Lex Luz

Freddie and Fannie: Living in the Past

Interestingly, the American middle class did pretty well before the securitization miracle took hold. Back when banking was a relatively simple endeavor (hey, I said "relatively," right?) and the watchword was "know thy customer," people had to do more than fog up a mirror to borrow a half-million dollars... and yet somehow, we managed to hold up. Fannie and Freddie fulfilled an important mission. The problem, to my way of thinking, wasn't the mission or even the implied government intervention in capital markets. The problem was runaway greed and the foolish belief that the party would never, ever, EVER end. It's a problem shared by virtually everyone, from the treasonous monsters currently occupying every federal government office, to the foul cretins in the executive suites (and formerly in the executive suites - yes, you, Uncle Angelo, and you too, Dave, you foul, soulless slime), right down to the cash-out-equity-tappin... hummer-driving, sybaritic suburbanites who couldn't bear the thought of setting aside a few bucks a month and waiting a year to "upgrade" your media rooms.

The only thing that's missing from America today is the courage to face ourselves and get to work solving the ONLY national security issue in front of us: debt and the necessity to take the pain of the great unwind. Unfortunately, because that courage is missing, we are all but unquestionably finished as a "superpower." This, by the way, is exactly how every other empire came crashing to the ground, and so in the final analysis it is really true what they say:

The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history.

Fannie Mae: The Next Six Months Are Key

The notion that 2008 will be the peak of the crisis is ludicrous in my view. Certainly a lot of the 2/28 Option-ARM trash is washing out this year, but the 2007 vintage will be even more foul. More importantly for the GSEs are the 3/1, 5/1, & 7/1 ARMs made through 2007 that will re-set between now and 2011. As mortgage rates rise and housing prices come under even greater pressure, prime borrowers who bought these products are going to start producing the jingle mail at pretty alarming rates.

By that time the GSEs will likely all have been nationalized and it will be the taxpayers' problem to sort out. If you're an individual investor, I'd be staying far away from Fan & Fred except on a trading basis. Everyone will be screaming about how we've hit a bottom in housing long, long, long before the last big leg(s) down.

Bust, Bail, Repeat: The U.S. Enters into an Ever-Worsening Cycle

The destruction of the dollar has been a planned and willful act, carried out by Fed Governors with the full cooperation of the Treasury Department and the entirety of Congress dating back at least to the 1990s. How much longer will Americans be hoodwinked by the delusion that accumulating cheap crap from China makes us rich?

We are standing at the gates of hell, facing the Cerberus: one head is the national debt, another the current account deficit, and another our total dependence on imported oil. We have allowed ourselves to be led here - and make no mistake, we the voters are absolutely responsible for having put criminals into every office in the government for damned near 30 years - by the illusion of prosperity, created by the willful, planned destruction of our currency through rampant, systemic, unimaginably massive inflation of the money supply. Cheap crap for everyone! Never mind about your real purchasing power...

If you care at all about the future of America, you absolutely MUST vote out EVERY SINGLE INCUMBENT in office. It is time to start over. If I recall correctly, I believe it was Jefferson who said that "from time to time, the tree of liberty must be fertilized with the blood of tyrants." Tyrants rule our nation today, and at this moment we can spill their blood symbolically by kicking them out of office. These people are traitors, one and all. Every. Last. One.

Saving Fannie and Freddie

Given that shadow Bush advisor Grover Norquist has repeatedly called for the United States Government to accelerate the growth of the national debt past the point of insolvency in order to force a government "so small you could drown it in a bathtub," he's probably among the biggest proponents of nationalizing Fannie & Freddie immediately.

Make no mistake: the people in office today are traitors and fascists, advised by traitors and fascists. Absolutely every sitting member of the executive and legislative branches, and the majority of the judiciary, is complicit in the willful, planned destruction of this nation. Most members of the so-called "liberal media" are complicit in the quiet fascist takeover of the United States as well.

I believe that by the end of 2012 there will be blood in America's streets. What we're seeing today is just the very beginning of the planned unraveling of this nation, and all of us who have voted for Republicans (especially) or Democrats (no better) over the past 28 years have participated quite fully in it.