Pent up demand

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+2 / -4

106 Comments

    • Wed Oct 1st 15:54 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Nixing 'Mark to Market' Won't Solve the Problem
      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.
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    • Fri Sep 19th 15:03 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      New Game, New Rules
      "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.
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    • Fri Sep 19th 15:01 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Armageddon Postponed
      Past Tense, I am a big reader of history, so yes I agree.

      Tricky, I am betting on repudiation followed by hyperinflation.
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    • Fri Sep 19th 14:28 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Banning 'Terrorism'
      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.
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    • Fri Sep 19th 12:52 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Banning 'Terrorism'
      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.
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    • Fri Sep 19th 12:36 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Armageddon Postponed
      So now the question becomes whether the United States is too big to fail.
      View article »
    • Tue Sep 9th 11:49 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Who Killed Frannie?
      "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.
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    • Tue Sep 9th 08:30 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Fed - A True Haven for Capitalism?
      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.
      View article »
    • Wed Aug 20th 15:16 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Will a 7% Mortgage Threat Doom Fannie and Freddie?
      "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.
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    • Fri Aug 15th 08:38 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Banks Wising Up? Short Sales Increase [Housing Tracker]
      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?
      View article »
    • Tue Aug 5th 16:48 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      NYT - 'Prime Loans About to Implode': Where's the Evidence?
      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.
      View article »
    • Fri Aug 1st 12:17 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Which Inflation Is It Anyway?
      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.
      View article »
    • Tue Jul 22nd 16:29 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Financials: How - And When - We Reached the Bottom
      Oh, I knew it must be Bush's fault. What are you people with Bush Derangement Syndrome going to do next January? You'll have to start blaming everything on garden gnomes or water sprites I suppose.

      You can lay all this at the feet of progressives, winslow. I mean the original progressives back at the turn of the 20th century who gave us the Federal Reserve system and the income tax. They set in motion the economic forces that are coming to bear on us today.
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    • Tue Jul 22nd 13:27 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Financials: How - And When - We Reached the Bottom
      Under what sort of accounting do we spend 60% of the government budget on the military?

      As for the article, I would point out there was a similarly sized rally in financials from August to October last year, which has of course turned out to be a sucker's rally.

      I think the scenario an investor needs to think very hard about is a situation where businesses start cutting jobs in a bigger way. What happens if official unemployment rises from these historically low levels? Then the other shoe would drop on the HELOC and credit card areas. Not a prediction; but in that scenario even the healthier banks will suffer badly.
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    • Tue Jul 22nd 10:40 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Financials: How - And When - We Reached the Bottom
      Don't count your money while you're still at the table.
      View article »
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