More of me being busy
This is again mostly a post of things I read and thought worth keeping up on a tab. No theme, sorry.
Miami's real estate market is remarkable at times, with a $1.1m waterfront property receiving no bids. They stopped asking at 91% off.
American media is mostly a travesty; the economic media is proving out to be pretty damn bad too, tho' not as bad as the Court at Versailles so-called political press. But it's close. Naked Capitalism asks why the American media continues to accept Bush administration pronouncements at face value when there have been so very many obvious lies that have been proven lies - yet press behaviour remains unchanged. In this case they're talking economics, but note the parallels to the political world.
They're talking about a lot of things in that post, amoungst them the so-called reform plan which will give the Fed sweeping new powers. Note the commonality here: when there's a fuckup, particularly if it's related to a series of government failures, the Bush administration response is to grab more power, even if (in a semi-opposing view) the powers sought don't address the problem. Mish, more bluntly, calls various reforms being floated around open invitations for corporations to lie. No one seems to be suggesting that this increases transparency, which is really what's needed.
But I degress. Back on the press: one example of the problems with the American press is that it is still talking about whether there's going to be a recession, despite the fact that it's pretty damn clear we've already entered one. (407,000 jobless claims are a pretty good clue tho' only the latest.) The Australian press, on the other hand, says the Bear Stearns buy-out/bailout was necessary to avoid a Great Depression. (The Treasury came out a couple of days later and said much the same thing, but again, dancing around about the language.) The UK Telegraph talks outright about the Nordic-style nationalisation that's started in the US.
In response, Genesis over at Market Ticker is extremely angry about some of the details of the Bear Stearns deal, noticing that essentially the $30B in loans is a de facto giveaway of money which he considers illegal and grounds for impeachment of Chief Executive Mr. Bush. Mish agrees that the de facto payoff of $30B to J.P. Morgan (basically a bribe to buy Bear Stearns) was blatantly illegal, shredding it in a line-by-line deconstruction. (With further commentary here; he claims even the vote to take action was illegal, taken without a quorum.)
Meanwhile, consumer debt is in its worst condition since 1992. 70% of tax refunds are going to pay of credit-card debt, giving rise to a general impression that the tax "rebate" coming out later this year will do the same.
The smallest bit of good news can be seen in the AAA ABX, where for the first time in months, there's a tiny bit of a rally in AAA ("up" here is good), and the CMBX indicies off their highs (remember, "up" == bad here) and forming a bit of a channel at merely "horrific," and off of "end of the economy." And private commercial spreads are still high, but well off their upward spikes. But Fed commercial paper spreads are shooting back up (again, up == bad), and somebody asked for an assload of money yesterday at the discount window and didn't get it. But they could've just gone to any of the other bazillion little windows the Fed has been opening. I just don't know.
Finally, I got private mail about the Senate not extending the power of bankruptcy judges to rewrite contracts to lower mortgage payments. I'm a bit torn, in that I can see how this could provide some relief - sort of establishing a demi-bankrupcy where the house debt is concerned - but I think it could also have horrific consequences for contract law, and "law" has already taken enough hits these last few years. So I'm ambivalent at best.
Miami's real estate market is remarkable at times, with a $1.1m waterfront property receiving no bids. They stopped asking at 91% off.
American media is mostly a travesty; the economic media is proving out to be pretty damn bad too, tho' not as bad as the Court at Versailles so-called political press. But it's close. Naked Capitalism asks why the American media continues to accept Bush administration pronouncements at face value when there have been so very many obvious lies that have been proven lies - yet press behaviour remains unchanged. In this case they're talking economics, but note the parallels to the political world.
They're talking about a lot of things in that post, amoungst them the so-called reform plan which will give the Fed sweeping new powers. Note the commonality here: when there's a fuckup, particularly if it's related to a series of government failures, the Bush administration response is to grab more power, even if (in a semi-opposing view) the powers sought don't address the problem. Mish, more bluntly, calls various reforms being floated around open invitations for corporations to lie. No one seems to be suggesting that this increases transparency, which is really what's needed.
But I degress. Back on the press: one example of the problems with the American press is that it is still talking about whether there's going to be a recession, despite the fact that it's pretty damn clear we've already entered one. (407,000 jobless claims are a pretty good clue tho' only the latest.) The Australian press, on the other hand, says the Bear Stearns buy-out/bailout was necessary to avoid a Great Depression. (The Treasury came out a couple of days later and said much the same thing, but again, dancing around about the language.) The UK Telegraph talks outright about the Nordic-style nationalisation that's started in the US.
In response, Genesis over at Market Ticker is extremely angry about some of the details of the Bear Stearns deal, noticing that essentially the $30B in loans is a de facto giveaway of money which he considers illegal and grounds for impeachment of Chief Executive Mr. Bush. Mish agrees that the de facto payoff of $30B to J.P. Morgan (basically a bribe to buy Bear Stearns) was blatantly illegal, shredding it in a line-by-line deconstruction. (With further commentary here; he claims even the vote to take action was illegal, taken without a quorum.)
Meanwhile, consumer debt is in its worst condition since 1992. 70% of tax refunds are going to pay of credit-card debt, giving rise to a general impression that the tax "rebate" coming out later this year will do the same.
The smallest bit of good news can be seen in the AAA ABX, where for the first time in months, there's a tiny bit of a rally in AAA ("up" here is good), and the CMBX indicies off their highs (remember, "up" == bad here) and forming a bit of a channel at merely "horrific," and off of "end of the economy." And private commercial spreads are still high, but well off their upward spikes. But Fed commercial paper spreads are shooting back up (again, up == bad), and somebody asked for an assload of money yesterday at the discount window and didn't get it. But they could've just gone to any of the other bazillion little windows the Fed has been opening. I just don't know.
Finally, I got private mail about the Senate not extending the power of bankruptcy judges to rewrite contracts to lower mortgage payments. I'm a bit torn, in that I can see how this could provide some relief - sort of establishing a demi-bankrupcy where the house debt is concerned - but I think it could also have horrific consequences for contract law, and "law" has already taken enough hits these last few years. So I'm ambivalent at best.