RudyInNY

Treasury's Plan Is Breathtakingly Awful

The cluelessness can be wrapped up in the following statement : "From a bazoka in the pocket to a live AK-47 firing bullets at random". They sure have taken the american tax payers for a ride.

The Auction-Rate Security Mess: Read the Writing on the Wall

"As reported, UBS (UBS), Merrill Lynch (MER), and Citigroup (C) alone have committed to buying back more than $36 billion of the securities."

Where do the Citi, Merill and UBS get the money to buy back the securities ? Why would the issuer ( say the municipalities) redeem the securities because the brokers misled the investors ?

The Impending Mortgage Crisis

Oh, I forgot to add that... Once everyone has taken advantage of the low interest rates, the Fed is going to start raising the rates, at which point the dollar is going to move up. As this happens, the equity market is going to start going up ( contrary to the belief), because of demand from International investors, thus benefiting US investors. This is going to compensate many stuck with negative home equity. So at the end of 2010, the US economy will be back on track, roaring for another boom !

The Impending Mortgage Crisis

Regarding Figure 1.7 : This graph is as of 2007. Since then the interest rate has gone down and people may have refinanced to a 30 year fixed mortgage. So they are not going to face interest rate risk. Yes, Their houses may have negative equity. But they can always hang in there hoping for the price of the houses to go up.

A Debate Over Citi

I think Citi has a good chance of going up by 10 bucks rather than going down by 10. Whatever said, quite a good amt of bad news is already factored in the current price. The US recession, credit card defaults, credit meltdown etc are going to hold down the US growth for a while. But Asia, ME are going to be the key in providing the good news for Citi. It may not have material effect on the balance sheet but the good news is going to have a psychological impact on investors and this is going keep investors pushing it back up whenever it goes too low.