phantomfivefive

Unemployment's Surprisingly Large Drop

"...we had our first significant indicator of what results to expect because of the swift policy actions of our Federal Reserve leaders."

Is this guy for real?

The Plague of Short-Termism

Dead right. You touched on a few different ways short-termism is hurting us. I think the last one you mentioned, executive compensation, is a biggie. Would financial CEOs have made the decisions they did during this giant credit bubble if their incentives weren't so badly skewed toward maximizing short term results? No way.

The Blame Game, Part I: The Short-Seller Witch Hunt

Glassbox, when you say there's no symmetry between a buy and a short, you've got the symmetry idea wrong. The symmetry exists between the short followed by it's eventual cover, and the buy followed by its eventual sell. Both situations involve a buy and a sell. The only difference is in the order in which they occur. If a party is allowed to speculate that prices will rise, then they should also be allowed to speculate that they will fall. It's that simple, and it's pathetic that that should have to be pointed out.

MBIA: Moody's Twists the Knife

Berkshire entered the market precisely because of the opportunity created by the stupidity of the monolines themselves. There may indeed be a future in the bond insurance business, but not for anyone who is currently on the hook for multibillions in CDS's on toxic MBS. That pretty much disqualifies MBI and ABK. Sorry, but Ackman has been right all along. It's all over but the shouting, which is beginning now.

Investment Banks: Through a Glass, Darkly

You know that accounting rule that allows you to book a gain on a mark-to-market writedown of your own debt? How much of that was in Morgan Stanley's earnings?

Inflation Triangle Dilemma: Dollar / Oil / Euro

Nice job of stating the totally obvious.

"The big problem with a weak dollar is that it is somehow correlated to the rising oil prices"

Somehow? That's like saying that overdoses are "somehow" correlated with drug use.

Also, there seems to be a problem with your reasoning with respect to the "triangle" premise of this article. Would anyone care to point it out?

Housing Prices Expected to Bottom in 2010, 21% Off '06 Highs

Yoski's analysis makes the most sense. But estimates on the severity of the decline depend on too many other things, such as the general trend of the economy (down) and how the fed will try to deal with that (massive inflation?). Assumptions based on returns to historical norms only tell part of the story. Still, I expect the decline will be on the more severe side of the estimates I've seen.

It's interesting to see FuckYouAssMonkies talk about "the bottom" in terms of price/sq. ft. I've often thought that that would be a more useful measure than the median prices that we see talked about all the time. Finding price/sq. ft. data isn't easy, however.