they knew the Fed promised to keep interest rates at max. low for 2 years, announced earlier. and this is become interest rates dropped, not rose that they lost.
Finally, it a beyond huge amount of money here, how can that possibly be less than what they would lose on mortgages if interest rates rose?
According to Daniel Indiviglio article (The Atlantic.com, 9 November 2011), losses were incurred in hedges against interest rate risk as long term interest rates declined more than Fannie and Freddie anticipated in 3Q 2011.
First comment at that article makes distinction between hedging and betting:
But if the derivatives portfolio is used as a hedge, Fannie and Freddie won't lose value over time with this position. Therefore, it isn't a bad bet because it isn't a bet, it's a hedge.
Second comment there analyzes events this way
If they didn't have the derivatives portfolio, presumably they would do even worse whenever interest rates rose.
Fannie and Freddie are very vulnerable to interest rate risk because they guarantee 30 year fixed mortgages *and* let mortgage holders refinance without penalty when rates drop. A hedge is entirely appropriate.
All of this begs the question: "What happened to cause long-term rates to decline beyond reasonable expectation?" I associate that question with another question: "What happened in 3rd Q 2011?" As we all know, Boehner held up raising the debt ceiling to send US credit rating down for the first time in history. That would take funds out of long-term Treasurys which then ended up in insured long-term mortgages, pushing interest rates down in the housing market. This may seem illogical, since the ultimate reliance is still on the USD and the "full faith and credit" of the US government -- but think about it. If you are interested in a steady stream of dollars from your investment, you might well consider your chances better when backed by real estate than when backed by the tarnished rating of Treasurys.
I am suggesting that Fannie and Freddie were caught off guard by Boehner's chicanery, as were many other institutional investors. That's my take on this news story, but I am certainly open to criticism.
More and more I like to focus on longer time periods for data samples, even the month report is operating in the margin of error and there are way too many "financial press" who go crazy over weekly data as if it's a trend.
That said, this is some welcome news folks. Say a prayer to the job God, we surely need it.
I'm not a fan of the BLS layoff tracker, it's a crude indicator at best, simply because corporations hide fires, and especially hide moving jobs offshore or hiring foreign guest workers to displace U.S. workers. Yes, believe this or not, you cannot get this data!
That said, the BLS released their Q3 2011 layoffs today and I'll just put it here.
Employers in the private nonfarm sector initiated 1,226 mass layoff events in the third
quarter of 2011 that resulted in the separation of 184,493 workers from their jobs for
at least 31 days, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Total extended
mass layoff events decreased over the year from 1,370 to 1,226, and associated worker
separations fell from 222,357 to 184,493. Events and separations reached their lowest
third quarter levels since 2007. Both events and separations have decreased over the
year for eight consecutive quarters.
So, this is some reasonably good news to at least see formal layoffs back to pre-recession levels. (Q3 2007).
When IllnessGoesFar took over Wachovia, they were holding up check clearance at the height of the late 2008 Crisis. They violated Reg Q, requiring notice of any change in clearance policy. I had to get the CoC involved to stop them. Most will not fight the banksters and don't care or know there rights. Skank of America is even worse.
I decided to overview it because it's one of the most incomprehensible economic reports put out by the government, but it's important and I missed it and couldn't get to an overview until now.
The worst is they use an price series based off of CPI-U-RS, vs. easily obtained CPI-U and part of it is the CPI-U. So, just take my word on it that the inflation rate for Q3 was 3.1%, annualized. (long story).
Anyway, it's yet another U.S. labor squeeze indicator.
The new measure is better. (There have been effective changes made increasing potential efficiency of governmental operations under the Obama administration.)
Here's what is alarming and has attracted considerable attention: we would have thought that the resources included in the new measure (counting SNAP, WIC, housing and heating subsidies, Earned Income Tax Credit) would have resulted in a lower overall poverty percentage. That the result of the new measure is an increased poverty rate is surprising and has attracted considerable commentary, mostly saying that the increased poverty result is primarily attributable to Out-of-Pocket Medical. I suspect that a lot of that increase is probably due to dental care expenses.
Less attention is being paid to Child Care Expenses and Child Support Paid categories. These two categories are subject to controversy and interpretation, and overall averages or totals for these categories are problematic because of differences at the level of individual cases.
Child Care Expenses are subject to off-the-books adjustments: should Grandma be paid for child care, etc.? How this kind of question is handled probably varies from state-to-state, creating problems for any survey.
Similarly, Child Support Paid is subject to enormous variation from state-to-state and even from court-to-court (in some states). The presumption of the public that it's all a matter of dead-beat dads versus long-suffering abandoned moms is, at best, simplistic. There are plenty of examples of a household that is objectively poorer than another household having to pay to a household that is objectively above poverty level. The IRS rule is to consider child support paid (by the payor household) to be taxable as income of the payor, not infrequently working arbitrarily to shift income from children in the payor household to children in the payee household without equitable regard for apparent need. Scheming and scamming activity is a notorious problem in this regard.
IMO, the IRS rule should be that Child Support Paid is taxable as income of the Payee (Plaintiff) household and not the Payor (Defendant) household (as of the actual transfer of moneys). The contrary way it now works goes back to the idea that all money judgments are to make whole an injured party, that is, to tort theory.
There is an IRS form to correct all this to a small extent by allowing the payor to take the dependent child deduction/credit; however, this is anything but automatic. Dependent child deduction/credits are properly a matter for adjustment according to contributions and circumstances of the two (or more) households involved; however, these deductions/credits can also become issues of negotiation between two warring households and even (sometimes) between two warring states. Notwithstanding the Full Faith and Credit Clause, issues of law can become incredibly complex when two or more states are involved, with states applying different standards for such crucial procedural matters as service of process. Welfare fraud and even citizenship fraud have become involved, sometimes involving identity theft, very difficult to prove.
Attempts to rationalize the system are generally defeated in many state legislatures, with some family-law attorneys weighing in on the side of keeping the whole thing as complicated and difficult as possible. All this said, it's better to subtract Child Support Paid (money leaving the payor household) from resources available to the payor household and to add that money to the payee household's resources, since that's generally the underlying reality.
Best of all, of course, is to avoid divided families, unemployment and poverty.
I think you're right that most of America ignores the politicians including the President of the United States. The only amusing thing I want to see this campaign cycle is how Obama manages to chant some Populist campaign slogan with a straight face, for we all have his track record now.
Naked Capitalism is one of my favorite reads and she has been on the banks from day 0. We have too been writing about this, although it gets old when nothing ever happens, nothing changes except more people become poor and desperate.
There are 3 distinct papers in the NYTimes, the Reporting, the Analytical ( a layer on top of reporting) and the Opinion. So when NYTimes reports or does analysis, it often does Opinion in the same edition. Listen to the language and how it is meant not to offend
"
Since the financial crisis, the S.E.C. has been criticized for missing warning signs that could have softened the blow. The pattern of repeated accusations of securities law violations adds another layer of concerns about enforcing the law. Not only does the S.E.C. fail to catch many instances of wrongdoing, which may be unavoidable, given its resources, but when it is on the case, financial firms often pay a relatively small price.
"
Can anyone tell that this is story about the real criminals in this society? Same can be said for Telecom, Energy,and other criminal industries.
A saner fairer republic, not this one, would create a formal plebiscite. Without changing federal or state Constitutions, a citizens lobby with power players running the Plebiscite Committee,
could lobby Congress or Statehouses. That would be too much of a power shift for this oligarchical system,but it would work politically. It would cleanse the filth from this system better than anything.
In a way, OWS may be the plebiscite, or it may evolve into something bigger and more radical.
I would not want to push, or handicap OWS the way so many do. OWS is doing just fine. They do not need ideology, planning and rest of the nonsense suggested by the ineffectual Left. OWS just needs the convenient target inequality, corruption, and gridlock.
I just did a brief overview of the Census report, located here.
You can compare the two poverty measures, but by either one, including EITC, Food stamps and so on, or not, both of them show poverty at all time highs.
So, I don't see how they can attack Brookings or the Census by including subsidies and so on, for what the alternative measure shows is even with the meager social safety nets in the U.S., even more people are actually living in poverty.
I think some leftist groups jumped the gun before the actual data is released or something because looking at both, they both show 1 in 6 basically is living in poverty here.
Also, there might be some confusion because the official poverty thresholds used by Brookings are well defined. What Brookings means by extreme poverty is 40% of the local population is living below the poverty line.
As you may be aware, the crtique of the study tries to count all the extra non-cash welfare benefits such AFDC, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, rent subsidies and SDI to suggest that the $22K figure is grossed up quite a bit. The reality is that the unbelievably low $22K allowed for the gross-up of benefits. No family can really live on $22K, so benefits needed to be included.
A more relevant policical point is that so many of those willing to point to the safety net are the very first to want to take the safety net away. I will locate the critique, if that is the right term.
Like nationalizing the Fed and banks, ending corporate personhood, limits to campaign funds, eliminating tax loopholes, single payer healthcare, and treason charges for corrupt politician and police.
Those are demands that most of the protestors would probably agree with. But it is a very valid strategic question to ask when is the right time to start making specific demands. This is a question that doesn't seem to have occurred to mountain matt. He seems to have assumed that the absence of specific demands at this point means that formulating such demands is beyond the intelligence and or knowledge and or maturity of the protestors. It seems pretty clear to me that the protestors are generally actually more politically sophisticated then mountain matt. They have figured out how to grow a large movement - already a bigger political accomplishment than matt has figured out how to do. It seems that so far the lack of specific demands has helped the movement to grow and command the attention of the nation and the 1%. It seems that simply articulating the problem in a very general way and then demonstrating willingness to engage in direct actions has been a brilliant strategy so far. Mountain matt's condescending dismissal is foolish.
From news letter today (6 November 2011) from Stephen Zarlenga to "Friends of the American Monetary Institute" --
It is time for each and every one of us to get involved on a personal level. ....
This weekend, national actions were mounted to "Make Wall Street Pay." Their idea is to mobilize marches to shut down certain egregious retail banks and organize a mass movement of consumer deposits from large banks to smaller banks and credit unions. This is a noble cause; we fully support this initiative to move money out of Wall Street. Unfortunately, if they think this campaign is a silver bullet, they are missing the point! We have limited power as consumers to reduce the reserves of large banks, as much of the money that backs our fractional reserve bank credit is held in pension funds, institutional deposits, and high net-worth individuals. To take our country back from Wall Street, we need to act collectively not only as consumers, but as citizens, and pass HR 2990. ....
Best wishes! Good luck! Remember this is a non-partisan activity!
Very few people today are aware of the Bonus Army and or its repression ordered by President Hoover and commanded by General Douglas MacArthur.
As always, MacArthur's tactics were just about perfect. You wouldn't give him a job if you didn't want it done.
From the New York Times (28 July 1932) --
The action was precise, well executed from a military standpoint, but not pretty to the thoughtful in the crowd.
President Hoover appeared confident that the action would meet with approval of the American public --
President Hoover summarized the event on July 29, 1932, as follows:
A challenge to the authority of the United States Government has been met, swiftly and firmly. After months of patient indulgence, the Government met overt lawlessness as it always must be met if the cherished processes of self-government are to be preserved. We cannot tolerate the abuse of Constitutional rights by those who would destroy all government, no matter who they may be. Government cannot be coerced by mob rule. The Department of Justice is pressing its investigation into the violence which forced the call for Army detachments, and it is my sincere hope that those agitators who inspired yesterday’s attack upon the Federal authority may be brought speedily to trial in the civil courts.
But then came the more lasting strategic implications, accurately understood by Hoover's opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt --
The Bonus army incident occurred in a presidential election year [1932]. Indeed, “[o]n the morning of July 29, with the New York Times spread open on his bed at Hyde Park, Democratic presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt [FDR] told an aide that there was no need now to campaign against Hoover.”
The realities of the numbers either brings up what you got sucked into or "immigration". I cannot think of a topic where one cannot simply look at the numbers. Even there, I just saw a spin post claiming fictional numbers are the numbers, so it's really bad. That's probably what I am such a statistical nazi when it comes to those figures, making sure either side doesn't "spin it".
I pity you on that dinner conversation! Welcome back too!
After a major insult comment he's gone. Main reason is the comment feed has a feed, (so yes you are part of EP!) and I saw some stuff being indexed on unemployment that is completely wrong, inaccurate. I don't want EP to be associated with inaccurate macro economic statistical analysis.
The ILWU is very aware of the importance of Oakland for imports from China (and elsewhere in Asia). ILWU is generally influential in passing FTAs such as recent Korean FTA.
But the ILWU isn't necessarily the same as its members.
I believe that the port could not have been shut down if ILWU and its members had not allowed that to happen.
There is strong reaction to Oakland Police repression, including head fracture of returned vet with two tours in Iraq.
This whole thing is way beyond anything I considered to be within the bounds of what is possible just a few months ago. There was some posting here at EP, more or less predicting something like this, but I just could not see it.
Dreaded Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
they knew the Fed promised to keep interest rates at max. low for 2 years, announced earlier. and this is become interest rates dropped, not rose that they lost.
Finally, it a beyond huge amount of money here, how can that possibly be less than what they would lose on mortgages if interest rates rose?
According to Daniel Indiviglio article (The Atlantic.com, 9 November 2011), losses were incurred in hedges against interest rate risk as long term interest rates declined more than Fannie and Freddie anticipated in 3Q 2011.
First comment at that article makes distinction between hedging and betting:
Second comment there analyzes events this way
All of this begs the question: "What happened to cause long-term rates to decline beyond reasonable expectation?" I associate that question with another question: "What happened in 3rd Q 2011?" As we all know, Boehner held up raising the debt ceiling to send US credit rating down for the first time in history. That would take funds out of long-term Treasurys which then ended up in insured long-term mortgages, pushing interest rates down in the housing market. This may seem illogical, since the ultimate reliance is still on the USD and the "full faith and credit" of the US government -- but think about it. If you are interested in a steady stream of dollars from your investment, you might well consider your chances better when backed by real estate than when backed by the tarnished rating of Treasurys.
I am suggesting that Fannie and Freddie were caught off guard by Boehner's chicanery, as were many other institutional investors. That's my take on this news story, but I am certainly open to criticism.
Cross-posted this comment at Daniel Indiviglio's blog at TheAtlantic.com
More and more I like to focus on longer time periods for data samples, even the month report is operating in the margin of error and there are way too many "financial press" who go crazy over weekly data as if it's a trend.
That said, this is some welcome news folks. Say a prayer to the job God, we surely need it.
I'm not a fan of the BLS layoff tracker, it's a crude indicator at best, simply because corporations hide fires, and especially hide moving jobs offshore or hiring foreign guest workers to displace U.S. workers. Yes, believe this or not, you cannot get this data!
That said, the BLS released their Q3 2011 layoffs today and I'll just put it here.
So, this is some reasonably good news to at least see formal layoffs back to pre-recession levels. (Q3 2007).
When IllnessGoesFar took over Wachovia, they were holding up check clearance at the height of the late 2008 Crisis. They violated Reg Q, requiring notice of any change in clearance policy. I had to get the CoC involved to stop them. Most will not fight the banksters and don't care or know there rights. Skank of America is even worse.
I decided to overview it because it's one of the most incomprehensible economic reports put out by the government, but it's important and I missed it and couldn't get to an overview until now.
The worst is they use an price series based off of CPI-U-RS, vs. easily obtained CPI-U and part of it is the CPI-U. So, just take my word on it that the inflation rate for Q3 was 3.1%, annualized. (long story).
Anyway, it's yet another U.S. labor squeeze indicator.
The new measure is better. (There have been effective changes made increasing potential efficiency of governmental operations under the Obama administration.)
Here's what is alarming and has attracted considerable attention: we would have thought that the resources included in the new measure (counting SNAP, WIC, housing and heating subsidies, Earned Income Tax Credit) would have resulted in a lower overall poverty percentage. That the result of the new measure is an increased poverty rate is surprising and has attracted considerable commentary, mostly saying that the increased poverty result is primarily attributable to Out-of-Pocket Medical. I suspect that a lot of that increase is probably due to dental care expenses.
Less attention is being paid to Child Care Expenses and Child Support Paid categories. These two categories are subject to controversy and interpretation, and overall averages or totals for these categories are problematic because of differences at the level of individual cases.
Child Care Expenses are subject to off-the-books adjustments: should Grandma be paid for child care, etc.? How this kind of question is handled probably varies from state-to-state, creating problems for any survey.
Similarly, Child Support Paid is subject to enormous variation from state-to-state and even from court-to-court (in some states). The presumption of the public that it's all a matter of dead-beat dads versus long-suffering abandoned moms is, at best, simplistic. There are plenty of examples of a household that is objectively poorer than another household having to pay to a household that is objectively above poverty level. The IRS rule is to consider child support paid (by the payor household) to be taxable as income of the payor, not infrequently working arbitrarily to shift income from children in the payor household to children in the payee household without equitable regard for apparent need. Scheming and scamming activity is a notorious problem in this regard.
IMO, the IRS rule should be that Child Support Paid is taxable as income of the Payee (Plaintiff) household and not the Payor (Defendant) household (as of the actual transfer of moneys). The contrary way it now works goes back to the idea that all money judgments are to make whole an injured party, that is, to tort theory.
There is an IRS form to correct all this to a small extent by allowing the payor to take the dependent child deduction/credit; however, this is anything but automatic. Dependent child deduction/credits are properly a matter for adjustment according to contributions and circumstances of the two (or more) households involved; however, these deductions/credits can also become issues of negotiation between two warring households and even (sometimes) between two warring states. Notwithstanding the Full Faith and Credit Clause, issues of law can become incredibly complex when two or more states are involved, with states applying different standards for such crucial procedural matters as service of process. Welfare fraud and even citizenship fraud have become involved, sometimes involving identity theft, very difficult to prove.
Attempts to rationalize the system are generally defeated in many state legislatures, with some family-law attorneys weighing in on the side of keeping the whole thing as complicated and difficult as possible. All this said, it's better to subtract Child Support Paid (money leaving the payor household) from resources available to the payor household and to add that money to the payee household's resources, since that's generally the underlying reality.
Best of all, of course, is to avoid divided families, unemployment and poverty.
I'd say that's ok, although it should have been 1 million frankly. But that's the number of credit union accounts opened last Saturday.
I cannot believe Bloomberg is proclaiming this an awesome report. Clearly they didn't see separations at all or actual hires.
I think you're right that most of America ignores the politicians including the President of the United States. The only amusing thing I want to see this campaign cycle is how Obama manages to chant some Populist campaign slogan with a straight face, for we all have his track record now.
Naked Capitalism is one of my favorite reads and she has been on the banks from day 0. We have too been writing about this, although it gets old when nothing ever happens, nothing changes except more people become poor and desperate.
There are 3 distinct papers in the NYTimes, the Reporting, the Analytical ( a layer on top of reporting) and the Opinion. So when NYTimes reports or does analysis, it often does Opinion in the same edition. Listen to the language and how it is meant not to offend
"
Since the financial crisis, the S.E.C. has been criticized for missing warning signs that could have softened the blow. The pattern of repeated accusations of securities law violations adds another layer of concerns about enforcing the law. Not only does the S.E.C. fail to catch many instances of wrongdoing, which may be unavoidable, given its resources, but when it is on the case, financial firms often pay a relatively small price.
"
Can anyone tell that this is story about the real criminals in this society? Same can be said for Telecom, Energy,and other criminal industries.
A saner fairer republic, not this one, would create a formal plebiscite. Without changing federal or state Constitutions, a citizens lobby with power players running the Plebiscite Committee,
could lobby Congress or Statehouses. That would be too much of a power shift for this oligarchical system,but it would work politically. It would cleanse the filth from this system better than anything.
In a way, OWS may be the plebiscite, or it may evolve into something bigger and more radical.
I would not want to push, or handicap OWS the way so many do. OWS is doing just fine. They do not need ideology, planning and rest of the nonsense suggested by the ineffectual Left. OWS just needs the convenient target inequality, corruption, and gridlock.
I just did a brief overview of the Census report, located here.
You can compare the two poverty measures, but by either one, including EITC, Food stamps and so on, or not, both of them show poverty at all time highs.
So, I don't see how they can attack Brookings or the Census by including subsidies and so on, for what the alternative measure shows is even with the meager social safety nets in the U.S., even more people are actually living in poverty.
I think some leftist groups jumped the gun before the actual data is released or something because looking at both, they both show 1 in 6 basically is living in poverty here.
Also, there might be some confusion because the official poverty thresholds used by Brookings are well defined. What Brookings means by extreme poverty is 40% of the local population is living below the poverty line.
As you may be aware, the crtique of the study tries to count all the extra non-cash welfare benefits such AFDC, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, rent subsidies and SDI to suggest that the $22K figure is grossed up quite a bit. The reality is that the unbelievably low $22K allowed for the gross-up of benefits. No family can really live on $22K, so benefits needed to be included.
A more relevant policical point is that so many of those willing to point to the safety net are the very first to want to take the safety net away. I will locate the critique, if that is the right term.
Those are demands that most of the protestors would probably agree with. But it is a very valid strategic question to ask when is the right time to start making specific demands. This is a question that doesn't seem to have occurred to mountain matt. He seems to have assumed that the absence of specific demands at this point means that formulating such demands is beyond the intelligence and or knowledge and or maturity of the protestors. It seems pretty clear to me that the protestors are generally actually more politically sophisticated then mountain matt. They have figured out how to grow a large movement - already a bigger political accomplishment than matt has figured out how to do. It seems that so far the lack of specific demands has helped the movement to grow and command the attention of the nation and the 1%. It seems that simply articulating the problem in a very general way and then demonstrating willingness to engage in direct actions has been a brilliant strategy so far. Mountain matt's condescending dismissal is foolish.
From news letter today (6 November 2011) from Stephen Zarlenga to "Friends of the American Monetary Institute" --
For those, like myself, who prefer non-video media --
Bonus Army Spectacle, U.S. Capital, 1932, What Really Happened (Suburban Emergency Management Project webpage, including contemporary reports and photographs)
Very few people today are aware of the Bonus Army and or its repression ordered by President Hoover and commanded by General Douglas MacArthur.
As always, MacArthur's tactics were just about perfect. You wouldn't give him a job if you didn't want it done.
From the New York Times (28 July 1932) --
President Hoover appeared confident that the action would meet with approval of the American public --
But then came the more lasting strategic implications, accurately understood by Hoover's opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt --
The realities of the numbers either brings up what you got sucked into or "immigration". I cannot think of a topic where one cannot simply look at the numbers. Even there, I just saw a spin post claiming fictional numbers are the numbers, so it's really bad. That's probably what I am such a statistical nazi when it comes to those figures, making sure either side doesn't "spin it".
I pity you on that dinner conversation! Welcome back too!
After a major insult comment he's gone. Main reason is the comment feed has a feed, (so yes you are part of EP!) and I saw some stuff being indexed on unemployment that is completely wrong, inaccurate. I don't want EP to be associated with inaccurate macro economic statistical analysis.
The ILWU is very aware of the importance of Oakland for imports from China (and elsewhere in Asia). ILWU is generally influential in passing FTAs such as recent Korean FTA.
But the ILWU isn't necessarily the same as its members.
I believe that the port could not have been shut down if ILWU and its members had not allowed that to happen.
There is strong reaction to Oakland Police repression, including head fracture of returned vet with two tours in Iraq.
This whole thing is way beyond anything I considered to be within the bounds of what is possible just a few months ago. There was some posting here at EP, more or less predicting something like this, but I just could not see it.
Dreaded Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
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