September 2008
2 posts
Second Money Market Fund Breaks Buck
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — As The Reserve cut the net asset value of its flagship money market fund to 97 cents a share, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said Tuesday that it had also downgraded the Colorado Diversified Trust to Dm from AAAm due to exposure to Lehman Brothers Holdings commercial paper. S&P said the Trust, which had about $200 million as of March 28, fell...
Morning News
-Russian Stock Market has lost 25% of its value in the last 2 days - a crash
-Feds are trying to find a buyer for WaMu: NYPOST Article : Made phone calls in last couple days
-Ambac - a bond insurer - had huge exposure to Lehman
-Biggest Money Market fund is worth less than $1. A money market fund is a type of account you can get at a bank that yields a little bit higher than a savings...
July 2008
21 posts
Commercial Real Estate Falls Off Cliff, Government...
More when I leave work.
Wachovia Exiting Wholesale Lending Business
Remember IndyMac did this before they went bust. More when I get home.
Corporate Bond Sales Collapse
Will explain this when I get home. Down from 11 billion last week to 3 billion this week. Very significant.
Song for Journeymen.
LadyHawke - Embrace
“The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from...”
– –Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish poet and dramatist, in the 1920s.
Anticipatory Actions Resulting from the Worst...
Coming Soon…
Delusional Optimism
This financial crisis has uncovered another type of malfunction in our system. It has identified globes worth of people I call “delusional optimists”(could easily call them Polyannas, but this sounds worse) who think irrational positive thoughts- that the financial crisis will recover by the end of this year, that everything is fine in Iraq, that this is a typical recession, that...
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US faces global funding crisis, warns Merrill...
The rest of the world is going to pull the plug on us…this would be right in line with the Germany Finance Minister’s comments yesterday. From Mr. Pritchard, or Dr. Doom: More….
Dollar breaks through all-time low
A Secular Song
from a secular ape Beck - Modern Guilt
The Earthquake Machine
Recently I have been accousted by friends and colleagues a like over my belief of the existence of state-run earthquake machines capable of spurring earthquakes at will.
I would like to take this post to point out that in the last twenty years or so, there have been a number of areas subjected to rare earthquakes. These same areas, which span the globe, are often the site of large-scale, ongoing,...
Hot Song.
errr….LadyHawke - Paris is Burning. It’s like being there.
Bush Lifts Ban on US Offshore Oil, Gas Drilling
His daddy was the one who enacted the ban in the first place.
Regional Banks in the Spotlight
Regional banks are getting hit hard today. As examples, First Horizon is off 19%, Downey Financial is off 11%, Zions is off 16%, and M&T is off 15%. WaMu is off 17% too. National City is off 20% and is now halted pending news. Update: NCC statement:
“National City is experiencing no unusual depositor or creditor activity. As of the close of Friday’s business, the bank maintained...
Germany's Finance Minister expects more US...
BERLIN, July 14 (Reuters) - German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said he expected further announcements on Monday from U.S. policymakers about government-sponsored mortgage finance agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“That’s causing us great concern,” Steinbrueck said of the agencies’ problems. “I’m expecting considerable rescue activities during the...
Bush gave Israel amber light to attack Iran if...
More…
US Treasury rescue for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The failing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would mean an outright depression. The banks insure, sell, buy, and are involved with $5 trillion dollars of the United States’ mortgages. The Treasury has apparently decided to engage in a $15 billion dollar bailoutof the two companies…..what is the beginnings of a major bailout.
This would be an indication that the situation is very serious...
Hot Song.
Oasis - Falling Down(Chemical Brothers Remix)
The Defender is Back
January 2008
52 posts
The Tyranny of Super-Delegates
Barack Obama’s stirring victory in Iowa was also a good night for our democracy. The turnout broke records and young people - who were mobilized and organized - participated in unprecedented numbers. And now that Iowans have spoken - the first citizens in the nation to do so - here’s the Democratic delegate count for the top three candidates (2,025 delegates are needed to secure the...
Stock Market Crash Tomorrow
Global indicies went down on average over 5 percent today. FTSE was at 5.6 decline, just missing the 5.7 decline after September 11. Additionally, Bank of China, the state-owned bank, is telling the WSJ it may have to writedown large sums of subprime loans. If China suffers the kind of shit we are going through as a result of their own subprime mortgage crisis, the global economy will be...
Credit Crisis: The Next Phase II
Credit-Default Swaps. They are trades made where one party makes quarterly payments to another party in return that the party receiving the payments pays a set sum to compensate in the event that a company goes bankrupt. There is more money in Credit Default Swaps than there is in the entire GDP of the United States. If people don’t make good on their payments once a company goes out of...
Credit Crisis: The Next Phase
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan, said this week when asked about bond insurers: “What [worries me] is if one of these entities doesn’t make it . . . the secondary effect . . . I think could be pretty terrible.” Two companies and their stocks: MBIA and AMBAC. They insure subprime mortgage bonds and municpal bonds(bonds issued by cities and states in order to fund their activites). If they...
Supreme Court Dramatically Curtails Corporate...
The Supreme Court yesterday strictly limited the ability of investors who lost money through corporate fraud to sue other businesses that may have helped facilitate the crime, a decision that could doom stockholder efforts to recover billions of dollars lost in Enron and other high-profile cases. In a victory for business interests in a case they had identified as their most important of the...
FDA Says Cloned Animals Safe for Food
WASHINGTON (AP) - Just over a decade after scientists cloned the first animal, the last major barrier to selling meat and milk from clones has fallen: The U.S. government declared this food safe Tuesday. Now, will people buy it? Consumer anxiety about cloning is serious enough that several major food companies, including the big dairy producer Dean Foods Co. (DF) and Smithfield Foods Inc. (SFD),...
Iran-US Boat Incident
There are many questions about the audio threats, to be sure. But if by “hoax” you mean, was it completely manufactured? Then the answer is no. What remains completely unknown -– and may never be resolved -– is the source of the transmission. Navy and Pentagon officials told me last Wednesday that they were still trying to determine if the transmission came from the speedboats or elsewhere. ...
Banks' Financial Gains are Privatized, but Losses...
Martin Wolf’s current comment is great fun. He makes a recommendation which is logical and well argued but so contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy that it is sure to elicit a lot of ire. And I guarantee it will be misconstrued as well. Wolf notes that banks (and we can include investment banks) have succeeded in creating crisis after crisis. Repeatedly, gains are private and losses are...
HOW REPUBLICANS WILL BEAT CLINTON, OBAMA
In an address to a group of state GOP executive directors at the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) winter meeting, Rove outlined talking points for ways to defeat leading Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.). The former adviser to the president did not mention former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.). On Clinton, Rove said the senator talks about fiscal...
Ex-Lawmaker Charged in Terror Conspiracy
WASHINGTON (AP) - A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan. The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and...
Thought of the Day
We are entering an age where soft power is less and less used and hard power is more and more common. In all cases, hard power refers to the body. Iraq was an example of hard power being used. So are these new police sirens that shake your body inside your car in order to get your attention. As is the new Microsoft patent that reads your body temperature and other medical information from your...
How to Make Billions.
You want to trade derivatives. Find a firm that does OTC(over the counter, as opposed to the stock exchange)derivative trades. If you trade the derivatives you want to short the derivatives on the subprime mortgage bonds(since we know they will go down). You want to keep your shorts on the bonds for as long as you can. Secondly, you want to invest in CDS, or credit-default swaps. CDS prices...
News Roundup
-Citigroup has announced a new write down of 18.1 billion dollar -Wholesale prices up 6.3 percent at the fastest pace in 26 years. -Retail sales actually dropped .4 percent, meaning it is contracting -Citigroup and Merrill sold stakes of themselves to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia otherwise they would of gone bankrupts. -Citigroup now is officially operating at a loss. -Bomb blast at US Embassy in...
Senate Subpoenas Four Wall Street Firms
Four Wall Street firms have received subpoenas from US Senate investigators who are examining whether the firms improperly structured transactions to help hedge funds avoid dividend taxes, The Wall Street Journal reported on its website. More Also…. A Congressional committee said on Monday it invited current and former chief executives of three major financial institutions —...
China Shuns Citigroup Investment
Citigroup needs a cash infusion in order to not declare bankruptcy. However, the Chinese will not be the one doing the investment after the state government stated it was simply unwise.
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Spy Chief Introduces Internet Spying Law
Spychief Mike McConnell is drafting a plan to protect America’s cyberspace that will raise privacy issues and make the current debate over surveillance law look like “a walk in the park,” McConnell tells The New Yorker in the issue set to hit newsstands Monday. “This is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous...
OBAMA CLINTON CALL FOR TRUCE ON RACE ISSUE
OBAMA CALLED FOR IT, AN HOUR LATER, A CLINTON SPOKESPERSON SAID THEY AGREE. WHO DO YOU WANT FOR PRESIDENT!?!
My Former Boss In Fight On Blogs
dude is the guy attacking him “and you, “dude”, are a small, envious zero. you aren’t even interesting on a blog like this one. tell you what, dude, why dont you lick your own ass since you seem to be self infatuated.” “what is your great track record, i’m a dude? its easy to take shots from behind the veil of anonymity. live up to your acronym and be a...
Clinton booed at MLK rally in New York
Black security workers union greeted Clinton with a smattering of catcalls in the wake of her comments about Martin Luther King, Jr. The New York senator called on the roughly 2,500, mostly black attendees “to fulfill [King’s] unfinished dream and to live the legacy that we have inherited.” Some of her biggest applause came when she cited her rival for the Democratic nomination, Illinois Sen....
The Great Depression
Great Depression Banks haven’t lost this much money, in relative terms, since the Great Depression, said Richard Sylla, a professor of the history of financial institutions and markets at New York University’s Stern School of Business. U.S. banks, insurers and real-estate companies earned about $1 billion a year during the 1920s until the...
Why the Dead Pregnant Marine Case is Important.
The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part...
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Why Do People Trick Themselves?
As in, trick themselves to think it will be better than it will be: If this had been a mere subprime crisis, it would now be over. But it is not, and nor will it be over soon. The reason is that several other pockets of the credit market are also vulnerable. Credit cards are one such segment, similar in size to the subprime market. Another is credit default swaps, relatively modern financial...
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New Economic Era
This is a letter from the Chairman of the House Finance Committe to the Financial Times. I believe that the catastrophe we are going to witness in the financial markets will result in the policies implicity supported by the writer. As we prepare for this autumn’s election, the results are in on America’s 30-year experiment with radical economic deregulation. Income inequality has risen to levels...
Bankrupt Fed
Ben Bernanke seemingly calmed the masses with power laden, majestic metaphors but it was a bluff. The Chairman’s candid chat was to convince everyone that there was indeed a mighty wizard behind the curtain, so powerful that proving his existence was entirely unnecessary. In reality it was a calculated effort to assuage enough angst so that he wouldn’t be forced to show how weak his hand really...