Niner

Meanwhile, Frank Rich makes a compelling case for Tiger Woods as the true Man of the Year: "His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade's flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy)." Great read.

If you're going to jump Tiger, jump every baseball, football and basketball player for the last quarter century. They've been hammering anything that would lay down.

The FDIC celebrates the last business-as-usual Friday of the year by announcing a total of seven bank failures, bringing the year's total to a nice round 140. Banks were closed in California (2), Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Florida, Alabama and Illinois. Total assets of the seven banks were $14.4B. Estimated cost to FDIC: $1.8B.

"The 1980s and early 1990s mark a period of financial distress unparalleled in U.S. history since the Great Depression. From 1980-1992, 4,695 federally insured institutions with assets of $665 billion failed and were resolved at an estimated present-value cost of $165 billion ( Barth and Jahera, 1994)."

Ain't even close. 4695 failures over a 13 year period is an average of 361 per year. If the cost was 165 billion in 1994, what you that be today? It's bad. But, it has been worse.


On Dec 19 01:36 PM Need2Learn wrote:

> I think it's worse then the S&L mess. We'll soon see, staring
> next year.

The FDIC celebrates the last business-as-usual Friday of the year by announcing a total of seven bank failures, bringing the year's total to a nice round 140. Banks were closed in California (2), Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Florida, Alabama and Illinois. Total assets of the seven banks were $14.4B. Estimated cost to FDIC: $1.8B.

It's bad. But, not as bad as the failures during the Savings and Loan debacle of the 80s and 90s.

More signs of housing confidence, as lenders are easing down-payment standards for some applicants, who can borrow 95% of a home's value instead of 90%. Changes are happening on a market-by-market basis, but indicate some companies think the worst is over for price declines.

My initial opinion is that the majority of you are ultra conservative assholes. But then I could be wrong.

You guys just don't understand because you have never been there.

The Economic Cycle Research Institute's weekly gauge of future growth rose again, to summer 2008 levels, on strength in commodities. The forecasters' Weekly Leading Index gained to 130.7 from the prior week's 130.2, and its growth is accelerating - to 24.7% annualized.

My Ex-father-in-law was a Doom and Gloomer and conspiracy theorist for forty years. He died never seeing any of of his doom and gloom predictions come true. This "Great Recession" might have come close to fullfilling one of his predictions. He's been dead for 10 years. So once every 50 years ain't.

I see signs of recovery. You Doom and Gloom Bears see cover ups and conspiracies. Just like last months good unemployement numbers. Bears screamed conspiracy and coverup. The Canadian unemployement figures were just as good. I guess Obama has convinced the Canadians to lie too. Yea, right. You Doomers and Gloomers are the ones that need to get a grip.

The Economic Cycle Research Institute's weekly gauge of future growth rose again, to summer 2008 levels, on strength in commodities. The forecasters' Weekly Leading Index gained to 130.7 from the prior week's 130.2, and its growth is accelerating - to 24.7% annualized.

On a rather quiet morning the rustling of a green shoot wakes two of Seeking Alpha Bears and they savagely pounced upon the little shoot trying desperately to destroy it before it can sow seed s of optimism and hope and forever destroy the Great Grizzly's cavern of gloom and despair.

Citigroup (C) wins an IRS decision to forgo billions of dollars in taxes to help the bank repay its TARP loans. Tax law limits the transfer of previous losses to new ownership, a condition triggered by the government's sale of its 34% stake in Citi combined with Citi's share sales. The IRS ruling (.pdf) stipulates that the government's share sale does not count toward the definition of an ownership change.

definitely agree with the Med care statement.......


On Dec 16 10:57 AM Poor Texan wrote:

> And Citigroups connections again save the day. Let's have one set
> of rules for the elite and another for the masses. Just as we have
> one set of medical care for the elite and one for the masses.

The Fed Open Market Committee began its meeting on time today, and nobody expects any real change in the statement it produces tomorrow - but those forecasts often aren't worth the paper they're printed on, says Caroline Baum. Policy could do an about-face; the bank's road to neutral has a lot of potholes.

And the point is? The Feds may change their mind. Da, isn't here something important to write about?

Toyota (TM) plans to sell its plug-in hybrid vehicles globally in two years, though with a modest initial target of tens of thousands of vehicles per year. The car will be a version of the Prius - with an electric motor as well as a small combustion engine - that plugs into a standard outlet and gets about 134 mpg.

It is my understanding that loss during transmission is the big thing on electricity. Come on surely there is an engineer out there that knows exactly.


On Dec 14 12:18 PM jabberwolf wrote:

> I kind of agree but only with the numbers.
>
> That phosphate lithium batteries (and other similar tech.) have been
> tested to death, at last at least 100,000 miles with repeated charging.
> The old tech of the prius batteries are well tested for repeated
> charges and seem to answer that question.
>
> But...
> To get that number for 14.5 miles with gasoline around $3 a gallon,
> the charge would have to be around 32 cents. That seems a bit low
> for an over night charge. An overnight charge to get 14.5 miles
> seems to be a bit much of work. That and the 134 mpg amount is not
> an average, it's just the amount you would get for the 14.5 miles.
>
> I'm not sure that's the average amount of miles traveled by a commuting
> driver per day.
>
> Comparing to the Volt's 40 miles per charge at around 1 dollar, and
> falling within the realm of average miles traveled per day, the Prius
> doesn't seem to compare.
>
> PS- Electricity is a very efficient use of energy. Combustion engines
> ( gasoline) in comparison are very inefficient. Its always the conversion
> of 1 medium of containing energy to another where you get loss. For
> example, using electricity to get hydrogen, only to convert hydrogen
> back to electricity to use - its a very large waste. The power plants
> convert fuel to electricity/energy much more efficiently than your
> car combustion engine does.

Toyota (TM) plans to sell its plug-in hybrid vehicles globally in two years, though with a modest initial target of tens of thousands of vehicles per year. The car will be a version of the Prius - with an electric motor as well as a small combustion engine - that plugs into a standard outlet and gets about 134 mpg.

I was always told that electricity was a very inefficient method of using energy. I remember (correctly or incorrectly) that 2/3 of the energy input was lost mostly in transmission. Now we charge batteries with I'm sure some loss and the we drive an electric motor that I would be really surprised if it is 100% efficient.

Someone out there knows the answer to this question. It gets 134 mpg per gallon of gas. But, what is the energy cost converted to dollars and cents per mile vs. a standard car that gets 30 mpg. What is the carbon footprint. Is it really as good a deal as it sounds?

David Rosenberg predicts heightened volatility in 2010, as the VIX creeps back up to the 30-40 range. He says investors have become complacent in a hurry, as witnessed by the low cost of buying index puts, and thinks sovereign risk could be one of the big stories next year: "Whatever bad assets that have been resolved in this credit crisis have almost entirely been placed on the books of governments and central banks."

Opinions, opinions, opinions. I for one am not going to sell the farm because of this man's opinion. I'm just going to try and be more alert to market conditions. there was a 5 year rally from june 02 till jan 08 according to the charts I have. According to that this one has just barely got started. I'm not going to sell the farm on that either!

As expected, government paymaster Kenneth Feinberg sets a $500K salary limit for hundreds of middle executives at four companies in his purview ([[AIG]], [[C]], GM, GMAC) - with fewer than a dozen exceptions. (MW)

I think they should double the max tax rate for anything over 500K. Just a little help for the deficit.

Three lunchtime reads: 1) The one thing you need to know about the markets 2) Housing: On equity 'cushions' and negative equity 3) Twelve reasons the job market is worse than you think

Unemployment is horrendous, terrible, catastrophic and the actual figure is in greater than the BLS figure shows. We all know that. But, the BLS figure is the figure we use. We always use it knowing that it is not 100% accurate. But, if we use the same yard stick everytime, then everytime we measure it is either shorter or longer, greater or lesser than before. You can't jump from one to the other. If you're driving your car, you don't use someone elses gas gauge because it is more accurate. If you do, your fat ass is going to be walking.

Two-thirds of Americans want the government to spend more money on job creation and tax the rich to pay the bill, according to a new poll by Bloomberg. While the public sees both unemployment and the deficit as a threat, anxiety over unemployment is higher: 8/10 respondents call unemployment a high risk to the economy, while 7/10 say the same about the deficit.

Sounds like a plan to me.... Change the tax code and tax the amount of bonuses and pay packages over X dollars at double the current max rate.

China executes a former securities trader for embezzlement, the first person in the industry to be put to death. "Preserve your moral integrity and don't set too much store by business results," Yang Yanming said just before dying. He took the whereabouts of 65M yuan ($9.5M) of the misappropriated funds with him to the grave.

Another interesting concept that might work here (US).