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That is how one street salesman described the mortgage market in an email a little while ago. He noted that the FNMA 4 1/2s were down a point on the day while the 6 1/2s are better by 5/32. The basis versus swaps moved from a couple tighter to about 5 ticks wider. The up in coupon trade has broken to new tights and the street is rife with rumors of one or more dealers sitting on very large losses on that trade. That simply means that the higher coupon mortgages have significantly outperformed the low coupons. Just look at the performance I noted at the beginning of this piece of 4 1/2s versus 6s. As the spread has moved outside of some historic parameters dealers and others would bet on the move ending and to the extent that they guessed wrong they might be looking at a career changing event. Anyway the point is that there is blood in the streets somewhere.
Money managers reportedly chose to book some profits on that trade today. And finally the selling by servicers and originators has been described as ferocious.
I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Dear Lee,
We know you are dirty and we are coming after you. We are looking everywhere and we will find enough to indict you in the near future. Even if the evidence is bubkiss you are going to trial. We will pick the jurisdiction and the jurors. With your tan and reputation we will get a jury to convict you. So you are looking at hard time. Why don’t you come in with some lawyers and we can talk this over. If you are willing to write a big check, say $250mm, well, maybe we can make this go away. Look forward to hearing from you,
The SEC
Bernard Madoff probably had large sums of money in offshore accounts that will never be recovered, whistle-blower Harry Markopolos said at a financial conference at Boston College last night.
"The investors who took distributions for sometimes decades took a heck of a lot more out of this than they put in," he said.
Beyond the well-known funds like Fairfield Greenwich, Markopolos alleged, there are probably other large investors staying below the radar so they won't be forced to repay the gains they reaped from investing with Madoff.
Many see the global economic crisis as proof that we live in one world. But as countries stumble to right the wrongs of the corporate masters of the universe, they are driving us right back to a future that looks like nothing more than a new Middle Ages, that centuries-long period of amorphous conflict from the fifth to the 15th century when city-states mattered as much as countries.
The state isn’t a universally representative phenomenon today, if it ever was. Already, billions of people live in imperial conglomerates such as the European Union, the Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the emerging North American Union, where state capitalism has become the norm. But at least half the United Nations’ membership, about 100 countries, can hardly be considered responsible sovereigns. Billions live unsure of who their true rulers are, whether local feudal lords or distant corporate executives. In Egypt and India, democratic elections have devolved into auctions. Delivering security and providing welfare aren’t just campaign promises; they are the campaign. The fragmentation of societies from within is clear: From Bogotá to Bangalore, gated communities with private security are on the rise.
A significant quantity of gold, silver and other precious metals is unaccounted for at the Royal Canadian Mint.
External auditors are investigating a discrepancy between the mint's 2008 financial accounting of its precious metals holdings and the physical stockpile at the plant on Sussex Drive in Ottawa.
The mystery raises possibilities from sloppy bookkeeping to a gold heist.
In declaring secession illegal, and the U.S. a consolidated state, Abraham Lincoln enacted the first income tax, the first draft, supported internal improvements and nationalizing banks. Such centralizing, socialistic and militaristic restructuring of America was certainly more comparable to the fascism that defined Hitler’s Germany than the agrarian-based economies and loose-knit state militias that defined the Confederate States of America.
Discussion of the 50% Retracement Rule,
potential future price levels, time studies, key dates, Fibonacci, Gann, Astro numbers, Robert Rhea's Great Depression analysis.
We, in America, are deep in the midst of a four-sided crisis. The first side is an economic slump; second, surprisingly, is our government's panicky efforts to stabilize the situation; third, the imminent peaking of fossil fuels and numerous other resources that seems to be in abeyance for the moment; and fourth, global warming which in the long run could overshadow the other three by a wide margin and is attracting considerable amounts of government and Congressional attention. The important point is that the four aspects of what could easily turn out to be the mega-crisis of the century are all interrelated. Developments in any of the four will cause perturbations for better or worse in the others.
Most believe our current economic problem was caused by the extension of too much credit, too freely, and to the wrong people, over the last 30-40 years. Some, however, are suspicious that the many-fold run-up in oil prices from their historic $10 or $20 a barrel that sopped up so much consumer purchasing power may have had more than a little to do with our current economic problems.
Zero Hedge knows when to admit it is wrong. We criticize the National Association Of Realtors for being moochers, for doing all they can (which isn't much) to support the zombie GSEs (on the taxpayers' back) so the organization can continue its existence for another day or two. Yet, when the NAR's spokesperson Frances Martinez Myers, who is also an SVP at Fox and Roach, appears in congress, before a House Committee on Financial Services no less, with roots that have not been retouched in well over a month, our collective heartstrings are torn, we shed a collective tear for her misused hairstylist (likely residing in some General Growth Properties owned mall), and admit that things at the NAR must be really, really, really bad.
Instead of paying taxes, we advise our readers to submit bottles of Clairol to lovely Ms. Martinez, who, seeing how nationalized Fannie and Freddie beg for the paltry sum of $150 billion or so every couple of months, will likely have to make many more appearances before the unflattering 640x480 resolution cameras of the House.
