Pent up demand

94 Comments

    • John Hussman: Depression Fear Mongering 'Ridiculous' [view article]
      "FDR also promised to keep us out of WWII."

      I think you're confusing your populist demagogues. It was Wilson and WWI :)       Oct 06 05:27 PM
    • Time to End Government Dickering Before It's Too Late [view article]
      apppro, you cannot do most of the things you listed by simple fiat. A "windfall" tax on short-sellers? So when traders are wrong they get to eat the loss, but when they're right, the government takes the proceeds? I don't care to live in that country, thank you very much.

      Your program amounts to fixing the rules of the game, massive government spending "stimulus", confiscatory taxes, restrictions on speech, and more government agencies. News flash: none of those ideas are new.       Oct 03 10:07 AM
    • The Market Cannot Fix the Financial Crisis By Itself [view article]
      "Congress chose to put party ideology ahead of the well-being of the American people."

      You say ideology, I say principle. As others have stated, we are going to have a severe recession or depression; the butcher's bill will be paid. The question now is what will we have when we emerge on the other side? Corporatism/national socialism, or some chance at maintaining our freedom?       Oct 01 03:59 PM
    • Nixing 'Mark to Market' Won't Solve the Problem [view article]
      I agree that Lehman, Wachovia, et.al. would probably have failed even under looser accounting rules. However, I think at this point we have to give cashflow positive financials a bit of breathing room. Let private capital gamble on whether the higher marks are correct or not. It serves nobody but the vultures to force an otherwise going concern to mark their stuff at the price of the most distressed player in the industry. Oct 01 03:54 PM
    • New Game, New Rules [view article]
      "These decisions have likely deflected the misery that Americans would be subjected to if the disruptive short selling (rape and pillage )continued. "

      Oh, yes, by all means. We're Americans, we like our rape and pillage at the hands of duly elected officials.       Sep 19 03:03 PM
    • Armageddon Postponed [view article]
      Past Tense, I am a big reader of history, so yes I agree.

      Tricky, I am betting on repudiation followed by hyperinflation.       Sep 19 03:01 PM
    • Banning 'Terrorism' [view article]
      Who said shorts have no effect on prices?

      Those "5 sigma" blasts are a disruption to the market's balance. You remove the weight on one side of a balanced scales and the same thing happens. They can change the reality for a few days, but no longer.

      I am selling into this make believe rally and I will buy it all back for 20% less in a week or two when these wacked out regulations are lifted.

      As a sop to the whiners they should bring back the short-uptick rule, and counterbalance that with a buy-downtick rule.

      And go back and re-read your Shakespeare. Everyone uses the "protest too much" quote in the incorrect sense.       Sep 19 02:28 PM
    • Banning 'Terrorism' [view article]
      The "evil" short sellers would not be able to drive these stocks to zero if there wasn't a widespread suspicion that they are insolvent.

      I bet all of the people whining about "massive leverage" (which does not exist in the first place, see: collateral) have no problem with investors buying on margin. Hypocrites one and all.       Sep 19 12:52 PM
    • Armageddon Postponed [view article]
      So now the question becomes whether the United States is too big to fail. Sep 19 12:36 PM
    • Who Killed Frannie? [view article]
      "ONLY A FOOL would disagree that the last 8 years has been utterly inverse between what is said and done"

      Keep believing that this has been going on only the last 8 years. And it will all be better with a different "current occupant". Right.

      Wake up. They have been lying to you for 80 years, not 8. And the current turmoil is the work of decades. We will not get out of this without war, because we will either fight our creditors, or be reduced to seizing resources by force that we are no longer able to pay for legitimately.       Sep 09 11:49 AM
    • The Fed - A True Haven for Capitalism? [view article]
      This was inevitable. Do you think Paulson wants to be up late pulling his hair (wait...) every time Fannie and Freddie have to roll over a big chunk of short term debt? Bureaucrats hate uncertainty. And now they have "fixed" it so that the GSE cannot go into a liquidity seizure. Of course the equity gets to pound sand.

      I'm anxiously waiting for follow up postings from all of the SA "contrarians"... who were long the GSEs due to their "strong earnings potential". Oops! That's gonna leave a mark.       Sep 09 08:30 AM
    • Will a 7% Mortgage Threat Doom Fannie and Freddie? [view article]
      "Disclosures: Author is long FNM and FRE."

      Well I guess somebody has to be long these companies.

      The GSEs are dead men walking for reasons mostly of their own making. The GSE shareholders and management have had how many years wetting their beaks whilst enjoying their "implicit guarantee"? Well, I guess they should have been smart enough to realize that if they ever needed to call in that market management and equity were going to be taking a beating.

      I agree with the previous poster. The only sane course now is to make the de facto nationalization official. In which case there is no reason to have two entities. Freddie was created in the first place to provide some semblance of competition for Fannie.

      Economists have shown that much of the subsidy that the GSEs were supposed to be providing to the mortgage market accrued to management and shareholders. The end of the GSEs would not mean the end of mortgage securitization.       Aug 20 03:16 PM
    • Banks Wising Up? Short Sales Increase [Housing Tracker] [view article]
      If you consider that only ~4% of houses change hands in a year, it means that roughly 1 of every 20 homes on the market are in foreclosure. And that's looking at a national average. Obviously it will be much worse than that in some places. Sound like a crisis yet? Aug 15 08:38 AM
    • NYT - 'Prime Loans About to Implode': Where's the Evidence? [view article]
      The issue with prime is that even though the prime default rates will look tame compared with the lower quality loans they are a much bigger piece of the mortgage pie. And this is coming after many lenders have had their capital decimated.

      These pollyanna's seem to think that housing will work like the hyperactive stock market where the half-life of a "story" is measured in minutes. Yes, everyone's read the same stories -- doesn't follow that it's all priced in.       Aug 05 04:48 PM
    • Which Inflation Is It Anyway? [view article]
      It matters because it's a form of theft. The lost value didn't just disappear; it went to those who got the newly minted money first. Aug 01 12:17 PM
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