The stress of the "biggest bankruptcy in history" and all those fee applications must really be getting to him.

A statistic that may surprise some, is that January 2009 has seen a record amount of new Investment Grade issues: $104 billion so far. This easily surpasses the 2008 total of $83 billion. Granted, of this tally $61 billion is FDIC-guaranteed paper, but the $43 billion non-financial balance is still much higher than the $28 billion comparable in 2008 and $11 billion in 2007. Even more surprising is that 56% of new issues were BBB rated, up from 25% in December. This is summarized below:

Nassim Taleb of Black Swan and fat tail fame, has created a Facebook site called "Make Bankers Accountable." It is feasible that this could become the 21st equivalent of the million man march on Washington. We fully endorse the initiative. Maybe eventually Obama will realize just how angry the general public is becoming.

It The Boston Consulting Group and Nassim Taleb are right, and the latter has been right over the past 2 years where everyone else has been massively wrong, then private equity firms are about to get in line for government bail outs.

In what many expected to be a test of whether financial companies can raise capital without the implicit guarantee of the government, Goldman managed to price $2 billion of non-FDIC insured notes at 500 bps over comparable treasuries. In absolute terms, the notes priced with a 7.5% coupon to yield 7.779%. While the rate is high, the fact that it could even price is notable as all capital raises by financial institutions in recent months were backed by the full faith of the Federal Reserve's printing presses. The pricing is even more remarkable as today GS stock is down a little over 5%.

14:00 *FED RELEASES QUARTERLY SENIOR LOAN OFFICERS SURVEY
14:00 *FED SAYS BANKS REDUCED LIMITS ON LINES OF CREDIT
14:00 *FED SAYS NEARLY 60% OF BANKS TIGHTENED CONSUMER-LOAN TERMS
14:00 *NET 80% OF BANKS TIGHTENED COMMERCIAL REAL-ESTATE LOAN TERMS
14:00 *FED SAYS NET 60% OF BANKS SAW REDUCED BUSINESS-LOAN DEMAND
14:00 *BANKS CITED DETERIORATING ECONOMY IN TIGHTENING LOAN TERMS
14:00 *FED SAYS 90% OF U.S. BANKS INCREASED BUSINESS-LOAN MARGINS
14:00 *FED SAYS 65% OF BANKS MADE IT HARDER TO GET BUSINESS LOANS

"New home sales drop to lowest level on record", down 14.7% from 388,000 in November (revised)