1currencyyogi:
I don't know why you complain about this 1 world currency. With online brokerages everyone can choose to store their wealth in their own "basket of currency" through the use of ETFs, futures, or other types of "financial instruments". Can you explain further? This is also why I don't see a very quick collapse of the dollar; as long as someone is buying our short-term Ts the dollar should be safe; no? It's that time when we have to roll over a large amount of T-bonds that we will take the hit... no? Isn't the use of the dollar as currency already "priced in"? Or do you simply object to currency manipulation or something? I'm confused...

Bad stuff still coming in Florida.

But the state govt is not about to implode like Cali.
Maybe if it stays really bad for the next 2-3 years.

No steps to defer or fix implosion again today?

"I am not aware of them actually backing any CDS. "

Otis ICE trust is a too big to fail bank, the latest. A clearinghouse, like a stock exchange, makes good on your deal even when the counterparty implodes. When the clearinghouse implodes, either you cover it with a tarp or all bets are off.

What killed me was saying the consumer economy in FL will recover. Ridiculous. Granted the no state income tax thing has helped a bit, but the property tax problem looms Id think. Have people there been able to get reassessments? Seems from this its wacky there!

Florida's Property Taxes Go Wacky in Housing Slump - TIME

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Judge Orders All State Senators to Attend Session

An Albany State Supreme Court judge ruled today that all 62 New York State senators must attend a session together tomorrow in the Senate chamber in an attempt by the governor to end the political stalemate which has crippled Albany for the past three weeks.

However, the ruling does not say that anything needs to be accomplished in the session.
http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/101498/judge-orders-all-state-senators-to-attend-session/Default.aspx

What is your guess on the current estimated cost of TARP? The CBO knows!

Would you believe $159 billion?

Here's a NPR story on the latest CBO estimate

(Most of the cost is auto industry bailouts, they say.)

i hear ya ...Im really surprised it is still on the market. Well, wait, Im not really surprised. (brother gdd9000)

"What is your guess on the current estimated cost of TARP? The CBO knows!"

I thought the taxpayer was going to make money on TARP. That is what I was told, anyway.

brendan - thx. Its something else I was thinking of , not aspirin. I wasnt IN med school, just going through with a GF who was. Lucky i didnt have patients. haha.

barfly (profile) wrote on Mon, 6/29/2009 - 5:35 pm replyIgnore userNothing quite like the smug, self-satisfied superiority of a self-made man.

samdog, Honduran livers!

___

Sorry, barfly--already a major export, right behind bananas.

"I thought the taxpayer was going to make money on TARP. That is what I was told, anyway. "

~~~

exigent circumstances ...

IOW s

bald face lies that are already forgotten by the public ...

thanks to a compliant MSM propaganda machine ...

The hoocoodanode crowd saw through that BS on day 1. And since day 1, the news has just gone from fantasy, to trickle down reality, as the losses accumulate, and any imaginary profits we'd make evaporated like an oasis in the desert. (were never there)

Which gets (once again) at the issue of BB integrity. Did he really believe this, or just say it? Again, incompetence or lacking integrity? funny how we keep coming back to that.

Sorry, barfly--already a major export, right behind bananas.

Damn! Always a day late, and a dollar short.

Cali gets bailed out to much Union and political fall out. Obama can't risk loosing the votes.

I read that Time article and it is about what you'd expect.

There are some accuracies.

Taxes are due on Jan 1 of a given year. . .but nobody knows what they are
until about late October of that given year. So property is assessed as of
January which is nice if it's going up, but not so nice if it's going down.

The county will reduce on its own occasionally, a lawyer with a place in
Aventura, a nice area, said his assessment was reduced by 100k.

When I went to the tax hearing, it was clear that the hearing officer wasn't
gonna reduce anybody's assessment unless you kicked him in the kneecaps--or had
feethy pictures.

The millage thing is no biggie for the homesteaded, and causes the pain
to be shared by commercial and rental property.

Taxes will continue to go up 3% a year on the homesteaded because many
of the homesteaded--including me--have an house value for tax purposes at maybe
50% less than it "should" be, even including the tremendous drop in
values.

Yep, houses are wildly different in taxes for that reason.

Foreclosured properties should pay too much for just the present year. Then
the county should reduce them, or the new owners should appeal.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's first cases of the new H1N1 flu have raised concerns that if the virus spreads it could combine with the entrenched and deadly H5N1 avian influenza to create a more lethal strain of flu.

Tamiflu resistance?:

Yahoo! 404 - Page Not Found

Is it too late for Cali to be declared a bank holding company, thus eligible for an unlimited backdoor handout via the Treasury-Fed-Goldman Sachs extra-constitutional money-laundering disbursement mechanisn?

• with no strings attached? I doubt it.

ug99...

The BIG ONE...

What's ug99?

Cali is done ... kaput ...

Like watching a car go over a cliff ...

Just a question of how many times it rolls and how many bounces it takes ...

reposted for lliz:

Ug99 - it is black stem rust first seen in Uganda in 1999 - it has been slowly working its way towards the Eurasian breadbasket, where it is knocking on the door...it has been found in Iran, current drought conditions have slowed the spread.

Only real solution is breeding up a resistant strain(s ) of wheat and distributing the seed. Bad news is, takes a good five years, good news is, they have already started (google Borlaug and ug99). It's a race when cereal stocks globally are at very low levels...

If I wanted to be morbid I would advise investors here to think about being bullish in ventilators, body bags and ice making machines.

• now yer talkin', pavel-

Who makes body bags?? Nevermind, they are prolly made in China.

Must go eat something.

Patrick signs state budget
By Matt Viser
Globe Staff

Governor Deval Patrick today signed a budget for next year that cuts aid to cities and towns, pares back programs throughout state government, and imposes $1 billion in additional taxes on Massachusetts residents, shoppers, and visitors.

In signing the $27 billion budget, which is $400 million less than the proposal approved this month by House and Senate lawmakers, Patrick issued vetoes that cut funding in a number of areas. The budget takes effect Wednesday, the first day of the next fiscal year.

“This is without question an austere – and in some respects, painful – budget,” Patrick told reporters. “It contains many unavoidable spending cuts, and many of them will have a painful impact.”

He said the budget “reflects the stark economic realities of the time.”
Patrick signs state budget - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe

It may turn out that our most disastrous mistake was not lack of banking and finance oversight, but neglect of the public health system. It seems to be an ingrained instinct of human beings not to worry about the future if the future isn't worrying us, and to count on something turning up to save us. I think it's in the program.

i think it is warfarin....or some blood thinner that rhymes with asparin. hahaha. Well, funny until you screw up and mix them.

Oh no, man ...

Who rattled the other do[aw]g's cage with union talk?

@lawyerliz,

Re the Fla foreclosure backlog, how do you see that being resolved? And how do you think that compares to levels in other bubble states?

Edit: there was an earlier link to Yahoo showing the huge backlog in lender processing. It looks like the there are multiple bottlenecks in the system.

Only real solution is breeding up a resistant strain(s ) of wheat and distributing the seed. Bad news is, takes a good five years, good news is, they have already started (google Borlaug and ug99). It's a race when cereal stocks globally are at very low levels...

Getting harder and harder to do as the genome pool gets narrower & narrower... recomb technology works fast but if the pool is narrow it's like a really fast card shuffling machine with only one hand's worth of cards. Reshuffling the same cards over and over. That analogy was offered up to me by a friend who owns a boutique seed corn company. Its a real threat and NOBODY is talking about it. One of these decades a real humdinger [if not ug99] is going to nail a major food source and we will have a 'potato famine' on a global scale... kill 2-3 billion people or something like that.

"Man cannot live by bread alone."

The preacher told the congregation: Jim isn't dead, he's gone to a higher reward.

A voice called out from the back of the church:

I got a hundred dollars says he's dead.

Short term, I don't see it being resolved.

The funding of the Courts would have to go up drastically, and
it's not gonna happen.

Soybeans! That's a gas...

It looks like the there are multiple bottlenecks in the system.

Hoocouldanode? I love that phrase.

"Its a real threat and NOBODY is talking about it."

Buy heritage seeds, share with your neighbors. Be ready. It's real.

dryfly (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Mon, 6/29/2009 - 3:14 pm

Only real solution is breeding up a resistant strain(s ) of wheat and distributing the seed. Bad news is, takes a good five years, good news is, they have already started (google Borlaug and ug99). It's a race when cereal stocks globally are at very low levels...
Getting harder and harder to do as the genome pool gets narrower & narrower...

Slight modification. The genetic diversity of the grain pool is getting narrower only in practice. This is because of some truly insane patent policies. The variety and characteristics of available plants is extremely diverse but because there isn't a patentable provenace with which to extort a profit they aren't released.

energyecon -

OT, but thought you'd be interested in this quote from Dave Rosenberg's research piece this morning:

Companies may well be tapping debt markets (to raise cash, not capex) and often with the help of government guarantees (like Citibank’s $5 billion two-year deal), but other forms of credit are still shrinking (especially in the asset-backed segment of the market). The U.S. commercial paper market, as an example, contracted $27.7 billion last week and now stands at $1.155 trillion, the lowest since the data began in 2001 and half the $2.2 trillion peak at the height of the credit bubble in July 2007.

Imagine the social justice screams when country club memberships become food coop shares as golf courses are planted in crops.

Well, it usta be about 6-7 months and virtually no foreclosures were contested.

Now it's up to about a year, and there are lots contested. A couple of mine that
are contested are up to about 2 years since payment stopped.

So, yeah, if funding isn't increased, I can easily see that it would take 2-3-even 4 years to get one done. If we just stopped the bank zombiefication, there would be a lot of pressure for
short sales, short re-fis, short mods. My impression is that a mod takes 3-6 months, if it's
gonna happen. There appears to be a lot of variation here.

An atty bud of my told me that it is now taking the sheriff 6 weeks to get out there
to evict someone. Normally 1-2 weeks, with an extra week at Christmas. So
if you must evict a stubborn former owner, add another 6 weeks.

Thanks MLM - yes, nice to see that has been on his radar screen - and note if you look at the updated outstandings, the commercial paper market contracted by another $47.5 billion the following (last) week.
Commercial Paper Outstanding

Slight modification. The genetic diversity of the grain pool is getting narrower only in practice. This is because of some truly insane patent policies. The variety and characteristics of available plants is extremely diverse but because there isn't a patentable provenace with which to extort a profit they aren't released.

Actually according to my buddy a lot of the gene pool is getting lost - completely and forever. They used to go into the 'bush' and hunt out primitive relatives of the crops they were breeding, corn mostly... say go down into Mexico & find 'native' varieties that were centuries old and sift through them for genetic variation missing in commercial gene pools... but those farmers are now planting narrow 'Monsanto' lines too [real or bootlegged]. He says the diversity really is drying up and he works in the biz. I've known the guy for 25 years and he isn't the type to go all hyperbole on something like this. My guess is it is really happening.

yogi says, "A clearinghouse, like a stock exchange, makes good on your deal even when the counterparty implodes. "

A clearinghouse makes good on the TRADE, not the various multitudes of instruments traded on its exchange. I don't see where they get hurt by fluctuating values, whatever the cause and I don't get your bad bank analogy.

On that Malthusian note, I think I go eat something.

Chinese Banks: "An Accident Waiting to Happen"

China needs more regulation and government intervention to stop the government from pouring endless amounts of market into the Chinese real estate market.

Sure he can - it is living without bread that is manifestly impossible...

I took a history class once & the prof said 'bread' was the one critical ingredient that made the industrial revolution possible. Long story how that happened but in effect it was the 'cornerstone' making skill specialization & subsequent 'economy of scale' possible. Take it a way and we have a planet full of 6 billion hunter gathers without enough to hunt or gather.

Rob Dawg (homepage, profile) wrote on Mon, 6/29/2009 - 6:20 pm
Slight modification. The genetic diversity of the grain pool is getting narrower only in practice.

Which only makes me think how it's a little too late to scream about 'genetic engineering, since we've already been at it for
10,00 years, give or take ....

The Sixth Extinction

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