Where criminals are still free and desperately arguing for a continued coverup of their crimes:
I’m not amused that the Wall Street Journal solicited an op-ed attacking the decision to try KSM in civilian court from one of the people–John Yoo–with the biggest conflict on such a decision. It’s yet more proof that Rupert Murdoch is [...]
Posts under ‘Credit crisis’
Welcome to Dystopia
The Gospel according to Goldman
As a graduate in theology, I was interested to read that Goldman Sachs believes the Gospels promote self interest.
However, I have learned there is an apocryphal basis for that position. It turns out that biblical archaeologists have unearthed a little-known text that offers a somewhat different understanding of the teachings of Jesus. In this new [...]
Phantom condos and phony accounting
Jim The Realtor shows a brand new expensive looking condo development in San Diego County that has no gas meters hooked up. That means they never sold any. Just more empty condos, and they are not counted on new home inventory reports.
Financial author Michael Lewis thinks another day of reckoning is coming. I agree. Like [...]
The MSU School of Accounting
Bloomberg. Bank profits soaring due to bogus accounting rules
(MSU is the Polizeros acronym for “Making Sh*t Up”)
Mothballed condo project in Irvine CA
Calculated Risk, in their first video, shows an empty, never-used condo project in Irvine. The lights are on, but no one is home. Ever.
New condos like this are shadow inventory – they are not included in the Census Bureau new homes report, and they are not listed in the MLS. But they do exist.
33% of homeowners w/mortgages are underwater
That’s a lot of pain…
Who do you trust on the economy?
The video above comes from a Mother Jones fundraiser held recently out on the west coast. You can view the rest here, but this one in particular got me thinking about which sources I actually trust for economic news. Turns out, not that many. Before I list them though, I should tell you that [...]
Are CNBC and Jim Cramer gaming the market?
So asks John Amato at C&L, citing a wealth of articles and sources. Read them all. It goes way beyond gaming the market by naked shorting and a compliant media. There’s hedge funds with organized crime money, a money culture that ignored laws (while regulators snoozed), illegal manipulation of stocks, and much more.
There needs to [...]
Disaster Chic: De-Globalization and the Middle Ages
Will countries react to the financial crisis with crippling “reverse globalization,” throwing the entire world economy off balance? Or are we instead locked into globalization and headed for a new “Dark Age?”
The US is less leveraged than everyone else
Bizarrely, even though subprime in the US was the trigger that caused the now worldwide financial crisis, we will probably suffer the least because, impossible as it sounds, our banks weren’t as insane as those elsewhere.
Sure, our banks are levered, as are households, but bank assets, as a percentage of GDP are “relatively” tame. We’re [...]
Your Daily Doom and Gloom report
GE says everything’s fine, just fine, thanks for asking, as the stock drops off a cliff. The problem is their finance unit, which threatens to turn the entire company into smoking rubble.
Those bothersome auditors say GM is circling the drain, how thoughtful of them to awaken from their slumbers long enough to notice what financial [...]
One solution to the mortgage crisis
An ex-Countrywide honcho is buying mortgages for pennies on the dollar, then offering distressed homeowners greatly reduced monthly payments.
Kurland’s new company, PennyMac (!), goes to a demolished bank or the FDIC and buys up delinquent mortgages at, say, 20 cents on the dollar. Kurland’s people then call the delinquent homeowner and say, “How would you [...]
The formula that blew up Wall Street
From Wired.
In 2000 a brilliant quant named David X. Li devised a mathematical formula called a copula function that got widely used by Wall Street to model risk.
Li came up with an ingenious way to model default correlation without even looking at historical default data. Instead, he used market data about the prices of instruments [...]
Moody’s about to neutron bomb CMBS market
Moody’s is about to downgrade as much as $300 bn in commercial mortgage backed securities. This will force many entities that hold them to sell, as they are not permitted to own lower-rated securities. Plus, everyone will have to write-down the current (probably fantasy) valuations on their books.
Which will probably trigger more downgrades.
High-end Los Angeles real estate finally crashes
Prices were down 20-30% in 4th quarter 2008 for high end Los Angeles homes. The same thing happened here in San Francisco. People thought high end property was safe. It wasn’t, it just took longer to start to fall, that’s all.
One problem is that mortgages, especially jumbos (which would be needed to buy these homes) [...]
