Housing Prices

Such a bearish appearance must be the result of the rose-colored glasses affirmative action thing at GE Capital: we have yet to see what the Comcast policy vis-a-vis unbiased content is. Nothing substantially new from Meredith - same focus areas of concern including toxic mortgages on the Fed's balance sheet, non cash flow generating "assets," and consumer, consumer, consumer (apparently she has not read the David Bianco piece either - after all the US consumer now accounts for 100% of Kindle revenues and 0% of US GDP, or so Merrill will soon want you to believe). Yet withComrade Sam making sure all is good for ever (the alternative, just like falling housing prices in your average S&P model from 2005, simply did not compute at the most recent 5 year plenary session), is there any reason to worry about anything? After all the debt auction carnival begins afresh again today at 1PM with $40 billion in 3 years. So long as those keep getting gobbled up without a glitch, all shall be well.

The latest lunacy out of the Institute for International Economics notes that the dollar can and should go to negative territory courtesy of another roughly $6 trillion in Quantitative Easing. Enter Joseph Gagnon, who is obviously daring to boldly go where the Fed Chairman can only dream of going, and is set on ruining whatever is left of America's (and the world's) middle class.

It appears that all the improvements in the housing market have not been due to market corrections, but are from government stimulus, and the numbers are fake. Such actions will only delay a recovery and housing prices will continue to fall.

"You want to do something about jobs? Well, considering a different Fed Chairman might be a good place to start. Nothing would more clearly display the inability of our leaders to deal with the disastrous state of our economy than easily reconfirming Ben Bernanke for another round at the Fed on the same day that they hold a "job summit" in a harebrained attempt to try to figure out how to create jobs in this country." - Dylan Ratigan

An empirical analysis of the most recent NY Fed and FDIC loan loss data shows things getting materially worse, despite the $75 billion foreclosure prevention efforts, quantitative easing, zero interest rate policy, and hundreds of billions of dollars of injected liquidity and MBS purchases. What can we expect with even the slightest blip upwards in interest rates... Complete mayhem among many dead banks would be my first guess.

The world's most handsome and charismatic blogger stands outside his beloved friends at Goldman Sachs headquarters at 85 Broad (see pic) to congratulate them on the outstanding CMBS offering made through TALF government leveraging for Developers Diversified Realty (notice the funny looks that I am getting from the women in the background, haven't they seen a handsome and charismatic blogger before???). A few questions still linger, though...

So many future bailouts to look forward to, so little time. So many cans do kick down the road via accounting adjustments, so few feet do keep doing the kicking. While I read this piece I was struck by my own reaction... not even $30 billion in deficit? This is peanuts! We've become so numb to bailouts that anything less than hundreds of billions seems like a normal part of Bailout Nation. Yet just over a decade ago the world was in a panic over hedge fund Long Term Capital and its gaping hole of $3.6 billion. How quickly we've adjusted to brushing off our shoulders handouts and bailouts 10 times that size. The cost for one of the smallest handouts, Cash for Clunkers was more than the bailout of LTCM in 1998. Need to manipulate housing prices higher? It's worth it! Only costs $16 billion; or with Cash for Cul de Sacs v 2.0 - $30B+. Peanuts.

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!

Is this bill good or bad? What's it missing?

Disclaimer: The following set of links and associated cynical commentary touches on mature subjects and may not be suitable for some investors. Topics covered include: hyperinflation, sovereign default and yes, even investing in Zimbabwe.

The sudden surge of optimism regarding the global economy resulted in the massive reduction in the costs of sovereign debt insurance. While the drop is not a surprise, the reasoning and the actions behind it surely are.

An interesting report coming from McClatchy, concerning Goldman Sachs bets on the housing crash.

"Moody's now expects that a trough in home prices will not be reached until the middle of 2010. In addition, based on recent loan loss severities, Moody's will increase its projected lifetime loan losses for pools backing U.S. Jumbo, Alt-A, Option ARM, and Subprime RMBS issued between 2005 and 2008." - Moody's Investors Services

I originally wrote this list of recommended books last year; recently I updated and added a few more. I hope to keep adding to it every year. It contains six sections: Selling, Think Like an Investor, Behavioral Investing, Economics, Stock Market History, and Books for the Soul. Due to its length, I divided it into two parts. Here is part 2. I hope you enjoy it.

Now that even Le Big Mac has hightailed it out of Reykjavik, the locals, forever deprived of $0.99 cheeseburgers and anything resembling a stable currency (a good advance look at what the U.S. can look forward to, although at least California makes some happy, Prozacked cows now and then), are at least owed some levity (even if it as their expense). And when one looks for matters dealing with jocularity (and/or gross, flagrant incompetence), one really needs to look no further than the Federal Reserve. In this case, former Fed director Fred Mishkin will suffice, who in May 2006 penned a report titled "Financial Stability In Iceland."