Whiskers
It's a small world
- Joined
- 21 August 2007
- Posts
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Agree there... self interest far more common.
arrr, well now, the problem is that common sense is not all that common
Yeah, agree to some extent MRC &Co.
The PPP thing came up out of a bit of a tiff I had with dukka about... not sure how it started now. You'll have to read back the thread.
No doubt a lot of head aches to come in the bond insurance business... self interest of the rating agencies... a change of rating system or splitting up of insurers. Be interesting to see who wins out there. The Rating agencies have 'threatened' action ages ago but interestingly have not followed through. I guess it would not be very pleasent in their shoes if a subsequent inquiry found the stalemate or disaster of rating downgrades had a smell of unjustified anomolies and self-interest.
Interesting to note the muni bonds are safer than the bond insurers. Get a reasonable fix here and most of our worries go away for now.
Muni bonds are not the problem. the problem is the billions of worthless CDO crap that the monolines have insured.
February 21, 2008, 7:36 am
Muni mess: Another black eye for Wall Street
The mess in an obscure corner of the municipal bond market is turning into another black eye for the banking industry. Bloomberg reports that the collapse of the $342 billion market for so-called auction rate bonds “demonstrates that regulators are no match for Wall Street.” Dealers such as Goldman Sachs (GS), Citi (C) and Merrill Lynch (MER) previously propped the market up by bidding for bonds that otherwise would have gone unsold, but they are now walking away from this once-lucrative niche in a bid to preserve their own strained balance sheets. Auctions failed on between $80 billion and $85 billion of auction-rate debt failed last week alone, The Wall Street Journal reports. As a result, even high-quality bond issuers such as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have ended up paying interest rates as high as 20 percent after the auctions for their bonds failed to draw any bidders.
The government hasn’t been totally blind to the possible conflicts of interest in the auction rate market: An earlier SEC probe of possible bid-rigging ended with 15 banks agreeing in 2006 to a $13 million settlement. Now, however, taxpayers are left footing the bill as Wall Street seeks to save its own hide. Meanwhile, understatement remains the order of the day in Washington. Referring to the possibility of bid-rigging in the auction rate market, an SEC official tells Bloomberg that the recent collapse of demand at auction “appears to indicate those concerns were well founded.”
http://dailybriefing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/02/21/muni-mess-another-black-eye-for-wall-street/
Yeah, I get that dhukka.
I should've reversed my last two sentences and into seperate paragraphs. It would have been clearer.
But in a sense the muni bonds seem to be a problem in that they are far more secure and deserve a higher rating than a lot of the stuff they are rated along side. Obviously part of the dilema in trying to get value for and determine what to split off and or sell.
The other issue that has been brewing for awhile and might be coming to a head re further intervention/regulation is poiniently outlined below.
Well the Philly fed turned into Philly cream cheese,,, giving the Dow futures a bit of a knock... but if it's bad news it won't take long to pick up... after all bad news is good news..
Cheers
..........Kauri
China farmers to get fridges, TVs to boost consumption
"This is like free food falling from the sky!"
Yuan was the beneficiary of a pilot scheme entitling each rural family in Shandong and two other provinces to a 13 percent government rebate on the purchase of up to two television sets, two refrigerators and two mobile handsets.
The subsidies are part of a battery of policies by Beijing aimed at spurring domestic consumption and improving the lot of the country's roughly 740 million rural residents, who make up 56 percent of the population but have not benefited nearly as much from the economy's roaring growth as people in cities.
The concept is enticingly simple: give farmers the same tax rebates long given to exporters of home appliances, removing a policy bias towards exports and helping manufacturers tap a potentially huge pool of consumers in rural China.
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSPEK26642620080221?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
Well... they almost got over it... having another think about it!
Turning back to that China 'decoupling' thing...:hide:
The're clever little critters. This one's a bit out of left field, but just might work.
now all they need is the power to make them more than ornaments..
Cheers
.........Kauri
the Fed's predicament is pretty hair-raising, with Bernanke and co willing to risk a battle with inflation over the medium to longer-term if it means keeping the housing-led credit crisis from sending the US economy into a tailspin in the near-term. That bet leaves the dollar vulnerable, particularly if the Fed is seen as losing both bets simultaneously, which recent data appear to suggest. Of course there is a 2-3 qtr lag between monetary stimulus and the economic payoff, so some are still betting on better US economic performance by mid-year, which may help the buck.
Well... they almost got over it... having another think about it!
Turning back to that China 'decoupling' thing...:hide:
The're clever little critters. This one's a bit out of left field, but just might work.
This has go to be one of the stupidest things I've seen for a while. The government desperately encouraging people to buy crap they don't need
to keep people in jobs.
Yeah there's a viable economic model.
Crap they don't need... wow, I'd have thought everyone needs a fridge, TV and phone these days. Common dhukka your're not being very charitable.
And you have to agree if they can pull it off it will enpower the rural poor to be more productive and efficient, to bridge the povety gap, probably enable more to stay in the country resulting in less conjestion and pollution in the cities.
The bit I like... it will reduce their increasing reliance on exports for their GDP and, as I say if they can pull it off, will be great for the continued prosperity of China and further decoupling from the US.
The Phily caught them at the trough .
That's the third successive number below zero , the fourth decline in a row ......... there's no recession out there , and pigs fly .
The ISM readings ......... well . apart from thinking the data is being squashed and moulded into something sheeple can swallow , is starting to sempahore that they can't hold back the numbers now .
Let's just have a look at the last round before we hit oh I don't know , say around 45 this go , but this was discussed a couple of months ago , I know couldn't find where so I thought I rehash it .
50.4 blip
50.0
48.4
50.7 blip
47.0 last reading
???? next ?
although it's debatable whether the rural poor need a mobile phone or even a TV for that matter.
I would completely disagree, how does a TV make you more productive and efficient? The whole policy screams of inefficiency, using government money to artificially stimulate demand for discretionary items (fridge excluded).
You would have to be kidding. Any form of communication especially phones but also Yes the idiot box is known to increase health and education for the disadvantaged. Which plainly increases productivity and efficiency?
Wealth distribution to the rural poor with targeted subsidies is a tactic that virtually every western governments uses. And its ultimately a very cheap way to decrease the gap between rural and urban disadvantage. A Fridge is a huge help to families thus increasing their productivity. You cannot see the disadvantage in not being able to store food??
Americans are the biggest watcher's of TV in the world and how's their health? The poorest and least healthy in the US, also watch the most TV, go figure. Most in the western world could improve their education if they turned off the TV and picked up a book or logged in to an informative discussion board like ASF.
Most in the western world could improve their education if they turned off the TV and picked up a book or logged in to an informative discussion board like ASF.
Most in the western world could improve their education if they turned off the TV and picked up a book or logged in to an informative discussion board like ASF.
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