Archive - Aug 2009 - Blog entry

The FDIC has released it's Q2 report. Here are some interesting pieces of information.

The first thing that went through my mind is who is Simon Halabi? The second thing that went through my mind is who is the idiot at the Caisse that structured this deal? I mean who would agree to terms where the Caisse would hold the junior portion of a 1.45 billion- pound loan?
Something really stinks with this deal and I suspect there is a lot more to this than what we know.

Because nothing bad could ever possibly come of this...

The silliness in junk stocks continues. What's a fair price for the Agency common? The Pref stock pricing suggests it's about 50 cents. Go figure

Long term Treasury yields have not discounted the economic recovery, and in fact, yields on the 10 year Treasury have a high likelihood of heading lower. Equities have discounted a strong economic recovery. This divergence won't persist for long.

I think that in the environment we are heading in, there will be a premium placed on liquidity. Long gone are the days where you tie up your money for ten years in private equity or accept lock-ups of three years with some hedge fund (some are stupid enough to do this).

Bank of Canada's Council Member Timothy Lane has some interesting things to tell the market.

August 24, 2009 will undoubtedly go down as a day of celebration at Zero Hedge as the thus-far bullet proof Federal Reserve was ordered to produce documents improperly withheld from Bloomberg reporters Mark Pittman and Craig Torres.

The Chinese ascent over last decade has lowered the degree of separation between China and the global economy: what happens in China doesn’t stay in China (not anymore), it spills over to the rest of the world.

While Harvard regroups and tacitly admits its mea culpa, most pension parrots will keep repeating the same mistakes, losing billions in the process. They will all learn the hard way.

My ramblings on how the banking system is broken and what to do about it.

After some interesting disclosures over the past week -- including the fact that a large percentage of the U.S. market volume is comprised of just five financial stocks -- let us review new information and take a look at the week ahead, in order to make some sense of the train wreck already in progress.

!---This is an attempt to harness the ZH brain trust, an invitation to discuss---!

A couple of days ago Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism posted a comment, Who Is Tyler Durden? The post generated over 187 comments (and still counting), most of which were infantile swipes from morons claiming that one blog is better than the other one.

I got carried away too and used language that I shouldn't have, but after sleeping on it, I want to offer you some of my thoughts on these blogging brawls and bragging rights.

To spare you the trouble of having to waste your time reading and to spare me the embarrassment, there will be no comments this week. Just graphs.