rcwhalen's blog

Ian Buruma: “The truth can be brutal, and makes life uncomfortable.  So one looks the other way.” 

Not only does FNM seem to be unprofitable under the new FHFA guidance, but payments made to Treasury might need to be reversed. 

"We have documented significant fiscal losses caused by preferential treatment of bank creditors of gone concern banks..."

We need to think about lessening the economic “skin-in-the-game” for RMBS and focusing anew on enforcing US securities laws... 

Banks are NOT looking to hang onto REO property.  Read Basel III.  150% risk weight for distressed... 

By pursuing QE too long, the FOMC has engineered a repeat of the periods of market losses and negative accrual that nearly crushed the banking industry in the 1970s and 1980s, only worse. 

Eisenbeis:  If the FOMC doesn’t have such a plan in place, then it shouldn’t say “it depends on incoming data.” 

Smyth: There seems to be an expectation that the end of QE will be bullish for the Dollar and therefore bearish for gold. My view is the end of QE will be bearish for all those asset classes which require QE for life support

There is no greater crime in Washington today than speaking truth about the US economy in public.  This is why Ben Bernanke is not being reappointed for another term as Fed Chairman.

In the real economy on Main Street, the circumstances are different. If you want to buy a house in the US and you need a conventional mortgage, and if you are not a speculator and want to live in dwelling, your costs have now risen substantially.

How is it possible to NOT monetize 200 million eyeballs? 

So much for that revolution, but don't worry about the oil companies losing money, price rises are assured. 

The 2011 actions of the FDIC ending the safe harbor for true sales locked in a solution to TBTF

"It's highly debatable whether AAPL iCloud is making the inroads that they predicted..."

The diminishing returns of the Fed's quantitative easing are very evident in the latest WFC results.