Archive - Blog entry

The FDIC is auctioning off property that it has "acquired" from failed banks. This is going to kill the other owners of foreclosed homes. Who are those other owners? It's Fannie, Freddie and FHA. There is no winner in this policy. The losers live in Hampton Ga. Is Sheila Bair desperate for bucks or does she just not understand that she is cannibalizing the other D.C. lenders?

Well … the third time certainly proved to be the charm. After yesterday’s anticipated bounce filled an open gap at 1060.25 on the S&P futures (ESZ09) in response to an insanely oversold McClellan Oscillator reading of -381.49, the markets appear to be resuming their impulsively downward voyage back to reality; today’s internals registered even more bearish readings than Wednesday’s, which is an extremely negative omen for the future outlook of the markets. While the TICK did not register a reading that surpassed -1400 today (intra-day low of -1396), we did witness the VOLD relentlessly plunge to a new extreme closing low of -1,408,903, which now marks the lowest closing low since that of 9/02/09.

The GDP results for Q3 are a triumph of government stimulus, which is to say they are a mirage, destined to vanish when the money runs out. There is really very little good news from the BEA report when you consider most of the economic activity was the result of Cash for Clunkers, the $8,000 housing tax credit, and federal spending. But like everything else in life, it's a bit more complicated than that.

I guess that the lack of any volume in the market for the last 7 and a half months has finally made an impact on the financial performance of the market operator NYSE Euronext. Read more about it in this article.

"If leadership won’t add such language [reigning in the TBTFs], call your elected official and ask how much they actually receive when they agree to put on the kneepads."

The real source of America's angst is a sense that something is terribly wrong.

With the Fed’s $300 billion gift card to PD’s Treasure Island maxed out, one wonders who will support the vendors chomping at the bit to offload Uncle Timmy’s 3 to 7 year wares. But with the sun setting, the Japanese tourists trickling out, and the kids tired from a hard day of play on the S&P 500 Coaster and the SPY IOI Whack-a-Mole, it would be easy to settle into a semi-euphoric complacency, thinking ahead to a frolic-filled night on Pleasure Island...

These are some, of the more important, headlines coming from Europe

When it comes to the pension pie, the insurance industry wants a big piece of the action. Notice how the editorial sounds a lot like those fear-mongering campaigns from U.S. health insurance companies, warning us of the "dire fiscal consequences in the future". The only thing missing was "we don't want a public option for pensions".

→ Washington's Blog.

When a liberal labor leader and a conservative financial policy
analyst unite against something, you know that something is really bad (actually, I don't believe in the whole fake left-right dichotomy;  I think its Americans versus those trying to steal our wallets and our rights, but that's another story).

Why is M3 falling?

How bad will the luxury hotel market get? Well,,, Pretty bad. All of those BS, "better than expected" earnings surprises off of severely lowered estimates stem not from top line revenue gains or economic progress, but from hacking jobs and cost cutting. Ya' think those Four Seasons', et. al. hyper-luxury executive suites are included in those cuts somewhere??? Here are all of those pretty graphs and interconnected hyperlinks to help tell the story...

These are some of the more important stories concerning the European economy

Hey, the little banks are doing their derivative thang too!

In the ongoing debate between the so called freshwater and saltwater economists about how the US got into this mess and how we are going to get out, what somehow often gets lost are the prophetic words of Hyman Minsky. Investors would be well advised to understand Minsky’s ideas concerning financial instability, especially given the current market euphoria.