Recent comments

  • I'd like to see Barney Frank ask Geithmer name-by-name to confirm or deny. Frank's staff should be able to come up with the short list.
    Frank T.

    Reply to: Paul Volcker Said What?   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Mike Lukovich is one of my favorite political cartoonists. His latest is a good one.

    Reply to: Paul Volcker Said What?   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Is it any wonder that even Volcker can not bring himself to say the Fed is part of the problem?

    In fact our whole US Government is the Problem!
    Gerald Celente is right... there IS going to be a revolution simply because the "Government" has now become the "TERRIORISTS" threatening the common citizen. Errr ...make that --- the Government UNDER the orders of the Wall St wealthy that have bought them completely (YES, and that certainly includes Obama).

    Reply to: Paul Volcker Said What?   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • were not socialists. Supposedly they did that so "this can never happen again". I think it was Bryon Dorgan (one of my favorite Senators) who warned on the Senate floor.

    There are other regulations which need to be reinstated but it's good to see Volcker really imply what so many others are saying needs to be done on Glass-Seagall.

    Reply to: Paul Volcker Said What?   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Right you are. And remember that Greenspan heavily promoted the repeal of Glass-Steagall with the adoption of the Financial Services Modernization Act (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) along with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. And he made big bucks betting on the subprime meltdown with his position at the Paulson hedge fund.

    Remember the Greenspan Commission? What a farce that was.

    Reply to: Paul Volcker Said What?   15 years 1 month ago
  • it's been an entire year, a year and they haven't done anything to restructure it.

    Reply to: Housing bust to resume   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • this bubble. We will have to do what we should have done sooner 'nationalize', debt foregiveness, write downs and hair cuts.

    Obama/Geithner's strategy depends on the bubble.

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Housing bust to resume   15 years 1 month ago
  • writing it up, but this is confusing because are they going to threaten to dissolve systemic risk institutions or are they going to just offer a government guarantee to do whatever they want? Right now, we know it's the latter in a nutshell, but proposals range on the former.

    Reply to: Paul Volcker Said What?   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • or whatever he is calling the financial conglomerates in a congressional testimony. But here is the thing, if passed: will this list be subject to public information and if so, government is definitely creating a tiered system that favors much bigger institutions over smaller ones.

    Think about it: if you are an investor - you be nuts not to invest in one of these systematically important institutions because of implicit or possibly explicit government support for that financial conglomerate. WTF!?!

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Paul Volcker Said What?   15 years 1 month ago
  • the monthly, seasonal existing home sales chart that CR uses. While home sales have gone up for the last 6 months, it has really done little more than match traditional seasonal trends (with a slight bump higher from tax credits).

    That's why it is amusing to read the headlines today about how home sales "unexpectedly dropped" last month. Seasonal trends dictated it. They will continue to drop for the rest of the year.

    Reply to: Housing bust to resume   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • who generally of all of the financial sites out there really has their analysis "on" the entire real estate market, had a post on housing sales, before this info on the shadow inventory, where they implied it was a major problem.

    When this summer everyone had proclaimed "home prices have bottomed" CR was one of the few who said, hmmmm, I don't quite think so" and said it would resume falling in the fall.

    Here we are.

    CR has now put up a flurry a posts going into further analysis on this shadow inventory, crash and burn news.

    Reply to: Housing bust to resume   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • but on the other hand, I'm looking at Congress and even when you have so many Reps. determined to do something, Congressional leadership plus the Obama administration is "bought and paid for" and basically one cannot get through pretty much anything through Congress.

    So, in consideration of this corporate lobbyist Congressional lock, now I'm seeing their legitimate reasoning.

    But the real answer is to flush our entire government of corporate "campaign contributions", lobbyists and plain flush the bribe money out of U.S. politics.

    But, if you noticed, even the completely ineffectual "say on pay" the Senate has vowed to block that.

    They cannot get anything meaningful passed and that's even when I'd claim, Barney Frank is trying, which is a key, to have the committee chair be clearly in the "reform camp".

    It's disgusting.

    So, with a situation like that it's not surprising they are recommending letting the Fed do end runs on the elected government.

    Reply to: Paul Volcker Said What?   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • regulatory power is accountability. At least, in theory, there is some accountability of elected officials through elections. But the power to appoint and confirm Board of Governors is not enough. It is no mistake that during Alan Greenspan's term , a devote free market fundamentalist, that there was no oversight of financial institutions.

    How do you prevent that from happening again?

    Obviously the current web of regulators has to change and having a new version of Glass-Steagall will help.

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Paul Volcker Said What?   15 years 1 month ago
  • Jesus, good god. Yeah, there is a strong reason why we have our space for the peanut gallery of America to write!

    You've got to be frickin' kidding me.

    If this was Uncle Fred, he'd have his bank accounts frozen, his credit cards taken away and committed to gambler's anonymous in house rehab.

    I mean come on, they are doublin' down to make back the money?

    Reply to: The FDIC is Broke   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • It's now leaking out into the mainstream.

    Moonraker Fund Management, the independent investment boutique, is concerned that banks may have been using their bailout money to buy equities, helping to fuel a rally that is vulnerable to a major correction if they consequently sell in thinly traded markets.
    ...
    Instead of lending to businesses and homebuyers, banks may have been using some of their bailout money to buy stocks from an oversold base in March, Moonraker believes. The British Bankers’ Association’s own figures show that gross mortgage lending by the banks has fallen from a high of £21.5bn in June 2007 to £9.1bn in August 2009, while new term lending to small businesses was £796m in July, compared with around £900m last October.
    ...
    “The banks have every right to use the money they borrow in any way they choose. But it would be good to know how much of the bailout money has been used to buy equities. Clearly, someone has been buying, and given that it hasn’t been ordinary investors and the institutions that does just leave the banks.
    ...
    “The banks’ balance sheets will certainly have benefited from their equity holdings. If they could sell these investments into a rising market then they would be in a better position to repay their debts. But there will be a problem if the public and institutions do not join the rally and the banks have to sell equities into a vacuum.”

    That's why its a suckers rally. Except the suckers don't appear to be ready to jump in. With the summer house selling season over, the collapse of the commercial real estate market, and the coming end to federal support of the markets, there is going to be increasing pressure for the banks to unload those equities.

    Reply to: The FDIC is Broke   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • I noticed many are claiming that the stock market rally is a "junk" rally and now those stocks will be dumped.

    i.e. sucker's rally. Yet to be seen of course.

    Reply to: The FDIC is Broke   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Looks like my blog article was one month early.

    (Bloomberg) -- The FDIC’s insurance fund is going broke, and Sheila Bair is wondering aloud about how to replenish it. This means one thing for taxpayers: Watch your wallets.

    Reply to: The FDIC is Broke   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Why do we hire foreigners to take over jobs that can be given to United States Citizens? People here are desperate for jobs!! Why hasn't the President done anything about the unemployment? How are we expected to pay our bills, yet alone feed our families? How pathetic to continue with wars spending our money when we shouldn't care about what takes place in some other country let their president worry about it. I feel we will never be able to stop crazy people its an ongoing thing. There are so many homeless people here and instead we ship out so much food to other countries lets worry about our people first.

    Reply to: "These jobs are not coming back"   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • initial unemployment claims.

    In the week ending Sept. 19, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 530,000, a decrease of 21,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 551,000. The 4-week moving average was 553,500, a decrease of 11,000 from the previous week's revised average of 564,500.

    The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.6 percent for the week ending Sept. 12, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 4.7 percent.

    I mentioned I wasn't going to post these in an Instapopulist anymore because there are too many games and revisions.

    I might switch this to an "open thread" where I just put in the comments the lastest data.

    But I went and look over the revisements and it does appear we had a good drop (for real) in the SA weekly initial unemployment claims.

    Keep your fingers crossed because lord knows unemployment rates are the issue here.

    We ain't blowin' these off like "some" who think firing people right and left is great for corporate profits.

    Reply to: Why it's super nuts to watch weekly initial unemployment claims   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • and he said Obama's bigger campaign contributor was Goldman Sachs.

    Yeah, the CFPA is under attack but for me, the real reforms are in derivatives as well as corporate governance, executive compensation.

    Did you read Bill Black's recommendations. They read like a manifesto.

    Reply to: William Black’s Proposal for “Systemically Dangerous Institutions”   15 years 1 month ago
    EPer:

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