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POPSWhat will cause the next US financial crisis! Repos and not subprime mortgages caused the present financial crisis. The top three banks in the world by market capitalization are now; 1) Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 2) China Construction Bank 3) Bank of China Citibank and Bank of America are not even on the list of the top twenty.
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POPSMadoff’s conviction is no example of American justice More. Bernie should really become is a pin up criminal for incompetence, who was allowed to escape for decades by incompetent regulation: both of the traditional black letter legal type and self-regulation. Bernie fooled all the checks and balances and became head of NADAQ. His auditing firm was a small one and a half person operation in suburban New York: the auditing groups and other regulators let that one go
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POPSBubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble Warns "Friends of The Earth" A cap-and-trade plan would create a huge new market in emissions permits at a time when Wall Street and Washington have their hands full figuring out how to police existing markets. One key element in all the climate proposals floated so far is the use of “offsets,” or the ability to purchase emissions reductions made somewhere else. As Friends of the Earth says in a new report, “Subprime Carbon”: Given the lack of proven mechanisms to govern commodities, it is imprudent to so hastily create the largest derivatives market in the world and foist it upon a new and untested regulatory regime. One possible side effect of the financial-market fallout and concerns about more toxic assets? Growing support for a straight carbon tax, rather than a complicated cap-and-trade plan.
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POPS25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
Rebubbacans and Ayn Rand disciples abound. Kathleen Corbet Corbet ran the largest agency, Standard & Poor's, during much of this decade, though the other two major players, Moody's and Fitch, played by similar rules. By slapping AAA seals of approval on large portions of even the riskiest pools of loans, rating agencies helped lure investors into loading on collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that are now unsellable. Dick Fuld steered Lehman deep into the business of subprime mortgages Lehman even made its own subprime loans. The firm took all those loans, whipped them into bonds and passed on to investors billions of dollars of what is now toxic debt. Marion and Herb Sandler In the early 1980s, became the first to sell a tricky home loan called the option ARM. And they pushed the mortgage, which offered several ways to back-load your loan and thereby reduce your early payments, over the next two decades. pocketed $2.3 billion when they sold their bank to Wac
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POPSThe Dirty Dozen Meet the bankers and brokers responsible for the financial crisis - and the official
The Maestro HENRY PAULSON WAS CEO of Goldman Sachs (1999-2006); Treasury secretary (2006-2009) WHAT HE DID Pushed for end to debt restrictions for banks like Goldman, then arranged big bailout for Goldman. WORST MOVE TARP proposal just three pages long; made his decisions "non-reviewable." NOW SAYS "I don't think we've made mistakes on the major decisions." The Big Loser DICK FULD WAS CEO of Lehman Brothers (1993-2008) WHAT HE DID Piloted Lehman to largest bankruptcy in U.S. history; earned $22 million the year firm went bust. WORST MOVE Tried to avoid lawsuits by selling his $13 million Florida home to his wife for $100. NOW SAYS Feels "horrible" about Lehman, but insists his management was "prudent and appropriate." Mr. Too Big KEN LEWIS IS CEO of Bank of America (2001-present) WHAT HE DID Created ultimate too-big-to-fail company, buying up Fleet, MBNA, Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. WORST MOVE Failed to catch a $15 billion loss at Merrill before buying the
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POPSWhy you don't want AIG to fail Short answer: It might bankrupt your state treasury. It might bankrupt your local bank. It might put your local industries out of business. If the gov't acts quickly, it can break up and sell off the profitable parts of AIG, recovering the cash it has lent to cover AIG's unregulated Financial Products Division's inability to pay "insurance" benefits that it had sold to cover the risk inherent in mortgage-backed securities.
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POPSOcto-Mom and Personal Responsibility We have latched on to Suleman, I think, because it is easier and more comforting to criticize her for a feat of careless hubris than it is to deal directly with our own feats of the same.
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POPSSummer of Rage Ironies this is a very unfair crisis. The epicentre is the United States, but the rest of the world, and particularly America's trading partners, will get hit harder than the U.S.
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POPSThis is not your father's country anymore The baby boomers are starting to retire and will consume an ever larger share of these entitlement programs. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Paying into it paid off current recipients. When it is our turn to retire there won't be enough money to cover us all, meaning we were funding a promise that could not be paid back. At the end of the day, we are going to have to settle for less. Less money, smaller houses, smaller cars and smaller dreams.
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POPS Econ 101 ~ ~ ~ ~ Economic Mess for Dummies ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ What is a CDO or CDS? Imagine taking paper debt like mortgages, subprime mortgages, car loans, credit cards loans, and pretty much anything you can imagine. Now combine and mix the paper in a blender, spiking it with worthless rhetorical hyperbole that derivatives are the new paradigm of investments. Then pour the mixture in a pyramid of champagne glasses, to represent the varying levels of return (and risk), with the higher the glass, the lower the risk return and risk. That represents the CDOs. Now as you sell the mess, insure against the risk of the CDOs decreasing in value with CDSs. Presto, $1 trillion of bad loans is transmuted into $62 trillion in faux wealth. An alchemist would be proud. http://nobullbert.blogspot.com/2009/02/economic-mess-for-dummies.html
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POPSTell me again how the Stimulus is going to work? And please, tell me again how sending more of our debt fueled "spending" to Chinese electronic manufacturers is going to save us? Can ANYONE see reality anymore? Or are we just going to keep playing out the tired old party lines as our once great nation falls? GLOBALIZATION did this to us. NOT subprime mortgages.
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POPSChina grows while the West continues it's descent Over the past ten years, under the radar and the "global economy" BS, they sent their suppliers jobs to China. Now, there customers are there. Which will work fine until the day the Chinese slam shut their borders-keeping our technology, investments and products. Wake up people. This mess is not "subprime mortgages". It is lack of family supporting JOBS. And I'm not talking about the whineass UAW workers jobs. Continue allowing the government to shove high tech and globalization down your throats. Harsh poverty is coming. This is going to make the "Great Depression" seem like a walk in the park.
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POPSA Brewing Fraud Scandal at the Treasury Department? The federal government took over IndyMac in July, after the bank's stock price plummeted to just pennies a share when it was revealed the bank had financial troubles due to defaulted mortgages and subprime loans, costing taxpayers over $9 billion.
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POPS Ego And Mouth by Thomas Sowell . . . by those who have accomplished something, and give it to whomever he chooses in the name of "spreading the wealth," is the kind of casual arrogance that has led to many economic catastrophes in many countries. The equally casual ease with which Barack Obama has talked about appointing judges on the basis of their empathies with various segments of the population makes a mockery of the very concept of law. After this man has wrecked the economy and destroyed constitutional law with his judicial appointments, what can he do for an encore? He can cripple the military and gamble America's future on his ability to sit down with enemy nations and talk them out of causing trouble. Add to Obama and Biden House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and you have all the ingredients for a historic meltdown. Let us not forget that the Roman Empire did decline and fall, blighting the lives of millions for centuries.
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POPS Joe The Plumber Can "Spread The Wealth Around" Just Fine
Kennedy understood all this, either consciously or intuitively. But he was the last Democrat to so understand. Lyndon Johnson, who moved into the Oval Office after Dallas, never did get it. Instead, he instituted a guns-and-butter policy (escalating the Vietnam War at the same time he announced the Great Society, a welfare-based attack on America at a cost of billions), and the results were devastating. His only lasting contribution to the public good was the successful passage of historic Civil Rights legislation. That wouldn't have been possible without the support of Republicans in Congress. Ronald Reagan did, and lowered taxes because of his understanding. And so did George W. Bush, leading to the boom which ended only because liberals in Congress - Barney Frank and Chris Dodd most significantly - colluded with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to push for subprime mortgages, and we all know what happened when the recipients of such largesse couldn't afford the payments.
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POPSAnd Now - Make Orgasms Fast Spam!
In case you were worried about the fate of all the good, "family friendly" people spamming you with offers for subprime "christian" mortgages, "christian" work from home "opportunities" and "christian" dietary supplements. In these hard economic times, they have learned that if sex sells, the fear of inadequacy causing you losing your partner to some better-hung liberal porn watching pervert with mad skills in the sack will sell even better. There's only one thing missing in this letter to make it absolute, unintentional comic genius: a picture of Willie Horton beside these paragraphs: " In fact, my wife had never had an orgasm during intercourse. Although, she was always "willing" to participate, I couldn't shake the feeling that she was only doing it for me - she was not truly that interested in sex. This caused me no end of frustration, disappointment and lack of self esteem. When you are a husband, it really hurts when you feel that you can't sexually satisfy your wi
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POPS Another Bubble Bursts Subprime mortgages were just the beginning. The dollar also plunged along the way against most global currencies, notably the euro, as the bottom chart illustrates. The dollar price of oil and the dollar-euro exchange rate are probably the two most important prices in the world. They represent a huge share of global commerce, sending signals that shape trade and capital flows. When those two prices move up and down so sharply in so short a time -- based more on fear and expectations than on economic realities -- they distort price signals and can lead to a misallocation of resources. Commodity prices have now fallen back to Earth, as the reality of global recession hits home and the Fed can't ease much further. Meanwhile, the euro has fallen from the stratosphere as Europe heads into recession and the dollar becomes a safer haven in a world of fear.
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