Chris White

24 Comments

    • RNC / DNC: Crisis? What Crisis? [view article]
      I think it is a very fruitful correlation, which could lead on to other considerations perhaps. Three might come to mind. First, do either of the tickets have knowledge they are not talking about? Second, if they do, and were to use that knowledge would the effect be beneficial or harmful? Third, if one of them broke with the story that everything is under control etc of Paulsen and Bernanke what would the reaction be from the other and the media "Irresponsible, panic mongering, doom saying nabobs of negativism"?
      In 1932 FDR did not associate with Hoover's policies, despite immense pressure to do so, but only talked in general about his, and ran his "forgotten man" campaign. Not so bad seeming now as then, but the next shoes to drop will for sure be economic as well as financial. The present silence for sure will not last past next March!       Sep 06 12:00 PM
    • GE: Why Buying on Weakness Is an Excellent Idea [view article]
      What do you think of GE Capital and its continuing effects on the other half of the company? Aug 18 11:09 PM
    • As Mortgage Securities Disappear, What Will Replace Them? [Housing Tracker] [view article]
      I heard some computer whizz was working on packaging mortgage insecurities for resale. Naming the process "insecuritization... was found to be a problem in focus groups, it was said. Infinitely preferable were names using "relief" type words though de-stressing mortgages sounded too much like more distress. Aug 13 07:52 AM
    • A Closer Look at the Dollar Rally [view article]
      Yes, thank you for the analysis. An issue might be the source of the flows into the dollar, and the relation to what happened Friday. Is this perhaps US equity investment fleeing from emerging markets? There might be more headaches that come from the consequences of such reflows. De-leveraging, which hasn't really started after a year, goes global. Aug 09 10:34 PM
    • Home Prices in 20 Major Cities: You're OK If... [view article]
      So we're about half-way through and heading back to 1998-2002 as mean reversion? Jul 30 07:27 AM
    • Troubling Aspects to the GSE Bailout Bill [view article]
      Thank you for posting this information in the way you did. It seems, like the Resolution on Iraq which Congress voted for, to be an Enabling Act broad enough to permit anticipated and unanticipated further problems to be addressed without further recourse to Congress for approval. Perhaps the USG, through the shells of Fannie and Freddie will be taking in the mortgage portfolios of the banks which are too big and too interconnected to fail.

      It about time someone in the tech world figured out how to digitally disintermediate the country from the mess made of its finances.       Jul 18 07:27 AM
    • A Long-Term, Structural Solution to the Banking Crisis [view article]
      Why do we have one? What is the financial system for? How well is it meeting its purposes? What should it be doing? Jul 16 09:28 AM
    • Should I Buy Fannie or Freddie Stock Today? [view article]
      Depends whose money it is! Jul 14 01:26 PM
    • Housing: Barron's Calls a Bottom [view article]
      Without investment in job creation and household income?
      There's no support for housing prices till someone remembers how to create pay checks substantial enough to pay bills without borrowing. Sorry, he can have all the numbers he wants, he still needs to be able to think about what's right before he starts counting.       Jul 13 06:09 PM
    • Fed to Ease Restrictions on Private Equity Investments in Banks? It's About Time [view article]
      Are these regulations? Or are the Fedsters moving beyond the legal frame of their charter to encroach on the Congress's monopoly of obligating tax payers only through the discussion and passage of legislation? If the latter what legal guarantee do private investors have that Bernanke and the Fed Board will prevail? Their word? Is it really such a good idea, just because someone says its a good idea? Moral hazard isn't only incurred cleaning up messes, it is also incurred in the decisions made, and the process by which they are made, before the messes need to be cleaned up. Jul 01 12:33 PM
    • Are We Facing a New Wave of Sovereign Bond Defaults? [view article]
      Thank you for these thoughts. The preservation of value is an interesting question. It might be interesting to compare the U.S. present circumstance with other Third World precedents. Would not the application of the medicine the US and international institutions insisted was necessary to restructure third world debtors be an option for the US's international lenders now? It might be, for example, that the current US situation could usefully be compared with Mexico in 1982 from the standpoint of capital flight, currency over-valuation, endebtedness. The ratios of values in Mexico before and after the devaluation and restructuring of 1982 might provide a better indicator of what's ahead than comparisons with the stag-flation of the 1970's when the US economy was very different than it is now. Jun 24 03:56 PM
    • Bond Insurer Break-Up: Beware Unintended Consequences [view article]
      The NY govt probably just wants to try and separate what is arguably toxic, from what is secured against someone's taxes, even if those are real estate based. Don't they hold muni bonds as well as insure them? Wouldn't it be much cleaner if the revenues from healthy taxes were not used to provide transfusions to the toxic stuff? They might also want to do something with the structure before the CDO mess becomes a public issue like sub-primes did, don't you think? Looks like it might be a whole lot bigger and messier. Some tails get to be like that if they're not cleaned up often enough. Feb 17 07:04 PM
    • China's Inflation Hits American Price Tags [view article]
      And the 'toxic' financial products the US has sold them? Inflationary or not? What do you think? If inflationary for China, how about for the US too? If not, why the discussion about moving away from the dollar? Oh, and what about the dollar? how would you feel about one of your major assets losing more than 40% in the last few years? That might be inflationary too, wouldn't you think?

      There might be others who think there in the same position as China, mightn't there?

      Probably be a good thing to look at both sides of the story, or maybe just more than one side. There might be some benefit from that, wouldn't you agree?       Feb 04 09:10 PM
    • Who Is Jerome Kerviel? [view article]
      How on earth can anyone in their right mind tell the difference between what this one guy was doing from what everyone else who does the same thing every day in this 600 trillion dollar whatever it is does?

      Putting a face on the functionary who was playing with 70 billion whatever kind of concretises stuff. But, please, who is going to compare his 'losses' with the 'write downs' at Citi Merrill and who knows where else? What's a write down if not a leveraged bet gone bad?       Jan 26 11:55 PM
    • Fed's Folly: Fooled by Flawed Futures? [view article]
      It seems to me that Barry is pointing productively to one of the international features of what is going on, namely, the unwinding of the leverage geared up through derivative contracts. Quantifying losses, and estimating effects of losses, is difficult because the leverage ratios are not known, and because the assets which are leveraged, and re-leveraged, and re-releveraged are neither identified, nor can they be valued accurately. Therefore timescales and discount rates are black-holes. After all ground rent is included with interest in the pricing of assets as part of the 'cost' of 'producing' the asset. Where will US housing prices end up? When? How will the totality of mortgages and agreements related to mortgages be affected by the continuing slide in housing prices? How does this affect taxes and government debt.

      Soc Gen's loss must be some fraction of what was in the black-hole.
      Was it stock, commodity, mortgage or whatever-based? Who knows, probably no one will ever know. However until more attention is given to the matter of leverage unwinding as an inter-market, international process discussion about amounts and largeness or smallness of problems will miss the target. It's the barn door the target was pinned to which has disappeared. We all need to know how big the barn was and what was inside when the door disappeared to make judgements about size and evaluate effects.       Jan 25 08:07 AM
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