Whig Party Wednesday – Reps take the House and QE Too!
by Phil - November 3rd, 2010 8:03 am
Now, like many Americans, the Democrats know what it’s like to lose their House.
Back in the mid-1800′s, the nation had another kind of Tea Party as the Whigs became a successful 3rd party, even going so far as to put two men in the White House – William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor plus Millard Fillmore, who succeeded "Old Rough and Ready" who died just after a year in office but that was a long term compared to Harrison, who caught pneumonia making a long inauguration speech in the freezing rain and died of it a month later despite attempts to cure him with opium, castor oil and leeches – treatments we are likely to see again as the Republicans vow to repeal Health Care legislation.
I don’t have to talk about what happened last night, Barry Ritholtz did a great job of it in "The Tragedy of the Obama Administration" so let’s just focus on the repercussions of the changeover and, of course, today’s upcoming Fed decision. The Board of Governors were meeting all day yesterday and will meet again this morning to discuss their policy decision and one would think they can’t be so deaf as to see that our citizens are not interested in additional deficit spending, which is exactly what QE2 is when the Fed writes checks to paper over the Treasury’s profligate spending.
Look for new and improved ways of not taxing corporations. Like GM, which will not have to pay taxes on its next $45.4Bn of earnings despite the fact that the Government paid for their losses already and allowed the company to bust union contracts and trash benefits for the millions of retired and fired workers as they shut down and sold brands – permanently shipping US manufacturing jobs overseas.
Of course, this tax break isn’t about GM. GM just sets a good precedent for similar treatment of Banksters and others who received relief under TARP and, of course, whatever they decide to call the next emergency bailout of Big Business. If the market breaks our tops, we are going to be loving the XLF which already owns most of the people who got elected last night. With FAS at $22.44, we can sell the April $19 puts for $2.75 and buy the Jan $17/21.67 bull call spread for $3.10 and that’s net .35 on the $4.67…
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DiggBernanke Gets His Pink Slip
by ilene - November 1st, 2010 12:59 pm
Bernanke Gets His Pink Slip
Courtesy of MIKE WHITNEY, originally published at CounterPunch
Question: What is the difference between a full-blown Depression and an excruciatingly "slow recovery"?
Answer--Inventories and a bit of fiscal stimulus.
On Friday, The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that 3rd Quarter GDP rose by 2% meeting most analysts expectations. The real story, however, is hidden in the data. Inventories added 1.44 percentage points to the 3Q real GDP, which means that--absent the boost to existing stockpiles-- GDP would be well-below 1%. If it wasn’t for Obama’s fiscal stimulus (ARRA), the economy would be sliding back into recession.
Improvements in consumer spending were too meager to indicate a "rebound", and residential investment dropped off sharply following the expiration of the firsttime homebuyer credit. The economy is in a coma and desperately needs more government support. But if Tuesday’s midterm elections turn out according to predictions--and the GOP retakes the House of Representatives--there won’t be any more stimulus. Instead, the economy will sputter along at a snail’s pace until festering bank woes (this time, the foreclosure crisis) trigger another contraction.
There’s no doubt now, that the Fed’s efforts to engineer a sustained recovery have failed. The fact that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is planning to resume his dubious Quantitative Easing (QE) program is an admission of failure. That said, I expect the Fed to “go large” on November 3, and purchase another $1.2 trillion of long-term Treasuries adding roughly $100 billion per month to the money supply. That should placate Wall Street and keep stock markets sufficiently “bubbly” for the foreseeable future. After 12 months of QE, unemployment will still be stuck at 10%, the output gap will have narrowed only slightly, and confidence in the Fed will have plunged to historic lows. Monetarism alone cannot fix the economy.
The fiscal remedies for recession are well known and have effectively implemented with great success for over a half century. QE is a pointless detour into uncharted waters. It is like treating a hangover with brain surgery when the bottle of aspirin sets idle on the bedstand. Why bother?
Bernanke is convinced that pouring money into the system will produce the results he wants. This is how the Fed chair pays homage to the great monetarist icon, Milton Friedman. Friedman had unwavering faith in the power of money. Here’s what he…
Obama No Longer Bothering to Lie Credibly: Claims Financial Crisis Cost Less Than S&L Crisis
by ilene - October 29th, 2010 3:29 pm
Obama No Longer Bothering to Lie Credibly: Claims Financial Crisis Cost Less Than S&L Crisis
Courtesy of Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism
I’m so offended by the latest Obama canard, that the financial crisis of 2007-2008 cost less than 1% of GDP, that I barely know where to begin. Not only does this Administration lie on a routine basis, it doesn’t even bother to tell credible lies. .And this one came directly from the top, not via minions. It’s not that this misrepresentation is earth-shaking, but that it epitomizes why the Obama Administration is well on its way to being an abject failure.
On the Jon Stewart Show (starting roughly at the 1:10 mark on this segment) Obama claims the cost of this crisis will be less than 1% of GDP, versus 2.5% for the savings and loan crisis (hat tip George Washington, sorry, no embed code, you need to go here):
The reason Obama makes such baldfacedly phony statements is twofold: first, his pattern of seeing PR as the preferred solution to all problems, and second, his resulting slavish devotion to smoke and mirrors over sound policy.
The savings & loan crisis led to FDIC takeovers of dud banks and the creation of a resolution authority to dispose of bad assets. That produced costs which were largely funded by the Federal government. I’ve heard economists repeatedly peg the costs at $110 to $120 billion; Wikipedia puts it at about $150 billion. This approach, of cleaning up and resolving banks, has been found repeatedly to be the fastest and least costly way to contend with a financial crisis.
The reason Obama can claim such phony figures is that many of the costs of saving the financial system are hidden, the biggest being the ongoing transfer from savers to banks of negative real interest rates, which is a covert way…
How You’re Going to Get Cornholed Thanks To Obama
by ilene - October 29th, 2010 3:22 pm
How You’re Going to Get Cornholed Thanks To Obama
Courtesy of Karl Denninger of The Market Ticker
The economy, that is.
This is a must-read from Chris Whalen. He’s spot-on, and I will reprint only the conclusions – read through for the why, what and how.
- The U.S. banking industry entering a new period of crisis where operating costs are rising dramatically due to foreclosures and loan repurchase expenses. We are less than ¼ of the way through foreclosures. The issue is recognizing existing losses ??not if a loss occurred.
- Failure by the Bush/Obama to restructure the largest banks during 2008?2009 period only means that this process is going to occur over next three to five years – whether we like it or not. Lower growth, employment are the cost of this lack of courage and vision.
- The largest U.S. banks remain insolvent and must continue to shrink until they are either restructured or the subsidies flowing from the Fed, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac cover hidden losses. The latter course condemns Americans to years of economic malaise and further job losses.
Yep.
The bottom line folks is that the fraud – massive and outrageous concealment of losses, intentionally making bad loans in the mid-2000s (now admitted to under oath by Citibank’s chief underwriter, among others) and the selling of that paper everywhere and anywhere that the banks could manage, along with holding much of it themselves, condemns us.
The opportunity to take these banks into receivership in 2007 existed. It existed in 2008 too. I counseled on doing exactly this during those years.
Instead, both Bush and Obama decided to protect those who had committed these offenses. First by attempting to bail them out, and then when it became obvious that $700 billion of taxpayer money was literally trying to **** on a forest fire to put it out they decided instead to paper it over by extorting FASB so the losses could be swept under the carpet instead of recognized.
The problem is that unlike long-run spending problems like Social Security and Medicare, which will detonate in ten year or more, this is a current account cash-flow problem and the deterioration continues month-by-month as the payments are not made. It’s like a barrel of dead fish. The next morning it starts to stink. Every day it stinks worse. Putting a…
The Tombstone Blues
by ilene - October 26th, 2010 2:41 am
The Tombstone Blues
Courtesy of James Howard Kunstler
The latest version of Pretend – going on a couple of weeks now – is the nation whistling past the graveyard of mortgage documentation fraud while skeletons dance around everything connected with the money system. Halloween came early this year. The USA is getting to look like one big Masque of the Red Death, so I suppose it’s convenient that our pop culture has been saturated with vampires, zombies, and werewolves for a decade, coincident with the self-cannibalizing of our economy. Something in the zeitgeist told us to get with the program of a twilight existence. We’re well-schooled now in the ways of the undead, operating under cover of darkness, going for the neck at every opportunity, even eating our young – if you consider the debt orgy, both private and public, as a way to party like it’s 1999 by consuming your children’s’ future.
The big banks leading the charge of the anthropophagi are making like it’s no big deal that notes representing money lent have become mysteriously dissociated from the mortgages that secure them. In the good old days, these things traveled in pairs, like boy-and-girl, Laurel and Hardy, a horse and carriage. It made for straight-forward property transfers, where Person A could be confident he was buying something free and clear from Person B. What a quaint concept, free and clear!
Nowadays, these documents can hardly be located at all – not such a surprise, really, since they were ground out like e-coli infested bratwursts in strip-mall boiler rooms run by former used car salesmen, and pawned off wholesale (literally) on banks who served them up sliced-and-diced, sloppy Joe style, on CDO buns to credulous pension funds, cretinous insurance company yobs, double-digit IQ college endowment managers, and other such nitwits bethinking themselves the reincarnation of Bernard Baruch, not to mention foreign sovereign nations who bought this smallpox-blanket-grade investment paper by the container-ship-load and, finally, the innovative geniuses at the very banks who engineered the stuff and got stuck with tons of it themselves when, as they say, the music stopped.
The Big Picture looks even worse when you figure in the mischief of so-called synthetic CDOs that represent the multiple securitizations of single underlying mortgages – God knows how many times each – which mean,…
OMG! Obama Wishes He’d Been Clearer About the Awesomeness of Obamacare
by ilene - October 21st, 2010 9:14 pm
OMG! Obama Wishes He’d Been Clearer About the Awesomeness of Obamacare
Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
To hear Obama tell it, Obamacare is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sure he wishes he’d been more transparent about the impact of health care legislation from the gate but the important thing is that he’s doing it now, right?
CNN:
Asked about the negative perception that many Americans have about signature legislation of his first two years in office, Obama said opponents of reform fought hard against it and he could have done more to sell it.
On such a complicated issue as health care reform, Obama said, the administration knew opponents would offer distortions in opposing the bill.
With provisions of the reform bill starting to take effect, people now can see the benefits for themselves and therefore understand it better, he said.
His government must continue "beating the drum and clarifying what’s in the bill," he said, noting that negative advertisements that lack specifics can influence public opinion.
Negative advertisements huh?
Guess what, my dear OMG-in-Chief, people now can see the benefits for themselves and therefore understand it better, people like corporate CFOs who now have to change their rules and put aside whole stockpiles of cash to deal with this crap.
See Qualcomm slashes health care benefits in response to ObamaCare law via WC Varones or Citing health care law, Boeing pares employee plan via AP for more on the subject. AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, John Deere, McDonalds and 3M have all come out saying they may or have slashed health care as a direct response to Obama’s fantastic, ground-breaking health care legislation. Does that clarify what’s in the bill enough for you?
Don’t forget to buy all the OTC meds you can now before new FSA rules kick in.
The economics of Obamacare speak for themselves, OMG can find something else to be transparent about while we have a nice long chat with the actual impact.
Raise Rates, Cowards
by ilene - October 21st, 2010 7:42 pm
Raise Rates, Cowards
Courtesy of Joshua M. Brown, The Reformed Broker
Here’s the deal, FOMC – I’m going to give you the intellectual cover you need to do what many people believe is impossible right now. I’m going to help you get the jelly out of your spines. Bear in mind that what I’m about to hit you with is coming from both street smarts and Street smarts; I ain’t the professor of nothing.
Benji, your "I’m a student of the Depression" rap is totally rate-arded at this point. No one’s going to call you Hoover, you can stop now.
What should you do? Pay close attention, because I choose my words very carefully and I never repeat myself…
The Move:
The Fed Funds target rate needs to go to 1% immediately. It should happen out of nowhere, not during one of your regularly scheduled FOMC slumber parties. That’s how China rolls, nobody gets advance notice of nothing. No jawboning, no telegraphing. It just IS.
The Perception:
The statement should be something to the effect of "now that the recovery has firmly taken hold…" Anyone who’s raised themselves up in the business world understands the concept of "Fake it til you Make it" and a lot of economic activity is based on perception and confidence. Your woe-is-me rate policy gives me all the confidence of an airline pilot wearing two different shoes.…
QE2 Won’t Save Our Sinking Ship
by ilene - October 18th, 2010 4:03 pm
Randall’s portrayal of Ben Bernanke’s thinking reminds me of a professor I knew who was trying to prove his own version of the Krebs Cycle. He designed experiments that would theoretically prove he was correct, but – strangely – the students in his lab kept failing to achieve the proper results. Rather than changing his theory, he realized that something must have gone wrong in the experiment, and he would have the students do it over, and over, until the right results were obtained. A lot of rats were killed in the process, but no matter--no one really cared about the rats. – Ilene
QE2 Won’t Save Our Sinking Ship
By L. Randall Wray, courtesy of New Deal 2.0
The Fed is between a rock and a hard economic outlook.
Fed Chairman Bernanke is signaling that a second round of quantitative easing will soon begin. In the first round, the Fed’s balance sheet nearly tripled to nearly $2.3 trillion as it bought $1.7 trillion in Treasury securities and mortgage-related securities. Since the Fed appears to want to unwind its position in mortgages, QE2 will probably target federal government debt.
During Japan’s long stagnation, Bernanke was famous for arguing that the Bank of Japan could have done far more to fight deflation. Since the BOJ’s overnight interest rate target was effectively at zero, the conventional policy of lowering its interest rate target was not an option. Hence, Bernanke advocated quantitative, rather than price, activity — the BOJ would purchase assets from banks, driving up their excess reserves, until they would finally make loans to stimulate spending that would reverse the trend of prices.
So when he had the opportunity, he put theory into practice in the US, driving short-term interest rates effectively to zero and filling bank balance sheets with excess reserves by purchasing their assets. So far, the impact has not been significantly different than Japan’s experience. Indeed, Bernanke has been publicly warning of the dangers of a Japanese-style deflation, as US inflation has dropped nearly to zero, well below the Fed’s informal target of two percent.
And so we are now set for round two of QE — more of the same old, same old.
In truth, the Fed has done only two helpful things. First, during the liquidity crisis of 2007 and 2008, it lent reserves to financial institutions that faced a liquidity crisis.…
Krugman: “The Question Is Whether Our Economy Is Governed By Any Kind Of Rule Of Law”
by ilene - October 17th, 2010 3:50 pm
Krugman: "The Question Is Whether Our Economy Is Governed By Any Kind Of Rule Of Law"
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Courtesy of Washington’s Blog
Paul Krugman writes:
The mortgage mess is making nonsense of claims that we have effective contract enforcement — in fact, the question is whether our economy is governed by any kind of rule of law.
***
True to form, the Obama administration’s response has been to oppose any action that might upset the banks, like a temporary moratorium on foreclosures while some of the issues are resolved. Instead, it is asking the banks, very nicely, to behave better and clean up their act. I mean, that’s worked so well in the past, right?
The response from the right is, however, even worse …. conservative commentators like those at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page have come out dismissing the lack of proper documents as a triviality. In effect, they’re saying that if a bank says it owns your house, we should just take its word. To me, this evokes the days when noblemen felt free to take whatever they wanted, knowing that peasants had no standing in the courts. But then, I suspect that some people regard those as the good old days.
I’m happy that someone as prominent as Krugman is weighing in on the side of the rule of law.
I’ve been hammering on that topic for years:
- Fraud Finally Being Discussed in Polite Company … Now Where Are the Prosecutions?
- A Free Market Is Not Possible Without Strong Laws Against Fraud
- The Economy Will Not Recover Until The Perpetrators Of Our Crises Are Held Accountable
- Economist James Galbraith: Economists Should Move into the Background, and "Criminologists to the Forefront"
- Senior S&L Regulator Says Government Engaging in Massive Cover-Up of Economic Crisis: “The Entire Strategy Is to Keep People from Getting the Facts”
- No Wonder the Economy Isn’t Improving
- The Root of the Economic Crisis: Dishonesty
Pic credit: Jesse’s Americain Cafe
Foreclosure Fraud For Dummies, Part 2: What’s a Note, Who’s a Servicer, and Why They Matter
by ilene - October 14th, 2010 3:29 pm
Foreclosure Fraud For Dummies, Part 2: What’s a Note, Who’s a Servicer, and Why They Matter
Mike Konczal defines the key players in the foreclosure fraud mess. **This is Part 2 in a series giving a basic explanation of the current foreclosure fraud crisis. You can find Part 1 here.
By Mike Konczal, courtesy of New Deal 2.
What is the note?
The SEIU has a campaign: Where’s the Note? Demand to see your mortgage note. It’s worth checking out. But first, what is this note? And why would its existence be important to struggling homeowners, homeowners in foreclosure, and investors in mortgage backed securities?
There’s going to be a campaign to convince you that having the note correctly filed and produced isn’t that important (see, to start, this WSJ editorial from the weekend). It will argue that this is some sort of useless cover sheet for a TPS form that someone forgot to fill out. That is profoundly incorrect.
Independent of the fraud that was committed on our courts, the current crisis is important because the note is a crucial document for every party to a mortgage. But first, let’s define what a mortgage is. A mortgage consists of two documents, a note and a lien:
The note is the IOU; it’s the borrower’s promise to pay. The mortgage, or the lien, is just the enforcement right to take the property if the note goes unpaid. The note is crucial.
Why does this matter? Three reasons, reasons that even the Wall Street Journal op-ed page needs to take into account. The first is that the note is the evidence of the debt. If it isn’t properly in the trust, then there isn’t clear evidence of the debt existing.
And it can’t be a matter of “let’s go find it now!” REMIC law, which governs the securitization, is really specific here. The securitization can’t get new assets after 90 days without a tax penalty, and it can’t get defaulted assets at all without a major tax penalty. Most of these notes are way past 90 days and will be in a defaulted state.
This is because these parts of the mortgage-backed security were supposed to be passive entities. They are supposed to take in money through mortgage payments on one end and pay it out to bondholders on the other end — hence their exemption from lots…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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