Archive - May 24, 2009

The recent addition of legacy loans to TALF caused CMBX spreads to turn on the nitrous and rip like all the commercial real estate concerns over the past 6 months have disappeared (especially in the top-most AAA tranche). Between financials, whose stocks have doubled on average, and CMBX (whose spreads have halved), there is, at this point, no doubt as to what lengths the administration is willing to go to funnel every single printed dollar into these otherwise doomed industries.

• Ben Bernanke's commencement speech at the Boston College School of Law (FRB)
• Obushma-Biney in the home of the frightened (FT)
• Geithner picking the best (for Wall Street) of all derivative worlds (Bloomberg)
• S&P: Britain will be the next stage of the global crisis (

Fast forward to 13:34 minutes in the clip below, in which the president, interviewed by C-Span, has the mother of all Freudian slips and discloses just what the real state of the economy is.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znZkxN0Ks0M&hl=en&fs=1]

There may yet come a time, when chasing Beta is no longer the preferred approach to generating returns, and together with Keno, Black-Jack, Craps and No Limit Hold Em, investors drop this most ridiculous of "investing" strategies.

There may yet come a time, when chasing Beta is no longer the preferred approach to generating returns, and together with Keno, Black-Jack, Craps and No Limit Hold Em, investors drop this most ridiculous of "investing" strategies.