At some point when do we say enough. Let's blow this mess up and start over. This is getting ridicules - jumbo loans, pensions, 401ks after that. We are moving from one crisis to another at a too rapid of a pace.
WTO is a Trade Organization without any real bite. Needed now is a Global Central Bank with the power to prevent (via levelizing) some of the regional tsunamis that will inetivably occur. (Soros has long suggested this.)
Inasmuch as the interlinkages are global...absent a global currency board, it's more comprehensible how this ultimately happened. Basically, we're at the next major stage of a transition to a true global community.
Ok, I can see the great concern and we did see the fall of Lehman cause a crash of the interdependencies created between all of these derivatives....
this is a real problem...but I do not see them decoupling the system and isolating the problems with coming up with almost another fire to put out a fire in this new TOP as well as feeding the Zombie banks.
I sometimes wonder if they should have just let the entire system collapse, meltdown in October and then pull a FDR..
shut the entire thing down for a couple of weeks and open up as you say a bunch of good banks, insure the deposits and start sorting through the rest of it all via a Resolution Trust Corporation etc. type of structure.
but in their defense, the legitimate reason (I think) they are doing this is to stop the collapse of the house of cards....
but they seem instead to be perpetuating it.
I don't know which economist/expert coined the term Zombie banks but it is so absolutely descriptive of what's going on....I think whoever coined this phrase should get some sort of award.
CSPAN is not offering embedding and that's a very useful tool in addition to being able to search transcripts and then just show the relevant clip. These hearings are usually 3 hours long and so it's impossible for people to listen to so many hearings, so long and need those tools to zero in on the clip of concern.
Everybody bug CSPAN will ya? They are slowly but surely getting it on web 2.0 and I can do some "tricks" and embed their videos anyway but it would be simple if they just offered it.
They have a fairly cool transcript coordinated to video clip script but they don't implement it most of the time.
Trying to rebuild Humpty Dumpty is foolhardy and futile. I've heard enough from these clowns.
I think we need to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Forget the Federal Reserve Note and debt money. Let's convert to non-inflationary Treasury Notes and put control of the money supply back in government control. All debt obligations are forgiven.
Declare say 100 solvent banks as new US Banks and infuse them with new capital and completely circumvent the existing banking structure. These new US Banks would be strategically located throughout the USA. The current Masters of the Universe and their "too big to fail" albatrosses can go the way of the dodo bird.
AIG took advantage of "skewability"...the unregulated space
between SEC and CFTC. (See the Commodities Futures Modernization Act.) Much of the securitized bullshit now needs to be shoved back in the faces of those that created them and spread the risk...all around. The cogniscenti. Let them eat shit, now. It's their time to die.:-) Bring it on!
(Guys like Paulson ought not be exempted...)
Step #1: We need a Global Financial Institution/Sheriff (akin to a U.N., but a huge Central Bank). #2: We need it to create a common currency, perhaps (eventually, ultimately...?). #3: We need it to 'buy' flushables that are attached to bad boy decisionmaking institutions...to prevent bad psycho-phantom re-emergences of bubble-izing debt-creating innovation-squashers...
You see, they're related. Roses love Manure, especially in spring. Except, here we're dealing with manure of an altogether different kind. That would be called...Dark Goo!
AKA...the Olde OkeeDoke. By now we have so many confusing open window programs that...we all be thoroughly confused,
even the rules makas:-)
Sort of like...Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland.
U.S. Treasury-Fed. Res. are, in essence, a singular
entity ... one askes to borrow, and in exchange the other issues credit (as money). "What's the limit?" as one Senator asked. It's a function of ratio and proportion to--was the Bernanke answer--as a percentage of GDP. But basically, the Keynesian pot is limitless to the extent that 'money' is a legal fiction. Basically, a relative concept. Consider the Obama borrowing scheme. To the extent it translates into long-term public infrastructural investments, it becomes instilled as off-book public assets, just like most non-toll public bridges and highways. They carry public value in a real sense, but they're not accounted for as assets...they've been previously booked as prior period expenses. Just an FYI.:-)
The WSJ had an article about this a few months back.
The first option is one that has been used — having the Treasury Department sell debt, with the money then deposited at the Federal Reserve. The Treasury has decided to scale back that effort, however. This leaves the Fed with the possibility of selling its own debt. That’s an attractive possibility for this reason: Whereas the commercial banks are worried about their balance sheets, outside of the banking system, among regular investors, there’s clearly massive demand for short-term debt, as Treasury bills have fallen into negative-yield territory. If the Fed were to issue debt that was considered on a par with the Treasury’s debt, it would presumably attract tons of buyers.
Kind of makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over, huh?
Krugman is the latest and links to Calculated Risk on it.
Krugman:
Indeed. Every plan we’ve heard from Treasury amounts to the same thing — an attempt to socialize the losses while privatizing the gains. We’re going to buy up all the bad assets at premium prices; no, we’re going to offer the banks guarantees against losses; no, we’re going to let private investors buy the stuff, but offer them de facto guarantees against losses in the form of non-recourse loans.
Thank God for those little bloggers and lay people...
if none of us were here, would we even pick up on this
yet another taxpayer screw job?
NDD, it's confusing because this was posting this morning yet ISM was released yesterday. I'm hoping you update this because ISM is down 10% and autos just plunged off the cliff and into the river and to make matters worse, I believe trapped instead are a host of small businesses. Divers are there on the river bottom trying to rescue many of the trapped but we fear the efforts are for naught. The current is too strong.
"awarded" an option? that isn't "buy" as I read it. Lowest price? awarding options at the lowest price? "draw on a loan" is it a loan?
and I love the fee calculation, oh divide by 360. Where is that number even coming from? You know if someone is using a static constant somewhere it's contrived...
I don't know where JV is but I'd love his take, I'm fairly certain he trades in futures/derivatives.
Under the TOP, dealers will be awarded options through an auction based on the lowest price at which bids are accepted. When the options expire, holders will have the opportunity to exercise the option by drawing on the underlying TSLF loan in increments of $10 million up to the amount of options held. A fixed rate on the loan will be announced prior to each option auction.
Dealers can also choose to let their option expire, but they will not be permitted to transfer that option.
The option fee will be calculated by multiplying the amount of the loan by the total quoted price of the borrowed securities (as measured a day before the option expiration) and divided by 360. The option fee is owed regardless of whether the option is exercised.
I'm not a trader, but this certainly sounds like an avenue for speculators.
A friend explained it this way: The failed gamblers can buy an option on the TSLF program, which is a swap of a Treasury held by the Fed for the toxic trash "eligible collateral" held by the failed financial finaglers.
At some point when do we say enough. Let's blow this mess up and start over. This is getting ridicules - jumbo loans, pensions, 401ks after that. We are moving from one crisis to another at a too rapid of a pace.
WTO is a Trade Organization without any real bite. Needed now is a Global Central Bank with the power to prevent (via levelizing) some of the regional tsunamis that will inetivably occur. (Soros has long suggested this.)
Inasmuch as the interlinkages are global...absent a global currency board, it's more comprehensible how this ultimately happened. Basically, we're at the next major stage of a transition to a true global community.
Ok, I can see the great concern and we did see the fall of Lehman cause a crash of the interdependencies created between all of these derivatives....
this is a real problem...but I do not see them decoupling the system and isolating the problems with coming up with almost another fire to put out a fire in this new TOP as well as feeding the Zombie banks.
I sometimes wonder if they should have just let the entire system collapse, meltdown in October and then pull a FDR..
shut the entire thing down for a couple of weeks and open up as you say a bunch of good banks, insure the deposits and start sorting through the rest of it all via a Resolution Trust Corporation etc. type of structure.
but in their defense, the legitimate reason (I think) they are doing this is to stop the collapse of the house of cards....
but they seem instead to be perpetuating it.
I don't know which economist/expert coined the term Zombie banks but it is so absolutely descriptive of what's going on....I think whoever coined this phrase should get some sort of award.
these analogies are scaring the s**t out of me...;)
I'm not so sure I want a global cop....so far that has resulted in some really bad deals...
this is how the WTO was peddled and instead it destroys national sovereignty and not for the better.
Ask a few sea turtles.
CSPAN is not offering embedding and that's a very useful tool in addition to being able to search transcripts and then just show the relevant clip. These hearings are usually 3 hours long and so it's impossible for people to listen to so many hearings, so long and need those tools to zero in on the clip of concern.
Everybody bug CSPAN will ya? They are slowly but surely getting it on web 2.0 and I can do some "tricks" and embed their videos anyway but it would be simple if they just offered it.
They have a fairly cool transcript coordinated to video clip script but they don't implement it most of the time.
Trying to rebuild Humpty Dumpty is foolhardy and futile. I've heard enough from these clowns.
I think we need to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Forget the Federal Reserve Note and debt money. Let's convert to non-inflationary Treasury Notes and put control of the money supply back in government control. All debt obligations are forgiven.
Declare say 100 solvent banks as new US Banks and infuse them with new capital and completely circumvent the existing banking structure. These new US Banks would be strategically located throughout the USA. The current Masters of the Universe and their "too big to fail" albatrosses can go the way of the dodo bird.
AIG took advantage of "skewability"...the unregulated space
between SEC and CFTC. (See the Commodities Futures Modernization Act.) Much of the securitized bullshit now needs to be shoved back in the faces of those that created them and spread the risk...all around. The cogniscenti. Let them eat shit, now. It's their time to die.:-) Bring it on!
(Guys like Paulson ought not be exempted...)
Step #1: We need a Global Financial Institution/Sheriff (akin to a U.N., but a huge Central Bank). #2: We need it to create a common currency, perhaps (eventually, ultimately...?). #3: We need it to 'buy' flushables that are attached to bad boy decisionmaking institutions...to prevent bad psycho-phantom re-emergences of bubble-izing debt-creating innovation-squashers...
What else...? (Add as you wish...);-)
You see, they're related. Roses love Manure, especially in spring. Except, here we're dealing with manure of an altogether different kind. That would be called...Dark Goo!
AKA...the Olde OkeeDoke. By now we have so many confusing open window programs that...we all be thoroughly confused,
even the rules makas:-)
Sort of like...Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland.
U.S. Treasury-Fed. Res. are, in essence, a singular
entity ... one askes to borrow, and in exchange the other issues credit (as money). "What's the limit?" as one Senator asked. It's a function of ratio and proportion to--was the Bernanke answer--as a percentage of GDP. But basically, the Keynesian pot is limitless to the extent that 'money' is a legal fiction. Basically, a relative concept. Consider the Obama borrowing scheme. To the extent it translates into long-term public infrastructural investments, it becomes instilled as off-book public assets, just like most non-toll public bridges and highways. They carry public value in a real sense, but they're not accounted for as assets...they've been previously booked as prior period expenses. Just an FYI.:-)
but check the last video on the Sunday Morning comics...I think they are also making USB interfaced coffee. ;)
Yeah, we need more bloggers who are diligent...there is so much going on, I also was confused on the ISM figures, posted too fast.
IT was ISM manufacturing that was issued yesterday. I'll edit the blog entry accordingly (I shouldn't have edited on only one cup of coffee!).
The WSJ had an article about this a few months back.
Kind of makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over, huh?
is it possible these actions are basically cause the United States to implode? I think we have to turn Peterson and start asking these questions.
Krugman is the latest and links to Calculated Risk on it.
Krugman:
Thank God for those little bloggers and lay people...
if none of us were here, would we even pick up on this
yet another taxpayer screw job?
NDD, it's confusing because this was posting this morning yet ISM was released yesterday. I'm hoping you update this because ISM is down 10% and autos just plunged off the cliff and into the river and to make matters worse, I believe trapped instead are a host of small businesses. Divers are there on the river bottom trying to rescue many of the trapped but we fear the efforts are for naught. The current is too strong.
They are happy to unload it on the FED in exchange for AAA Treasuries. So what the heck do they need Options for? Will they start playing spreads?
It has always been about class warfare.
"awarded" an option? that isn't "buy" as I read it. Lowest price? awarding options at the lowest price? "draw on a loan" is it a loan?
and I love the fee calculation, oh divide by 360. Where is that number even coming from? You know if someone is using a static constant somewhere it's contrived...
I don't know where JV is but I'd love his take, I'm fairly certain he trades in futures/derivatives.
I found this at Forbes.
I'm not a trader, but this certainly sounds like an avenue for speculators.
A friend explained it this way: The failed gamblers can buy an option on the TSLF program, which is a swap of a Treasury held by the Fed for the toxic trash "eligible collateral" held by the failed financial finaglers.
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