patrick.net

The cops all buy those Crown Victoria sedans. That's a non-luxury 2 ton RWD sedan.

"HARM, if banks are not bailed out, a deflationary depression may occur."

This is so much nonsense. Even in the current corrupt system, its is possible to prevent a depression AND to allow banks to fail.

The proper policy would be, ()
(1) Allow the corrupt banks to fail. Bailout only the depositors to FDIC limit.
(2)Nationalize the banks (stockholders and stock-owning execs get zilch), if needed ONLY FOR continuity. But preferable would be (3) below
(3) Grant charters and provide liquidity for new banks to come into being. I'm sure that Buffet would be glad, or many like him. In the very least the surviving banks should be allowed to expand rapidly, and provided liquidity by the Fed.

This "if banks are not bailed out, a deflationary depression may occur" is exactly like going to threat level red by the TSA before elections. It is a ruse to make you stop thinking and make decisions based in fear.

The cops all buy those Crown Victoria sedans. That’s a non-luxury 2 ton RWD sedan.

You're right. :)

I prefer the style of a Grand Marquis though. Convincing my wife to let me get one is another issue.

The 2008 Taurus comes in at close to 2 ton. It has more power and has AWD. Perhaps I will take a look later.

cranker,

Well said. I for one think the gap left by these clowns would be filled in a minute. That's part of the problem. Unless we change the way the people view banks, it'll just be more of the same. I've openly asked why we need 30 year (let alone 40 or 50! yr. mortgages) Why... of ALL the english speaking countries is our relationship w/ lenders is the most abusive?

E'f 'em.

Hey folks,
I need some help. Does anybody know which banks/financial institutions are most or least affected by subprime mess? Please give a rating from 0 to 10. 10 being worst affected and 0 being no impact.

I tried to find it out, but I couldnt. It seems to be a top secret maintained by FDIC.

HARM Says:

February 28th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I say F**k our current “financial system”, which primarily exists to serve the top 2% at the expense of practically everyone else. It’s not the least bit “essential” to me. If we had to go back to a gold & barter-based economy for a while (until a better financial system gets built), that’d be fine by me. People with real skills –who know how to actually make and fix things– would be in high demand. People who only know how to create “innovative” debt products, peddle influence, shuffle paper, and transfer wealth from other people to themselves would be screwed.

Works for me.
-------------

You should study the end of the Black Plague in Europe. The big winners were the skilled laborers that survived. They squatted on lands that was not theirs and tilled away making large profits. The elite upper class had no skills and were starving to death. Later, they figured out they could pay mercs (lord-less knights) to put the laborers to the sword until they became surfs again....the little guys never win.

DinOR:
"...I for one think the gap left by these clowns would be filled in a minute. .."

Exactly, provided the Fed gave the necessary support for it.

The same kind of fear and irrational thinking goes on about the monolines like AMBAC and MBIA et al. If those rackets collapse, a lot of reckless fools and institutions will lose, nothing will happen to muni insurance. Capable institutions with enough funds (as Buffet amply demonstrated) will step in to fill the void.

Bailing out the banks is the lesser evil only for the richest 0.2%

I say letting the richest 0.2% eat their losses is the lesser evil.

If I ask “Do you think that we should allow able bodied people to sit around living rent free doing nothing other than buying liquor and drugs with the money and food stamps we give them?”

You will probably get 20 to 1 saying no (even in SF).
------------

Ghetto welfare is a bribe paid to the angry and violent underclass to keep them from kicking your ass and taking your sh!t. Does not work all the time but for most intents and pruposes it does ok. Section 8 has taught generations that they don't have to pay to live somewhere. Take Sect 8 away and you will observe a huge loss of equity from multi-family bldgs. Land lords will not be able to get the inhabitants to pay market rate rents, bec they have not had too in decades. The LL's will just fold up their tents and say good by to their equity. Same with food stamps. Recipitents will eat one way or and other. You will pay one way or another in blood, tears, or dollars. Which do you have more to lose?

Sweden and Canada are on my short list for where to go when all hell breaks out! I have ancestry from both (1/2 Swedish) plus I understand you can buy your way into Canada.

Australia is a good place too.

I think good people will do better and bad people will quit procreating if welfare ended now. Right after the border laws are enforced.

If welfare is eliminated, we do not even need a border to keep out most illegals..

Of course, we still need a border to protect ourselves from truly bad guys.

Last time I checked it's really difficult to emigrate to Australia.

Last time I checked it’s really difficult to emigrate to Australia.

Probably easier than Switzerland.

I don't know about Australia but Canada has a program where you invest 800k cando for five years (I believe this to mean put it in a bank or Canadian treasuries) and pass a knowledge test and you're in!

The best deal I could find in Sweden is the close relative scenario but I'd need to do some calling around before I could fit that bill!

I don’t know about Australia but Canada has a program where you invest 800k cando for five years (I believe this to mean put it in a bank or Canadian treasuries) and pass a knowledge test and you’re in!

I think young English-speakers with managerial skills may just have enough "points" without investing anything.

Vote with feet and leave the country. I swear 'm still moving to France and getting a government job there.

I think I can have the same standard of living in France being a government worker taking tickets on the subway as I have in CA being a highly taxed programmer using the web 2.0 crap.

really.

oh and they only work 34 hours a week over there, its the law!

Here's a protest idea:

Circulate a petition to make all 50 states colonies under the King Of England again - clearly this whole experiment has failed horribly.

I will GLADLY pay any tax on tea that the king will impose - representation or no!

To start the protest we can dump AN ENTIRE HOUSE into the boston harbor.

I think Europe will run into a horrible pension crisis and entitlement shock.

I think I can have the same standard of living in France being a government worker taking tickets on the subway as I have in CA being a highly taxed programmer using the web 2.0 crap.

Enough said.

Is HK a British Secret Agent?

Vote with feet and leave the country.

That's just what I did.....sold out in CA and moved to ID.

I think I can have [a much higher] standard of living in [Idaho] being a [shiftless retired person] as I have in CA being a highly taxed [patent attorney] ;)

Dennis,

Last I checked, both CA and ID are both in the same Amerika!

Idaho isnt as backwards as people would like to think.

I saw a a tv show 'late night with dave attell' where he was in downtown boise at a gay club. in boise. and they were gay. and the clan...i mean the police....never showed up to shut it down....

Reminds me -

Totally off topic, but was the name Amtrak chosen for a negative purpose?

It seems so unnatural to an english speaking person to see the name Amtrak doesn't it?

I'm sure that gay club was the Emerald Club. www.emeraldclubboise.com It's a really obvious place - a stucco building painted pink, with a sign outside claiming it's "straight friendly" (they have live music there).

Idaho is a libertarian state. People don't really care if you are gay or not.

There was a case last year where some gay guy filed a police report claiming he had been "gay bashed". After a long investigation, he confessed that all his cuts and bruises were self-inflicted and that he had done this as a "publicity stunt".

Well shoot. If the NY Times has a story about Youwalkaway, it must be old news.

www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/us/29walks.html?hp

There’s a whole lot of people who would’ve been stuck as renters without these exotic loan products,” Professor Sinai said. “Now it’s like they can do their renting from the bank, and if house values go up, they become the owner. If they go down, you have the choice to give the house back to the bank. You aren’t any worse off than renting, and you got a chance to do extremely well. If it’s heads I win, tails the bank loses, it’s worth the gamble.

Off topic,

But I did hear Bernanke right today when he said that oil and commodities being denominated in US dollars was merely symbolic, right?

WTF? Is this guy seriously that big of an idiot? I'm not one of those who thinks the Fed is an evil cabal, or that I am smarter than [most] Fed governors. But WTF!?! This is intermediate macroecon stuff here. Of course USD reserve currency status matters. It's essential to how the process of seigniorage works, which is exactly what the frickin Fed has been using to provide liquidity.

We are seriously screwed, I'm starting to fear. Maybe Ben will have a short tenure and we can turn things around, but man...

Circulate a petition to make all 50 states colonies under the King Of England again - clearly this whole experiment has failed horribly.

Call it the Tory movement.

No lie. In 7th grade we had a mock debate historical debate in which we determined whether the 13 colonies would declare independence or not. I was the lead proponent on the side that we throw out the Radicals and reaffirm our loyalty to the Crown.

I've written my congressfolk. It's pretty much hopeless though. Their will be bail outs. They will try to make them not look like bailouts by doing things like having GSE take over loans (which will eventually go bad and then the USG will be obliged to bail them out). They'll call them 'tax credits' (in other words cash handouts). They'll come out with 'emergency homeowner loans' at 0%, which effectively lets the banksters profit on the 0% to 6% spread. They'll delay and keep pushing out the problem. But the banking systems is in real trouble and it's just getting worse.

Protest if you want, and I'll cheer you on, but there will be bailouts.

@Bap33
I think good people will do better and bad people will quit procreating if welfare ended now.

-----------------------------

There is definitely a group of people out there with no common sense - some of them are my patients. If you stop welfare, they might procreate even more.

We are seriously screwed, I’m starting to fear. Maybe Ben will have a short tenure and we can turn things around, but man…

What to buy? What to short?

Gold is still advancing in Asia:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=a5wYci7PAHtg&refer=india

There is definitely a group of people out there with no common sense - some of them are my patients. If you stop welfare, they might procreate even more.

I propose a 1 Troy Oz Gold carbon tax for every newborn in the world. :twisted:

Paul Says:
February 28th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
"I don’t know about Australia but Canada has a program where you invest 800k cando for five years (I believe this to mean put it in a bank or Canadian treasuries) and pass a knowledge test and you’re in!"

I think it is less money, but anyway, if you've had a professional job, and with a master's degree you probably have enough points to go as a skilled worker. I barely score high enough but at least the degree is good for something. If you get a job offer, or have a relative there that also helps. They are picky and it costs $500 or so to find out but they have a sample score sheet which is strightforward.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/index.asp

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/assess/index.asp

To save you some reading this should be the self assessment link. Just click the take test link at the bottom.

I score a 71.

Paul,

here is the DIMA site of Oz.
http://www.immi.gov.au/migrants/index.htm

If you are interested in investment immigration, I believe the minimum price tag is $2M AUD, oh well, soon-to-be USD.

Randy,

I think Ben is adopting a policy of giving up on USD to save the economy. We really don't have a choice. Avert the Great Depression II or give up the status of world's reserve currency? Tough call.

DEFENSIVE BEN
By PAUL THARP

February 28, 2008 -- Ben Bernanke is shooting blanks in his battle with inflation, leaving him powerless to protect the greenback from getting clobbered.
The Federal Reserve chief defended his inflation-fighting policy before a testy congressional hearing yesterday on the economy, and played what had once been his most potent card - promises of rate cuts to pump more cheap money into the economy.

Wall Street bit, but only briefly, leaving shares flat by the end of the day. The dollar was hit hard worldwide, skidding to a new all-time low, while gold and oil climbed to new highs.

Several panel members who grilled Bernanke complained that his rate cuts were having the unwelcome effect of sharply devaluing the dollar, wiping out the nest eggs of countless Americans.

Crude spiked here above $102 a barrel for the first time, settling lower at $99.64 on reports of oversupplies of oil and gasoline.

The weak dollar is blamed for pushing gold and oil into the stratosphere since more dollars are needed than ever before to buy a barrel of oil or an ounce of gold, which also hit a new high here yesterday of $961.30 an ounce.

When oil is theoretically priced in gold rather than dollars, the price of a barrel of oil is nearly unchanged in the past year. But when paid in dollars, the price of a barrel of oil is up 66 percent.

The dollar dropped to an all-time low, trading at $1.5143 against the euro, easing to $1.5135 by the end of trading here.

Bernanke assured the panel that the Fed is prepared to start lowering interest rates back to historic lows, despite inflation.

He said the Fed "will act in a timely manner as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks."

A key inflation measure shows factories hiking prices on wholesale goods by an annualized rate of 12 percent, based on government data earlier this week showing a 1 percent hike in January alone.

Another government report yesterday showed a steeper-than-expected slide in business expansion, with durable goods orders dropping 5.3 percent in January.

Under questioning from lawmakers, Bernanke acknowledged that the Fed has made "mistakes in terms of regulation and oversight" regarding the housing bubble and Wall Street's over-leveraged heyday.

He said it might be "worthwhile" for the federal government to buy distressed mortgages to help ease the housing recession.

The Dow jumped about 120 points a few minutes after Bernanke spoke, and retreated to 12,694.28 - adding just 9.36. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1.27 to 1,380.02, and the Nasdaq rose 8.79 to 2,353.78.

"New problems in the economy are popping up like a not-very-funny version of whack-a-mole," said Rep. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).

"Many commentators are now saying that credit cards will be the next area of consumer credit where overburdened borrowers will no longer be able to pay their bills."