Pretty amazing to "see it" in a graph. No free-enterprise story to dream up here anymore. Guess we'll need to find some other "market" to make up our stories in.
With the vast majority of current mortgage lending now intermediated in some form by the GSEs, it will be difficult for the housing market to return to normal.
My vote for the 'Understatement of the Year' award.
When people say (something like) the Treasury has purchased 1.5T in MBS's - and is planning on purchasing another 2.5 T - where does that fit into this graph? Is that just the "other side" of the account-entry for the GSE's shown in the graph?
Well, if I transfered USD to India, wouldn't it then be in Rupes in a bank in India?
Wonder what the transfer fee is. Oh and I get 60 free minutes of Us to India calling card.
Since government-controlled lenders now control some 95% of the market, there's no need for that "first time" homebuyer tax credit thingie, anyway. If they want to create incentives to buy homes, they can do it quietly by modifying the terms of the Big Three government-run lenders. Expect to see further tweaks to downpayment terms, LTV ratios, rates... Be interesting to see what happens when Federal Reserve stops channeling funds through here. On the plus side, the government now has a golden opportunity to thoroughly restructure the paperwork and other aspects of the real estate transaction market, since they can pretty much dictate terms to the originators and everyone else now... "All your houses are belong to us!"
H1N1 Update. Looks like we have a case in our house. We'll get confirmation tomorrow. Busy signal calling the school this morning. 15+ rings to call the clinic. Hour wait until call back from nurse. This might just be as bad as people are saying.
NotVeryNice- '...the idea that the Fed is finally going to allow equity prices to fall again.'
They are going to 'allow' equity prices to fall again. The 'independent' Fed.
Systemic structural imbalance distortion alert!
This is how our system works. Public assets are privatized and stripped of value by the FIRE eCONomy. After the value is stripped, the assets are then dumped back on the government.
On the changes in CC rates, I see Sen. Dodd is introducing a bill today to freeze rates until the CARD Act goes into effect in February . The House did not follow that approach in the Expedited CARD Act passed by the House Financial Services Committee last week, but the bill could be amended on the House floor when it is taken up for consideration next week. If Dodd's bill passes, I suspect that issuers will be closing accounts by the hundreds of thousands right before the holidays.
the nets don't actually resolve anything structural in the African health delivery system.
I shook my head the other day when I heard the story of a farmer who had bad weather and ended up with a less than optimal edible bean crop. The poor weather had resulted in discolouration and would fetch virtually nothing on the market. However, they were still completely edible.
Crop insurance provisions required him to plow the entire works under before he could receive any payment, and he was having a serious internal struggle when faced with the fact that he was going to destroy tonnes and tonnes of edible food simply due to the colour when people halfway around the world were starving.
But what's the choice? Is he going to harvest them for free? Is someone going to ship them for free? Are these 'free' beans going to depress local prices when they finally arrive in the destination country? To offset this problem, are we going to provide these 'free' beans to the local government, who will then sell them at market rates to avoid market disruptions? Who gets to keep the profits? The despotic leader?
Simple moral questions rarely have simple answers, but everyone wants to 'help'.
They could combine them together, the new Federal Housing Agency. Nationalize all the Real-Estate agents, making them part of the Department of Homeland Security. Write software for a new nationwide real-estate listing service and loan application processing system.
NotVeryNice- '...the idea that the Fed is finally going to allow equity prices to fall again.'
They are going to 'allow' equity prices to fall again. The 'independent' Fed.
Systemic structural imbalance distortion alert!
If housing prices drop across the board, there'll be systemic failure in the financial system. Not just banks, but pension funds, 401ks, possibly money markets. The other side of the coin is radical currency debasement. There's no good outcome as far as I can see.
Does the bill also roll rates back to where they were a few months ago?
Don't know - the actual bill is not posted yet, and who knows what will happen in the mark-up. Under the fed rules issued awhile back, the 45 day change in terms notice requirement is already in effect, so any recently announced changes that have not yet taken effect may be knocked out.
Crop insurance provisions required him to plow the entire works under before he could receive any payment, and he was having a serious internal struggle when faced with the fact that he was going to destroy tonnes and tonnes of edible food simply due to the colour when people halfway around the world were starving.
On the bright side, these beans will do wonders for the soil, and perhaps he'll be able to afford not to use heavy doses of nitrogen next year.
I just had to take this straight line from NOTaREALmerican (from previous thread):
Comrade Kristina wrote: U.S. to unveil new "too big to fail" strategy | Comcast.net ... "that would make it easier for the government to seize control of them and make major changes, an administration official said on Monday."
NOTaREALmerican wrote: That sounds like it will eventually have a good ending. Perhaps we can let Congress appoint half the board of directors.
No, no, you've got it backwards. The board of directors appoints half of Congress! (Then again, undoubtedly the backscratching goes both ways.)
On end of last thread...I was saying something like you are unfortunately making sense in a 'hopeless' but gritty realistic sort of way...
That means my job is nearly complete. I was sent by the Illuminati to capture your sole. We need a new Fed chairman, the current guy's lookin’ kinda frail.
On the bright side, these beans will do wonders for the soil, and perhaps he'll be able to afford not to use heavy doses of nitrogen next year.
Indeed. I didn't talk to him directly, but I would have told him something very similar: if you want to help, make a monetary donation so that the NGO can buy the beans locally, which is helpful to everyone. Shipping your own crap halfway around the world doesn't help anyone except your conscience.
If housing prices drop across the board, there'll be systemic failure in the financial system. Not just banks, but pension funds, 401ks, possibly money markets. The other side of the coin is radical currency debasement. There's no good outcome as far as I can see.
That's what I was calling "taking the biflationary bath" last weekend. On the one side, your house loses value. On the other side, your living expenses go up due to the currency devaluation "inflation". Renters may come out okay, and homeowners with little equity have the option of stiffing the bank on the one side, but those who own and are on tight incomes will get hurt most.
And how about this quote from CR's referenced report...
After plummeting in early 2008, the share of borrowers with FICO credit scores lower than 660 has returned to just higher than 20%, the same share as when subprime securitization peaked in 2006.
NaRm,
I just hope we don't have the Russian post-revolutionary 'looting' & 'cannibalism' problem and/or the German currency Crash 'wheelbarrel of money' problem...did any of this 'internet' stuff really happen?
That's what I was calling "taking the biflationary bath" last weekend. On the one side, your house loses value. On the other side, your living expenses go up due to the currency devaluation "inflation". Renters may come out okay, and homeowners with little equity have the option of stiffing the bank on the one side, but those who own and are on tight incomes will get hurt most.
Yup; no good outcomes; that said, if major pension funds go bust, it's going to be really painful. SS may be all that's left, and in an inflationary environment, it won't be able to keep up. Not enough worker bees in the future.
Renters never come out OK. Their cost of living is increased each lease term to an amount the landlord deems sufficient to compensate him for any losses due to currency risk or econominc trauma, while the renter is also subjected to equivalent currency risk and depends on his crappy job to keep body and soul together.
And any renters that don't like it are welcome to GTFO.
Always worked that way, always will, and many former owners are about to discover it.
But hey, there's always the beach, right? Try to spread some newspapers out though, the sand gets a little cold at night.
The world has ended: McDonald’s Closes in Iceland After Krona Collapse
Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Iceland’s McDonald’s Corp. restaurants will be closed at the end of the month after the collapse of the krona eroded profits at the fast-food chain, McDonald’s franchise holder Lyst ehf said.
McDonald’s in Iceland, which imports most of the ingredients it uses in its meals, will shut after costs doubled over the past year, Lyst said in an e-mailed statement today. The franchise holder said it doesn’t expect the situation to change in the short term.
he was having a serious internal struggle when faced with the fact that he was going to destroy tonnes and tonnes of edible food simply due to the colour when people halfway around the world were starving.
But the issue is not that there's not enough food to feed people halfway around the world.
Are these 'free' beans going to depress local prices when they finally arrive in the destination country? To offset this problem, are we going to provide these 'free' beans to the local government, who will then sell them at market rates to avoid market disruptions?
Destroying edible food simply because of its color when people are starving can never be a rational moral act on a societal level. Have no fear, the most remote starving people on the planet are capable of understanding that the discolored beans are likely to be a one-time bounty and they should not adjust for a long-term "market disruption".
The logistics are not simple. The moral question is.
I just hope we don't have the Russian post-revolutionary 'looting'
Luckily for you, the US nobility is addressing the 'looting' issue ahead of time, with their pre-revolutionary looting program. By the time the revolution happens, there should be nothing left, if everything goes according to plan (which it appears to be doing).
Regarding: cannibalism and wheelbarrels... I'm not sure about this. However, zombies are really popular these days. Perhaps, like the new Pride and Prejudice and Zombies book, the next generation of economist can include Zombies in there titles.
Angry Saver (profile) wrote on Mon, 10/26/2009 - 3:12 pm
This is how our system works. Public assets are privatized and stripped of value by the FIRE eCONomy. After the value is stripped, the assets are then dumped back on the government.
What a system.
You forgot the most important part - the value stripped also doesn't go into any sort of productive investment, it is dispersed to FIRE minions and/or paid out in bonuses, so there is no net gain to anyone outside the FIRE.
sm_landlord,
Define 'stimulus'. If it is unsustainable govt., corporate, and consumer debt that causes a collapse of the markets and/or currencies and based on past national & global collapses our leaders went ahead and spent anyway, they 'crashed' the system and/or caused a 'systemic collapse'.
Lucky me, I got an e mail invitation from MARIA BARTORIMO to join her and her friends to get in on the opportunities most Americans are missing. WOW , This is better than the one from Kramer. I think I'll choose this one. Did I get on the "obvious shill list" somehow?
Have no fear, the most remote starving people on the planet are capable of understanding that the discolored beans are likely to be a one-time bounty and they should not adjust for a long-term "market disruption".
I was thinking he could worry about those that he can actually get the food to.
Problem: Many people are starving.
Solution: I have lots of extra food that I am willing to share.
Consensus: Shove it, St. Francis. Better to just burn it for fuel, brother, because this sucker's goin' down.
I like it; the consensus works well for such diverse groups as pillaging Viking hordes, deforesting Easter Island visionaries, and casual American litter-bugs. Sort of a one-size-fits-all nihilism worthy of the most horrific Kali Cults.
Maybe if we put our heads together we can find a way to make the hapless bean farmer truly understand how impotent and pointless his entire existence really is. I can't wait to see what the New Year brings this country if we have already been reduced to this. I hope Pavel just skips this whole thread.
Have no fear, the most remote starving people on the planet are capable of understanding that the discolored beans are likely to be a one-time bounty and they should not adjust for a long-term "market disruption".
Really? Because that's not my understanding of the situation. My understanding is that years of shovelling crappy free commodities into countries depresses local market conditions, removes all incentive for investment into local productive capacity, and provides a windfall for well-placed bureaucrats and officials.
I'm not saying don't respond. I explicitly said 'send money, not physical commodities'. Then buy they locally, or from neighbouring countries, so that local productive capacity is enhanced and incentives are provided to enable a full crop the following year.
Moving the beans halfway around the world is simple logistical exercise. Justifying the expenditures in moving the physical commodity is a complicated moral question.
Leftys Liquors Lubricants and Tarp and Bank wrote:
WOW , This is better than the one from Kramer. I think I'll choose this one. Did I get on the "obvious shill list" somehow?
As a gag, I once "signed up" one of my liberal friends to an e-mail list for the Republican Party. He ended up getting a signed photo of GWB and his wife, and I got nothing...
There are almost daily protests in Argentina about one thing or another. I spent 2 weeks there, everyday a large or small group protested. The police closed streets for them, it was always peacefull if loud.
Chicago is having a demostration against the banks soon.
Luckily for you, the US nobility is addressing the 'looting' issue ahead of time, with their pre-revolutionary looting program.
Yes. And when the obvious becomes, well, obvious they'll have a template to work with to 'explain' things.
"Rumsfeld: Let me say one other thing. The images you are seeing
on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same
picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see
it 20 times, and you think, "My goodness, were there that many vases?"
(Laughter.) "Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole
country?"
Chicago is having a demostration against the banks soon.
This will mostly attract the liberals. Until the liberals and tea-party people are - more or less - pissed off at the same people the political Parties are successfully doing their jobs.
The United States is the world’s largest provider of international food aid, supplying more than half of all food aid designated to alleviate hunger, about four million metric tons of food per year. As currently implemented, U.S. food aid lines the pockets of American agribusiness and the shipping industry. Under existing rules, at least 75 percent of food aid has to be grown and packaged in the United States, and shipped using U.S. flag-bearing vessels. Unlike most countries that donate food, the United States sells a portion of its food aid, either by selling it to recipient governments, or allowing it to be monetized, a process where food aid is sold to generate cash for development projects. And while most donor countries provide cash as food aid, the United States insists on giving in-kind donations.
There are no fish. Red Loser harvested them all when you weren't looking and sold them for $4.99 all-you-can-eat years ago.
Teach a man to eat acorns, and if he can keep them down, he will ask you for a job because he needs some for his wife and kids.
Welcome to the new world! [sigh] This sucker did go down, didn't it?
Is there anything wrong with begging for food? It makes people feel good to feed them. They are working - not laying around on their ass watching the big flat screen at the shelter. Make them have copies of their resumes! No food or money for food unless you can prove that you are willing to get a job and go into debt!
The District is in need of hundreds of volunteers over the next several weeks to assist with the very important H1N1 Vaccination Clinics.
... missed a chance to lower their unemployment rate, they did. Those could've been minimum-wage jobs and done double-duty as a "stimulus" package item...
It may not be obvious yet, but renters don't come out ok. Their apartments are after all owned by someone, and a large number will default.
I see your point, although I think as population fails to increase and mean household size increases, there's a good chance that there will be a serious surplus of housing for some time to come. That will hold down rents (sub-inflation levels, anyway) regardless of who owns the rental units.
Maybe if we put our heads together we can find a way to make the hapless bean farmer truly understand how impotent and pointless his entire existence really is.
No one ever thinks of the hapless farmers in Africa who refuse to invest a penny in their fields because some country keeps dumping their excess production on the local market.
Jonathan wrote:
The quid pro quo is that it's a back-door subsidy to US farmers. Obviously.
As a fun exercise, try to start a lobby in Washington that reduces the American content requirement for food aid even 10%. Watch the howls of outrage.
Watched The Blob yesterday with Steve McQueen. At the end they parachuted 'the blob' into the artic since it didn't like cold. If it is still there they might be able to unleash it on the down-and-outers.
I'm responding to the narrow issue of destroying, for some micro-economic purpose, valuable food that can't fetch a premium because the local market wealth is so extreme that it irrationally values its appearance.
If the cost of shipping and storing renders an alternative method of sharing food with a distant country more sensible, that's a separate issue.
pavel.chichikov wrote:
The District is in need of hundreds of volunteers over the next several weeks to assist with the very important H1N1 Vaccination Clinics.
... missed a chance to lower their unemployment rate, they did. Those could've been minimum-wage jobs and done double-duty as a "stimulus" package item...
For some odd reason most people will volunteer before taking a paying job for minimum wage. Must be what is left of their ego when they are unemployed.
Or it could be that most states set up unemployment benifits based on the wage of the last job held. And if the new job doesn't last more than 2 or 3 quarters you are inelligable for benifits.
"... missed a chance to lower their unemployment rate, they did. Those could've been minimum-wage jobs and done double-duty as a "stimulus" package item..."
I think the District is constrained financially these days. It is local government.
Watched The Blob yesterday with Steve McQueen. At the end they parachuted 'the blob' into the artic since it didn't like cold. If it is still there they might be able to unleash it on the down-and-outers.
Yet another reason to fear global warming. We must save the polar bear! Think of the children!
Cinco-X wrote:
nova wrote:
Let them eat acorns!
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day;
Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime-
Let a nation with no moral constraints acquire with no recompense your methods of sustainability and the planet burns.
Jeez Rob, you know I was just messin' around.......acorns are the new squirrel
For some odd reason most people will volunteer before taking a paying job for minimum wage. Must be what is left of their ego when they are unemployed.
Sounds like the same people who won't eat discolored beans...
Sorry, I'm having trouble finding the context here; key words don't seem to help.
It's my fault, and I fear this thread is painting me as an amoral scumbag. Notarealamerican would be proud.
But I'll put the bottom line here: I don't think food should be destroyed when people are starving, but that doesn't mean I think those starving people would benefit by us dumping free food into their food supply.
Or it could be that most states set up unemployment benifits based on the wage of the last job held. And if the new job doesn't last more than 2 or 3 quarters you are inelligable for benifits.
Ahh, that's the rub. The people who need this money can't afford to take a fully documented "government" job. What they want is a "cash market" job.
For that matter, it wouldn't surprise me if the government can't even afford the overhead costs of creating a bevy of short-term minimum wage positions. Too much paperwork to push around.
Wisdom, I see your point of course, but REO frequently sits empty and isn't available for rental. No argument about the extent of inventory - it's available rental stocks or rentals reasonably secure from an owner's default which unnerve a renter in times like our own.
Hello, Pavel. I just used you as a convenient short-hand for someone who would appreciate the dilemma faced by the bean farmer who thought his less-than-perfect crop might be able to help someone less fortunate, who was told to shove it because his crappy beans weren't as valuable as he previously believed them to be.
yogi has perhaps done a better job than I of describing and commenting on the distinction between a global economics exercise and the plight of one small farmer who thought he could help just a little, just this once.
I didn't like the implications going forward if we are already reduced to destroying food and plowing under less-valuable crops. I have seen these kinds of solutions applied before.
Well, if I transfered USD to India, wouldn't it then be in Rupes in a bank in India?
Wonder what the transfer fee is. Oh and I get 60 free minutes of Us to India calling card.
Of course after we have a dollar meltdown slamming the door of currency controls will probably be the order of the day (no doubt after the well connected horses are in the next country). You might have to send emails to Indian nationals hoping they will help you get your money out. You might check your spam folder for ideas (hint: search for "Nigerian").
Compare and contrast European terms for a Bailout with the American Terms.
So now we know: the European Union really does mean business. ING Group has been forced into a much more radical restructuring than anticipated, as the price of compliance with the E.U.'s rules on state aid provided during the financial crisis. That's bad news for ING. It also sends a worrying signal to the other 30 or so European banks whose financial restructuring plans still await E.U. approval.
The Dutch banking and insurance giant is to divest the insurance businesses, sell its U.S. ING Direct online subsidiary, divest 6% of the Dutch retail banking market, pay the Dutch government an extra 1.3 billion euros ($1.93 million) in fees for access to its bad asset protection scheme, and commit not to make acquisitions or be a price leader in certain retail banking for another three years.
It's my fault, and I fear this thread is painting me as an amoral scumbag. Notarealamerican would be proud.
Never mind, Noob. It's very difficult to discuss the topic of food aid unless everyone is up to speed on the history of the various programs attempted over the last umpteen years or so.
The farmer of the beans also needs to decide if he needs the crop insurance money to buy bean seeds for next year or if he has the cash to pay his bills until next havest and buy seed for the spring.
In reality, he probably can't afford to give the beans away, even if harvest and shipping cost him nothing.
The plan to 'save' the banks isn't working...system needs a 'time out'...why have 'chaos' and Failed Banks(except for one or two...last bank(s) standing...)
I wonder how much DC can afford to send 2010 Census workers around? The "return on investment" there (in terms of government-entitlement payouts from Uncle Sam) is probably higher than for H1N1.
Actually, I wonder how hard it would be to make use of the 2010 Census workers (temporarily) to support the H1N1 workforce needs? Just add "right arm or left arm?" to the questionnaire... [only half in jest]
If the man is too weak to fish and starves to death, what good is knowing how to fish?
You got some fine Kool-aid up there. "Depressing local prices" is good for eaters. We are discussing shipping food to starving people, not people who are adequately fed by local farmers and their bankers.
that chart is a nauseating hisotoriographic glimpse of our Gibbonesque road to ruin - the original sprint towards idiocy in the yellowcake ZIRP mania of '01 that kicked the housing/commodity bubble into high gear and the recent complete subjugation of the idiocracy to the whims of Jamie and Lloyd. Heckuva job. Eating feces has never been so celebrated since the days of DeSade.
I'm responding to the narrow issue of destroying, for some micro-economic purpose, valuable food that can't fetch a premium because the local market wealth is so extreme that it irrationally values its appearance.
The honest to god truth is that it's done because it's simpler. It's simpler to pay the guy after the beans are destroyed so that you don't have to audit him and figure out if he made money on the insurance claim, which would then have to be adjusted. It's simpler because then you don't have to figure out if the guy buying the beans paid market price or underpaid.
I'm not saying it's right, but that's the reason. Because it's too hard to account for unscrupulous business practices that insurance fraud often results in.
And now I have to go home, so I can't stay signed in to watch the carnage I've unleashed.
noob - no hard feelings! You make good points! I was really only regretting that we have actually come to this ... it is getting harder and harder to watch the global catastrophe unfold.
They're taking billions of your tax dollars, and paying them out as bonuses. Pretty sure they consider that 'working'. And they don't give a shit what you think.
I'm not saying it's right, but that's the reason. Because it's too hard to account for unscrupulous business practices that insurance fraud often results in.
Alex, Mr. Noob here would like to take "How insurance distorts markets and drives up costs" for $400...
We are discussing shipping food to starving people, not people who are adequately fed by local farmers and their bankers.
I know we are. And I'm not opposed to sending aid. Trust me, I'm not. I donate a great deal of my meagre personal income to charity to expressly address this issue.
But as a policy-maker, other priorities quickly become involved.
And now I truly must go, unfortunately. A night of travel and another conference in the morning awaits.
Yeah, how true is that ! I wonder how long it will take the under 30's to get really pissed off and what form the revulsion will take. There's not allot of them tho (compared to the '60's generation which had numbers on their side).
Geez, in the good ole USA during GD1, farmers were destroying food, dumping milk, etc.... Presently, French farmers are slaughtering imported (Germany) trucks of animals as they cross the border, and dumping milk ,etc.......
I never understood while people make fun of spam. I like it fried with eggs. I also don't understand why Tanya Tucker does not have a recording contract and why the resturaunt behind us that had greens and fried baloney closed. My America is gone.
Probably do some furious twittering and angry podcasts
They probably are now. But, when they look around in 5 years and see all these old farts sitting around and they're (the < 30's) are not going to get much of anything, who knows. I'd be pissed.
Disclaimer: Ignored and despised the '60's (was a "conservative" then).
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, agricultural price support programs led to vast amounts of food being deliberately destroyed at a time when malnutrition was a serious problem in the United States and hunger marches were taking place in cities across the country. For example, the federal government bought 6 million hogs in 1933 alone and destroyed them. Huge amounts of farm produce were plowed under, in order to keep it off the market and maintain prices at the officially fixed level, and vast amounts of milk were poured down the sewers for the same reason. Meanwhile, many American children were suffering from diseases caused by malnutrition.
It's weird. I just realized something. When I was much younger I tried to join the Young Socialists Party on 14street in DC. I hitched into town just to do that. Some guy listened to me, told me I should wait. It would be better for me. It just occured to me he did me a big favor. Probably FBI
whatever happened to the restaurants that served livermush and cheerwine and watered your horse for free? And whatever happened to the Know-nothing party---those were the days!
"I don't think food should be destroyed when people are starving, but that doesn't mean I think those starving people would benefit by us dumping free food into their food supply."
Withholding food from hungry people is criminal, but the able-bodied need to work if only to retain their self-respect.
Let's go back to art. Say you had 200 beautiful lithographs that you couldn't sell because everyone in your local market who wanted to own one already did. You could give them away to a poor community that wanted them but couldn't pay you what you could get from an insurance policy that paid you to burn unsold copies.
You can rationalize that giving them the litho's would discourage local artists and printers, but you are destroying value, even if the price of the existing stock rises by so much that the gross "market cap" winds up more than covering the loss.
Sure you can add value by destroying clunkers if you substitute a more fuel-efficient equivalent. You can also destroy value if someone could use the clunker and had no alternative. Pavel happens to be right that virtually all "economic" policy alibis fail in the face of the moral imperative.
the only "solution" is people breeding less. Which is impossible.
Not only possible, but happening. Lower birth rates and longer life spans are the order of the day all around the developing world. Here's the Hans Rosling video on global statistics: TED
One can feel free to disagree, but one should at least understand the reasons for a policy before they do so. Take milk for example. It takes roughly 3 years to build a dairy herd. As prices drop, milk production drops, except it doesn't. Like an oil well, it costs you about the same to run the pump (milk the cow) at 10% or 100%, so you produce at 100%. So what happens it that wells are capped and cows are killed. In other words productive capacity is destroyed. In a pure free market, it is destroyed past the point of supporting the market due to lead times. New calves are slaughtered, and old cows slowly stop producing milk. If this is allowed, you eventually have a massive milk shortage with no immediate remedy resulting in massive starvation. Since this undesirable, we have price floors and tolerate overages that sometimes lead to the waste of product.
The H1N1 virus; swine flu originated with Smithfield farms. So what, what the big deal, right?, Wrong. Read Rolling Stone's "Boss Hog." Factory farms are a hot spot for new infectious diseases. According to a former chief of the Centers for Disease Control’s Special Pathogens Branch, The animals are pumped with antibiotics and which produce resistant strains. Stop buying corporate grown meat.
"A single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah holds a half-million hogs and produces more shit every day than all the residents of Manhattan.
Rolling Stone’s stunning report describes the lakes of shit that surround pig factories as the color of Pepto Bismol because of the “interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs.”
Vegetarians who think they are unaffected by this toxic fecal frappe should think again: The sludge is often used to “fertilize” crops that end up on your table.
I'm not suggesting that a scorched-earth policy is always morally wrong, just that propping prices by destroying valuable supply because you don't believe the demanders deserve a hand-out is usually a lame excuse for greed.
“interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs.”
Vegetarians who think they are unaffected by this toxic fecal frappe should think again: The sludge is often used to “fertilize” crops that end up on your table------
Sowell is led by his ideology.
One can feel free to disagree, but one should at least understand the reasons for a policy before they do so. Take milk for example. It takes roughly 3 years to build a dairy herd. As prices drop, milk production drops, except it doesn't. Like an oil well, it costs you about the same to run the pump (milk the cow) at 10% or 100%, so you produce at 100%. So what happens it that wells are capped and cows are killed. In other words productive capacity is destroyed. In a pure free market, it is destroyed past the point of supporting the market due to lead times. New calves are slaughtered, and old cows slowly stop producing milk. If this is allowed, you eventually have a massive milk shortage with no immediate remedy resulting in massive starvation. Since this undesirable, we have price floors and tolerate overages that sometimes lead to the waste of product.
Spoken like a true "cheese head" . How ya' feelin' about Farve's return to GB?
NCUA is reminding examiners to factor out the adverse impact of the premium when evaluating and rating credit union earnings performance.
Editorial: Bulls**t! The capital ratio is what it is. Just because one of your credit union brethren lost their money and you have to pay up, doesn't mean you don't have to pay up! What matters for your own financial stability is that you're not going to have that capital when you need it.
Updated analysis of the NCUSIF’s risk levels point to a higher number of potential credit union failures over the next fifteen months.
Editorial: These guys are geniuses!
As part of the process to update the recorded corporate stabilization action liability, NCUA recently updated both the analysis conducted by staff and the PIMCO analysis of the distressed mortgage backed assets. The result was a $350 million increase to the liability.
Oops, looks like another 6% increase in the damage done by the mortgage-backed securities that the corporate credit unions bought during the bubble...
Based on NCUA’s recently completed analysis of the exposure from the corporate
stabilization efforts, the total recorded liability for the stabilization programs increases
from $5.98 billion to $6.33 billion. The majority of the liability is associated with the
Temporary Corporate Credit Union Share Guarantee Program (TCCUSGP). ...
At the inception of the TCCUSGP in January 2009, a liability of $3.70 billion was
established using the investment data corporate credit unions reported in the fall of
2008. In March 2009, after receipt of the analysis of corporate credit union investments
conducted by PIMCO and the additional review completed by NCUA staff, the liability
was increased to $4.94 billion.
The quote just above suggests that the problems are still getting worse. If you propagate this sort of rate of deterioration to other parts of the banking system, which were much more highly leveraged than the credit unions at the start of the crisis... ruh-roh!
Looks like the "Natural Person" Credit Unions (they kind individuals use, not corporations) have $87B in Net Worth... note this is much smaller than the deposit base...
With an equity ratio of near 1.30 percent, the NCUSIF is sufficient to meet anticipated credit
union failures considering almost all stress scenarios run. However, all measurements of risk
to the NCUSIF are expected to continue to increase over the short-term as the economic
environment continues to be adverse and further consolidation increases concentration risk.
While the analysis shows the risk from NPCUs is manageable for the NCUSIF, the stress on
existing Agency resources will be substantial.
"What if a hungry man is stretched out in the doorway and the dogs come to lick his sores?"
THE SONG OF DIVES
Dives ate and Lazarus starved
But Dives scraped his platter clean
The dogs that licked the beggar’s wounds
Belonged to Dives and grew lean
The beggar’s heart was small and red
The blood they lapped was thin and sweet—
When Dives’ dogs ate Lazarus
It cost much less than butcher’s meat
But when they broke the beggar’s bones
And licked the marrow from the cracks
The rich man cried and rubbed his hands:
I wish I had poor Lazarus back
For then I’d send my table scraps
To make atonement for my lapse
In a pure free market, it is destroyed past the point of supporting the market due to lead times.
That's the problem with pure "isms". They never quite work all the time. So, the "isms" get tweaked. And once the cow pokes its udder under Sheriff Moral Hazard's tent, then the dam bursts and you can't close the barn door after the cows come home.
*Retirement benefits are at risk, with fewer traditional pension plans available and workers now “in charge of investing their own assets,” U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said at an Oct. 22 conference in Washington.
Pigged by the new post...
I'm leaning towards the idea that the Fed is finally going to allow equity prices to fall again, mostly to create treasury demand to replace the ending of it directly purchasing treasuries.
As such, at least for the short to middle term, I think treasury yields are going to go back down.
How would one go about going long treasuries without buying directly?
True wealth is the ability to deliver the products of skilled Labor.
There, fixed that for ya.
And I would have thought it was somehow related to reaping the benefits from the products of labor. BTW, is there no wealth to be had from unskilled labor? Someone has to do that work, and doing it for nothing is in effect slavery-
and workers now “in charge of investing their own assets,”
HA! Isn't this a joke-n-half! And, how - exactly - is the average person supposed to avoid getting screwed by the smart amoral scumbags that run the financial system?. And, how many people recall the "movement" to allow "the people" to "invest" their own Social Security money. I bring this up to some of my "conservative friends" occasionally (if I'm in a poking mood - usually after they complain about their 401k and the wonderful decisions they've made with those).
rarity dictates value, especially in the world of art.
Rarity dictates price, not value. Pavel reproduces his poem to anyone with a connection. It retains value even on multiple readings.
My most valued material possessions are rare Hendrix vinyl LP's. If millions of better copies were made and sold for a penny, the price of my collection would get clobbered, but not only would the value of the new stock be a gain, I'd be happier knowing there was greater supply.
You are having more fun than I am nova. My broke and they implored me to not start drinking earlier. I've since disregarded their input and began to drink. It is tedious cooking dinner without
Next shoe to drop--PBGC Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, One of W's last gifts was this: from UPI.com WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- President George Bush signed legislation Tuesday that allows U.S. corporations to put off funding pension plans. "Those of you who may have followed this issue know that we did have some concerns with this bill because we think it will increase the cost of near-term claims on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation -- the PBGC -- and could also result in some benefits lost to workers over the long term," Fratto said.
NotVeryNice- '...the idea that the Fed is finally going to allow equity prices to fall again.'
They are going to 'allow' equity prices to fall again. The 'independent' Fed.
Systemic structural imbalance distortion alert!
By equity prices, I really meant the stock market. The fed needs to incite people back to treasuries so they can both sell their existing debt, and keep yields down so that mortgage rates don't start going up. This also re-balances the global recovery, by moving money back out of investments in emerging markets and back to treasuries.
I have plotted the CDC data normalized for time from 1997 to the present for the % of patient visits reported as ILI (Influenza Like Illness). energyecon
not true, yogi. the original issues would still have value and do. if your argument was true, every great painting in the world would have instantly had zero value as color reproduction became feasible. but folks still pay 100 mil for an iconic landmark in art.
for whatever reason, most wonkish econ types really can't understand fetishization, and project their own ignorance of this basic psychological mechanic onto things. Lenin's golden urinals come to mind.
Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" posited that you could basically divide everyone into those who believe either A) modern man is smarter and "better" than any previous generation, more capable to making the right decision and avoiding past follies or B) all men are inherently self-interested and need constraints (societal, legal, etc...) to keep these selfish tendencies in check. Answered a lot of questions I had had regarding why the same sets of people tend to divide the same over very diverse issues. It's worth reading regardless of your opinion of Sowell's ideology.
Keep a copy of that graph handy and show it to anyone who claims that FNM and FRE were the root cause of the housing bubble and crash. How may firms would be willing to give up the sort of market share that FNM and FRE did at the worst part of the bubble? Should they have given up more, yes, but very hard to do. Note that when the private securitizations dried up, there was enormous political pressure from all sides on FNM and FRE to step into the void, including the idiotic idea of increasing the conforming limit to $730K. The problem that FNM and FRE had was that they were highly leveraged, and that they were 100% exposed to resedential mortgages. When the Tsunami hit, they were standing on the beach, and had no chance, and not because they were bad swmmers. If Michael Phelps were a lifeguard on the beach a Phuket in 12/26/04, even he would have drowned.
What gets to me is that so much is set up to screw the guy who goes to work, pays his bills and tries to save a bit. By doing what the smart guys tell you is the right thing, you end up with little to nothing.
You can work, pay, save and end up with a shopping cart on the street. Or if you are lucky in a camp ground.
You probably know the story that Hendrix was disgusted by that cover, which he had been assured would be the Linda Eastman photos of him playing with kids on the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park.
He grew sick of his pop image long before his promoters, and I find the rumors that he was murdered for an insurance policy quite credible. Michael Jackson proved that survival depends on the perception that your ability to deliver the product of skilled labor is greater than the rarity premium occasioned by your dramatic death.
It's worth reading regardless of your opinion of Sowell's ideology.
I have no idea how people can assume that basic psychological attributes wouldn't affect ones economic philosophy (or any other philosophy, for that matter). Socialists, Fascists, Libertarians, and (old school) Liberals don't disagree over economics, they disagree about the fundamentals of their belief systems, differences which can never be reconciled.
Kick-ass frat-boys, smothering mommy, big-group-hug, outsider-paranoia, distrust-of-authority; this is the kinda stuff that decides what “economic” system you WILL prefer.
I'm leaning towards the idea that the Fed is finally going to allow equity prices to fall again, mostly to create treasury demand to replace the ending of it directly purchasing treasuries.
As such, at least for the short to middle term, I think treasury yields are going to go back down.
How would one go about going long treasuries without buying directly?
If the ends QE, which is what I think you're implying they'll do, then won't bond yields go up, since it's the Fed's "demand" for debt that keeping yields artificially low at the moment?
"Socialists, Fascists, Libertarians, and (old school) Liberals don't disagree over economics, they disagree about the fundamentals of their belief systems, differences which can never be reconciled."
Yep, that was the epiphany I got when I read the book.
Having a hard time sympathizing with the banksters' desire to restart securitization. For decades, things ran just fine lending the money out at 6%, paying 3% deposits, keeping the loans on their books and hitting the golf course by 3 PM.
not true, yogi. the original issues would still have value and do. if your argument was true, every great painting in the world would have instantly had zero value as color reproduction became feasible.
Nope. Same value, but only fetish price. Of course there is value in a road having different colored and shaped cars, to the extent that the exotic look doesn't cause distracted driving. And creativity should be rewarded financially during the artist's lifetime. As noted above, no "pure" economic ideology makes sense for all product. If Josephine won't sing unless she gets paid more than Blankfein, chances are pretty good her music wouldn't retain much value even if her company's law machine put every pirate fan in jail.
that point is coming real soon if the timing of the peak of the flu season occurs as it has in the past (week 52 to week 7 for peak patient visits with influenza like symptoms)...
Local agencies in Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Miami and Oakland, California, spent $331 million to end interest-rate swaps with banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. of New York and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp. during the past 18 months. The swaps, agreements to exchange periodic interest payments with banks or insurers, were intended to save borrowing costs. Payments increased instead.
How dare we talk of taxing back those hard-earned bonuses...
If the ends QE, which is what I think you're implying they'll do, then won't bond yields go up, since it's the Fed's "demand" for debt that keeping yields artificially low at the moment?
First off there is a general lack of will/nerve to invest against the fed, it amounts to taking on gambler that can print his own money to double down against you. Second most investors realize the economy is not fundamentally getting better, so it's hard to argue that us treasury yields are going to rise without a real recovery.
Commodites, equity markets have been on fire since march, and the momentum traders have piled into the equity markets, and have been moving out of treasuries, but because the fed has been propping up the market, and the economy is not really getting better, yields have not risen as much as they normally would.
However, this is the last week of treasury purchases, and it seems like there is ever increased interest in investing against the dollar. There is also an increased imbalance in the global recovery process, as a side effect of the extraordinary liquidity in the market. This does not bode well for the fed financing the huge US debt, and as such, yields have been creeping up. The fed cannot allow yields to continue to increase before the economy recovers or it is royally screwed.
If it triggers a collapse in the equity markets, people will rush back into treasuries, and not only will the fed not have to worry about increasing yields, but it will likely be able to sell all the treasuries it has accumulated this year. This gives them ammo for next year, because it knows the economy is not getting fundamentally better.
Most of the recent market momentum has not been from the big trading partners, but retail investors. The fed doesn't mind, and in fact would like to reduce the average consumer's leverage. It needs to get consumer debt down, because we can't have a consumer led recovery without much less consumer debt (or what that debt is worth in devalued dollars).
I think this is all a means to an end, to give the fed ammo to extend and pretend another year.
Jeez. I'm freakin' olde. Didn't ya git da memo? My kidz took me to Disneyland yesterday. Now I'm expected to monitor CR for every whim? There's email and my blog for requests.
Back-Door Taxes Hit U.S. With Financing in the Dark (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
"Salvatore Calvanese, the treasurer of Springfield, Massachusetts, for four years, had a ready defense for why he risked $14 million of taxpayer money on collateralized-debt obligations laden with subprime mortgages in 2007. He didn’t know what he was buying, he says, and trusted the financial professionals who sold them and told him they were safe. "
Why do bozos like this get into positions where they can blow OPM on speculations? Didn't the Orange County, CA fiasco a few years ago serve as a warning to anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
while the bankers were certainly predatory with respect to the local governments (fish in a barrel), if the local administrators aren't sophisticated enough to understand the contracts and investments that the were sinking millions of dollars into, then perhaps they shouldn't be investing them.
Jeez. I'm freakin' olde. Didn't ya git da memo? My kidz took me to Disneyland yesterday. Now I'm expected to monitor CR for every whim? There's email and my blog for requests.
Ummmm......I checked my in-box; no memo. I guess you are getting old. Hope the kids had a good time anyway-
...Christopher “Kit” Taylor, who was the top regulator of the municipal bond market from 1978 to 2007.
‘Stockholm Syndrome’
“They’re suffering from Stockholm syndrome,” he said, referring to the psychological phenomenon in which hostages begin to identify with and grow sympathetic to their captors. “They are being held hostage by their investment bank.”
...
Taylor questioned why the information-gathering hasn’t led to anything further.
“Finra wants the world to think it is doing something for investors and the good of the markets without actually bringing any enforcement actions or adopting any rulemaking,” he said.
What gets to me is that so much is set up to screw the guy who goes to work, pays his bills and tries to save a bit. By doing what the smart guys tell you is the right thing, you end up with little to nothing. You can work, pay, save and end up with a shopping cart on the street. Or if you are lucky in a camp ground.
Yeah. It's called Evil. We're not supposed to use the term -- it's so judgmental, it's for kooks -- but a good chunk of the Old Testament is spent railing against the "best people" who find ways of siphoning off all your money into their pockets. And a another chunk of it is instructions on how to keep this from happening. Even back then, they knew. And we've forgotten.
Whether you believe in God or not -- not saying I do -- evil is evil. Even if you go to charity balls for the poor and get your picture taken shaking Obama's hand (and paying damned well for the privilege, bigawd).
Yeah. Make allot of sense. I'm going to use this on the next Green Warrior that asks me about global warming: "That dog is lookin' mighty tasty there..."
Evil is also relative. The reason the US was so successful during the last century was that economic evil and imperialist evil was "declared" good. If more people worried about the financial system's evil as compared to - oh, say - the fornicatin' harlots, things would be very different.
a good chunk of the Old Testament is spent railing against the "best people" who find ways of siphoning off all your money into their pockets. And a another chunk of it is instructions on how to keep this from happening.
And if your kids aren't that into the Bible and church and all that, and want to have some fun learning how the smart connivers pull it all off, I might recommend "The Great Brain" by Fitzgerald (illustrated by Mercer Mayer) at the local library. A great read for 8-12 year olds, with plenty of equally entertaining sequels. The title comes from the older brother of the narrator, a boy named Tom who could connive anyone out of anything, and did, with great hilarity except for those losing their wealth to him...
For decades, things ran just fine lending the money out at 6%, paying 3% deposits, keeping the loans on their books and hitting the golf course by 3 PM.
I suspect that such low risk activity does not lend itself to million dollar bonuses...
The other book I found in the library this weekend was Prechter's "Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression". I couldn't believe it was written in 2002/2003, since we're facing the same issues daily here... Guess there really is nothing new under the sun, although fortunately some of that stuff doesn't see the sun very often!
Public officials shunned competitive bids for more than 85 percent of the $308.9 billion in new tax-exempt bond sales in the first nine months of this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s up from 17 percent in 1970 and 68 percent in 1982, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Competitive bidding just wastes tax money on more big gubmint. Why are those foolish municipalities spending so much of other people's money anyway? Surely the free market can provide a fine sewer system for Jefferson County, Alabama. Say what you want about slavery, but if the businessman starved his labor supply, he wouldn't be able to grow tobacco at a profit for more than a few hundred years.
If JPM/GS/BAC/MS says their underwriting is best, who could argue-- they would fail if they scammed their "c;ients".
So, following up on my credit union comments above, I went and checked on my local CU, and lo and behold the top money-market savings rate just plunged (edit: today!) from an eminently reasonable 0.7% to a rather feeble 0.25%. (Had been well over 1% earlier this year...) Time to reconsider where to park that money... Do ya think Citigroup is willing to offer me 15%? They'd still get to lend it out at 29.99% and have a 15% spread!
You know the movies where they start out panning across a desolate landscape with a deep voice providing a narrative about the mistakes made to reach this point? The cacophony of voices the commentariat provides will be missed if our dark visions of the future reach fruition. The funny part is I have a suspicion that many here tone down their opinions before they share with the group. Self fulfilling prophecies and all that. If there is ever a need for expert witnesses to the fall most of us will qualify.
Down So Long-Jewel
'Til I saw an angel in a bathroom who said she saw no one worth saving anywhere
And a blind man on the corner said it's simple, like flipping a coin
Don't matter what side it lands on if it's someone else's dime
I just moved some today. Union Bank of Calif is paying 1.5%. BofA 1%.
Well, I refuse on principle to deposit any more $ with BofA (or Citi, JPM or Wells Fargo); I've been working down my balances with BAC and WFC over the past year... The credit union was very competitive back when I started that process... I'll have to check out Union Bank of Calif! I assume that with a yield that high they have to be on CR's endangered banks list? My other go-to place is USAA (nonprofit). They're at 0.75-0.85% right now.
200+ consecutive years of a massive [aggregate] grain surplus didn't hurt.
I also credit the relatively fair and balanced economic system under Constitutional Law, which is flexible enough to allow collective bargaining, minimum wage and other socialist safety nets, but also to prevent the President from nationalizing steel plants in a "crisis", to honor ancient "foreign" title claims, and compensate for public expropriation in a somewhat fair legal system.
Interest rates in the U.S. have been artificially depressed, especially on Treasuries. They have to rise back up to un-manipulated levels over time, and starting soon. They will. There are too many people and institutions in the U.S. that can't survive on such low interest rates. They include older middle-income people, pension plans and life insurance companies. A pension plan that owes billions of dollars in liabilities to retirees over the next two decades can't fund those liabilities with 10-year Treasuries at 3%. Life insurance companies will go broke if 10-year Treasuries stay at 3%.
But by the same token, the dollar has to deflate to make all debts less expensive for all debtors, to lift real estate prices, and to make it feasible to manufacture and export in the U.S. again.
The manipulators need to get out of the way and let free market economics find these levels, higher rates, lower dollar. That's the next phase. Don't bet against it with your own money.
Man, the local credit union REALLY does not want my money anymore. Even the rate on a 5-year CD is only 1%!!! Sheesh... even TreasuryDirect has better yields in that maturity...
A pension plan that owes billions of dollars in liabilities to retirees over the next two decades can't fund those liabilities with 10-year Treasuries at 3%. Life insurance companies will go broke if 10-year Treasuries stay at 3%.
Catching up & reading CR's latest entry... this struck a chord, Krainer's quote:
With the vast majority of current mortgage lending now intermediated in some form by the GSEs, it will be difficult for the housing market to return to normal.
I wonder how high the interest rates would have to go to entice the market to step back into private market securization again? I mean there is nothing price won't fix & interest rates are the measure of the price of money. Certainly the rates would be lower IF the originators could show they did solid due diligence [and could also show the market wasn't distorted by other market participants not doing DD - that there were in fact few abuses now - if that were even true]... but regardless the rates would have to be a LOT higher if we want to see the mortgage market something like 50% in private hands again.
Interest rates in the U.S. have been artificially depressed, especially on Treasuries.
We are on a similar wave length it appears - that was my independent conclusion seeing Krainers piece. Interesting. Wonder how long it takes that meme to spread?
Haven't seen where said farmer is from.
If crop insurance is involved this must be in the U.S. and would make sense if
appearance is what's screwing the pooch. What kind of beans are we talking about?
Soy doesn't care about appearance. We press them into meal and oil.
If in the U.S. shipping said beans would be a deal breaker.
Haven't seen where said farmer is from.
If crop insurance is involved this must be in the U.S. and would make sense if
appearance is what's screwing the pooch.
The farmer was in New York state, from my recollection. The crop was edible beans, which I assumed was white but certainly be another variety. And the USA is not the only country with crop insurance, by the way. Many developed countries have government-sponsored crop insurance, and to my knowledge most operate by the same mechanisms.
Tanta Vive!
Snap, crackle, pop.
I love trivia, but I'm obviously not at Tanta-level yet.
But I think I'll use Filly-Mae from now on.
Countrywide Home Loan Mortgage Corp = CHLMC = Chili Mac
Pretty amazing to "see it" in a graph. No free-enterprise story to dream up here anymore. Guess we'll need to find some other "market" to make up our stories in.
thank god the free market had the option to sell out to the federal government!
home values will sink to the bottom of the pool. Along with equities
What's the mortgage industry's favorite sugary-sweet cereal?
Lucky A.R.M.'s
Krainer concludes:
My vote for the 'Understatement of the Year' award.
Where does FHA show in that pretty chart?
Looks like a healthy market system to me.
Abnormal is the new normal. But it always was. You see, time and space are curved.
Don't they just stuff the crap in an agency?
One of my ads is "remit 2 india" Wire transfer service.
Should I be getting my money out of the country?
When people say (something like) the Treasury has purchased 1.5T in MBS's - and is planning on purchasing another 2.5 T - where does that fit into this graph? Is that just the "other side" of the account-entry for the GSE's shown in the graph?
The housing market now depends on the US government's credibility in the credit markets. If that's lost...
Well, you don't want to think about it.
You should be getting the other country's money.
oops. wrong thread.
You should be getting the other country's money.
Other fiat currencies?
Unless the issuing country routinely demonstrates a fiscally responsible posture I think they're all pretty much the same.
Well, if I transfered USD to India, wouldn't it then be in Rupes in a bank in India?
Wonder what the transfer fee is. Oh and I get 60 free minutes of Us to India calling card.
Since government-controlled lenders now control some 95% of the market, there's no need for that "first time" homebuyer tax credit thingie, anyway. If they want to create incentives to buy homes, they can do it quietly by modifying the terms of the Big Three government-run lenders. Expect to see further tweaks to downpayment terms, LTV ratios, rates... Be interesting to see what happens when Federal Reserve stops channeling funds through here. On the plus side, the government now has a golden opportunity to thoroughly restructure the paperwork and other aspects of the real estate transaction market, since they can pretty much dictate terms to the originators and everyone else now... "All your houses are belong to us!"
josap wrote:
Maybe; maybe not. That said, I doubt you want to use rupees as your reserve currency-
H1N1 Update. Looks like we have a case in our house. We'll get confirmation tomorrow. Busy signal calling the school this morning. 15+ rings to call the clinic. Hour wait until call back from nurse. This might just be as bad as people are saying.
NotVeryNice- '...the idea that the Fed is finally going to allow equity prices to fall again.'
They are going to 'allow' equity prices to fall again. The 'independent' Fed.
Systemic structural imbalance distortion alert!
This is how our system works. Public assets are privatized and stripped of value by the FIRE eCONomy. After the value is stripped, the assets are then dumped back on the government.
What a system.
If half of all sales are "distressed", they they aren't.
If you own 100 Rembrandts, and paid $10 billion, the paintings are worth what they can bring in if they are all auctioned today.
On the changes in CC rates, I see Sen. Dodd is introducing a bill today to freeze rates until the CARD Act goes into effect in February . The House did not follow that approach in the Expedited CARD Act passed by the House Financial Services Committee last week, but the bill could be amended on the House floor when it is taken up for consideration next week. If Dodd's bill passes, I suspect that issuers will be closing accounts by the hundreds of thousands right before the holidays.
NaRm,
On end of last thread...I was saying something like you are unfortunately making sense in a 'hopeless' but gritty realistic sort of way...
Basel Too wrote:
I shook my head the other day when I heard the story of a farmer who had bad weather and ended up with a less than optimal edible bean crop. The poor weather had resulted in discolouration and would fetch virtually nothing on the market. However, they were still completely edible.
Crop insurance provisions required him to plow the entire works under before he could receive any payment, and he was having a serious internal struggle when faced with the fact that he was going to destroy tonnes and tonnes of edible food simply due to the colour when people halfway around the world were starving.
But what's the choice? Is he going to harvest them for free? Is someone going to ship them for free? Are these 'free' beans going to depress local prices when they finally arrive in the destination country? To offset this problem, are we going to provide these 'free' beans to the local government, who will then sell them at market rates to avoid market disruptions? Who gets to keep the profits? The despotic leader?
Simple moral questions rarely have simple answers, but everyone wants to 'help'.
Terry wrote:
Now, THAT would be interesting. Does the bill also roll rates back to where they were a few months ago?
Wisdom Speaker wrote:
They could combine them together, the new Federal Housing Agency. Nationalize all the Real-Estate agents, making them part of the Department of Homeland Security. Write software for a new nationwide real-estate listing service and loan application processing system.
merchants of fear wrote:
If housing prices drop across the board, there'll be systemic failure in the financial system. Not just banks, but pension funds, 401ks, possibly money markets. The other side of the coin is radical currency debasement. There's no good outcome as far as I can see.
Instead of a RE bubble blog, this needs to be a Crash blog...based on what's happening...
Homes are the one thing that no matter what level of depravity the dollar falls to, not a one of them can be exported.
sm_landlord wrote:
Don't know - the actual bill is not posted yet, and who knows what will happen in the mark-up. Under the fed rules issued awhile back, the 45 day change in terms notice requirement is already in effect, so any recently announced changes that have not yet taken effect may be knocked out.
noob goldberg wrote:
On the bright side, these beans will do wonders for the soil, and perhaps he'll be able to afford not to use heavy doses of nitrogen next year.
I just had to take this straight line from NOTaREALmerican (from previous thread):
No, no, you've got it backwards. The board of directors appoints half of Congress! (Then again, undoubtedly the backscratching goes both ways.)
Cinco-X,
Yeah the 'currency' or the 'financial system'...truth is if either one goes, they will probably BOTH 'go'...
That means my job is nearly complete. I was sent by the Illuminati to capture your sole. We need a new Fed chairman, the current guy's lookin’ kinda frail.
Btw, we have outstanding benefits.
Edit: Soul (but we get both with either).
The feel of the blog has little to do with the tepid prognostications of its owner. It is a crash blog.
Cinco-X wrote:
Indeed. I didn't talk to him directly, but I would have told him something very similar: if you want to help, make a monetary donation so that the NGO can buy the beans locally, which is helpful to everyone. Shipping your own crap halfway around the world doesn't help anyone except your conscience.
Cinco-X wrote:
That's what I was calling "taking the biflationary bath" last weekend. On the one side, your house loses value. On the other side, your living expenses go up due to the currency devaluation "inflation". Renters may come out okay, and homeowners with little equity have the option of stiffing the bank on the one side, but those who own and are on tight incomes will get hurt most.
NaRm,
I thought the 'Illuminati' was renamed the 'Squid'...
We needed the housing bubble to expose the soft underbelly of matters financial, but now it feels like a house guest that won't leave...
And how about this quote from CR's referenced report...
still 100 % short equities. welcome to the p3 crash. I hear Cramer was whining today that obama doesn't care about shareholders
NaRm,
I just hope we don't have the Russian post-revolutionary 'looting' & 'cannibalism' problem and/or the German currency Crash 'wheelbarrel of money' problem...did any of this 'internet' stuff really happen?
the great reflation wrote:
If Cramer ever thought that he did, I guess that explains the
shortage.
Roubini sounds like he has been posting on CR .
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33477456
Wisdom Speaker,
It may not be obvious yet, but renters don't come out ok. Their apartments are after all owned by someone, and a large number will default.
Chainsaw wrote:
FHA backs the loans which are bundled into a big pile of dung which Ginnie Mae then insures this piece 'o' shit. It's a sure,
never can fail system.
Wisdom Speaker wrote:
Yup; no good outcomes; that said, if major pension funds go bust, it's going to be really painful. SS may be all that's left, and in an inflationary environment, it won't be able to keep up. Not enough worker bees in the future.
See if this looks and feels just a little familiar?
YouTube - Middle Class Revolt - Argentina
Renters never come out OK. Their cost of living is increased each lease term to an amount the landlord deems sufficient to compensate him for any losses due to currency risk or econominc trauma, while the renter is also subjected to equivalent currency risk and depends on his crappy job to keep body and soul together.
And any renters that don't like it are welcome to GTFO.
Always worked that way, always will, and many former owners are about to discover it.
But hey, there's always the beach, right? Try to spread some newspapers out though, the sand gets a little cold at night.
The world has ended: McDonald’s Closes in Iceland After Krona Collapse
Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Iceland’s McDonald’s Corp. restaurants will be closed at the end of the month after the collapse of the krona eroded profits at the fast-food chain, McDonald’s franchise holder Lyst ehf said.
McDonald’s in Iceland, which imports most of the ingredients it uses in its meals, will shut after costs doubled over the past year, Lyst said in an e-mailed statement today. The franchise holder said it doesn’t expect the situation to change in the short term.
digalert wrote:
I thought that the FHA was the insurer, and Ginnie Mae held the paper?
noob goldberg wrote:
But the issue is not that there's not enough food to feed people halfway around the world.
Roubini- '...there may be a crash in global assets' and there 'could be a 'market crash all over the world'.
So the 'stimulus' worked?
rb wrote:
mmmm. great coffee beans to chew. tastes like sh*t. no nutritional value.
Terry wrote:
merchants of fear wrote:
Define: "Worked".
Destroying edible food simply because of its color when people are starving can never be a rational moral act on a societal level. Have no fear, the most remote starving people on the planet are capable of understanding that the discolored beans are likely to be a one-time bounty and they should not adjust for a long-term "market disruption".
The logistics are not simple. The moral question is.
merchants of fear wrote:
Luckily for you, the US nobility is addressing the 'looting' issue ahead of time, with their pre-revolutionary looting program. By the time the revolution happens, there should be nothing left, if everything goes according to plan (which it appears to be doing).
Regarding: cannibalism and wheelbarrels... I'm not sure about this. However, zombies are really popular these days. Perhaps, like the new Pride and Prejudice and Zombies book, the next generation of economist can include Zombies in there titles.
Amazon.com: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! (9781594743344): Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith: Books
If Dodd's bill passes, I suspect that issuers will be closing accounts by the hundreds of thousands right before the holidays.
Oooh. New plan.
The second this bill passes, max out the Citicards.
Oh yeah. Gaming the system is becoming a full time job.
(obvious snark) (of course) (I would never do that) (really)
Angry Saver (profile) wrote on Mon, 10/26/2009 - 3:12 pm
This is how our system works. Public assets are privatized and stripped of value by the FIRE eCONomy. After the value is stripped, the assets are then dumped back on the government.
What a system.
You forgot the most important part - the value stripped also doesn't go into any sort of productive investment, it is dispersed to FIRE minions and/or paid out in bonuses, so there is no net gain to anyone outside the FIRE.
OT but there was some discussion of H1N1 in the last thread. Here is an excerpt of an email I just received from the DC government:
The District is in need of hundreds of volunteers over the next several weeks to assist with the very important H1N1 Vaccination Clinics.
For all of you gold bugs...
sm_landlord,
Define 'stimulus'. If it is unsustainable govt., corporate, and consumer debt that causes a collapse of the markets and/or currencies and based on past national & global collapses our leaders went ahead and spent anyway, they 'crashed' the system and/or caused a 'systemic collapse'.
Lucky me, I got an e mail invitation from MARIA BARTORIMO to join her and her friends to get in on the opportunities most Americans are missing. WOW , This is better than the one from Kramer. I think I'll choose this one. Did I get on the "obvious shill list" somehow?
1 currency now -yogi wrote:
I was thinking he could worry about those that he can actually get the food to.
Problem: Many people are starving.
Solution: I have lots of extra food that I am willing to share.
Consensus: Shove it, St. Francis. Better to just burn it for fuel, brother, because this sucker's goin' down.
I like it; the consensus works well for such diverse groups as pillaging Viking hordes, deforesting Easter Island visionaries, and casual American litter-bugs. Sort of a one-size-fits-all nihilism worthy of the most horrific Kali Cults.
Maybe if we put our heads together we can find a way to make the hapless bean farmer truly understand how impotent and pointless his entire existence really is. I can't wait to see what the New Year brings this country if we have already been reduced to this. I hope Pavel just skips this whole thread.
1 currency now -yogi wrote:
Really? Because that's not my understanding of the situation. My understanding is that years of shovelling crappy free commodities into countries depresses local market conditions, removes all incentive for investment into local productive capacity, and provides a windfall for well-placed bureaucrats and officials.
I'm not saying don't respond. I explicitly said 'send money, not physical commodities'. Then buy they locally, or from neighbouring countries, so that local productive capacity is enhanced and incentives are provided to enable a full crop the following year.
Moving the beans halfway around the world is simple logistical exercise. Justifying the expenditures in moving the physical commodity is a complicated moral question.
Let them eat acorns!
Leftys Liquors Lubricants and Tarp and Bank wrote:
As a gag, I once "signed up" one of my liberal friends to an e-mail list for the Republican Party. He ended up getting a signed photo of GWB and his wife, and I got nothing...
In other words, the govt. deficits everywhere that are unpayable without 'printing'...'crashed' the system. It 'worked' to crash the global system.
JD
There are almost daily protests in Argentina about one thing or another. I spent 2 weeks there, everyday a large or small group protested. The police closed streets for them, it was always peacefull if loud.
Chicago is having a demostration against the banks soon.
Showdown In Chicago
Luckily for you, the US nobility is addressing the 'looting' issue ahead of time, with their pre-revolutionary looting program.
Yes. And when the obvious becomes, well, obvious they'll have a template to work with to 'explain' things.
"Rumsfeld: Let me say one other thing. The images you are seeing
on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same
picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see
it 20 times, and you think, "My goodness, were there that many vases?"
(Laughter.) "Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole
country?"
nova wrote:
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day;
Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime-
BTW, acorns are no worse than poke salad, and folks down South have eaten that for centuries...
josap wrote:
This will mostly attract the liberals. Until the liberals and tea-party people are - more or less - pissed off at the same people the political Parties are successfully doing their jobs.
As far as granting food aid, and sending food, rather than money to buy locally.
The quid pro quo is that it's a back-door subsidy to US farmers. Obviously.
Who Does U.S. Food Aid Benefit? -- In These Times
There are no fish. Red Loser harvested them all when you weren't looking and sold them for $4.99 all-you-can-eat years ago.
Teach a man to eat acorns, and if he can keep them down, he will ask you for a job because he needs some for his wife and kids.
Welcome to the new world! [sigh] This sucker did go down, didn't it?
In reality, how many US citizens can we expect their new creditor (the US Government) to foreclose on? Wouldn't garner a lot of votes, would it.
NOTE: For a moment my nimble fingers had typed "criditor." Freudian?
Ma Joad said 'They can't wipe us out. They can't lick us.'
Let them eat each other!
Cinco-X wrote:
I thought it was: Teach a man to fish and he'll over-fish the sea until he starves. ( I think I saw that on this site.)
I think the MCdonalds in Iceland has some special sauce for sale for your fish.
Is there anything wrong with begging for food? It makes people feel good to feed them. They are working - not laying around on their ass watching the big flat screen at the shelter. Make them have copies of their resumes! No food or money for food unless you can prove that you are willing to get a job and go into debt!
Let me eat cake.
pavel.chichikov wrote:
... missed a chance to lower their unemployment rate, they did. Those could've been minimum-wage jobs and done double-duty as a "stimulus" package item...
I only eat frosting. You can keep the cake.
Ma Joad said 'They can't wipe us out. They can't lick us.'
Nope. They gave you NASCAR, football, and the Marine Corp!
There will be Jobs...picking peaches for a dollar a Ton...
Just so long as I don't have to eat any disgusting discolored beans. Yuck!
"I hope Pavel just skips this whole thread."
Sorry, I'm having trouble finding the context here; key words don't seem to help.
Cinco-X wrote:
Let a nation with no moral constraints acquire with no recompense your methods of sustainability and the planet burns.
burnside wrote:
I see your point, although I think as population fails to increase and mean household size increases, there's a good chance that there will be a serious surplus of housing for some time to come. That will hold down rents (sub-inflation levels, anyway) regardless of who owns the rental units.
threetorches wrote:
No one ever thinks of the hapless farmers in Africa who refuse to invest a penny in their fields because some country keeps dumping their excess production on the local market.
Jonathan wrote:
As a fun exercise, try to start a lobby in Washington that reduces the American content requirement for food aid even 10%. Watch the howls of outrage.
Let them eat each other!
Watched The Blob yesterday with Steve McQueen. At the end they parachuted 'the blob' into the artic since it didn't like cold. If it is still there they might be able to unleash it on the down-and-outers.
threetorches wrote:
Acorn Flour
© Copyright 2009. All rights reserved and enforced
I'm responding to the narrow issue of destroying, for some micro-economic purpose, valuable food that can't fetch a premium because the local market wealth is so extreme that it irrationally values its appearance.
If the cost of shipping and storing renders an alternative method of sharing food with a distant country more sensible, that's a separate issue.
Wisdom Speaker wrote:
For some odd reason most people will volunteer before taking a paying job for minimum wage. Must be what is left of their ego when they are unemployed.
Or it could be that most states set up unemployment benifits based on the wage of the last job held. And if the new job doesn't last more than 2 or 3 quarters you are inelligable for benifits.
"... missed a chance to lower their unemployment rate, they did. Those could've been minimum-wage jobs and done double-duty as a "stimulus" package item..."
I think the District is constrained financially these days. It is local government.
Watched The Blob yesterday with Steve McQueen. At the end they parachuted 'the blob' into the artic since it didn't like cold. If it is still there they might be able to unleash it on the down-and-outers.
Yet another reason to fear global warming. We must save the polar bear! Think of the children!
It wasn't just 'stimulus' spending 'band-aids' that is causing a crash...it's derivatives too!
" "I hope Pavel just skips this whole thread."
Sorry, I'm having trouble finding the context here; key words don't seem to help. "
No one wants to see your hopeful spirit crushed by the bean nihilists.
Juvenal Delinquent wrote:
If the alternative is an Argentine future, the pain would be worth it.
PrudentBear
(It's hard to believe how less "conservative" this Martin Hutchinson guy has gotten over the last year)
Rob Dawg wrote:
Jeez Rob, you know I was just messin' around.......acorns are the new squirrel
josap wrote:
Sounds like the same people who won't eat discolored beans...
pavel.chichikov wrote:
It's my fault, and I fear this thread is painting me as an amoral scumbag. Notarealamerican would be proud.
But I'll put the bottom line here: I don't think food should be destroyed when people are starving, but that doesn't mean I think those starving people would benefit by us dumping free food into their food supply.
josap wrote:
Ahh, that's the rub. The people who need this money can't afford to take a fully documented "government" job. What they want is a "cash market" job.
For that matter, it wouldn't surprise me if the government can't even afford the overhead costs of creating a bevy of short-term minimum wage positions. Too much paperwork to push around.
Wisdom, I see your point of course, but REO frequently sits empty and isn't available for rental. No argument about the extent of inventory - it's available rental stocks or rentals reasonably secure from an owner's default which unnerve a renter in times like our own.
Is noob still on?
Hello, Pavel. I just used you as a convenient short-hand for someone who would appreciate the dilemma faced by the bean farmer who thought his less-than-perfect crop might be able to help someone less fortunate, who was told to shove it because his crappy beans weren't as valuable as he previously believed them to be.
yogi has perhaps done a better job than I of describing and commenting on the distinction between a global economics exercise and the plight of one small farmer who thought he could help just a little, just this once.
I didn't like the implications going forward if we are already reduced to destroying food and plowing under less-valuable crops. I have seen these kinds of solutions applied before.
Either hang around a little longer before making generalizations. Or better, go away.
Are you Mork from Ork, showing your darker side now?
Of course after we have a dollar meltdown slamming the door of currency controls will probably be the order of the day (no doubt after the well connected horses are in the next country). You might have to send emails to Indian nationals hoping they will help you get your money out. You might check your spam folder for ideas (hint: search for "Nigerian").
ING Shows EU Means Business - WSJ.com
Compare and contrast European terms for a Bailout with the American Terms.
So now we know: the European Union really does mean business. ING Group has been forced into a much more radical restructuring than anticipated, as the price of compliance with the E.U.'s rules on state aid provided during the financial crisis. That's bad news for ING. It also sends a worrying signal to the other 30 or so European banks whose financial restructuring plans still await E.U. approval.
The Dutch banking and insurance giant is to divest the insurance businesses, sell its U.S. ING Direct online subsidiary, divest 6% of the Dutch retail banking market, pay the Dutch government an extra 1.3 billion euros ($1.93 million) in fees for access to its bad asset protection scheme, and commit not to make acquisitions or be a price leader in certain retail banking for another three years.
Them European regulators play rough.
noob goldberg wrote:
Never mind, Noob. It's very difficult to discuss the topic of food aid unless everyone is up to speed on the history of the various programs attempted over the last umpteen years or so.
The farmer of the beans also needs to decide if he needs the crop insurance money to buy bean seeds for next year or if he has the cash to pay his bills until next havest and buy seed for the spring.
In reality, he probably can't afford to give the beans away, even if harvest and shipping cost him nothing.
The plan to 'save' the banks isn't working...system needs a 'time out'...why have 'chaos' and Failed Banks(except for one or two...last bank(s) standing...)
I wonder how much DC can afford to send 2010 Census workers around? The "return on investment" there (in terms of government-entitlement payouts from Uncle Sam) is probably higher than for H1N1.
Actually, I wonder how hard it would be to make use of the 2010 Census workers (temporarily) to support the H1N1 workforce needs? Just add "right arm or left arm?" to the questionnaire... [only half in jest]
If the man is too weak to fish and starves to death, what good is knowing how to fish?
You got some fine Kool-aid up there. "Depressing local prices" is good for eaters. We are discussing shipping food to starving people, not people who are adequately fed by local farmers and their bankers.
that chart is a nauseating hisotoriographic glimpse of our Gibbonesque road to ruin - the original sprint towards idiocy in the yellowcake ZIRP mania of '01 that kicked the housing/commodity bubble into high gear and the recent complete subjugation of the idiocracy to the whims of Jamie and Lloyd. Heckuva job. Eating feces has never been so celebrated since the days of DeSade.
anyone in dallas going to the Get Motivated seminar with george w bush?
1 currency now -yogi wrote:
The honest to god truth is that it's done because it's simpler. It's simpler to pay the guy after the beans are destroyed so that you don't have to audit him and figure out if he made money on the insurance claim, which would then have to be adjusted. It's simpler because then you don't have to figure out if the guy buying the beans paid market price or underpaid.
I'm not saying it's right, but that's the reason. Because it's too hard to account for unscrupulous business practices that insurance fraud often results in.
And now I have to go home, so I can't stay signed in to watch the carnage I've unleashed.
This happens more times than not, I feel.
What if a hungry man is stretched out in the doorway and the dogs come to lick his sores?
Hopefully the Stalinist Plan to burn food will not be an option...that didn't work out obviously...wonder how Spam is selling?
noob - no hard feelings! You make good points! I was really only regretting that we have actually come to this ... it is getting harder and harder to watch the global catastrophe unfold.
The plan to 'save' the banks isn't working
Sure it is.
They're taking billions of your tax dollars, and paying them out as bonuses. Pretty sure they consider that 'working'. And they don't give a shit what you think.
noob goldberg wrote:
Alex, Mr. Noob here would like to take "How insurance distorts markets and drives up costs" for $400...
i love jam, ham, and spam alot.
are they really OUR tax dollars? or a spoiled combination of our grandkids' and Chinese tax dollars?
Too many of our "systems" suck.
1 currency now -yogi wrote:
I know we are. And I'm not opposed to sending aid. Trust me, I'm not. I donate a great deal of my meagre personal income to charity to expressly address this issue.
But as a policy-maker, other priorities quickly become involved.
And now I truly must go, unfortunately. A night of travel and another conference in the morning awaits.
HollywoodHack wrote:
Yeah, how true is that ! I wonder how long it will take the under 30's to get really pissed off and what form the revulsion will take. There's not allot of them tho (compared to the '60's generation which had numbers on their side).
Geez, in the good ole USA during GD1, farmers were destroying food, dumping milk, etc.... Presently, French farmers are slaughtering imported (Germany) trucks of animals as they cross the border, and dumping milk ,etc.......
I never understood while people make fun of spam. I like it fried with eggs. I also don't understand why Tanya Tucker does not have a recording contract and why the resturaunt behind us that had greens and fried baloney closed. My America is gone.
Yeah, how true is that ! I wonder how long it will take the under 30's to get really pissed off and what form the revulsion will take.
Probably do some furious twittering and angry podcasts
Eric,
I guess I meant working for 'depositors'...and it's not working for the 90% pay cut crew...who came after the big money was made...
well tanya tucker now looks like a blond Rosie Odonnell, so there's that.
Ahh, I actually read this yesterday, but now it's topical. Good news for the agricultural superpower
Food will never be so cheap again - Telegraph
nova wrote:
They probably are now. But, when they look around in 5 years and see all these old farts sitting around and they're (the < 30's) are not going to get much of anything, who knows. I'd be pissed.
Disclaimer: Ignored and despised the '60's (was a "conservative" then).
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, agricultural price support programs led to vast amounts of food being deliberately destroyed at a time when malnutrition was a serious problem in the United States and hunger marches were taking place in cities across the country. For example, the federal government bought 6 million hogs in 1933 alone and destroyed them. Huge amounts of farm produce were plowed under, in order to keep it off the market and maintain prices at the officially fixed level, and vast amounts of milk were poured down the sewers for the same reason. Meanwhile, many American children were suffering from diseases caused by malnutrition.
–Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 56.
They(the highly rewarded) are taking 'digital fiat' dollars for cash and buying hard assets possibly?
It's weird. I just realized something. When I was much younger I tried to join the Young Socialists Party on 14street in DC. I hitched into town just to do that. Some guy listened to me, told me I should wait. It would be better for me. It just occured to me he did me a big favor. Probably FBI
rps,
1930's price support programs for food...destroying food...unbelievable...
whatever happened to the restaurants that served livermush and cheerwine and watered your horse for free? And whatever happened to the Know-nothing party---those were the days!
Jonathan wrote:
Interesting. Another problem that can't be peaceful "solved" as the only "solution" is people breeding less. Which is impossible.
the logical complement of the confiscation of gold... perversion is as perversion does
"I don't think food should be destroyed when people are starving, but that doesn't mean I think those starving people would benefit by us dumping free food into their food supply."
Withholding food from hungry people is criminal, but the able-bodied need to work if only to retain their self-respect.
I left the YSP and got stoned with some black guys on the steps of a gov building and went home. Just like I am doing now
Charles Kiting wrote:
Bwah! Colloquially known as "Train Wreck." How apropos.
NOTaREALmerican (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Mon, 10/26/2009 - 4:16 pm
Interesting. Another problem that can't be peaceful "solved" as the only "solution" is people breeding less. Which is impossible.
Nature was too successful!
nova wrote:
Which gov build? Start waving, I'll look out the window....
Put something in the water or invest in the Soylent corporation.
~splat
nova wrote:
Was that during the Great Depression?
which black guys --I think I see them
ac wrote:
In one sense, all we've succeeded in doing is building an ever-more tightly-coupled system with a single point of failure.
Interesting, that in software design, tightly-coupled systems are generally seen as an anachronistic response to concerns over security and privacy.
Let's go back to art. Say you had 200 beautiful lithographs that you couldn't sell because everyone in your local market who wanted to own one already did. You could give them away to a poor community that wanted them but couldn't pay you what you could get from an insurance policy that paid you to burn unsold copies.
You can rationalize that giving them the litho's would discourage local artists and printers, but you are destroying value, even if the price of the existing stock rises by so much that the gross "market cap" winds up more than covering the loss.
Sure you can add value by destroying clunkers if you substitute a more fuel-efficient equivalent. You can also destroy value if someone could use the clunker and had no alternative. Pavel happens to be right that virtually all "economic" policy alibis fail in the face of the moral imperative.
josap wrote:
Then the obvious conclusion is that we need more, right?
Been coming here since the second half of 2006. I'm not Mork. Feel free to put me on ignore. I stand by my comment.
NOTaREALmerican wrote:
Not only possible, but happening. Lower birth rates and longer life spans are the order of the day all around the developing world. Here's the Hans Rosling video on global statistics: TED
rarity dictates value, especially in the world of art. remember that when creating your currency, yogi...
'Globalization' and Big-Agri has been starving people for years by replacing food crops with 'cash' crops(including opium, etc.)
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
Some large preditors (T-Rex, etc.) should have survived for 'balance'.
Sowell is led by his ideology.
One can feel free to disagree, but one should at least understand the reasons for a policy before they do so. Take milk for example. It takes roughly 3 years to build a dairy herd. As prices drop, milk production drops, except it doesn't. Like an oil well, it costs you about the same to run the pump (milk the cow) at 10% or 100%, so you produce at 100%. So what happens it that wells are capped and cows are killed. In other words productive capacity is destroyed. In a pure free market, it is destroyed past the point of supporting the market due to lead times. New calves are slaughtered, and old cows slowly stop producing milk. If this is allowed, you eventually have a massive milk shortage with no immediate remedy resulting in massive starvation. Since this undesirable, we have price floors and tolerate overages that sometimes lead to the waste of product.
The H1N1 virus; swine flu originated with Smithfield farms. So what, what the big deal, right?, Wrong. Read Rolling Stone's "Boss Hog." Factory farms are a hot spot for new infectious diseases. According to a former chief of the Centers for Disease Control’s Special Pathogens Branch, The animals are pumped with antibiotics and which produce resistant strains. Stop buying corporate grown meat.
"A single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah holds a half-million hogs and produces more shit every day than all the residents of Manhattan.
Rolling Stone’s stunning report describes the lakes of shit that surround pig factories as the color of Pepto Bismol because of the “interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs.”
Vegetarians who think they are unaffected by this toxic fecal frappe should think again: The sludge is often used to “fertilize” crops that end up on your table.
"I can guarantee food production is subject to the law of diminishing returns to capital, no matter how hard you work"
A comment from the Telegraph above. Food production is not alone in this regard.
Global depopulation through war and famine is an uninterupted 'industrial profits/finance' process...
I'm not suggesting that a scorched-earth policy is always morally wrong, just that propping prices by destroying valuable supply because you don't believe the demanders deserve a hand-out is usually a lame excuse for greed.
JimPortlandOR (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Mon, 10/26/2009 - 4:23 pm
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
Nature was too successful!
Some large predetors (T-Rex, etc.) should have survived for 'balance'.
A lot of small predators (bacteria, virii, parasites) did... nature always finds a way. That's not blind faith, just the way it works out.
rps wrote:
looks like I'll be skipping dinner
Feckless Ness wrote:
Will have to check it from home. The zombiwall has blocked it.
badger wrote:
Spoken like a true "cheese head" . How ya' feelin' about Farve's return to GB?
10/26 NCUA update: Things are still getting worse, even for the relatively healthy Credit Union sector...
National Credit Union Administration levies "premium assessments" on credit unions. 0.15% of insured shares (deposits).
http://www.ncua.gov/Resources/Letters/09-CU-20.pdf
Some interesting tidbits:
Editorial: Bulls**t! The capital ratio is what it is. Just because one of your credit union brethren lost their money and you have to pay up, doesn't mean you don't have to pay up! What matters for your own financial stability is that you're not going to have that capital when you need it.
Editorial: These guys are geniuses!
Oops, looks like another 6% increase in the damage done by the mortgage-backed securities that the corporate credit unions bought during the bubble...
The above link has two attachments which provide some more color. The first is about the Corporate Credit Union problem: http://www.ncua.gov/Resources/Letters/09-CU-20(Attachment2).pdf
The quote just above suggests that the problems are still getting worse. If you propagate this sort of rate of deterioration to other parts of the banking system, which were much more highly leveraged than the credit unions at the start of the crisis... ruh-roh!
Also looked here (the other the attachments to the first link above): http://www.ncua.gov/Resources/Letters/09-CU-20(Attachment1).pdf
Looks like the "Natural Person" Credit Unions (they kind individuals use, not corporations) have $87B in Net Worth... note this is much smaller than the deposit base...
It's 5:00. Do you know where your money is?
Money - meet matteress.
Industrial pollutants, 'new' viral products, and depleted uranium ammo may affect birth rates and birth defects...
I think the Packers made the right choice. Unfortunately MN has the better team and should win easily.
the great reflation wrote:
That is a tragedy....
Josap,
Spend while it's still 'money'.
"What if a hungry man is stretched out in the doorway and the dogs come to lick his sores?"
THE SONG OF DIVES
Dives ate and Lazarus starved
But Dives scraped his platter clean
The dogs that licked the beggar’s wounds
Belonged to Dives and grew lean
The beggar’s heart was small and red
The blood they lapped was thin and sweet—
When Dives’ dogs ate Lazarus
It cost much less than butcher’s meat
But when they broke the beggar’s bones
And licked the marrow from the cracks
The rich man cried and rubbed his hands:
I wish I had poor Lazarus back
For then I’d send my table scraps
To make atonement for my lapse
Pavel
March 3, 1994
badger wrote:
That's the problem with pure "isms". They never quite work all the time. So, the "isms" get tweaked. And once the cow pokes its udder under Sheriff Moral Hazard's tent, then the dam bursts and you can't close the barn door after the cows come home.
(I've used-up all my agricultural knowledge).
It's 5:00. Do you know where your money is? In the Bank Of Sealy.
“Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value ---- zero.” Voltaire
True wealth is Labor.
And from the pension side of things.
*Retirement benefits are at risk, with fewer traditional pension plans available and workers now “in charge of investing their own assets,” U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said at an Oct. 22 conference in Washington.
“These were never meant to be more than supplemental plans, and the recession has decimated too many accounts,” Solis said of 401(k) plans.
*
Retirement Plan Changes Won’t Stem Gaps, GAO Says (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
Looks like all retierment plans / savings are really only ment to suplement a "real" retirement savings plan. Now what did they think that plan was?
Pigged by the new post...
I'm leaning towards the idea that the Fed is finally going to allow equity prices to fall again, mostly to create treasury demand to replace the ending of it directly purchasing treasuries.
As such, at least for the short to middle term, I think treasury yields are going to go back down.
How would one go about going long treasuries without buying directly?
rps wrote:
There, fixed that for ya.
it'd be awesome if individuals could buy 401(k) insurance through the PBGC.
Roubini sorta sounds like Dracula.
Wisdom Speaker wrote:
There, fixed that for ya.
And I would have thought it was somehow related to reaping the benefits from the products of labor. BTW, is there no wealth to be had from unskilled labor? Someone has to do that work, and doing it for nothing is in effect slavery-
josap wrote:
HA! Isn't this a joke-n-half! And, how - exactly - is the average person supposed to avoid getting screwed by the smart amoral scumbags that run the financial system?. And, how many people recall the "movement" to allow "the people" to "invest" their own Social Security money. I bring this up to some of my "conservative friends" occasionally (if I'm in a poking mood - usually after they complain about their 401k and the wonderful decisions they've made with those).
Rarity dictates price, not value. Pavel reproduces his poem to anyone with a connection. It retains value even on multiple readings.
My most valued material possessions are rare Hendrix vinyl LP's. If millions of better copies were made and sold for a penny, the price of my collection would get clobbered, but not only would the value of the new stock be a gain, I'd be happier knowing there was greater supply.
You are having more fun than I am nova. My
broke and they implored me to not start drinking earlier. I've since disregarded their input and began to drink. It is tedious cooking dinner without 
Next shoe to drop--PBGC Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, One of W's last gifts was this: from UPI.com WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- President George Bush signed legislation Tuesday that allows U.S. corporations to put off funding pension plans. "Those of you who may have followed this issue know that we did have some concerns with this bill because we think it will increase the cost of near-term claims on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation -- the PBGC -- and could also result in some benefits lost to workers over the long term," Fratto said.
1 currency now,
Do you have the 'nude groupie' UK version of 'Electric Ladyland'?
Won't the healthcare reform 'Death Panels' fill this niche ?
~splat
rps wrote:
Oh, well, nobody that matters then. I was worried for a minute there.
merchants of fear wrote:
By equity prices, I really meant the stock market. The fed needs to incite people back to treasuries so they can both sell their existing debt, and keep yields down so that mortgage rates don't start going up. This also re-balances the global recovery, by moving money back out of investments in emerging markets and back to treasuries.
NOTaREALmerican wrote:
They're not. LOL! They're supposed to pay lots of hidden fees to plan administrators and mutual fund companies.
I have plotted the CDC data normalized for time from 1997 to the present for the % of patient visits reported as ILI (Influenza Like Illness).
energyecon
not true, yogi. the original issues would still have value and do. if your argument was true, every great painting in the world would have instantly had zero value as color reproduction became feasible. but folks still pay 100 mil for an iconic landmark in art.
for whatever reason, most wonkish econ types really can't understand fetishization, and project their own ignorance of this basic psychological mechanic onto things. Lenin's golden urinals come to mind.
"Sowell is led by his ideology."
Aren't we all?
Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" posited that you could basically divide everyone into those who believe either A) modern man is smarter and "better" than any previous generation, more capable to making the right decision and avoiding past follies or B) all men are inherently self-interested and need constraints (societal, legal, etc...) to keep these selfish tendencies in check. Answered a lot of questions I had had regarding why the same sets of people tend to divide the same over very diverse issues. It's worth reading regardless of your opinion of Sowell's ideology.
Buy TLT for US, WIP for world. TBT to go short.
That's one way.
Keep a copy of that graph handy and show it to anyone who claims that FNM and FRE were the root cause of the housing bubble and crash. How may firms would be willing to give up the sort of market share that FNM and FRE did at the worst part of the bubble? Should they have given up more, yes, but very hard to do. Note that when the private securitizations dried up, there was enormous political pressure from all sides on FNM and FRE to step into the void, including the idiotic idea of increasing the conforming limit to $730K. The problem that FNM and FRE had was that they were highly leveraged, and that they were 100% exposed to resedential mortgages. When the Tsunami hit, they were standing on the beach, and had no chance, and not because they were bad swmmers. If Michael Phelps were a lifeguard on the beach a Phuket in 12/26/04, even he would have drowned.
What gets to me is that so much is set up to screw the guy who goes to work, pays his bills and tries to save a bit. By doing what the smart guys tell you is the right thing, you end up with little to nothing.
You can work, pay, save and end up with a shopping cart on the street. Or if you are lucky in a camp ground.
I am angry, sad and somewhat resiged.
No.
You probably know the story that Hendrix was disgusted by that cover, which he had been assured would be the Linda Eastman photos of him playing with kids on the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park.
He grew sick of his pop image long before his promoters, and I find the rumors that he was murdered for an insurance policy quite credible. Michael Jackson proved that survival depends on the perception that your ability to deliver the product of skilled labor is greater than the rarity premium occasioned by your dramatic death.
Chainsaw wrote:
I have no idea how people can assume that basic psychological attributes wouldn't affect ones economic philosophy (or any other philosophy, for that matter). Socialists, Fascists, Libertarians, and (old school) Liberals don't disagree over economics, they disagree about the fundamentals of their belief systems, differences which can never be reconciled.
Kick-ass frat-boys, smothering mommy, big-group-hug, outsider-paranoia, distrust-of-authority; this is the kinda stuff that decides what “economic” system you WILL prefer.
energyecon wrote:
Good site. I like your picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words approach.
You can basically divide everyone into two groups of people: those who believe you can divide everyone into two groups of people and those who don't.
I try to keep it to the data there - here, I like to yammer and butt heads - hey, anyone seen the Dawg around?
NotVeryNice wrote:
If the ends QE, which is what I think you're implying they'll do, then won't bond yields go up, since it's the Fed's "demand" for debt that keeping yields artificially low at the moment?
Dear Ben Bernanke,
Your program of getting banks to lend sure is working... you are one smooth-smoothie, you.
Yalt wrote:
You can also divide them into 3 groups. Those that can count, and those that can't-
"Socialists, Fascists, Libertarians, and (old school) Liberals don't disagree over economics, they disagree about the fundamentals of their belief systems, differences which can never be reconciled."
Yep, that was the epiphany I got when I read the book.
energyecon wrote:
If you click on the "Who's Online" button to the left, you'll see he's around, but he's probably getting himself a beer at this moment.
Having a hard time sympathizing with the banksters' desire to restart securitization. For decades, things ran just fine lending the money out at 6%, paying 3% deposits, keeping the loans on their books and hitting the golf course by 3 PM.
feralpig wrote:
i don't know why, but i am still snickering.
Nobody expects The Bean Nihilists.
i must need more coffee. or maybe i need less.
Hey! Was today a big one on the CRVIX, or am I reading that wrong?
Nope. Same value, but only fetish price. Of course there is value in a road having different colored and shaped cars, to the extent that the exotic look doesn't cause distracted driving. And creativity should be rewarded financially during the artist's lifetime. As noted above, no "pure" economic ideology makes sense for all product. If Josephine won't sing unless she gets paid more than Blankfein, chances are pretty good her music wouldn't retain much value even if her company's law machine put every pirate fan in jail.
Wondering when Obama will begin blaming the economy on H1N1?
josap wrote:
You get it!
That's why I've never voluntarily opened a 401K.
It won't matter very much.
Hah! Here's the reason the DJIA tanked? Risk demand is up due to the recovery!!!!!!
ROFL
that point is coming real soon if the timing of the peak of the flu season occurs as it has in the past (week 52 to week 7 for peak patient visits with influenza like symptoms)...
rps wrote:
Whenever blaming it on Bush wears old....I think there's a lot of mileage left in that one though....
That's why I've never voluntarily opened a 401K.
I worked for 11 years at a place that did 100% matching, all the way to the max limits.
It would have been suicidal not to open one.
I remember thinking when the credit markets locked up world-wide in august 2007 that Obama would blame Bush
Eric wrote:
We're not done yet.
Huh?
If you're totally terrified of the markets, one of the investment options they offered was a GIC (guaranteed investment contract).
You're making 100% return on your money, plus the tax dodge.
That money got rolled over into my trading account.
Dude.
it's still paper, I don't care what label they put on it.
Easy money caused bubble?
AIER - The Financial Bubble Was Created by Central Bank Policy
Advice for the "new normal":
Save the planet: eat a dog? | Stuff.co.nz
More fun with patientrenter's "benign" swaps that "mostly net out":
Back-Door Taxes Hit U.S. With Financing in the Dark (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
How dare we talk of taxing back those hard-earned bonuses...
Cinco-X wrote:
First off there is a general lack of will/nerve to invest against the fed, it amounts to taking on gambler that can print his own money to double down against you. Second most investors realize the economy is not fundamentally getting better, so it's hard to argue that us treasury yields are going to rise without a real recovery.
Commodites, equity markets have been on fire since march, and the momentum traders have piled into the equity markets, and have been moving out of treasuries, but because the fed has been propping up the market, and the economy is not really getting better, yields have not risen as much as they normally would.
However, this is the last week of treasury purchases, and it seems like there is ever increased interest in investing against the dollar. There is also an increased imbalance in the global recovery process, as a side effect of the extraordinary liquidity in the market. This does not bode well for the fed financing the huge US debt, and as such, yields have been creeping up. The fed cannot allow yields to continue to increase before the economy recovers or it is royally screwed.
If it triggers a collapse in the equity markets, people will rush back into treasuries, and not only will the fed not have to worry about increasing yields, but it will likely be able to sell all the treasuries it has accumulated this year. This gives them ammo for next year, because it knows the economy is not getting fundamentally better.
Most of the recent market momentum has not been from the big trading partners, but retail investors. The fed doesn't mind, and in fact would like to reduce the average consumer's leverage. It needs to get consumer debt down, because we can't have a consumer led recovery without much less consumer debt (or what that debt is worth in devalued dollars).
I think this is all a means to an end, to give the fed ammo to extend and pretend another year.
Jeez. I'm freakin' olde. Didn't ya git da memo? My kidz took me to Disneyland yesterday. Now I'm expected to monitor CR for every whim? There's email and my blog for requests.
1 currency now -yogi wrote:
"Salvatore Calvanese, the treasurer of Springfield, Massachusetts, for four years, had a ready defense for why he risked $14 million of taxpayer money on collateralized-debt obligations laden with subprime mortgages in 2007. He didn’t know what he was buying, he says, and trusted the financial professionals who sold them and told him they were safe. "
Why do bozos like this get into positions where they can blow OPM on speculations? Didn't the Orange County, CA fiasco a few years ago serve as a warning to anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Maury the Credit Responsibility Panda wrote:
I think their goal is to purchase the golf course now. Keep out the rif-raf.
while the bankers were certainly predatory with respect to the local governments (fish in a barrel), if the local administrators aren't sophisticated enough to understand the contracts and investments that the were sinking millions of dollars into, then perhaps they shouldn't be investing them.
there's always us treasuries...
Rob Dawg wrote:
Ummmm......I checked my in-box; no memo. I guess you are getting old. Hope the kids had a good time anyway-
Rob Dawg wrote:
Yeah, I saw the pix of Tinkerbell over at your blog. You're not that old...
Kind of like the Bates Motel. You can check in but never check out!
My new moniker for him is:
Count Formaldehyde
josap wrote:
Yeah. It's called Evil. We're not supposed to use the term -- it's so judgmental, it's for kooks -- but a good chunk of the Old Testament is spent railing against the "best people" who find ways of siphoning off all your money into their pockets. And a another chunk of it is instructions on how to keep this from happening. Even back then, they knew. And we've forgotten.
Whether you believe in God or not -- not saying I do -- evil is evil. Even if you go to charity balls for the poor and get your picture taken shaking Obama's hand (and paying damned well for the privilege, bigawd).
sm_landlord wrote:
Yeah. Make allot of sense. I'm going to use this on the next Green Warrior that asks me about global warming: "That dog is lookin' mighty tasty there..."
Disclaimer: 1 cat.
rob dawg
youre only 50 years and 1 day old, get a grip
Bob Dobbs wrote:
Evil is also relative. The reason the US was so successful during the last century was that economic evil and imperialist evil was "declared" good. If more people worried about the financial system's evil as compared to - oh, say - the fornicatin' harlots, things would be very different.
gabyjan wrote:
Well, I moped for weeks and complained to anyone who would listen when I turned 50, so I can cut a Dawg some slack.
sm_landlord wrote:
50 is just 49 with attitude. 54, where I am now, is 50 with the gravity turned up a notch.
Bob Dobbs wrote:
And if your kids aren't that into the Bible and church and all that, and want to have some fun learning how the smart connivers pull it all off, I might recommend "The Great Brain" by Fitzgerald (illustrated by Mercer Mayer) at the local library. A great read for 8-12 year olds, with plenty of equally entertaining sequels. The title comes from the older brother of the narrator, a boy named Tom who could connive anyone out of anything, and did, with great hilarity except for those losing their wealth to him...
Maury the Credit Responsibility Panda wrote:
I suspect that such low risk activity does not lend itself to million dollar bonuses...
Bob Dobbs wrote:
Or two. Wyeth, the makers of Advil, must love my business. Maybe I should buy a few shares...
The other book I found in the library this weekend was Prechter's "Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression". I couldn't believe it was written in 2002/2003, since we're facing the same issues daily here... Guess there really is nothing new under the sun, although fortunately some of that stuff doesn't see the sun very often!
Competitive bidding just wastes tax money on more big gubmint. Why are those foolish municipalities spending so much of other people's money anyway? Surely the free market can provide a fine sewer system for Jefferson County, Alabama. Say what you want about slavery, but if the businessman starved his labor supply, he wouldn't be able to grow tobacco at a profit for more than a few hundred years.
If JPM/GS/BAC/MS says their underwriting is best, who could argue-- they would fail if they scammed their "c;ients".
NOTaREALmerican wrote:
I thought it was because Europe and Asia pretty much blew themselves up in a fiery world war?
Kind of along the lines of Major Major Major's father in Catch-22?
I thought it was a "Manifest Destiny" thing.
sm_landlord wrote:
I'm an Aleve man myself. Plus chonditrin caps for the creaky knees. Now, where's my cane...
I'm looking for a sword cane, or maybe one of those with the brandy flask built in when my time comes...yessir, adaptive technology for living!
So, following up on my credit union comments above, I went and checked on my local CU, and lo and behold the top money-market savings rate just plunged (edit: today!) from an eminently reasonable 0.7% to a rather feeble 0.25%. (Had been well over 1% earlier this year...) Time to reconsider where to park that money... Do ya think Citigroup is willing to offer me 15%? They'd still get to lend it out at 29.99% and have a 15% spread!
energyecon wrote:
If that's your plan we oldsters won't let you get to the mother flask and refill. Sharks in the womb and all that.
You know the movies where they start out panning across a desolate landscape with a deep voice providing a narrative about the mistakes made to reach this point? The cacophony of voices the commentariat provides will be missed if our dark visions of the future reach fruition. The funny part is I have a suspicion that many here tone down their opinions before they share with the group. Self fulfilling prophecies and all that. If there is ever a need for expert witnesses to the fall most of us will qualify.
Down So Long-Jewel
'Til I saw an angel in a bathroom who said she saw no one worth saving anywhere
And a blind man on the corner said it's simple, like flipping a coin
Don't matter what side it lands on if it's someone else's dime
Dailymotion - Jewel - Down so long - une vidéo Musique
Wisdom Speaker wrote:
I just moved some today. Union Bank of Calif is paying 1.5%. BofA 1%.
I was looking at credit unions, but they are not competitive, at least around here.
sm_landlord wrote:
Well, I refuse on principle to deposit any more $ with BofA (or Citi, JPM or Wells Fargo); I've been working down my balances with BAC and WFC over the past year... The credit union was very competitive back when I started that process... I'll have to check out Union Bank of Calif! I assume that with a yield that high they have to be on CR's endangered banks list? My other go-to place is USAA (nonprofit). They're at 0.75-0.85% right now.
200+ consecutive years of a massive [aggregate] grain surplus didn't hurt.
I also credit the relatively fair and balanced economic system under Constitutional Law, which is flexible enough to allow collective bargaining, minimum wage and other socialist safety nets, but also to prevent the President from nationalizing steel plants in a "crisis", to honor ancient "foreign" title claims, and compensate for public expropriation in a somewhat fair legal system.
Interest rates in the U.S. have been artificially depressed, especially on Treasuries. They have to rise back up to un-manipulated levels over time, and starting soon. They will. There are too many people and institutions in the U.S. that can't survive on such low interest rates. They include older middle-income people, pension plans and life insurance companies. A pension plan that owes billions of dollars in liabilities to retirees over the next two decades can't fund those liabilities with 10-year Treasuries at 3%. Life insurance companies will go broke if 10-year Treasuries stay at 3%.
But by the same token, the dollar has to deflate to make all debts less expensive for all debtors, to lift real estate prices, and to make it feasible to manufacture and export in the U.S. again.
The manipulators need to get out of the way and let free market economics find these levels, higher rates, lower dollar. That's the next phase. Don't bet against it with your own money.
Man, the local credit union REALLY does not want my money anymore. Even the rate on a 5-year CD is only 1%!!! Sheesh... even TreasuryDirect has better yields in that maturity...
rich wrote:
I'm still looking for an entry point on TBT.
Catching up & reading CR's latest entry... this struck a chord, Krainer's quote:
I wonder how high the interest rates would have to go to entice the market to step back into private market securization again? I mean there is nothing price won't fix & interest rates are the measure of the price of money. Certainly the rates would be lower IF the originators could show they did solid due diligence [and could also show the market wasn't distorted by other market participants not doing DD - that there were in fact few abuses now - if that were even true]... but regardless the rates would have to be a LOT higher if we want to see the mortgage market something like 50% in private hands again.
I just wonder how high? 1980s high? Higher?
Wisdom Speaker wrote:
What do you want to bet that they just got a notice from their insurance fund about accelerated payments?
rich wrote:
We are on a similar wave length it appears - that was my independent conclusion seeing Krainers piece. Interesting. Wonder how long it takes that meme to spread?
Cinco-X wrote:
Yeh... I think you meant: a big one IN the CRVIX.
Haven't seen where said farmer is from.
If crop insurance is involved this must be in the U.S. and would make sense if
appearance is what's screwing the pooch. What kind of beans are we talking about?
Soy doesn't care about appearance. We press them into meal and oil.
If in the U.S. shipping said beans would be a deal breaker.
grillfalcon wrote:
The farmer was in New York state, from my recollection. The crop was edible beans, which I assumed was white but certainly be another variety. And the USA is not the only country with crop insurance, by the way. Many developed countries have government-sponsored crop insurance, and to my knowledge most operate by the same mechanisms.