Replies to post #243844 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[lee kramer]

Bot ER2's 533

[marketmaven]

Fred, is CapitalOne Financial tapped out?

Legg Mason (COF) Reit Buy Managed loans grew just 0.3% sequentially (3.1% annualized rate) to $72 billion as the company added $184mm of receivables in April. This is somewhat surprising given that the company`s aggressive marketing continued in March (3.99% card represented more than a third of total offers) and our expectation that COF will add over $2.8 billion in loans this quarter. Large tax rebates may have contributed to the weakness. In addition, loan growth is always lumpy, and tends to accelerate in the second half of the year. In 2003, COF added $11 billion in loans, almost all of it in the third and fourth quarters.

[Stock in Truth]

I think the Iraq war was one of the reasons the economy picked up in late 2004 (along with the housing bubble, massive foreign bond purchases, and the new mini bubble in stocks, among other things). We couldn't afford it, and went into debt doing it, but that's all part of the current mentality in the current credit bubble anyways. Debt creation always brings on short term economic growth. In the end, however, the excesses will have to be eliminted one way or another.


Outstanding debt increased 850 billion dollars in the 4th quarter of 2003, to 34.5 trillion, and the rate is accellerating as we approach outstanding debt to GDP ratio of 310%
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1r-4.pdf