I see green shoots!

Comrade Misean is Dope wrote:

I see green shoots!

There's always a bull market somewhere.

fighting over dying and dead carcasses

"fighting over dying and dead carcasses "

People gotta eat...

TG
got pigged! on last thread but left you a msg about your bro's Casino Royalle

sm_landlord wrote:

I guess now we get to see how efficiently courts can be run.

I have personal experience. NY judges had to sue for a pay raise. Justice does not depend on how many evictions a judge signs per day. Efficiency doesn't mean what you think it means.

so Krugman is calling the last decade the Big Zero...
I prefer more of a Khmer Rouge inspired 'Decade Zero'

greenchutes wrote:

a new real estate resolution branch of the Judiciary

Court-packing to perform labor for the landed gentry? It won't happen here.

The Constitution gives criminal defendants the right to a speedy trial. Landlords wait their turn. National title database? Real estate is local. Citibank, of South Dakota, will not avoid NYC rent control.

Duke of Con Dao wrote:

left you a msg about your bro's Casino Royalle

Saw it thanks

I can attest to the increase in family violence. Local law enforcement has been seeing amazing numbers of suicides over the last 18-24 months. Remember the good old days when a man felt himself a failure and he'd hang himself from the garage rafters? Nowaways, before turning a gun on himself, a man kills his whole family, his in-laws, neighbors, co-workers, you name it. The ultimate act of selfishness.

Feckless Ness wrote:

emember the good old days when a man felt himself a failure and he'd hang himself from the garage rafters?

doubly sad now because, these days, failure is 9 times out of 10 a consequence of how well or how poorly one played politics. talk about a complete and total waste.

The real question is whether Krugman "kibo's" himself in the comments...

When I worked in NY State Court, NYC got 400,000 eviction filings/year.

I've been saying all along. Mass foreclosures can't ever happen. Society would implode. It's a game of chicken. Judges want a raise and to avoid pitchforks...

For courts to run efficiently you'd need to remove both the attorneys AND the judges. Neither of whom are particularly interested in making a legal system which is accessible and efficient. If you think it's bad here have a look at the UK where the courts add an extra layer of a "Barrister".
~splat

sm_landlord wrote:

Could you save money by replacing the court reporter/stenographer with a video recorder?

I've commented on these issues at length in my arguments with Byz Ruins over the last 2 years. I can't speak for Cali, I only know NY. It's not just about the money. Every court procedure is there for a reason. Glass-Steagall was inefficient also...

A video recording is subject to alteration. Those "hangers-on" are witnesses against corruption. A dissenter in China just got 5 years: closed trial... his lawyers got 20 minutes. They do efficiency well.

In Sentence of Activist, China Gives West a Chill - NY Times

sm_landlord wrote:

How many hours per day are courts in session?
How many days per week are courts in session?

24/7/365 for habeas corpus purposes.

Judges will work the midnight shift; but if you don't guard them, they get shot. If the local police guards them, it's harder for a judge to rule against a policeman.

momentum buying - econ phrase for 'bubble'
red flag - incomes don't keep up with rising housing prices
fundamental econ equation missed?

sm_landlord wrote:

Has anyone outside of the courts ever looked at the budgets?
Or are the judges running their own show without auditing or review?

Who do you imagine sets the judicial budget? Don't know how Cali does it but NY judges only get a raise from the Legislature--sometimes once a decade. Do you suggest we reward judges who handle cases faster? How about according to how many criminals are convicted in their jury trials? How many foreclosures and evictions?

I saw a TSA manager berating an employee yesterday for not 'keeping the line moving'. I suppose he has 'efficiency' targets as well.

His "crime" would be a civil matter here, probably.

Oh Comrade, if court resources are transferred from criminal to civil ('recession"), how will speedy trials and habeas corpus be satisfied? Make no mistake, the backlog in NY is mostly banks versus people: evictions, foreclosures, credit card defaults.

I'll bet you...

"Oh Comrade, if court resources are transferred from criminal to civil ('recession"),"

Never suggested it. Just pointing out that your complaint about Chinese efficiency was about a criminal matter. And in this country, such trials would exist after the beatings ceased in a military tribunal.

IMHO, there is no way to make courts "efficient" as long as they are state agencies. The incentive structure is wrong, and results cannot be objectively quantified. And I'm far too tired to go into it anymore than that.

Nytol, TGIM!

Comrade Misean is Dope wrote:

IMHO, there is no way to make courts "efficient" as long as they are state agencies

And my point was that efficiency is not the crucial goal, and is in the eye of the beholder anyway.
Who would you like to run the courts if not the state? Highest bidders? ( ) Union thugs? Fast robots?

My bad: 11 years, not 5, for writing something about open elections. Criminal, yes.

By sentencing Mr. Liu to 11 years in prison for subversion, the Chinese government sent a chilling message to advocates of political reform and free speech. Mr. Liu, 53, a former literature professor who helped draft a manifesto last December that demanded open elections and the rule of law, was convicted after a closed two-hour trial on Wednesday in which his lawyers were allowed less than 20 minutes to state his case.

The majority of cases on the civil docket in NYC courts, literally, are a bank, insurer or corporate creditor suing a human being for default on a contract or lease. Literally.

The civil defendants in such cases have no right to, and are rarely represented by, legal counsel.

A poor family's eviction case definitely "clogs up" the court system so that corporate claimants using free dispute resolution must wait in line. I don't want a plumber deciding my case, though, do you?

In many cases, a plumber is exactly what I want. "Extend and pretend" is more than a one-way street - the banks may want to avoid recognition of losses, and the execs of those banks may want to discretely use their first-name relationship with Rahm and friends to dump those losses onto taxpayers when they are recognized. The same goes for j6p when he tries to stay in a house for as long as possible without paying the note on it. I have zero sympathy for either - they both clog up the market and make it difficult for working middle-class people to house, feed and clothe their families. And this is more than an intellectual exercise - subletters of subletters of rent-control royalty are exactly the kind of thing that makes NYC an exercise in impossibility for middle-class families. Effective squatters are no different.

When either flavor of jackass holds an entire market or piece of public infrastructure hostage, I feel less than no sympathy, I actually feel something very close to contempt, and that contempt extends to their enablers. Letting your car run out of gas on the interstate is not the best way to protest high gasoline prices.

Comrade Misean is Dope wrote:

Criminal law. The recession stuff is civil.

Not so.

From the article:

The new statistics in New York show the breadth of the recession-related cases — in family, criminal and commercial courts and on across the judicial system.

The problem is when no one gets access to due process because of the overwhelming caseload brought by the army of scammers. And, as I alluded to, this problem has an analog in the banks sitting on 'shadow inventory' in the hopes of avoiding losses while keeping an unspoken policy mandate of "price support". All peas in the same pod, all badly in need of industrial-strength bleach.

Access to a plumber is not due process.

I went to support a friend recently at his unemployment appeal, held by an Administrative Law Judge, in a small ugly room with a tape recorder. The Judge was a piece of shit, rude and arrogant. Probably fresh out of law school, she resented being there and let it show. Due process costs money, and NY State budgets are being cut.

The Judge was interested in efficiency, not truth.

Weather Helm wrote:

Chronic welfare status is a plague on society, government, and economy. Encouraging it only leads to Bad Things.

Which is why we must eliminate FDIC welfare, TARP bailout and Fed discount window welfare, mortgage interest welfare, religious institution non-profit welfare, and wage-busting bankruptcy scam welfare. Food stamps are a tiny blip next to those.

We could let the poor eat cake, but if we want to eliminate plagues we'll have to shoot the sick.

1 currency now -yogi wrote:

Which is why we must eliminate FDIC welfare, TARP bailout and Fed discount window welfare, mortgage interest welfare, religious institution non-profit welfare, and wage-busting bankruptcy scam welfare. Food stamps are a tiny blip next to those.

I think corporate welfare should be eliminated wholesale, permanently. The monstrosities we've created with F/F, AIG, TBTF banks, GM, and the like are a slow-motion disaster. I'm not sure anymore about the FDIC.

Food stamps and welfare might be OK on a very temporary basis. But social welfare programs are much bigger than a "tiny blip", costwise.

Blackhalo wrote:

Has anyone actually made the case as to what the harm would have been to Main St. had TARP and the associated banker bonuses NOT happened?

Over and over again. "Utter collapse of global financial system". (All fixed, now.) Details, analysis? Uhh, sorry, try the Fed's books. Heckuva job, Timmy. Presumably bankers on breadlines, or reduced to performing demeaning labor for soup. Like entire banking and currency systems have never failed in history without Mad Max.

Just once I was waiting to hear a Congressman follow up the bluffs of Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke et al with, " explain in detail how this collapse would unfold, and why an emergency resolution "bank" like the FDIC couldn't have provided a bare-bones system." But that would mean acknowledging that the toxic assets and moral hazard are all still there under the rug.

Utter collapse of Congressional credibility was what they opted for.

I think corporate welfare should be eliminated wholesale, permanently. The monstrosities we've created with F/F, AIG, TBTF banks, GM, and the like are a slow-motion disaster.

The real question is do you think the same with regard to Halliburton, Boeing, Exxon, Tyson, and Microsoft?

Food stamps and welfare might be OK on a very temporary basis. But social welfare programs are much bigger than a "tiny blip", costwise.

Policy Basics: Introduction to the Food Stamp Program — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

How Much Does the Food Stamp Program Cost?

In fiscal year 2009, the federal government spent about $56 billion on the Food Stamp Program. About 90 percent of it went directly to food stamp benefits that households used to purchase food.

That's 4 months in Iraq, and the TARP could pay for the program for a decade. It's a blip.

65% of Federal spending goes to three programs: DoD, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid. If that's what you mean by the more expansive phrase "social welfare programs", you should say so.

Can Phil Gramm be sued for legislative malpractice?

C

Phil Gramm, who as a Republican senator from Texas was another co-sponsor, said that, rather than weakening banks, the law [repeal of Glass-Steagall] cushioned the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis by making financial institutions more broad-based and competitive.

“A lot of this is about trying to find somebody to blame,” said Gramm, now a vice chairman of investment banking at UBS Securities LLC. +

I know whom I blame, and I hope the impact on his reputation is not cushioned.

Japan finance minister Fujii admitted to hospital (causes: high blood pressure and exhaustion following work on the government’s budget)

Japan Finance Minister Fujii Admitted to Hospital (Update3) - BusinessWeek

This won't help him rest:

The Nikkei has lost 73 percent since it climbed to a record 38,915.87 on Dec. 29, 1989, the worst performance of the world’s major markets.

44,000 Level

On Jan. 3, 1990, the day before asset valuations began collapsing, the Nikkei newspaper’s top headline read, “Nikkei Average May Reach 44,000 at Year-End,” citing 20 heads of major companies. The most promising stock for 1990 was Shimizu Corp., the newspaper said. The construction company’s shares have since fallen 87 percent

Japan’s Stocks Offer Bets on China 20 Years After Nikkei Peak - Bloomberg.com

Tonight I must draft
Eleven first day motions
Thank God for templates.

Many times I hear
“Yes, I’m in bankruptcy.”
The joke grows old.

Anxiously I rise
To represent my client
In Judge Beatty’s court.

BankruptcyBill.us » Bankruptcy Haiku

I don't know, Hu?

Well, I guess I lost this one, although denying injunctive relief as unnecessary and then denying the appeal as moot is a kick in the groin. Shame on SCOTUS:

Today, in a one-paragraph order, the court rejected the formal appeal of the bankruptcy decision as "moot" because the sale has gone forward. A group of Indiana pension funds challenged the sale, saying were being short-changed and the sale improperly went around normal bankruptcy rules.

Supreme Court rejects appeal of Chrysler bankruptcy exit | detnews.com | The Detroit News

I believe I owe an extra $50 to Hoocoodanode or CR's tip jar. But I still say that SCOTUS got it wrong, and expedited quick sales at the whim of the BK court will someday have to be curtailed.

Ah, sorry, I can be so backwardized at times.

C

Cool, found this via Jesse's, John Williams on US balance sheet, liabilities, and debt: "these numbers are ceyond containment."

Fairfield County Weekly: News - We're Screwed! 

Trans.: skrood

C

Edit: oh all right, so tg got in yesterday with it. What what a great way to start the morning! Shadowstats: the breakfast of champions.

1 currency now -yogi wrote:

Just once I was waiting to hear a Congressman follow up the bluffs of Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke et al with, " explain in detail how this collapse would unfold, and why an emergency resolution "bank" like the FDIC couldn't have provided a bare-bones system." But that would mean acknowledging that the toxic assets and moral hazard are all still there under the rug.

I too wish to hear more of the play by play of an unfolding disaster, to try to grasp how it would have been any worse off for me. However, I suspect they would prefer that we pay as little attention to the "man behind the curtain" as possible.

Oops. I retract my concession, (hat tip Al Gore). I believe I can still win (at least in spirit) if the Indiana funds wind up with compensation on top of the 29 cents as secured creditors. Even if voiding the sale is unavailable as a remedy, they can still be awarded money from the proceeds, and thus be made whole if cheated.

The Court might allow the sale but award damages from other assets, if any left, or the share of lower-ranked creditors. Indiana funds' claim was only several million...

anybody looking for MSM coverage on how he got on board without a passport thanks to the intervention of a well dressed man?

Flight 253 passenger: Sharp-dressed man aided terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab onto plane without passport (MLive.com exclusive) | Detroit News - - MLive.com

From Dr. Hussman this morning:

"With Congress and the nation preoccupied with the holidays, the Treasury announced on Thursday that it would be providing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unlimited financial support for the next three years, thus providing the end-game that accompanies the Federal Reserve's massive purchase of the securities of these agencies. The Treasury's press release notes:

“At the time the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship in September 2008, Treasury established Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements (PSPAs) to ensure that each firm maintained a positive net worth. Treasury is now amending the PSPAs to allow the cap on Treasury's funding commitment under these agreements to increase as necessary to accommodate any cumulative reduction in net worth over the next three years.”

After a long deliberation, I've decided to defer my remarks about this until after the holidays. The implications are likely to be sufficiently long-term in nature that we can wait until then, and my impression is that none of us really want to contemplate their full impact just now. Beyond noting my deep concern, I don't intend to dampen anyone's holiday.

Stocks remain overvalued, overbought, overbullish and face rising yield pressures - a combination that has typically been associated with increased risk of abrupt market losses.

I know it's true for me, in that I'm holding my breath.

Look at the map of the armies.

Bombs in Pakistan.

Bombs in Afghanistan.

Iranian protests growing and getting violenter.

Iraq and Iran are squaring off in southern Iraq over who owns which oil well.

Airplanes are being set afire.

Stricter grip coming from PTB.

More...

Anyone else feeling jumpy?

Comrade Rally Monkey wrote:

That this is actually the steepest the yield curve will become

Yes, the steepest until Things Go Boom.

Morgan Stanley Sees 5.5% Note as U.S. Faces Deficits (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

"Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- If Morgan Stanley is right, the best sale of U.S. Treasuries for 2010 may be the short sale.

Yields on benchmark 10-year notes will climb about 40 percent to 5.5 percent, the biggest annual increase since 1999, according to David Greenlaw, chief fixed-income economist at Morgan Stanley in New York. The surge will push interest rates on 30-year fixed mortgages to 7.5 percent to 8 percent, almost the highest in a decade, Greenlaw said."

"Trans.: skrood"

We need skrood smiley!

Maximus Bacchus.....The only thing missing is Fannie Flagg.

Anyone interested in podcasts of various Congressional panels? I have House on OTC derivate reform, Senate Banking committee on dark pools, high frequency trading and other market structures, Senate on "the state of banking", and TARP COP from September and October...

Blackhalo wrote:

Has anyone actually made the case as to what the harm would have been to Main St. had TARP and the associated banker bonuses NOT happened?

it is a starting assumption that everybody makes and nobody questions. Of course the reason that most people accept it is that the Stock indices were plunging. And for 20 years we have let the movement in the Dow Jones be the determinant of the efficacy of all public policy. Therefore since the market is up we must have diverted from the edge of the cliff.

CR doomer, New Year's Party Nite:

-->

After one hour:

After two hours:

Three:

Finally:

No. I think the hearings are where the most insight into the bills and everything come from, even beyond simply "reading the bill". Yet instead of people making efforts to make Congressional hearings more open, such as simply ripping them as MP3 like I've been personally doing, the efforts are focused at "read the bill".

I'm convinced that someone could successfully compete with and whip C-SPAN's bottom as far as covering public/government policy, using the MP3 as a medium. All of the "content" is public domain... however the way Congress serves it up via streaming video and not offering an MP3 podcast is horrible.

crazyv wrote:

The guidelines for Discount window borrowing are pretty strict and directly tied into the primary purpose of the banking system - making loans.

And yet the investment banks were falling all over themselves to be converted into bank holding co.s, in an emergency effort to gain access to that window, whether qualified or not.

crazyv wrote:

And for 20 years we have let the movement in the Dow Jones be the determinant of the efficacy of all public policy.

How very... Spanish... Greenspanish... Remember when the Fed primarily concerned itself with "licking inflation now?" and not the portfolios of banker buddies... Of course the pension funds loading up on dubious "AAA" securities does not help things much. I'm still waiting for the ratings agencies to get their day of scrutiny.

Blackhalo wrote:

And yet the investment banks were falling all over themselves to be converted into bank holding co.s in an emergency effort to gain access to that window, whether qualified or not.

If they had collateral which was discount window eligible they were qualified once they had become a bank. There are certainly valid questions whether institutions should be allowed to convert to bank holding companies so rapidly but that is distinct from the operations of the discount window which is a crucial element of any modern banking system. To suggest that the discount window should be eliminated is as I said "populist rhetoric" and complete nonsense.

While it may not be fashionable if every single entity operated on the protecting against the "Black Swan" event all economic activity would come to a stand still. In situations like that it makes sense for the government to be a lender / insurer of last resort.

This little piggy marked to market,
This little piggy sold home loans,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had no losses.
And this little piggy went...
"Mee me me" all the way home...

In yet another case of hysterical analysis- all the questions why somebody who was in a data base of 550,000 names was not subject to increased scrutiny. Obviously starting at the end (somebody trying to blow up a plane) its easy to work ones way to the beginning - this guy should have been scrutinized. What it ignores is that the other 549,999 didn't do anything and to catch this one guy you would have had to scrutinize all the others. Instead of recognizing this basic fallacy we now want to expand the list of 550,000. If DHS had to do that under pressure from the the morons in Congress all that the terrorists would need to do is get a phone book and make random calls to US Embassies with tips on random people. Do people really believe that we have the resources to confirm that every tip is authentic.?

crazyv wrote:

There are certainly valid questions whether institutions should be allowed to convert to bank holding companies so rapidly but that is distinct from the operations of the discount window which is a crucial element of any modern banking system. To suggest that the discount window should be eliminated is as I said "populist rhetoric" and complete nonsense.

Uhh, bullshit.

Rhetoric my ass. "Lender of last resort?" That's a Ponzi, pal. Currency printing is cheating. If the depositing public has no confidence in banks and cause a run, then those banks are insolvent. Declare a bank holiday, come clean. But giving crony primary dealers and other favored bank and finance holding companies special access to secret lending "facilities" is PONZI.

This century's arty ex-pat Austrian strongman leader came off as a buffoon, in that piece.

He wants the pumps turned back on in the midst of a untorrential drought, but where is the water gonna come from?

LoserBeachBum wrote:

Gawd to California: No good movies, no water!

Much to my surprise, Avatar did not suck. And Up was truly stellar. I can't think of any live action stuff that was great though.

New York has about 17 million adults. This is about one case per every four adults.

If each of these cases involved only two litigants, that would make about 50 litigants/plaintiffs/defendants per every 100 adults. Of course, some of the same people are there multiple times, and lots of the parties are public entities or corporations.

some investor guy wrote:

lots of the parties are public entities or corporations.

We're all corporations now... Everyone wants to get in on the trick of converting income to cap gains, to get the ~15% tax break.

"People like to build, people like to build new dams " - the Govenator
......what the Hell does that have to do with an idiotic $40-bil canal project?

"Southern California developers eliminated the Colorado River Estuary (which was once a larger system than the Delta, turned the owens valley into a desert, and now plan to drain the delta."

.......I remember when there WAS an Owens Lake.

Yogi,

The extension of credit to 90 days is in my view the least dangerous and most defensible move to deal with volatility. As long as the haircuts for collateral are something approximating reasonable, this is a helpful step. It sure beats throwing out cash and open ended guarantees.

The consumeratti is overwrought with debt, almost like a colossal Donald Trump, those 4.7 million pending cases in NY.

A debt jubilee is coming in 2010, either de facto-or by other means~

"A debt jubilee is coming in 2010, either de facto-or by other means~"

......It won't happen - banks are too powerful. If there's a danger of it, the banks will bring everything down.

Need .

Anyway, The Fed just has to announce the window will return to normal by Q4. Starting immediately the 50 bps premium returns and the term is shortened in steps from 90 days to overnight in steps over the year.

If the crisis is over and the banks are not on life support this would be a . I suspect a different reaction.

IMO it is extremely important to fix as many credit bubble lingering problems as possible so we are better prepared to address an increasingly likely regular recession in 2010. It won't be a true double dip but more a case of two cyclical events in close succession.