Archive for the 'FED' Category
Greece
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
The only reason Greece is not bankrupt now is because even as its past mistakes have caught up with it and climaxed in a solvency and liquidity crisis unseen since the Lehman days, the country’s end would bring down all of Europe. If Greece would not have impaired French, German and UK banks, the country would have long been allowed to default. Yet diversion is always a good tactic: let’s bring the “speculators” into this yet again. After all it is unheard of in these turbulent Keynesian times for anyone, especially our own Fed Chairman, to own up to their endless mistakes. It is always, without exception, someone else’s fault.
Housing bottom?
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
In short, if you believe that the economic growth since 1996 was robust enough to justify the doubling of home prices during that time, then perhaps home prices are now at the ‘correct’ levels. But if you believe that most of the economic growth since 1996 was built on bubbles and debt, then it’s hard to find a reason why homes should be twice as expensive.
Inflation may play a role in the second leg down in housing - prices would remain flat while the buying power of the almightly dollar falls. Also of note, the FED recently completed it’s 1.25 trillion buying spree of mortgage backed securites. It’ll be interesting to see where rates and the stock market head from here. Long term, it’ll be interesting to see if the FED gets back what it put in. If it doesn’t excess liquidity will be left floating around in the money supply. The next few years should be interesting.
The Empire Strikes Back
Saturday, July 11th, 2009
The
Federal ReserveEvil Empire on Thursday launched a robust defense of its independence and warned that efforts in Congress to put monetary policy under political sway would hurt theeconomyEmpire.
Fed Vice ChairmanSith Master Donald Kohn said opening up some of the U.S. central bank’s most sensitive decisions to political scrutiny could result inhigher long-term interest rates and hurt the United States’ credit ratingdiscrimination against the Sith Lords.Testifying before a congressional panel, Kohn sought to beat back a proposed bill that would open the U.S. central bank’s policy decisions to audits by
a federalan Ewok watchdog agency. More than half of the members of theU.S. House of RepresentativesEwoks have signed as co-sponsors of the measure.Kohn’s testimony comes as Congress debates
PresidentSith Lord Barack Obama’s plan for regulatory reform, which envisions theFedEvil Empire taking on an expanded role monitoring risks across the entire financial system to help ward off future financial crises.
Funny stuff from Mish.
Questions
Thursday, March 5th, 2009
One of the Congressmen asked a hard question. “Mr. Geithner can we sell the bonds necessary to fund this deficit? Are the Chinese still buying our bonds?”
Mr. Geithner responded with a full three minutes of non-answers to those questions. At the end of three minutes the Congressman repeated his questions.
For another two minutes Mr. Geithner ducked the questions. He just repeated the sound bights that had been drilled into his head.
A simple “no” would have sufficed.
Stilts
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
Overheard on the interwebs:
“By the time they announce the next announcement of an announcement, the DOW should be 5000.”
FED Balance Sheet
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
From the FED itself - the Credit and Liquidity Programs and the Balance Sheet web site. A little light on numbers, they refer you off to official tables for most of it. But the graphs and general data are informative.
Sick and Twisted
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Mortgage bailout - It’s going to work.
Busted Citi
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
“Not only is Citigroup a black hole from which no taxpayer dollars can escape, but Geithner’s brain is a black hole from which no intelligent thought can escape.”
That’s some pretty cold sh*t.
Bond Bubbles
Monday, February 9th, 2009
Enter the gods of government: the Treasury Dept. and Federal Reserve. Their task: get fearful investors out of the Treasury bond lifeboats, into the frigid high risk financial markets sea to the sinking USS FIRE Economy – where they can be put to work re-floating it.
The gods of government have so far taken a two-pronged approach: send rescue ships and boil the ocean.
Interesting
Sunday, February 8th, 2009
Averting a digital bank run -
