Archive - Nov 2009 - Blog entry

Anyone advocating for war to help our economy is mistaken.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the credit rating industry but were afraid to find out.

While not there yet, the indicators are heading in the direction that one would expect to see at a market top.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation on Friday said its potential exposure to future pension losses had increased to about $168 billion in fiscal 2009. The PBGC's ongoing deficits will require another massive bailout down the road. That's why Uncle Ben will let this bubble blow for as long as he possibly can.

→ Washington's Blog.

The war hawks claim that getting us into some more wars will pull us out of the economic crisis.

But several studies show that more jobs would be created by other types of spending.

Simon Johnson says Bernanke is killing the dollar to help bail out the too big to fails ...

Senator Dorgan calls it like he sees it ...

HUD's Shaun Donovan delivered a report to Congress. Some of the information provided does not jive with the default performance of some Ginnie Mae portfolios. A representative portfolio from 2008 is suffering defaults of 27%. Exactly the same as the sub prime loans.

No bailout for FHA? Don't count on it.

I just received this email and thought my readers may find this of interest. DDR is the company that was featured in the "bailout" post (Here's a Big Company Bailout by the Taxpayer That Even the Taxpayer's Missed!), a must read if you haven't done so already.

Friedrich von Hayek might have thought so. Hayek worried that during times of crisis the government would assume so much control that it would eventually have a negative impact on the economy and eventually turn all the people into serfs. My hope it that through sites like Zero Hedge we can help wake people up and avoid such an undesirable fate.

Technical Profiles of 8 Key Stocks: AIG, BIDU, CAT, CELG, DRYS, IBM, GS, SKF

With an asset allocation of 45% in public equities and 11% in private equities - by far one of the more aggressive asset mixes among the large pension funds - it's all about beta. If equity markets tank next quarter, so will CPPIB's performance.

This is aimed at those banking execs that believe that they will be better off hiding losses than taking them now and preempting the guaranteed higher losses to come in the future. Yes, the US is Japan - the "19 year" lost decade, redux!

The FDIC will announce today its final plans on how to bridge a $45 billion shortfall in its accounts. Our pals, the bankers, have submitted letters on this matter to the FDIC. Some make interesting reading. Guess what? They all want to get paid for bailing out the FDIC. They will get paid and this will be all off balance sheet. Presto, the problem no longer exists.