patrick.net

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.
...
Only the stimulus bill to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates enacted in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion is in lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the Fed and FDIC. Recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

California may have to cut prison population by 40 percentStory Highlights
Overcrowding has created unconstitutional conditions, judges conclude

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger immediately promised to appeal the case

Those who would be released would be very low risk, says head of Prison Law Office

@ sybrib,

The public library is the most under used / under appreciated asset in our society!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_library

I don't use it as much as I should but my wife sure makes good use! It is so funny that most of her book club members go buy the books new and she checks them out and returns (on time) no charge.

In Japan during the previous bubble (1980s) you could borrow more than the value of a home or office building. So you could in essence use a negative down payment, and actually get cash back on the purchase. The more you real estate you bought, the more cash in hand. I am sure that the lenders put some limits and restrictions on this practice. But what a bubble stimulator that was. Lending based on expected future appreciated value!

Now that I've retired I spend a lot more time at the library. The public library here in Boise is limited - makes sense since their charter is not just to have a reference library of non-fiction books but rather to have lots of kids' books and fiction. The Boise State U library gives out cards to members of the community and they do have a much more extensive collection of serious books. Also the state law library is in town to support the Idaho Supreme Court. You can't check books out but the reference librarians are bored and eager to help. Plus they have free Westlaw terminals there. Do you have any idea how expensive a Westlaw account can be if you have to pay for it?

I'd say that Geithner is doing what anyone is supposed to do in his seat at this moment in history. This is the undisputed route, only available route for anybody in the seat of power. Printing their way out, getting into more debt, until, the final collapse. They know the ending, but it is like a drowning swimmer caught in muscle cramp in fast moving stream, he knows very well that the best response is to relax his body muscles and do nothing until his cramp is over, but he panics nevertheless and cramps up even more, struggling with hopeless strokes and disrupted breathing, which eventually send him into coma and death.

# justme Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 10:21 am

Geithner proved today that he is a mole for Henry Paulson and W. Bush.

Did you *mean* to call the new President an idiot or did it just come out that way?

"Today, the excess manufacturing capacity of the US lies in China, we are retreating from an unsustainable excess demand."

Perhaps that's actually a bit of good news for the US, since our factories weren't recently tooled for what may soon be non-existent demand of retail goods? But of course, there are those US auto factories...

Regarding the US, I wonder how much "excess capacity" is represented by the retail sector, specifically in retail development projects? In particular, the once-lauded "Euro" retail concept, ie townhouses piggy-backed on retail strike me as double-whammy during the downturn.

On a local note, this the downturn does not seem to faze Sunnyvale govt., which has diverted public funds into a retail/residential development that's still under construction. Rumor has it they're not finding enough merchants. Taking this fiasco further, Sunnyvale also plans to convert the Onizuka AFB into an auto mall. Brilliance!

BAI. Obama is in a tight spot. He could have made someone like senator Bernie Sanders or Paul Krugman the new SOT (sec of treasury), but van you imagine the blowback? Or is it Ron Paul you would like ;-).

Breaking News - $15,000 joke of a tax credit in the now agreed upon stimulus bill has been eliminated. HORRAAAAYYYYY!!!! I bet the NAR is super pissed off today.

Or is it Ron Paul you would like ;-).

Ron Paul will actually fix the system.

Breaking News - $15,000 joke of a tax credit in the now agreed upon stimulus bill has been eliminated.

tannenbaum: do you have a link for that?

@justme

I like how you're already making excuses for him. Still hoping he's different I guess, so you have to.

I'm not a Ron Paul fan.

How about Taleb or Roubini? That would make waves, not Krugman!

Sure, bring on Roubini. Or George Soros.

A good explanation of the purpose of currency swaps:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/120039-bond-expert-the-emperor-has-no-clothes?source=headline1

Quote from the comments section:

FED prints dollars. ECB prints euros. FED and ECB swap currencies and now the FED owns the euros and the ECB own the dollars.
Next step: ECB buys Treasuries with their dollar, FED buys Schatz with their euros (or whatever).
Financial media in US proclaims: high demand for US Treasuries!!

What a joke.

Patrick: Here you go:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/congress_stimulus

It's near the bottom, 7th pragraph from the end.

Here's another more relevant article about the tax credit elimiantion for home buying:

http://www.mlive.com/business/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2009/02/tax_break_for_home_buyers_out.html

What a great day. Honestly, every person in real estate I know was salivating over this. Their collective balloon just got popped.

Basically, rather than the Fed buying Treasury directly in return for printed dollars, they print dollars, swap against EUR/GPB/whathaveyou, and then buy european bonds, while the europeans do the same for us.

In other words, it is a scheme to disguise the printing by involving the co-operation of a third party, and in a way that ensures a balance between the currencies.

This is nothing short of brilliant. Finally I understand it.

This is nothing short of brilliant. Finally I understand it.

Nothing brilliant. We are just dumb. :(

Change!

Why is Obama delaying the shut-off of analog TV signal?

Because we ran out of coupons for digital tuner/converter boxes.

Because we ran out of coupons for digital tuner/converter boxes.

Why do we even need coupons at all?

>> can i marry your wife?

He can reply by saying:

can i marry your daughter?

And it can go downhill from there ....

Bay Area, Silicon Valley executives expect more layoffs

Bay Area businesses are anticipating many more layoffs than hires in coming months, according to a new quarterly survey of 505 executives across the nine-county region that found business confidence at a record low.

"We clearly have not hit bottom," said Jim Wunderman, chief executive of the Bay Area Council, a business group that promotes the regional economy. Half of the executives said they expect economic conditions to be worse in six months, while only 21 percent said they expected improvement.

"Unfortunately, significantly more layoffs and business failures seem inevitable in every industry and every corner of our region," Wunderman said. "Indeed, some of our regular survey participants were unable to respond because their company was now gone."

The survey's business confidence index registered 31 on a 100-point scale, one point below its last reading in November.

Unlike previous surveys, this one found no part of the economy immune to layoffs. Overall, 42 percent of respondents said they expected to decrease their work force, while only 10 percent plan to make increases. The latter figure was down from 13 percent in November.

Previous surveys have generally shown that Santa Clara County, the heart of the greater Silicon Valley, was stronger economically than the region as a whole. But this survey showed little difference: 39 percent of Santa Clara County executives said they anticipate layoffs, while 11 percent predicted hiring.

Telik Inc. said Wednesday it will cut about 43 jobs and reorganize to focus on its "most advanced preclinical and clinical drug development programs."

Palo Alto-based Telik (NASDAQ:TELK) said the restructuring will involve a workforce reduction of 44 percent, primarily in early-stage discovery and support positions. Employees directly affected by the restructuring plan will receive severance payments, continuation of benefits and outplacement assistance, the company said.

The company estimates it will take about $900,000 in severance-related charges in the first quarter.

Telik is a clinical stage drug development company focused on discovering and developing small molecule drugs to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases.

Applied Micro Circuits Corp. said Wednesday it plans to cut about 100 jobs in an effort to reduce annual operating expenses by $14 million to $16 million.

Sunnyvale-based Applied Micro Circuits (NASDAQ:AMCC) said the cost reduction is expected to take effect by fiscal year 2010.

The company did not say where the jobs would be cut or what positions would be effected.

Here in Silicon Valley, the housing market has been struggling to stay afloat. According to real estate Web site Zillow (which we've been trying not to check lately; it's just too depressing), home values in the beautiful (if bureaucratically named) San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area plunged 17.2 percent in the last three months of 2008 compared with a year earlier. Even worse, about one-fifth of homes in the Valley of Heart's Delight are "underwater," meaning owners can't sell them to pay off the mortgage.

Lost your job recently in Silicon Valley? Part of San Jose’s growing army of job-seekers? We’re looking for volunteers for Pink Slip 2.0

Lost your job? We should talk.

The Mercury News is looking for people recently laid off in Silicon Valley. We’ll select three of you to follow in your job search over the coming months, chronicling the same dramatic saga that’s spinning off thousands of new job-seekers every month.

In the pages of the newspaper, and across an online landscape of nteractive and social-networking tools at mercurynews.com, your stories will become part of a much larger narrative. As readers share in your own hopes and fears, false starts and lucky breaks, you’ll become the emotional hub of a sprawling virtual community. Over time, your stories will tie together folks looking for work and people looking to hire, career experts and seasoned veterans of past slow-downs, family and friends and even those currently employed but bracing for a pink slip.

In fact, in the spirit of networking, we’re calling the project Pink Slip 2.0.
Just as the dreary unemployment picture it mirrors, we expect this collective tale to gather steam in the coming months. Beyond the continuing series of cliffhangers featuring our three main job-seekers, the project will become a burgeoning one-stop shop for all things jobless - coping techniques and emotional red flags, how-to tips on navigating the unemployment bureaucracy, health care and tax relief, job retraining and tricks for connecting with others out there re-inventing themselves.

And with online user forums and live chats from career consultants, the goal is more than simply narrating your personal stories. It’s pulling together the thousands of strands of a local community let loose in this global economic maelstrom.

To help make the project as practical, transparent and technologically savvy as possible, we’ll also create social-networking components like Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogs and multimedia presentations, to help us all tell the story together. If you do find a job, we’ll look for a replacement, but still occasionally check in with you. To volunteer, make sure you’re comfortable publicly sharing the financial and emotional aspects of your own joblessness. Then send me an email at pmay@mercurynews.com.

We’ll email you a brief questionnaire, then narrow down the list to a dozen people we’ll bring in for final interviews. From those, we’ll select three people to follow.

Thanks!

http://seekingalpha.com/article/119619-how-the-world-almost-came-to-an-end-on-september-18-2008

This is a scary article. I somehow think the bankers still don't get it. They are not going to be happy till angry mobs show up with tar and feathers.

This is a scary article.

... Democratic Representative ...

Oooh. Enough said.

Nvidia Corp. said Wednesday it will take a $150 million charge to buy employees' underwater stock options.

The Santa Clara-based graphics chipmaker (NASDAQ:NVDA) said the offer applies to all employee-held outstanding stock options with an exercise price of $17.50 per share or more. Some executives and board members are not eligible.

The company said that as of Jan. 25 there were about 33 million eligible options out of 537.6 million outstanding, and estimated they will cost about $92 million.

On Tuesday the company reported a fourth quarter loss of $147.7 million, or 27 cents a share, compared to net income in the same period last year of $257 million, or 42 cents a share.

As the Orange County Probation Department began to lay off dozens of workers this week to deal with a projected $8.2-million budget shortfall, its officials are pointing affected employees toward Los Angeles County, where the probation department is looking for new applicants.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, 100 employees in the department received notices that they might be laid off, although only 58 positions will be eliminated, said Colleene Preciado, the county's chief probation officer.

Some of those notified were senior county employees who can opt to take a demotion in order to keep their jobs, Preciado said. Laid-off employees will work their last day Feb. 27.

Conventional wisdom is that there is always something to buy in a bear market and sell in a bull market. However, if the long-term deflationary debt unwind thesis is correct, the point of recognition will result in the simultaneous decline of virtually all financial assets.

Under those circumstances, shopping for bargains among the rubble is like groping around in a pile of knives. This is a difficult concept to grasp, especially given the length and magnitude of the secular bull market in social mood and, subsequently, financial assets, that brought us to this point. But the reality is that during a deflationary debt unwind there are no good long-term investments other than cash.

FWIW, Greenspan will go down in the history books as the biggest villain in the current financial mess and a whole lot of people already see it that way.

It's also galling to picture Greenspan getting a medal from GW Bush. That really says more about Bush than Greenspan.

(It's a lot like "You're doin' a heckuva job, Brownie!" It shows how lame Bush is. But, beware: Obama is not looking any better at this point! It's just more of the same old garbage, I'm afraid.)

While history will show Greenspan is a loser, the top 10 list is correct to point out that people can only blame themselves in the end.

Some of us didn't fall for the 'Good Times' temptations offered by nearly free money.

Some of us were raised to believe "There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" and to be VERY suspicious when something (like a half million dollar McMansion with nothing down, 125% financing and interest only payments at 1%) looks too good to be true.

I'm a saver and I've worked very hard and saved very hard for decades to pay off my house and have a wad of cash. I intentionally live way below my means.

1. Good Times
2. Alan Greenspan (lost to a 1970s comedy series?)
3. Twisted Regulation
4. Wall Street
5. The Homeownership Obsession (not HGTV?)
6. Too Much Money (see #2)
7. The Myth of the Rational Market (damn economists)
8. You and Me (hey, speak for yourself)
9. George W. Bush
10. Commodity Futures Modernization Act

My plan was to earn 5-6% interest in bank CDs and retire early and live off the money.

That plan isn't working out so well with interest rates at ridiculously low levels and, to me, the threat of runaway inflation too real.

I avoided the stock market because, as a finance major in college, a former banker and bankruptcy lawyer, I could see that it was a corrupt, Vegas-style, gambling mess with no real substance and huge risk at the ridiculous price levels for almost all stocks.

I had adjusted to the fact that our government encourages borrowing by making the interest deductible and discourages saving by taxing the interest.

I honestly never thought it would go so far as it has to punish savers and reward borrowers. The current 'bailout' fad is simply stunningly unfair.

Greenspan's policies (and now Bernanke's) have made it hard to justify saving money. It's such an insult to get the paltry 1% interest each year and then have to pay taxes on it!

I heard Obama and his surrogates openly state that they want to "get Americans back to where they can borrow money to buy the things they want again."

To me, that is just an amazing thing to admit. You know we're in deep trouble when the new POTUS can say that and almost no one even notices or objects.

Debt is a way of life in America and it will sink us.

I have said for years that I feel as if I'm a 3rd class passenger who is locked below decks aboard the Titanic. I didn't do anything wrong but I'm screwed.

It's a little worse than that because I could see the iceberg coming and I've been yelling to anyone that would listen for years. But no one in power, except Ron Paul, seemed to hear me or agree with me.

That's how I found this blog and I then began to realize that thousands of people saw it coming, too. If all of us 'regular' people could see it coming, how is it that all the powerful geniuses in Washington and on Wall Street couldn't see it coming?

I decided that these powerful people are either liars or wildly incompetent - or BOTH! For that final conclusion, Greenspan is the poster boy.

Obama will still be conducting and his musicians will still be playing as the stern of the USS AMERICA slowly sinks into the dark, cold abyss.

It's a sad story...

People borrowing for large purchases does stimulate the economy. I think you might be taking Obama slightly out of context. To me it seems like it has been a failed Republican strategy to encourage debt to buy foreign goods, because in destroying the labor market with foreign outsourcing that is the only way that someone who used to make $25/hr can buy something when they now only make $15/hr.

The reason I am encouraged by Obama is because he seems to get it. He understands that the way to bring the country back to health is to get people working on worthwhile jobs which pay well. When this happens a lot of other problems go away. People will have the same purchasing power but won't need debt to subsidize their normal standard of living, and having a large middle class creates all sorts of opportunities for the private sector.

Fuck the democrats. Fuck the Republicans. Debating this is like talking about the difference between a louse and a flea.

Let's talk about what you're shorting.

California may have to cut prison population by 40 percent

Hey I have a brilliant idea; legalize pot, tax it 100% and let all the heads out of jail!

Free Willie, man!

Perma,

Good list of the perpetrators, especially for who it did NOT list.

There have been too many lists floating around that are trying to smokescreen the real perps by trying to place the blame in wrong places.

Let’s talk about what you’re shorting.

So... what are you shorting? :)

California may have to cut prison population by 40 percent

Fast-track Death Penalty is the way to go. It is ridiculous to put someone behind bars for more than 10 years.