Archive - Jun 2009

Hey Kids! It's time again for Marla's Romper Room!

Today we are going to play "Statistically Significant at the 95% Confidence Interval!" No sniveling Julie or you'll get the hose again.

Children, you have a very important mission! You know all the soft fuzzy bunnies we have in Marla's petting zoo? Well, of the 2923 bunnies in Marla's petting zoo, we are going to have to cruelly put to death 702 of them on tomorrow's program. Your job is to pick which bunnies you want to save!

Fun! Yay!

Hey Kids! It's time again for Marla's Romper Room!

Today we are going to play "Statistically Significant at the 95% Confidence Interval!" No sniveling Julie or you'll get the hose again.

Children, you have a very important mission! You know all the soft fuzzy bunnies we have in Marla's petting zoo? Well, of the 2923 bunnies in Marla's petting zoo, we are going to have to cruelly put to death 702 of them on tomorrow's program. Your job is to pick which bunnies you want to save!

Fun! Yay!

Hey Kids! It's time again for Marla's Romper Room!

Today we are going to play "Statistically Significant at the 95% Confidence Interval!" No sniveling Julie or you'll get the hose again.

Children, you have a very important mission! You know all the soft fuzzy bunnies we have in Marla's petting zoo? Well, of the 2923 bunnies in Marla's petting zoo, we are going to have to cruelly put to death 702 of them on tomorrow's program. Your job is to pick which bunnies you want to save!

Fun! Yay!

Absent a few tokes of the occasional green shoot, Richard Brown, Chief Economist at the FDIC, has put together a more or less objective presentation of the current and projected economic state. Some notable highlights:

Slide 5 - increase in arm and alt-a distress.
Slide 14 - annualized 6.1% decline in GDP Q109 due to big drop in business investment; you can bet the consumer spending fudge factor won't stay blue for long.
Slide 17 - shows more than 100% increase in loss provisions in Q408 over Q407.

In the first bondholder splinter group in the GM bankruptcy, today Paul Weiss filed a statement under rule 2019, creating an informal group of bondholders. The four initial members hold $1.6 billion face in notes, and were previously members of the HLHZ-advised ad hoc committee, which was instrumental in attaining to the highly questionable 54% of plan supporters.

Courtesy of mint.

Courtesy of mint.

Courtesy of mint.

In one of the lesser noticed scandals over the past week, the CEO of the American Banker Association Ed Yingling (presumably not related to the fine, fine beer) accused GMAC essentially of using TARP money to fund its subsidiary Ally Bank in order to advertise/provide markedly higher deposit interest rates than prevalent market rates. The last is in violation of a May 29 decree by the FDIC, barring weaker banks from paying interest rates out of line with local markets to keep lenders from taking on excessive risk.

Nothing new here for those who follow David, but some typical soundbites. "Rally can continue based on technicals. In late summer/early fall we will rollover" etc.

And of course the intellectual titans at CNBC close it off with a stunner of a question as the ominous "here comes the commercial break" music hits 145 dB. Has to be seen to be believed.

Moody's out with a piece, in which it joins the S&P chorus (well, not technically a chorus if just one is singing) Zero Hedge wrote about earlier, in which it seems the two major rating agencies are now taking both REITs and associated securitization conduits to the woodshed, and making it inevitable that Geithner adjusts the requirements for CMBS TALF participation. For once being a 1-10 year lagging indicator may actually be a market normalizing influence.

Moody's out with a piece, in which it joins the S&P chorus (well, not technically a chorus if just one is singing) Zero Hedge wrote about earlier, in which it seems the two major rating agencies are now taking both REITs and associated securitization conduits to the woodshed, and making it inevitable that Geithner adjusts the requirements for CMBS TALF participation. For once being a 1-10 year lagging indicator may actually be a market normalizing influence.

All you ever need to know about the prestory, the propaganda, a couple of facts, and the likely outcome of the Government Motors bankruptcy case, wrapped in a tidy little package, compliments of Weil Gotshal, who, between Lehman and GM, are now the de facto too big to fail law firm.

Not quite a repeat of Friday, but close enough for government work (pardon the pun).

Not quite a repeat of Friday, but close enough for government work (pardon the pun).