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Talking about dropping trow
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7860556.stm
Roubini and Whitney should sell rights to a play to disney.
How about
"Beauty and the Beast do Wall Street" or "How to screwup in business with really trying"
Screw Steelers and Cardinals
Give me 2 halfs of Springsteen and 12 minutes of football
BKX broke down pretty good today.
New Lows coming soon.
Hard to imagine this administration puts any "free" money into bankers hands via bad bank creation.
It will all come with strings attached making current equity holders stake worth even less then the bucket of spit that it is worth today.
It seems we got a lot a combination of a lot of retracing to do and there is still a enough virgin 2009 401K money allocated to equities to be invested reasonably blindly by a bunch of fairly timid mutual funds managers who are not going to put it in all at once.
I not going to take the bait on Meredith being a hottie.
My wife got back from helping out at the local soup kitchen yesterday and they ran out of meatloaf (smaller portions and no seconds had to suffice) for the larger crowd which included many new faces.
This is somewhat significant since the soup kitchen is in a top 10 in the country per capita county.
It seems that they having a problem increasing the supply of meatloaf makers in our parish. Older people moving out of state to avoid high taxes and cost of living in NJ are not being replaced with younger folk.
They are not inclined to make meatloaf since by and large they got their own potential insolvency problems with big mortgages and trying to hold down a job to deal with to think about providing for others.
I guess high net worth locales buoyed by real estate valuations are fast coming down to the average folk with economic realities.
The devil is in the details. Is roubini just an inpractical acedemic or is he pointing out we haven't even constructed a better mousetap to deal with the problem.
Jan 20 Roubini/Parisi: Assuming a further 20% fall in house prices and unemployment peaking at 9%, we project total loan losses to amount to $1.6T out of $12.4T loans outstanding. Of these $1.6T loan losses, about $1.1T accrue to U.S. banks and brokers.
Mark-to-market prices as of December imply around $2T in writedowns on $10.8T U.S. originated securities outstanding. Flow of funds data show that 40% of U.S. originated securities are held abroad. U.S. banks' share of writedowns is about 30-35%, or $600-700bn for U.S. banks/brokers according to weights in IMF GFSR October 2008, table 1.1
Total loan and securities losses amount to $3.6T, half of which accrue to the U.S. banking system, or $1.8T. Capitalization of FDIC banks is $1.4T, that of investment banks as of Q3 $110bn. If projected loan and securities losses materialize, the U.S. banking system is close to insolvency despite TARP 1 of $230bn and private capital of $200bn.
Chris Whalen (IRA): The bad news is that estimates that put aggregate charge-offs for all US banks over the next 12-18 months above $1 trillion are probably in the right neighborhood. The entire banking industry only has $1.5 trillion in capital, so new equity must obviously be provided by Washington and/or private investors.
Jan 25 Goldman (via Zero Hedge): Total loan losses will reach $2 trillion of which $1 trillion are carried by the U.S. banking system (50% mortgage losses and 50% other loan losses). Banks need a minimum of $300bn additional capital but most likely more.
Calculated Risk: I think the U.S. residential credit losses will be in the $1 to $1.5 trillion range and additional credit losses from corporate loans and bonds, commercial real estate, credit cards, and other consumer loans will probably add close to another $1 trillion in losses.This analysis excludes losses on securitizations.
Roubini: In order to restore healthy credit conditions, the banking system needs about $1-1.5T in public or private capital. This calls for a comprehensive solution along the lines of a 'bad bank' or RTC.
Krugman: 'Bad bank' problem without nationalization first is asset valuation and ongoing bail-out of existing share and debt holders. A better approach would be to do what the government did with zombie savings and loans at the end of the 1980s: it seized the defunct banks, cleaning out the shareholders. Then it transferred their bad assets to a special institution, the Resolution Trust Corporation; paid off enough of the banks' debts to make them solvent; and sold the fixed-up banks to new owners
Roubini: in order to resolve this financial crisis it is not enough to take the
bad/toxic assets off the balance sheet of the financial institutions (a new RTC); it is also necessary and fundamental to reduce the debt overhang of millions of insolvent households via asignificant debt reduction on their mortgages (an HOLC program like the one that was implement during the Great Depression); and also recapitalize undercapitalized banks with public capital inthe form of preferred shares (as the RFC did with 4000 banks during the Great Depression). An RTC scheme without an HOLC and RFC component would not resolve two fundamental problems: 1) millions of households are insolvent and unable to service their mortgages; 2) the financial system is vastly undercapitalized and needs capital to avoid an ugly credit crunch and to foster new credit creation that is needed for future growth--> That is why I proposed the creation of a HOME (Home Owners’ Mortgage Enterprise) that would
be a combination of an RTC, a HOLC and a RFC.
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police have jurisdiction at Holland tunnel.
Also, I have seen panhandlers at entrance ramps to interstate highways were local cops would not have a beat.
BKX retraced symetrically in last 2.5 hours all of the gains in last 2 hours of yestreday.
No Geithner; no treasury directives; no tarp action
Pretty scary situation.
I thought Paulson with all his stuttering reminded me of I Claudius role Derek Jacobi played in PBS miniseries.
I guess we are going from Cladius to Nero right about now.
With even MSFT telling us things are not going to be like they were before for a while, it is hard to believe market is not going to continue down to new lows.
Personally, if I tuned to CNBC for the first time in a while to check out what's going on in the stock market, seeing the crabby performance of that monkey with a crewcut, Charley Grazaino, it alone would tell me that things are not right with the stock market.
PS got my car squeeged at the Holland tunnel Tuesday at least he used clean soapy water.
RE AIG
My friends at AIG are starting to brush up their resumes with the realization that the company is shopping it's insurance divisions and is basically in runoff mode already.
Cablevision is waiting for data loss to go from 75% to 100% ,ie hardware drops dead, making it easy to diagnose.
I can't send any data out except for these non secure posts if I submit post and wait a few minutes for data to be reassembed on IH server. Luckily phone and recieved emails work.
No email can be sent out.
My AT&T wireless connect card is saving the day with data transmission speeds of 300-400 mbps. I can recomend this to everyone. This type of internet circuit is becominig popular as primary or back data lines for retail stores since it eliminates high costs for electricans running long data lines in the shopping mall.
I think concept of being "hard pressed" is going to be the norm for the entire society going forward and I base it my clairvoient brother.
My brother who did a lot of partying and held anarchist ideas up until 10 years ago when he stopped drinking. So when he said some things you could tend to dismiss him.
Back in 1998, he worked for Con Ed in enviromental affairs and spend several weekends a year with their diaster response teams in the emergency center at World trade Center. He told me his 1999 New Years eve party that he had to leave Con Ed because he didn't want to be in emergency center when Bin laden came back to finish of the job he didn't complete. I basically told my brother he was crazy.
Post 9/11, I talked to two of his coworkers from the Con ed diaster reaction team at another party at his house and they backed up my brothers assertions about wanting to get out since they had to run for their lives when towers came down.
I return to the present since one of my brothers recent more controversal remarks seem more and more likely as things keep going down the crapper.
I asked him this summer why he so into physical fitness. He replied " one has to be able to climb into the second story window of the rich mans house in oder to get food when generilized mayhem comes to the US."
Coming from someone with new worth well above $2M, I take it to mean that shit is going to hit the fans and all of the internet based security and communicaiton systems are not going to be much use if wide scale rioting breaks out.
OT Cablevision a real piece of work.
I had some internet issues Friday morning. Email messages were still coming in and phone service was working so I wasn't too concerned. I thought it was some generic DNS problems out on the web when some web sites didn't respond or there was delays on browsing but the sitation would reslove itself on it's own.
I came home last night and similar issues still were in place. Cablevision quickly confirmed that there was an issue with intermittant packet loss of greater then 50% and they quickly scheduled an appointment to have it looked at. The lineman came out this morning and had this long look on his face. I asked him what type of problem was going on. He frankly told me that he had the same problem down the street yesterday and he was waiting for response from his supervisor on resolution. I asked him how do we get this problem resolved. He described the problem as a bad node in the area that only effects customers with the boost service. A node could have anywhere from 500-2500 customers on it. I asked why wasn't this resolved more quickly. He replied that until a 3rd customer calls in with the same problem they do not address the issue.
It has been 36 hours since they knew of the problem and no engineer has been dispatched to fix the node on their network.
They are starting to make decisions to response to outages based primarily on financial factors not on any pledge of customer service or reponse time guarantees.
I had to escalate this with a supervisor in customer support and they still haven't got their support personel to act on it since it a weekend.
Just ask if their making payroll since they must face that
music on weekly conference calls with district managers.
Store managers are being asked to go so understaffed in general trying to keep the brick and mortar format losses down.
I am coming to conclusion that as we start handing out money to individual states by the billions some of it will go directly into the underfunded pension systems. I think market will come back into market pretty quickly.
Your right, as you usually are, on long and lean. She has not much upper body strength but plenty of leg strength which is typical for breaststrokers.
For example, they have a running club at school, 5th grade, and she was doing 7-8 laps in 15 minute lunch break during the fall. I had to ask was that a full quarter mile track because I never could run a 8 minute mile in grade school. I am the opposite of long and lean<g>.
As long as she is cheery and determined (competitive), I am going to go with it for as long as it lasts.
I got a chin up bar as one of her presents for christmas and she is all smiles as she hangs from bar trying to make one pullup.
like someone had switched off a light
Go to one of the office depots that is closing down.
They have 20%-60% off and nothing is moving
To see all of the Microsoft Norton and Intuit skus at 25% off, below dealer cost, not moving tells you small business owners are in the "deer in the headlights" mode.
Linens and things did the correct thing to shutdown before Christmas when people would still be buying their inventory as gifts.
PS talking about our kids penchant for technology.
My 10 year old daughter saw that one parent has been uploaded a few swim meet races up on to Youtube. She has been winning her race, the 50 yd breaststroke handily, and now she wants her race posted on youtube.
Camcorder prices have come down so much that I bought 2 open box standard definition Sony handycam units with record direct to memory stick and HDMI output on ebay for about $500 total. I am going to donate one of them to the swim club and hope someone steps up as official videographer so I don't have do film it.
The top of the line consumer camcorder HD 1920x1080 units are only $600. I am surprised there isn't more porn out there then their is.
My daughter been making hand written tables since 4 years old. She took a bunch of her books and made a simple table with book title, author, and color of binding.
As a lark, I started up excel and she filled in cells and right from the start got a gist how to change font, color attributes better then I can after 20 years of use.
She is currently into making power point slides by the dozens at a time. I pretty rigid in terms of background fills and word art but no two slides look alike.
In 2002, I went to vonage.
I had pretty bad water leak in copper wire service at the time and it took many service calls to have fixed (it be still raining when repairman arrived) . The day after they fixed it I cancelled verizon service<g>.
I subsequently added a cablevision phone line 4 years ago, no big whoop.
I just switched of from cablevision and vonage this fall to tmobile at home $10 a month per line.
only thing lost from vonage service is voicemail attachments arrived as email. I assume tmobile wll add that feature on later since there using. You have to have tmobile cell phone accoutn to get service.
I got a dentist who swears about magic jack. I told him only basic difference between other voip solutions is he using PC resources rather then termnial adapter device and electricity cost for PC on 24/7 was a measuable cost he needed to factor in.
What do you think about Intel report. I am seeing 19" LCD monitors $119 since they rolling off assembly lines faster then their being sold.
Hey my mother in law gets $1,000 a month payout as a widow of GM worker. Father in law lived modestly and saved from the wages he made from 32 years on the job so he was able to invest wisely. So even if GM pulls the survivors pension and medical benefits, she will not have to sell house, eat cat food or god forbid move in with us.
Republican Senators shameless Union bashing going to bite them in the ass making passage of Employee Free Choice Act much easier and more probable event. Foreign based auto workers will eventually become Union workers as they face the pain form layoffs resulting from the fiscal market collapse.
How or why should Chrysler be permitted to continue.
Dalimer cut off it's head, engineering dept, after it's merger.
John Snow, ex treasury sec, heads up Cerberus Capital and their books got to be a big mess as any other of the financials.
I would say let them fail and sell off Jeep to highest bidder and fix GM's Union problems voluntarily or involuntarily.
I know potatoes produce a small galvanic response <g>.
I would think the auto bailout is bigger issue. I think market is going to give the Senate a big wakeup message today with a eye popping decline.
Sen Shelby been saying some unbelivable things about US automakers similar to President Ford to NYC during their fiscal crisis. I havn't seen newspapers saying "Shelby tells GM drop dead" yet.
Madhoff reminds me of Robert Maxwell. Markets did start to take off shortly after all the boggie monsters played out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell
Don't worry be have a good time
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7773356.stm
Your prognosticators aren't relly that down beat. Roubini is at NYU. If he was there 30 years ago, he would have seen first hand one of NYC's toughest areas, Houston St. I can personally experienced many times having to run the gauntlet heading to Holland Tunnel and the relative safety of NJ.
One was always confronted by dozens of homeless vagrants panhandling or just just passed out on the side of the street stone cold from booze or heroin. You would have to wave off one after another down and out homeless people trying to clean your windshield with a dirty rag.
I don't know where all the homeless hang out today, I was in NYC this week, if times are really that bad. The areas like the lower east side and Harlem are fairly upscale and tame now a'days. The Bronx is not vacant buildings burning up as we learned from Howard Cosell reported from the Reggie Jackson NY Yankees World Series of the seventies.
We still have a long way to go to match the societal pain we had in the seventies.
PS I asked 2 different UPS drivers from 2 different sorting centers in NJ how the shipping loads were during the last 2 weeks. As teamsters, they are keenly concerned about shipping volumes since it dictates work rules and number of drivers needed. Their answers were pretty frightening. UPS has not hired any additional drivers or temporary helpers since business is off so much.
I guess we didn't get a UPS Tuesday or a FEDEX Ground fortnight after, that about how long it takes them to get me a package, reaction to Cyber Monday sales.
In this inflationary environment, I would imagine China uses it treasure chest of US dollars to boost domestic growth through construction and goose the costs of basic materials all over again.
Shanghai got a good market bottom in. Their centralized planning, cronyism and bribery will get the job of revitalizing their economy done well.
http://finance.cn.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=000001.SS&t=3m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
I don't see much domestic growth since we keep squabbling over who gets the $700 B in tarp funds. $700 B just doesn't go as far as it used too.
I don't we can get much positive effect when your only two choices Congress is debating currently are giving it either to the investment bankers for their bigger mansions and larger yachts or to the labor union members for their no show jobs and fat pensions.
Tarp funds couldn't support no more than 700K investment bankers for a year or 7 M union members which leaves almost 300 M people in the US out in the cold no matter how you split it up.
New Jersey gotten so high tech you can only reasonably apply for UI over the internet. You can't apply for UI at the unemployment office any more.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1228455504107800.xml&coll=1
Go RU
I haven't seen the long lines of cars last weekend lining up to get into Bridgewater Commons shopping Mall, a Simon property, either Saturday or Sunday afternoon.
This is only mall in Somerset County with per capita income levels in the top ten in US.
Any indication that you have seen that Christmas selling season isn't going to be a armageddon where financial institutions that hold the bridge financing loans are going to be squeezing out any chance of store profitability by stringent repayment terms.
Listening to Bloomberg on the hearings on capital hill, all 3 automakers would most likely have to file prepackaged bankruptcies with 30-60 days if bridge loans weren't extended now.
Later on in the day Carlos Ghosn told Bloomberg all automakers across the globe would need government aid to complete hybrid vehicle rollouts.
I am surprised market didn't tank more.
It a 450 lbs bundle of switches, solenoids and clutches.
I expect first 5 years with basically no maintenance; next 3 years getting to know my local repair shop a lot better; then in year 8 9 or 10 having him cart it away for scrap metal.
My lawn mower repairman was very happy to pickup for free my 550 lb, 2 cylinder, 22 HP 10 year old MTD garden tractor this year which was really too big for my needs. He is real nice guy, a retired school principal, who employs his wife and daughter in his business. He is very handy with small engine repairs from building go carts and dragsters for his son to race.
That Mr. gadget mechanical re-engineering experience comes in very handy when one wants to tackle repairs with MTD mowers. If he closes up shop, I am going to get a lawn service. I am a pragmatic kind of guy not a pipe dreamer
I bought my MTD mower direct off the internet which has a Kohler engine, automatic transmission, electronic blade engagement and all the bells and whistles at www.buymtdonline.com.
It was the Yard Man labeled model which are sold at Walmart. It seems that it was too steep in price for Walmart and MTD is blowing them out from the factory including free shipping.
If it an apples to apples comparison, the internet shopping experience is more cost effective.
I bought my MTD mower direct off the internet which has a Kohler engine, automatic transmission, electronic blade engagement and all the bells and whistles at www.buymtdonline.com.
It was the Yard Man labeled model which are sold at Walmart. It seems that it was too steep in price for Walmart and MTD is blowing them out from the factory including free shipping. It is not a
If it an apples to apples comparison, the internet shopping experience is more cost effective.
market rallied 4 days after Oct 10
market rallied 7 days after Oct 27
you want to revise and extend any remarks since your on the record that rally lasts more than 1 week and imply we bust through 1005 resistance
PS expiry next friday
I appreciate everyone's advice on how to proceed.
My mother in law's state of mind is not very strong right now. She still not over loss of her husband to do it herself. My wife is going to put it on front burner next week before GM insurance coverage eventually disappears.
Only problem is the more we do for her the more she expects us to continue to do more for her. She told her sister "it's my time to take it easy". Just weeks ago, she was managing to deal for herself and her husband who was totally blind for last 5 years.
For example, she is inventing problems with her car, headlights, turn signals, saggy tires, gear shifter etc to get us to drive her everywhere including the hairdresser but we are 50 miles away from her on local roads. It is the wildly imagined running out of money problems that we can't deal with. She got enough money for at least 120 months of nursing home care if situation got a lot worse. If you ge directly involved and suggest something she doesn't like to hear she uses the "your only interested in my money" or " I just want to die" remarks to get you to back off or if you ignore her too much the phone calls start coming several times a day.
Nutrition is becoming the biggest and most concerning issue since she won't cook or shop for herself and there is no physical limitations preventing her from doing so. She rarely goes out to the local diner alone when she went 7 days a week with her husband there. It must be tough on her to be seen as a lonely widow by waitstaff. Eating has become mostly a social function rather then a basic necessity required for one to prosper.
She has 2 sisters very close by who want to help but she can get on their nerves very easily.
We can't get her to go to local senior citizens center during the day to keep her occupied and get a meal squared away. We are going to propose meals on wheels next and see if that is shot down. If she rejects that, we may have to wait for upcoming medical situation to occur to get her in better managed situation since she seems to have more a psychologically problem that we are not in a position to deal with unless my wife becomes legal guardian for her for medical reasons.
RE AIG
The guys at AIG are cheering that their jobs are now safe and don't care either about demise of current ownership or transition to basically government ownership.
RE GM
My mother in law is getting total run around from Horizion Blue Cross since my father in law, a GM employee for 41 years, passed away in AUG. There are acting like they made a clerical error in the transfer of account information and they will need another 1-2 months for paperwork to be corrected. They told her not to expect any retroactive coverage for the time frame from when he passed away to the time that they fix their mistake.
It seems Blue Cross knows that retiree benefits are going bye bye since they are flat out making every effort not to fix their "clerical error" and/or provide retroactive benefits.
Unions love infrastructure spending and I smell MTBE exhaust
If Obama owes anyone anything, inner city community orgs basically pimped for free, it is unions which will request for a payback with jobs.
I am seeing a few independents selling gas for $2.07 while majors are sticking at $2.29. It is a little too much price spread then could be expected and that distinctive smell is returning when some SUV's pull away from traffic lights. Also, 2 of my last 3 tanks of gas returned 3 extra MPH like right after Katrina.
2 thoughts
- I try not to post so frequently since my last opinion I was going to post last week would look foolish now. I was going to post that 945 S&P, one of your Maginot lines, was successfully defended and we were going to stay above 1000.
It is obiously going to get broached tomorrow and we will revisit the ancient lows of 3 weeks ago which gets to my second thought.
- Joe Biden said that Obama was going to get tested early in his term as president. Well Bushie/Paulson are lame ducks so any new economic policy is going to come from President elect Obama, Rob Enanual if he takes chief of staff and one of 2 GS ex CEO's Rubin or Corzine as potential Treasury Secs.
I think negative stock market valuation pressure is coming on quickly in next week or two to force new president to announce next round of stimulus package, money printing, for the banks and any associated entities that lend or borrow money.
Surely McCain wasn't hinting at economic crisis but military crisis to occur.
Investors pulled $9.2 billion from stock mutual funds in the past week
chump change compared to last 4 weeks outflows.
42 point S&P sell off in last 10 minutes.
Nothing has changed fundamentally in last 6 months with the financial shape of broker dealers.
They are technically insolvent and can't prop up the market one iota when sellers appear.
I still think when funds sell shares EOD, the market makers are dependent on looking in their larders for US treasury supplied funds.
RE what my (relatively objective) eyes tell me is that everything is about to go up. Gold. Silver. Oil. Wheat. Kitty Litter. Equities. Everything."
The only practical way out of this mess were in.
How fast do you see us retracing to proverbial
DOW 14000; Oil $140; copper $4/lb; Edy's 48 oz half gallon ice cream $4.59
another 90% up volume day with 9% gain on the S&P in last two hours of trading. not too many sellers to be found at EOD.
There seems to be no one on the counter side of trades in the last month.
IMO Thursday or Friday we give up most of the gain as the boys decide they need to get out with a profit knowing it will be fast and significant decline when the sell program kicks in and there is no willing counterparty to buy.
Tarp must only allowed to da rade not hold overnight
Fine maybe they will cnsolidate like Brooksotne but the current store footprint is not making money.
RE China
I heard someone on Bloomberg talk about how China has been focusing on developing preferrentially the most cyclical parts of our economy. He thought that China would suffer far worse if our economy faltered since we are their #1 customer for goods.