Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan co-signed a letter calling for lawmakers to take action to relieve the financial crisis. [Real Time Economics]
Maestro69: you're welcome
Maestro69: "the oracle has spoken"
Maestro69: QED
GaldalFed: yeah, i saw your note. thanks, but I think we're good here
Maestro69: yeah, you are now, benji
Maestro69: dont think for a second, Gilligan, that they would've listened to you if I hadn't stamped it with my seal of approval. I own all those Hill Bitches (every time I hit the District it was a 1-2 punch. after i tapped it, i autographed it).
GaldalFed: whatever, busy here
GaldalFed: I've been up the last 8 nights straight reading texts from the great depression
GaldalFed: making sure we can avoid the next one
Maestro69: wow, benji, loosen up, you're too tight
Maestro69: you need to dip your wick in something sweet
Maestro69: when I was King I got so much puss it wasn't even funny
GaldalFed: stop it, i can't think about that now
GaldalFed: do you have any idea the dire straits we're in at the moment?
Maestro69: i told you, take the 3 rules from maestro's play(a)book
Maestro69: 1. talk like you know your shit, even when you don't
Maestro69: 2. cut rates like a thai hooker with the clap
Maestro69: 3. when in doubt, print it out
GaldalFed: with all due respect it's that kind of thinking that's turned our country into a banana republic
Maestro69: are you daring to sass me, pipsqueak
Maestro69: you hear that sound? that's the sound of the maestro's rolodex closing up on your ass
GaldalFed: what the hell are you talking about
Maestro69: i own every bitch's ass in corporate america
Maestro69: dont expect a cushy gig on the other side
Maestro69: you'll be back to playing D&D with your fellow academics
GaldalFed: alan, do you not get it?
GaldalFed: we'll be lucky if we're not all peddling apple carts in 6 months
GaldalFed: or worse, you and i could be hanging from lamp posts
Maestro69: maybe YOU will, you beared fruit
Maestro69: in 6 months i'll be headlining the UBS conference in the Maldives, pocketing 300 large for a giving a 5 minute speech and then sipping pina coladas with ten of UBS's finest investor relations bunnies
GaldalFed: why do you always have to do this alan?
Maestro69: preacha tellin' the truth and it hurts!
GaldalFed: I hate you
Maestro69 has signed off
Earlier: Fed Chairmen: They're Just Like Us!
Posted by Phobos , Sep 26, 2008 4:31PM
http://www.xkcd.com/476/
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 4:39PM
Well, of course, him and hillbill created this entire mess.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 4:40PM
Oh Bess...does it make you sad when your most brilliant sh*t excretes itself on a Friday afternoon and it doesn't get the attention and adoration it deserves?
I wish you could just repost this Monday morning for all to appreciate...
Maybe a book?
"Bess's Best Blurbs...Bitches"
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 4:40PM
Preach! Preach!
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 4:43PM
sing it sista! testify!
Posted by american bandersnatch , Sep 26, 2008 4:48PM
nice work
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 4:58PM
Okay it may be the end of the world here, but that was damn hilarious
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 4:59PM
Bess, you smell.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 5:05PM
you're an idiot @8
Posted by Cincinnatus C , Sep 26, 2008 5:07PM
maybe he meant she smells nice?
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 5:26PM
haha
Posted by RAW DOG , Sep 26, 2008 5:29PM
@10 - What does that have to do with the price of eggs in China?
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 5:40PM
I'm still laughing. This was the funniest DB stuff I've read in a long time. Nice job Bess.
Posted by EricM , Sep 26, 2008 5:45PM
En fuego, Bess.
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Sep 26, 2008 5:46PM
Well played Bess...
~SEG
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 5:56PM
It wasn't a purloined real conversation?
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Sep 26, 2008 6:05PM
Barry has a great cartoon up... http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/26/baby_boomer_panic.png
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:09PM
the dialog thing is played out.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:10PM
Why don't they start posting these securities on ebay? Or create a market on stub hub. Like jon Najarain said only he said put them, one by one, on an exchange and then it will be clear as a bell.
Why doesn't the congress want transparency?
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:10PM
Cramer just said w/o bailout an increase of FDIC insurance limits from $100,000 to $1 million the Dow will hit 8378. SO much for his bottom calling (the last 4x)
What an ass wipe.
Posted by Pay It Forward , Sep 26, 2008 6:12PM
Marry me Bess.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:12PM
Poor Cramer. He has created a situation where no one trusts anything he says anymore.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:13PM
you're played out @18
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Sep 26, 2008 6:18PM
Here is a link to the Republic Critters Manifesto, which is not to be confused with its opposite structure which is being pushed by the current Neo Con Republician Party and the current Democratic Party.
Page 3 is the Manifesto... Its pretty much a 3 step punt Wall Street to its own devices game plan.
http://republicanleader.house.gov/UploadedFiles/09-26-2008_lettertopelosioneconomy.pdf
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:23PM
SEG your downside if we don't get a plan?
Even if we do get one is there an upside or just less of a downside?
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:24PM
This was just too funny!
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:36PM
Pulitzer!
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:39PM
Why doesn't someone put a couple of these toxic assets up on ebay. They will know really quick what they are worth.
They can even do what everyone else does, have their friends bid so the price goes a little higher.
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Sep 26, 2008 6:45PM
I am not sure I even have one anymore... I am just trying to stay green for the month and green for the year. My ability to view the future and make a guess is now down to my gut and it only knows what makes it feel good or not.
I am long things... and short fiat... I am long other fiats vs the US Dollar, however my score is kept in dollars so its kind of weird at one level when you think about it.
We have now had two rally's based on a deal that has not happened, which makes me think that we will have a sell the news event, once there is a deal.
We are reaching the stage of this crack up/boom where reverse decoder rings don't work anymore. Where you make more on the hedge then on the idea.
I was talking to a wholesaler today for a former IB bank that is still in business today about a cash fund. I used the idea of a fund that only held cash, as an example of how bad the market has become.
He asked how we make money, I said, its about not loosing money. lol... actually I then explained my idea about how to make money with just cash exposure products... he liked it.
I know that my phone is ringing from old friends who are calling to ask about where to move their cash, and how to buy silver. Exactly those two topics.
~SEG
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:57PM
@10,
Nope, Bess smells like toe cheese.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 6:58PM
Man these motherfucking cocksucking asswipes in congress better pass this shit.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 7:01PM
Bernake dropped the B word on congress, Buffett.
Bet that'll get those bitches to listen.
Posted by Phobos , Sep 26, 2008 7:03PM
drunk.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 7:14PM
@8/30 get a life, loser.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 7:19PM
What's a dire straight? A dour heterosexual?
MSN Encarta defition of "strait":
difficult situation: a situation that is difficult or involves hardship, e.g.,
"The collapse of the stock market put many brokers in serious financial straits."
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 7:36PM
@34
Sycophant
Bess,
One word. Massengill.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 7:38PM
douche bag@35- you and the other people who like to feel morally superior by correcting spelling-- considering that it's online and not in print, and can be fixed quickly (and appears it already has), perhaps you should try and attack other, more substantive aspects of the posts, so you can hold on to that feeling a little longer.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 7:38PM
SEG - Thanks
I am doing almost same as you.
Got decent cash on the sideline because it just doesn't feel right out there.
Am green for the year but this month will be first black month (-1.4% mtd). Got caught offside on 1 short position. It was okay because limited downside quickly, which seems to be the name of the game these days.
Everytime someone calls or collegues run a buy idea by me i just say no. I don't care how cheap a particular stock or a group looks. Got 2 questions this week about how to take physical delivery in gold.
I like the cash exposure idea - a lot.
Thank you.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 7:44PM
"... and whosoever was not found written into the book of life was cast into the lake of fire..." - Revelations 20:15
we need more Bible in DB, yessiree-
substitute TARP for "book of life" and it all becomes clear... although, and maybe a Holy Cross grad can help me, I scoured the Bible for a egomaniacal delusional jackass who would be a metaphor for Fuld and I came up empty...
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 7:45PM
@35
Run on sentence.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 7:52PM
@36- not a sycophant, just suggesting that you do something a little more productive with your time than leave asinine, obnoxious, not even creative or witty post on an online message board.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 8:08PM
@40 and 41. You assholes don't know shit from shineola.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 8:11PM
@41
You want productive, go to work. It's Miller time you mofo.
Bess,
You don't really smell. I was just joshing.
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Sep 26, 2008 9:00PM
@38,
I say we round up some scared AUM and offer them this...
using 100 MM as a scale point...
100 MM physical cash... 95 MM of it staying in cash at all times... not T's or CP but good old unleveraged almost physical cash. 5 MM exposed to the market in long calls or puts on the currency ETFs... Use a global macro model for picking the direction of the currency trade...
Buy 6 months out, and run the sucker so its max draw down is 1-3% per month, no matter what... with enough leverage in the near the money calls/puts to produce a 5% month if you nail a major move... and the currency's are moving...
Not a lot of trades out there where you can run heavy money via equity accounts and keep 95% in cash and use no margin exposure for your leverage while retaining enough bang for a possible 5%+ upside move in the account...
I would say I am giving away a major trade, but hell its the currency markets... and more liquidity in the options part helps me move in and out of the options easier... so join me please... lol
my argument about using options on currency's is that you can skip the whole CEO/CFO event risk issues, or nasty takeover/unders ect... while having liquid movement with macro trends.
The liquidity is based on the currency markets and the flow through for the ETFs... Its does not include margin use, so you are only exposed for the cash cost of the option itself.
Anyway... enough babbling about this trade... have a great weekend.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 9:00PM
How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable
Terry Jones
Wed Sep 24, 7:19 PM ET
One of the most frequently asked questions about the subprime market meltdown and housing crisis is: How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?
The answer is: President Clinton wanted it that way.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even into the early 1990s, weren't the juggernauts they'd later be.
While President Carter in 1977 signed the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities, it was Clinton who supercharged the process. After entering office in 1993, he extensively rewrote Fannie's and Freddie's rules.
In so doing, he turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made loans to large Democratic voting blocs and handed favors, jobs and money to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and the Fannie-Freddie collapse.
Despite warnings of trouble at Fannie and Freddie, in 1994 Clinton unveiled his National Homeownership Strategy, which broadened the CRA in ways Congress never intended.
Addressing the National Association of Realtors that year, Clinton bluntly told the group that "more Americans should own their own homes." He meant it.
Clinton saw homeownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class.
Though well-intended, the problem was that Congress was about to change hands, from the Democrats to the Republicans. Rather than submit legislation that the GOP-led Congress was almost sure to reject, Clinton ordered Robert Rubin's Treasury Department to rewrite the rules in 1995.
The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000, "made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder." Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and measures for the level of "diversity" in their loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with another.
Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else.
"Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group and race, to rate banks on performance," wrote Howard Husock, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute.
But those rules weren't enough.
Clinton got the Department of Housing and Urban Development to double-team the issue. That would later prove disastrous.
Clinton's HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, "made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis," the liberal Village Voice noted. Among those decisions were changes that let Fannie and Freddie get into subprime loan markets in a big way.
Other rule changes gave Fannie and Freddie extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments, vs. 10% for banks.
Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks due to implicit government guarantees for their debt, the government-sponsored enterprises boomed.
With incentives in place, banks poured billions of dollars of loans into poor communities, often "no doc" and "no income" loans that required no money down and no verification of income.
By 2007, Fannie and Freddie owned or guaranteed nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market -- a staggering exposure.
Worse still was the cronyism.
Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of-work politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. An informal survey of their top officials shows a roughly 2-to-1 dominance of Democrats over Republicans.
Then there were the campaign donations. From 1989 to 2008, some 384 politicians got their tip jars filled by Fannie and Freddie.
Over that time, the two GSEs spent $200 million on lobbying and political activities. Their charitable foundations dropped millions more on think tanks and radical community groups.
Did it work? Well, if measured by the goal of putting more poor people into homes, the answer would have to be yes.
From 1995 to 2005, a Harvard study shows, minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners.
The problem is that many of those loans have now gone bad, and minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.
Fannie and Freddie, with their massive loan portfolios stuffed with securitized mortgage-backed paper created from subprime loans, are a failed legacy of the Clinton era.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 9:10PM
stfu 45
everyone knows Ron Paul got us in to this.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 9:38PM
@44: "good old unleveraged almost physical cash"
Where you gonna put the cash? A bank account at WB?
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Sep 26, 2008 9:46PM
@47,
You didn't expect me to tell you the whole trade did you? ;-)
~SEG
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 10:58PM
More scenes from a bailout ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH--o&e
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 11:08PM
When you read history books, don't you sometimes wonder how someone could possibly screw up that badly, or why no one did anything in time?
Yeah. The media-generated idea that whatever "bailout" passes Washington will save us is more than likely a bunch of shit. Removing the toxic crap from the market should have been done a year ago. It would have been a lot cheaper to provide support then.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that whatever Congress passes is actually going to fix the system. I view the probability that happens as less than the probability nothing is passed by Monday i.e. a mega longshot.
If you have positions that only work if there is massive, spontanious salvation, you should rethink those. That includes stupid shit like significant weight speculation in bank stock that is circling the drain. Everyone from TPG to the daytrader down the street to banks holding the debt to clowns writing CDS this week thought they were soooo smart about WaMu.
Not so smart now, are they?
I don't agree with some of the total Armageddon scenarios. Even something as big and as fucked as WaMu was taken down, repackaged and handled with no loss to the taxpayer or depositors. If nothing else, the Feds still have more than enough money to save any deposit-holding institution from an actual 1929 collapse and wipe out. They'll kill everyone who was holding a piece of it, but you aren't going to see annihilation of millions of Americans' savings.
Cash really isn't the worst place to be right now. Most of the exotic stuff and commodities are facing enormous uncertianty from Lehman, WaMu, hedge fund liquidation and the impending massive deleveraging of Goldman and Morgan. You could get torched by something you don't see coming very easily. And you have the government stomping around like a rabid dinosaur, trampling and eating people who have done everything "right" with their strategy. Arb funds, anyone? Let's hear it for overnight, no recourse sledgehammer government action.
This is about capital preservation.
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Sep 26, 2008 11:21PM
Well said #50... Could not have said it better...
~SEG
Posted by diablo , Sep 26, 2008 11:26PM
@45
You don't have to come here and paste garbage that you don't even understand.
Everyone knows that everything bad that has happened to this world after Clinton was born is Clinton's fault.
You don't need to come back here to share your ignorance ever again. Hope you feel better now, and if not, we don't care.
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 11:34PM
You know what I don't care about America's reputation in the world. I care about the fact that they respect us and that is very different from liking us.
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Sep 26, 2008 11:38PM
Something doesn't smell right in this chart... http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H2DePAZe2gA/SNxmTnPymPI/AAAAAAAAEf0/d4AS9BNJB5U/s1600-h/monetarypercentchange.png
Posted by guest , Sep 26, 2008 11:51PM
Stop copying the Foggy Monocle in your posts. Come up with your own funny blogging style, because you have nothing on the priceless humor that takes place at that work of art.
www.thefoggymonocle.com
Posted by PhilSeltzer , Sep 27, 2008 1:15AM
Note SEG's comment in the Earlier reference. "worst day ever". Guessing he'd love to be back there right now.
Not hating; just saying.
Posted by michange , Sep 27, 2008 1:30AM
Cow and banking jokes series :
Bayou Group Farm :
You say you have two cows, but you only have two egrets. When bulls come to mate, you're fucked up. You pretend to be on the phone talking to a sacred cow in India, does not work. You bungie jump from the Bear Mountain Bridge in Westchester County, does not work either. You pretend you are in jail, and this, till now, works.
Countrywide Farm :
You've got two heavily sun-tanned cows, that don't give milk. Farm of America agreed they will take the farm over, but finally they also decided they will leave the cows on the street.
Merrill Lynch Farm :
You've got two cows, and the farm is on fire. Farm of America agreed they will take the cows over, but they did not decide yet if they will let the farm burn down.
Lehman Brothers Farm :
[yek yek yek]...continued here :
http://www.lacrisepourlesnuls.com/
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 1:45AM
@SEG
Are there options on the currency ETFs?
Even so, Currency ETFs are non-volatile compared to its equity counterparts. Longing them would just eat your premium away.
I've been fairly successful this past 2 months of turbulence with option volatility spreads. But it's not too scalable though. Not sure if you can bet more than 5% on such spreads.
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 1:47AM
37 and 41, 35 here. I've mostly given up on correcting spelling except when it grossly changes the meaning of a post, appears in a headline (long-term embarassing to DB), or will screw up a tag line (fouling up indexing), and then I usually provide the correction through the tips line.
The use of the term "dire straight" struck me as funny. Since Bess most definitely has a sense of humor, I thought she wouldn't mind.
What I posted is not a run-on sentence. It's two short sentences, followed by an actual definition from MSN Encarta. The definition coincidentally included an example relevant to the very extreme times in which we are living.
I do post on substantive issues in 98% of my posts. I have posted very extensively on the financial crisis, but feel that the events have become so amazingly bizarre that I have little more to add. Sorry if I offended you in post 35.
By the way, I thought the phrase in 50 about the "government stomping around like a rabid dinosaur, trampling and eating people who have done everything right" was nicely done and apt.
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 1:53AM
foggy m. promoter @ 55
1. you did not invent the IM convo
2. your piece of shit site was one of the least funny things I've read maybe ever.
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 1:55AM
@59-you are a sad little man or woman.
Posted by Jack n Crack , Sep 27, 2008 3:01AM
I have a little too much exposure to the United States and I'm thinking of exiting the position. I hope someone in Asia/the gulf is hiring.
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 3:24AM
Tonight a woman called a radio talk show host. I happened to have the station on and I listened as she said that she was a WAMU employee and that she woke up this morning to find out about the take over. (she must go to bed very early) Anyway she said she lost two hundred grand in her retirement account as she inquired from the bank about her funds and she was told that she is considered a stock holder. The woman was nearly in tears and seemed convincing. Could this be possible? What are the rules about cashing in your stock if you are an employee? Did this happen to BSC and Lehman and AIG and Fannie and Freddie employees too? Thanks to those who respond.
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 4:02AM
@63
Of course it's true. LEH employees share the same fate. Most employees are not allowed to sell their company shares BUT if they had brains, they will buy puts to hedge their exposure. I mean, come on, even if the company forbids you from buying the puts, ask your family or friend to buy the puts on your behalf.
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 10:20AM
Yes that's true. Bear, Lehman, Enron, this happens. It's horrible, but it happens.
Public companies should not be allowed to do with their employees retirement exactly what *every* legitimate financial advisor tells clients not to do. How many horror stories does it take to druve home that "everyone goes down with the ship" is a fucking horrible idea?
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 11:52AM
could someone respond to #19- is it a good idea? the exchange- would it work?
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 12:03PM
Speaking of lulz...
http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 12:10PM
Speaking of Bailout, The Lehman Brothers Coffee guy gets mentioned in The Economist (http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12305341) because he'll be hurt by the crisis.
Posted by Phobos , Sep 27, 2008 1:29PM
@SEG in re: chart @54.
The chart is right. On or around December 1 1999, the FED increased Ms throughout the US so as to stem the worry revolving around Y2K. In short, with all the nuts they didn't want a bank to have a run on it, because the nuts would leverage that and turn it into hysteria. After 9/11/2001 the same thing happened. Here we have Ms spiking so as to provide cash for banks: trying to stem the runs. Basically, they're scared (again, and rightfully) that if one of the larger regionals has a run on it, the country will panic.
@63
It depends. If the money was held in stock, and that stock was WaMu stock, then yes the chances are good that the money is gone. Please note, however, that the money would have been gone anyway had she been holding that stock anywhere else: WaMu just simply collapsed and ceased to be. On the other hands if she was just holding her funds there, they might be recoverable.
@66
It's not a good idea, it's a very dumb idea – the person who proposed it is a moron that knows less about finance than crack addled circus midget. You can't sell something that no one will buy. Moreover, we don't know what the instruments are worth – pricing of them are very difficult. And transparency is only an issue if you think we care what you think. There seems to be this current trend in America right now that is something akin to “We have the RIGHT to know what's going on in these institutions!” -- and I'm telling you – as far as we are concerned: you can all go fuck yourselves. You no more have the right to our books than you would to the soda-pop industry.
@67
Yeah, that's pretty retarded too: My mom sent me an email with that attached. My mom. Four years of college did ya proud, bud.
Posted by Harald , Sep 27, 2008 2:31PM
@66 .The idea doesn't work because these toxic assets aren't worth diddly. If they were worth something, and this was merely a problem of liquidity, we wouldn't need a bailout - suspending the mark-to-market rule would be enough, since once the toxic assets "mature" or whatever they could be sold at the values holders want for them.
But since that litmus test fails, and we are looking at a bailout, that signals these toxic assets really are worth diddly. Bad loans were made that will never be paid on, and banks cannot recover their losses on these mad mortgages until the housing market turns around - thus allowing them to actually make some money when they foreclose. So they are looking for a bailout
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 3:12PM
The US has been so hurt by the financial turmoil that markets now view its credit worthiness as akin to - or even worse than - that of McDonald’s, a shocking fact even if you believe that both are fronted by clowns.
One broker quoted McDonald’s CDS at about 26.5 basis points, compared with 30bp for the US, on Friday morning and another desk quoted both about 25bp. The picture has worsened since the news that politicians and public servants in Washington failed to seal a financial bail-out deal on Thursday night. McDonald’s closed at 28bp versus 25bp for the US on Thursday, according to Markit.
Posted by Harald , Sep 27, 2008 4:31PM
The language is a little patronizing, but I ave not seen a wiser assessment of the current crisis:
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2008/09/bankruptcy_and_the_counterpart.html
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 4:54PM
No weekend updates?
ClusterStock.com has weekend updates.
DealBreakerMon-Fri.com
SPODE
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 5:29PM
@Harald (#72):
"The idea doesn't work because these toxic assets aren't worth diddly."
"...that signals these toxic assets really are worth diddly."
Huh?
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 5:36PM
Make that @Harald (#70)
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 5:58PM
Apparently without Carney, DealBreaker won't be blogging on these crisis weekends. He's doing it over at ClusterStock now: http://www.clusterstock.com/2008/9/the-bailout-brawl-rages-on
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 6:01PM
But me no buts, mark me no models, sling me no bullshit. The worth of a thing is what what thing will bring. If it will not bring anything it is worthless.
If anybody here has anybody to sell, I hereby declare that I will buy any mortgage backed security with a full maturity value of more than $100,000.00 for ten cents. And I mean ANY security. I don't care if it's a mortgage on a shed with a meth lab in it.
There.
I have just established a floor on the value of all mortgaged based securities. None of them are worthless. If others wish to outbid me, they are welcome to do so. If nobody wants to sell to me, that's their right, but I don't want to hear any bitching about "toxic assets." Interested sellers can forward messages to me through DB - they have my IP on file. :)
Posted by Bess Levin , Sep 27, 2008 6:58PM
@spode-- right, except that I posted last saturday and sunday. so fuck off.
@76-- thanks for the link. are you a shill for clusterstock?
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 7:00PM
Those who claim these assets are worthless can go fuck yourself. you know shit about reality.
There are buyers for these assets at about $0.08-0.15 on the dollar. So don't give me the crap that there is no market for these stuff.
It's just the banks who refuse to sell at such low prices.
Posted by Harald , Sep 27, 2008 7:23PM
@74,79: By 'diddly' I don't mean zero - I mean 10-20 cents. Something that's clearly not PV of the mark-to-model price.
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 9:03PM
Most banks would go under if they had to mark/sell at .08-.015 on the dollar.
Posted by guest , Sep 27, 2008 10:14PM
is it possible for Phobos, working within his opaque soda-pop factory (#69), to package the assets so that a market like the CME could price them and then maybe the price would end up being more than 10-20 cents?
Posted by Phobos , Sep 27, 2008 11:18PM
what in the holy name of 'tard heaven have you been smoking @82? Seriously?
There is a market for these instruments. The problem isn't that there isn't a market. The CME? I mean really? The god damn CME? Do you work for Congress? Tell me you're on the Hill right now referencing DB for bailout implementation strategy.
Here's what we're looking at:
If the US Gov buys this shit @15/20 cents on the dollar, it creates VERY LITTLE money for the banks. The banks, unhappy about this, refuse to buy massive amounts of credit from the regionals/super's etc., and as a result, the retail banking units FAIL. I MEAN FUCK. How hard is this?
The banks, the big guys that are holding this stuff, they need around 50c/d to stay afloat. 60c/d would be nice, 80c/d would be ideal (and consequently, probably be the l/t break even point for the US Taxpayer given dollar FPV vs interest vs overall failure) -- but that's not going to happen. Especially at 300B. At 300B I hope every banker within 20 miles of 10028 decides that Rand had it right and takes us to 8000 on Monday. Well, not 8000, because I don't want that bastard Cramer to be right about ANYTHING, EVER.
All of that being sad, my hangover has all but passed. I'm going drinking.
Posted by guest , Sep 28, 2008 10:00AM
One question. Why don't the fat cats of wall street and the richee rich bailout out wall street, then get the profit when things are better? They got the rewards why can't they put the money back into what they run?
Posted by guest , Sep 28, 2008 10:10AM
How about the Congress,the sport stars, music business people foot the Wall Street bailout.