Pent up demand

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.

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.

Financials: How - And When - We Reached the Bottom

Don't count your money while you're still at the table.

"Pick-a-Pay" Defaults Deepen - Housing Tracker

I agree with you ArnoldCountry that the lenders were crazy to offer those types of mortgages to "normal" buyers. Those mortgages were designed for people with uneven monthly cashflow; people who get paid primarily in large bonuses a few times a year.

But this is what you get when the originator doesn't have to hold the paper. He can tell himself that the customer will refinance in a couple years or sell the place for a profit so that he can sleep at night. Then he pockets his origination fee and moves on to the next guy.