The site isn't called "Populist" for nothing. Esp. because the corporate financial lobbyists are swarming the hill, killing any possible good idea that managed to breath.
What hit me when I saw this is it a set up for more acquisitions of the Zombie banks of these "classified failure" smaller banks?
i.e. can they use these loans to the FDIC in some sort of acquisition after the FDIC cleans up the liabilities?
So, let's be clear, these banks have U.S. taxpayer money, but now under their control. So they are supposed to lend to the government....and make profits from interest and fees....
but it's taxpayer dough and meanwhile regional banks are falling like dominoes to the point we have a new EP series, Bank Failure Friday as if it's dinner and a movie.
I am starting to believe corporate accountants really are fiction writers.
I was looking at that too and noted a lot of it is perception...I haven't been tracking on earnings and 10-ks so I don't know if the fundamentals are really in alignment here.
I just saw some drip on CNBC about how awesome it was that Dell is getting into the outsourcing business, along with all of our other now destroyed tech corporations (IBM, HP) by buying Perot Systems.
Hey, great, lovely, more labor/wage arbitrage under the guise of "services".
to a certain extent builder permits are reflecting back at one another. For example, if stock prices go up, consumer confidence goes up and then stock price goes up again. But there is nothing really underlying the increases such as fundamentals (corporate earnings).
they would fund a real jobs program for real infrastructure, like a WPA instead of this $50B distributed by the states which is going to no-bid contracts and some offshore.
I'd just rather see taxpayer money going to something like that, which would also give skills training plus public works than just this continuing employment malaise.
is weighting. So, in other words, we are now recognizing all of these events, such as the coming option arms expiring, now the Fed no longer propping up MBS, the seasonal adjustments, the $8k homeowners tax credit...
and take any scenario like this. But what I do not know, which is now bugging me, is how to weight these elements to determine which one is going to affect the bottom line most.
i.e. will a jump in interest rates further repress home prices and by how much? What's that ratio?
Ya know...then we have distressed sales, something like 42% or something of home sales going to 1st time buyers...
I, at least, haven't really weighted these events to see the consequences.
i.e. it's a multi-variate equation and even if linear, each element has a scalar associated with it to predict the total effect. What are those scalars (if they are even linear).
If the Federal Reserve were to abruptly stop purchasing mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and agency housing debt, mortgage rates could climb a half to a full percentage point in a hurry, according to Peter Hooper, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities.
Thank you for sharing this piece. I was just about to write a derivative post referencing this piece for it's such a good "call out" on some serious spin by the WSJ.
What a great edition for the EP readers!
I wanted to point to this EconomPic Data post on income inequality.
Now he too is using census data, yet magically concludes that the increase in income/wealth inequality shows the top 1% are the ones who gained.
How is it two posts both using census data, which you point out the flaws in using, still come up with different answers?
in the previous Instapopulist? I'd like to see those estimates validated/discredited but one thing I liked was they mentioned income (finally) being able to afford these home prices in that projection.
You're picking up on (again) something I've noticed for some time...we have some folk who are focusing in on rate of change, otherwise known as slope, otherwise known as trend lines. The only number that gives me any real sign of hope is the ISM going above 50 (and other manufacturing data coming in looking much better). I mean seriously, grabbing at some cash for clunkers "pop" in retail sales as evidence of a "V" recovery....please! I'm sorry, I gotta call that one "grasping at straws" at this point.
When, by the absolute figures, the data is pretty much at recession levels, esp. initial unemployment claims.
Not only did the official recession start in December, 2007, even before that wages were being repressed, careers destroyed, overall middle class income further squeezed. It was just a housing bubble, with it's 3.5% GDP contribution, masked it.
Now we have some new "coming tsunamis", like regional/smaller bank implosion, CRE and option arms (interest only) residential mortgages, which to me really give credibility to the "W" or "double dip", so now my question is....on the "double dip" possibility, is that too a relative comparison to the Q1 2009 "cliff dive" caused by the actual financial implosion?
Because comparing troughs to troughs doesn't mean one is ever out of the "valley of death". It's just "we're out of that really nasty crevice of doom we just feel into".
Seriously. I've notice this extensively that when the blogs, people pick up on something that is either from first principle analysis, or pulling together factoids from a variety of sources....and it's good juju i.e. credible, cited, logical, insightful....a couple of weeks later is seems to get picked up on by the MSM.
I've kind of blasted Bloomberg for the rah, rah recovery cheer headlines, but overall, I think they do a reasonable job quite often. I especially am thrilled they are going after the Fed's $2 trillion to disclose who got the money through a FOIA. That takes some bucks to go to court over it.
But yes, midtowng, feel proud because I've noticed on a lot of posts you're "ahead of the curve" a good two weeks. i.e. this isn't the first time I've seen something hit the MSM that you were writing about, and pretty much alone in doing so, two weeks previous!
But we need to keep ourselves honest, clean, police ourselves to make sure we're writing credible stuff. So far so good and that's why people are reading EP. We're making a huge effort to be accurate or if we write a Populist political blast, rant, that there is some real meat behind it.
The Obama administration is studying whether to let a first-time home buyers’ tax credit expire as scheduled at the end of November. Bernanke and his Fed colleagues may continue talking this week about how to wind down purchases of mortgage- backed securities, according to Peter Hooper, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York. The two programs have helped stabilize real-estate demand, with new-house sales rising 9.6 percent in July from the prior month, the most since 2005.
...
“Things could get ugly,” said Lawler, an independent consultant in Leesburg, Virginia, who spent 22 years at Fannie Mae, a Washington, D.C.-based government-controlled mortgage- finance company. “We could be facing a triple whammy at the end of the year: the expiration of the tax credit, the end of the Fed mortgage-buying program and rising foreclosures.”
The point is that people believe they can pay in too many years. They don't plan that things must happen and finance can get into trouble... It's important to make a good personal finance plan to avoid problems in the future
There are jobs but the trend is to hire cheap foreign labor under the H1-b, L1, H2-B, EB1, EB2 and EB3 visas. What companies are doing is bypassing the American workforce.
Mr. Obama, this is a question for you - do you have the courage to stand up to big companies like Microsoft and tell them NO MORE - when it comes to their demands for more visas?
Ask them how the Internet was built without H-1B visa holders. Ask them how iPods were created without H-1B visa holders. Ask them how innovation in other businesses and industries continues without H-1B visa holders. Ask them why their business model is based on this huge assist from the government. Ask them what they are doing to make this so-called shortage of skilled workers temporary.
Ask them what they intend to do about giving Americans a chance to participate in this economy. Ask them what they are willing to do to help our own youngsters become better educated.
Speaking of education, ask them about the communication skills and critical thinking abilities of H-1B workers. Do they really want American workers who are clones of the Indian ones?
As an Indian-American, let me tell you this - America should NOT even try to emulate the Indian education system. It is based on rote learning, and extreme pressure to succeed. You think No Child Left Behind is bad? The Indian system is like NCLB on steroids - they teach ONLY to the test.
Mr. Obama, I am looking to you to change the terms of this debate - ultimately, it is about whether or not WE Americans are a nation of citizens, or are we just consumers and cogs in the giant wheel owned and operate by the big corporations. Why is it okay for the Chinese and Indians to be nationalistic, but not okay for Americans to even try to take care of their own?
It is the government's role to take the long view, to look out for and protect all the CITIZENS. It is the government's role to build a nation, and not just the economy for the chosen few.
What will you change when it comes to helping and protecting American workers?
I'm not surprised in the least about that. the projections for auto sales was a cliff, from here
I put this analysis from the SF Fed because I think it's pretty much, more or less what we've been writing about, certainly what I would write up from my own peanut gallery activities...
and note, he doesn't have some major financial calamity in his data...he's assuming it's over.
earlier I pulled out that chart from the 200+ page GAO report. May I suggest learning how to make images of charts via foxit pdf. You can capture an image, save it to your hard drive and upload it here in a comment by hitting the "rich text editor" link.
that way people can just see the chart instead of digging through a 200 page document.
Yes, I know the GAO reports are excellent, but the problem is they are long, long, long, so it helps to capture some of the critical data and repost it for reference.
But I agree with all of this, the insanity of wanting to increase debt and all the while wages are just viewed as "inflation" and "labor costs" increase of the consumer economy and the middle class, plus overall economic growth.
and us little ole Populists down here are saying the thing anyone with a 2nd grade education knows....hey, no job, can't pay off all of that debt.
Keen has it right, of course, although his approach is from the general macroeconomics level.
Now I would point out that the Obama Administration, continuing the Bush Administration policy, is simply resecuritizing the resecuritization of the securitization!
If one peruses this GAO chart, p. 53 (listed as doc p. 47) and reflects on how these LBOs were structured with the banks, and how the banks in turn structured, and leveraged upon, those LBO-oriented loans, and how those private equity firms leveraged those funds, and what pension funds, endowments, corporations, foundations, and insurance companies invested in all their various buyout funds, and how many of their "pump-and-dump" schemes have ended up with the target companies going under, or about to go under (Sirius, pretty soon now), then one begins to understand the significance of the Total deal value at the bottom of the chart to the TARP bailout fund amount.
Or, to summarize, debt financing built upon debt financing built upon debt financing (add about 17 more levels) and then we have all these debt-financed billionaires today in America, and elsewhere.
is to do a blockquote of key summary points, kind of do a "readers digest" of critical points in articles.
For example, I think EP needs a good overview/tutorial post on international exchange rates and what influences changes...
Carry trade is something and on your link for example, you can pull out a summary quote or put together your own summary to spell out the main point.
People who read blogs often want us to basically edit the information for them, so they can "cut to the chase" in a 2 minute read, i.e. we are the "information condensors" sometimes (as well as the information expanders).
The site isn't called "Populist" for nothing. Esp. because the corporate financial lobbyists are swarming the hill, killing any possible good idea that managed to breath.
And I'm incline to make a nice long rant about it.
What hit me when I saw this is it a set up for more acquisitions of the Zombie banks of these "classified failure" smaller banks?
i.e. can they use these loans to the FDIC in some sort of acquisition after the FDIC cleans up the liabilities?
So, let's be clear, these banks have U.S. taxpayer money, but now under their control. So they are supposed to lend to the government....and make profits from interest and fees....
but it's taxpayer dough and meanwhile regional banks are falling like dominoes to the point we have a new EP series, Bank Failure Friday as if it's dinner and a movie.
I am starting to believe corporate accountants really are fiction writers.
I was looking at that too and noted a lot of it is perception...I haven't been tracking on earnings and 10-ks so I don't know if the fundamentals are really in alignment here.
I just saw some drip on CNBC about how awesome it was that Dell is getting into the outsourcing business, along with all of our other now destroyed tech corporations (IBM, HP) by buying Perot Systems.
Hey, great, lovely, more labor/wage arbitrage under the guise of "services".
to a certain extent builder permits are reflecting back at one another. For example, if stock prices go up, consumer confidence goes up and then stock price goes up again. But there is nothing really underlying the increases such as fundamentals (corporate earnings).
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
they would fund a real jobs program for real infrastructure, like a WPA instead of this $50B distributed by the states which is going to no-bid contracts and some offshore.
I'd just rather see taxpayer money going to something like that, which would also give skills training plus public works than just this continuing employment malaise.
is weighting. So, in other words, we are now recognizing all of these events, such as the coming option arms expiring, now the Fed no longer propping up MBS, the seasonal adjustments, the $8k homeowners tax credit...
and take any scenario like this. But what I do not know, which is now bugging me, is how to weight these elements to determine which one is going to affect the bottom line most.
i.e. will a jump in interest rates further repress home prices and by how much? What's that ratio?
Ya know...then we have distressed sales, something like 42% or something of home sales going to 1st time buyers...
I, at least, haven't really weighted these events to see the consequences.
i.e. it's a multi-variate equation and even if linear, each element has a scalar associated with it to predict the total effect. What are those scalars (if they are even linear).
And it could jump pretty fast.
Thank you for sharing this piece. I was just about to write a derivative post referencing this piece for it's such a good "call out" on some serious spin by the WSJ.
What a great edition for the EP readers!
I wanted to point to this EconomPic Data post on income inequality.
Now he too is using census data, yet magically concludes that the increase in income/wealth inequality shows the top 1% are the ones who gained.
How is it two posts both using census data, which you point out the flaws in using, still come up with different answers?
in the previous Instapopulist? I'd like to see those estimates validated/discredited but one thing I liked was they mentioned income (finally) being able to afford these home prices in that projection.
You're picking up on (again) something I've noticed for some time...we have some folk who are focusing in on rate of change, otherwise known as slope, otherwise known as trend lines. The only number that gives me any real sign of hope is the ISM going above 50 (and other manufacturing data coming in looking much better). I mean seriously, grabbing at some cash for clunkers "pop" in retail sales as evidence of a "V" recovery....please! I'm sorry, I gotta call that one "grasping at straws" at this point.
When, by the absolute figures, the data is pretty much at recession levels, esp. initial unemployment claims.
Not only did the official recession start in December, 2007, even before that wages were being repressed, careers destroyed, overall middle class income further squeezed. It was just a housing bubble, with it's 3.5% GDP contribution, masked it.
Now we have some new "coming tsunamis", like regional/smaller bank implosion, CRE and option arms (interest only) residential mortgages, which to me really give credibility to the "W" or "double dip", so now my question is....on the "double dip" possibility, is that too a relative comparison to the Q1 2009 "cliff dive" caused by the actual financial implosion?
Because comparing troughs to troughs doesn't mean one is ever out of the "valley of death". It's just "we're out of that really nasty crevice of doom we just feel into".
Seriously. I've notice this extensively that when the blogs, people pick up on something that is either from first principle analysis, or pulling together factoids from a variety of sources....and it's good juju i.e. credible, cited, logical, insightful....a couple of weeks later is seems to get picked up on by the MSM.
I've kind of blasted Bloomberg for the rah, rah recovery cheer headlines, but overall, I think they do a reasonable job quite often. I especially am thrilled they are going after the Fed's $2 trillion to disclose who got the money through a FOIA. That takes some bucks to go to court over it.
But yes, midtowng, feel proud because I've noticed on a lot of posts you're "ahead of the curve" a good two weeks. i.e. this isn't the first time I've seen something hit the MSM that you were writing about, and pretty much alone in doing so, two weeks previous!
But we need to keep ourselves honest, clean, police ourselves to make sure we're writing credible stuff. So far so good and that's why people are reading EP. We're making a huge effort to be accurate or if we write a Populist political blast, rant, that there is some real meat behind it.
It looks like the rest of the media is catching up with me again.
The point is that people believe they can pay in too many years. They don't plan that things must happen and finance can get into trouble... It's important to make a good personal finance plan to avoid problems in the future
This doesn't bode well for the dollar. I continue to think that we are going to see face some serious economic woes this coming year.
There are jobs but the trend is to hire cheap foreign labor under the H1-b, L1, H2-B, EB1, EB2 and EB3 visas. What companies are doing is bypassing the American workforce.
Mr. Obama, this is a question for you - do you have the courage to stand up to big companies like Microsoft and tell them NO MORE - when it comes to their demands for more visas?
Ask them how the Internet was built without H-1B visa holders. Ask them how iPods were created without H-1B visa holders. Ask them how innovation in other businesses and industries continues without H-1B visa holders. Ask them why their business model is based on this huge assist from the government. Ask them what they are doing to make this so-called shortage of skilled workers temporary.
Ask them what they intend to do about giving Americans a chance to participate in this economy. Ask them what they are willing to do to help our own youngsters become better educated.
Speaking of education, ask them about the communication skills and critical thinking abilities of H-1B workers. Do they really want American workers who are clones of the Indian ones?
As an Indian-American, let me tell you this - America should NOT even try to emulate the Indian education system. It is based on rote learning, and extreme pressure to succeed. You think No Child Left Behind is bad? The Indian system is like NCLB on steroids - they teach ONLY to the test.
Mr. Obama, I am looking to you to change the terms of this debate - ultimately, it is about whether or not WE Americans are a nation of citizens, or are we just consumers and cogs in the giant wheel owned and operate by the big corporations. Why is it okay for the Chinese and Indians to be nationalistic, but not okay for Americans to even try to take care of their own?
It is the government's role to take the long view, to look out for and protect all the CITIZENS. It is the government's role to build a nation, and not just the economy for the chosen few.
What will you change when it comes to helping and protecting American workers?
should I add them to the middle column? They seem to have come out of nowhere and seem to have almost "inside" knowledge.
That's really damning. I have no idea!
I'm not surprised in the least about that. the projections for auto sales was a cliff, from here
I put this analysis from the SF Fed because I think it's pretty much, more or less what we've been writing about, certainly what I would write up from my own peanut gallery activities...
and note, he doesn't have some major financial calamity in his data...he's assuming it's over.
earlier I pulled out that chart from the 200+ page GAO report. May I suggest learning how to make images of charts via foxit pdf. You can capture an image, save it to your hard drive and upload it here in a comment by hitting the "rich text editor" link.
that way people can just see the chart instead of digging through a 200 page document.
Yes, I know the GAO reports are excellent, but the problem is they are long, long, long, so it helps to capture some of the critical data and repost it for reference.
But I agree with all of this, the insanity of wanting to increase debt and all the while wages are just viewed as "inflation" and "labor costs" increase of the consumer economy and the middle class, plus overall economic growth.
and us little ole Populists down here are saying the thing anyone with a 2nd grade education knows....hey, no job, can't pay off all of that debt.
Keen has it right, of course, although his approach is from the general macroeconomics level.
Now I would point out that the Obama Administration, continuing the Bush Administration policy, is simply resecuritizing the resecuritization of the securitization!
If one peruses this GAO chart, p. 53 (listed as doc p. 47) and reflects on how these LBOs were structured with the banks, and how the banks in turn structured, and leveraged upon, those LBO-oriented loans, and how those private equity firms leveraged those funds, and what pension funds, endowments, corporations, foundations, and insurance companies invested in all their various buyout funds, and how many of their "pump-and-dump" schemes have ended up with the target companies going under, or about to go under (Sirius, pretty soon now), then one begins to understand the significance of the Total deal value at the bottom of the chart to the TARP bailout fund amount.
Or, to summarize, debt financing built upon debt financing built upon debt financing (add about 17 more levels) and then we have all these debt-financed billionaires today in America, and elsewhere.
is to do a blockquote of key summary points, kind of do a "readers digest" of critical points in articles.
For example, I think EP needs a good overview/tutorial post on international exchange rates and what influences changes...
Carry trade is something and on your link for example, you can pull out a summary quote or put together your own summary to spell out the main point.
People who read blogs often want us to basically edit the information for them, so they can "cut to the chase" in a 2 minute read, i.e. we are the "information condensors" sometimes (as well as the information expanders).
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