Dow at 14000

[quote]hedo wrote:
The DOW hit 14000 yesterday. S&P also set a record. Fairly big news in the world of finance.[/quote]

Broke below 13000 today. There just too much chaos in Wahington and word on the street is that Countrywide Mortgage (a big one) might go belly up.

The Fed better step in fast. The addict (addicted to fiat money) wants his fix NOW.

I am getting crushed. I am too leveraged and am losing a ton. Shame on me, though.

But the dollar is getting stronger against the Euro,the swiss franc, the british pound, but not the yen.

[quote]jp_dubya wrote:
I am getting crushed. I am too leveraged and am losing a ton. Shame on me, though.

But the dollar is getting stronger against the Euro,the swiss franc, the british pound, but not the yen.[/quote]

The Fed is draining the banking system. Something is up…

Liquidity is gone.

Not a single high yield deal has been done for the past 2+ weeks straight.

The investment banks on the street are choking on 300+ billion of LBO bridge loans they can not move off their balance sheet repackaging as CDOs.

Not only is the subprime market dead…so is the prime and prime+ market. Real estate values are plummeting like its 1929.

The dollar is getting stronger only because the hedge funds have to fund withdrawals with dollars as most of their clients want dollars as a form of payment.

I am in treasury backed money market funds and inverse S&P 500 ETFs.

This is going to be bad.

FYI - Foreign currency is not a good bet…contrary to what HH believes. This S is global.

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Liquidity is gone.

Not a single high yield deal has been done for the past 2+ weeks straight.

The investment banks on the street are choking on 300+ billion of LBO bridge loans they can not move off their balance sheet repackaging as CDOs.

Not only is the subprime market dead…so is the prime and prime+ market. Real estate values are plummeting like its 1929.

The dollar is getting stronger only because the hedge funds have to fund withdrawals with dollars as most of their clients want dollars as a form of payment.

I am in treasury backed money market funds and inverse S&P 500 ETFs.

This is going to be bad.

FYI - Foreign currency is not a good bet…contrary to what HH believes. This S is global.[/quote]

Welcome back, MD! Been a while…

If you have to be in a currency, its hard to beat Swiss Francs. That was my point.

I WAS wondering why the dollar was rising. Good info!!

PROTOCOL No. 21
[i]…We shall replace the money markets by grandiose government credit institutions, the object of which will be to fix the price of industrial values in accordance with government views. These institutions will be in a position to fling upon the market five hundred millions of industrial paper in one day, or to buy up for the same amount.

In this way all industrial undertakings will come into dependence upon us. You may imagine for yourselves what immense power we shall thereby secure for ourselves…[/i]

Fed Injects Liquidity To Unfreeze Credit
The Federal Reserve injected $38 billion into the banking system in three operations Friday, attempting to avert a credit crunch that could threaten the economy.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/IBD-0001-18826476.htm

Stocks Tumble After Fed Adds Liquidity
Central banks worldwide have supplied billions of funds to banks over the past week to make cash available for lending and keep interest rates stable amid signs that credit was drying up.

On Wednesday, the Fed said it would accept a “repo” of $7 billion, in which it buys that amount in securities from dealers, who then deposit the money into commercial banks.

PROTOCOL No. 6
[i]1. We shall soon begin to establish huge monopolies, reservoirs of colossal riches, upon which even large fortunes of the GOYIM will depend to such an extent that they will go to the bottom together with the credit of the States on the day after the political smash…

  1. You gentlemen here present who are economists, just strike an estimate of the significance of this combination!

  2. In every possible way we must develop the significance of our Super-Government by representing it as the Protector and Benefactor of all those who voluntarily submit to us.

  3. The aristocracy of the GOYIM as a political force, is dead - We need not take it into account; but as landed proprietors they can still be harmful to us from the fact that they are self-sufficing in the resources upon which they live.

It is essential therefore for us at whatever cost to deprive them of their land. This object will be best attained by increasing the burdens upon landed property - in loading lands with debts. These measures will check land-holding and keep it in a state of humble and unconditional submission.[/i]

U.S. Foreclosure Filings Jump to Record in First Half
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afjq9WCz.Zy8&refer=home#

Heavy losses sweep world markets
Shares on Wall Street have mirrored losses elsewhere, as uncertainty over the impact of turmoil in the US sub-prime lending market persisted.

US sparks worldwide panic

Big Bank Failure Could Turn Credit Crunch Into Global Crash
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3430bank_failure_crash.html

Proud to be a “conspiracy theorist”

I am in awe of the utter ignorance embodied in these conspiracy posts. May I please have the last 30 seconds of my life back?

From one of JTF’s links:

“That triggering condition continues to worsen rapidly. On July 27, following the announcement of big new falls in both new-home and existing-home sales in the United States in June, Moody’s Economy.com, a division of the ratings agency, issued a dire new analysis of the mortgage credit market by its chief economist, Mark Zandi. That analysis was that the housing-market plunge will continue for at least another year, at which time, average home prices will be 10% below their level of the beginning of 2006. Such a price collapse has not happened since the early 1930s, during the Great Depression. Moody’s forecast U.S. unemployment to jump as a result. Two days earlier, the CEO of Countrywide, the largest American mortgage lender, said the condition of the home market had no precedent except the Great Depression.”

That’s not part of any conspiracy theory.

With regard to the Protocols: it is said that they have been debunked. About this I’m not sure. I think of them like I think of the Report From Iron Mountain — may be a hoax but sure seems prophetic.

Note: My mother was a Jew which makes me one, and I don’t find the Protocols offensive at all. If some international bankers, Jewish or not, are trying to implement such a scheme, their balls should be roasted over a slow fire.

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Welcome back, MD! Been a while…

If you have to be in a currency, its hard to beat Swiss Francs. That was my point.

I WAS wondering why the dollar was rising. Good info!!
[/quote]

The Swiss banks have bought our sub prime CDOs too.

There really is no safe haven.

Just about everyone is going to lose in this. The trick is to limit the loss.

There is no valid conspiracy theory but the Eeyores were right.

It is all about greed.

It is funny to watch Cramer and Kudlow cry for the Fed to intervene.

It is called the free market for a reason…easy come, easy go.

Get over it!

We have 2 CLO CDOs stuck in our warehouse and we are replacing the current loans with new debt that is at LIBOR +400 bips.

A Distressed CLO CDO fund is being ramped up right now.

BB - What is going on in your neck of the woods?

SIVs look like the only safe port in this current storm.

This is a traders market. Stay out if your not in. If you are, take advantage of the dips.

Ma and Pa are paying the mortgage. The subprime mess will sort itself out. Plenty of cash out there and lot’s of qualified buyers have to live somewhere. The homes will just be smaller.

If you are scared stay away. It creates too much anxiety. Buy financials on bad news, sell on good.

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
There is no valid conspiracy theory but the Eeyores were right.

It is all about greed.

It is funny to watch Cramer and Kudlow cry for the Fed to intervene.

It is called the free market for a reason…easy come, easy go.

Get over it!

We have 2 CLO CDOs stuck in our warehouse and we are replacing the current loans with new debt that is at LIBOR +400 bips.

A Distressed CLO CDO fund is being ramped up right now.

BB - What is going on in your neck of the woods?

SIVs look like the only safe port in this current storm.[/quote]

Now the question of the day: does this translate into language we can all understand? Very few investment bankers here methinks… ;D

Thanks for the heads up on Swiss banks. I suspect its more of a problem for the public banks.

Exxon is melting before my eyes!!!

[quote]hedo wrote:
This is a traders market. Stay out if your not in. If you are, take advantage of the dips.

Ma and Pa are paying the mortgage. The subprime mess will sort itself out. Plenty of cash out there and lot’s of qualified buyers have to live somewhere. The homes will just be smaller.

If you are scared stay away. It creates too much anxiety. Buy financials on bad news, sell on good.[/quote]

Rent until 2009.

There is NO cash out there and no one can afford the homes without sub-prime products.

The housing bubble has most definitely burst.

ALL of my friends in the sub-prime market are in the unemployment line.

We are getting resumes from analysts currently working at hedge funds on a daily basis (Unregulated Speculative Investment Pools).

They want to work for a money manager that has steady income from institutional accounts like we do.

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Marmadogg wrote:
There is no valid conspiracy theory but the Eeyores were right.

It is all about greed.

It is funny to watch Cramer and Kudlow cry for the Fed to intervene.

It is called the free market for a reason…easy come, easy go.

Get over it!

We have 2 CLO CDOs stuck in our warehouse and we are replacing the current loans with new debt that is at LIBOR +400 bips.

A Distressed CLO CDO fund is being ramped up right now.

BB - What is going on in your neck of the woods?

SIVs look like the only safe port in this current storm.

Now the question of the day: does this translate into language we can all understand? Very few investment bankers here methinks… ;D

Thanks for the heads up on Swiss banks. I suspect its more of a problem for the public banks.

Exxon is melting before my eyes!!!

[/quote]

Check out www.investopedia.com

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
From one of JTF’s links:

“That triggering condition continues to worsen rapidly. On July 27, following the announcement of big new falls in both new-home and existing-home sales in the United States in June, Moody’s Economy.com, a division of the ratings agency, issued a dire new analysis of the mortgage credit market by its chief economist, Mark Zandi. That analysis was that the housing-market plunge will continue for at least another year, at which time, average home prices will be 10% below their level of the beginning of 2006. Such a price collapse has not happened since the early 1930s, during the Great Depression. Moody’s forecast U.S. unemployment to jump as a result. Two days earlier, the CEO of Countrywide, the largest American mortgage lender, said the condition of the home market had no precedent except the Great Depression.”

That’s not part of any conspiracy theory.

With regard to the Protocols: it is said that they have been debunked. About this I’m not sure. I think of them like I think of the Report From Iron Mountain — may be a hoax but sure seems prophetic.

Note: My mother was a Jew which makes me one, and I don’t find the Protocols offensive at all. If some international bankers, Jewish or not, are trying to implement such a scheme, their balls should be roasted over a slow fire.

[/quote]

Interestingly, I’m not at all Jewish - I’m German, Finnish, Swedish and mixed-Northern European Mutt - but I find all of this conspiracy bunk intellectually disgusting, and the racist element of the “Protocols”, combined with the fact it has been proved to be a forgery, make it so that I cannot fathom how anyone could believe this tripe.

http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2006/Aug/16-372389.html

[i]Museum Exhibit Explores Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Notorious forgery stirs anti-Semitism and hatred

By Michael Jay Friedman
Washington File Staff Writer

In 1920, Americans found a version in the glove box of their new Ford automobiles. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia distributed copies to guests, including U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. It ignited pogroms in Russia and helped inspire mass murder in Germany. “If ever a piece of writing could produce mass hatred it is this one,” Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel has written.

Even so, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion�??a notorious forgery debunked repeatedly throughout the West�??continues today to nourish anti-Semitism and to poison relations between peoples.

An exhibition at The United States Holocaust Museum, entitled A Dangerous Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, explores the history and continuing impact the modern era’s most widely distributed piece of anti-Semitic propaganda.

ORIGINS

The Protocols purports to be the minutes from a meeting of the “Elders of Zion,” a group of Jewish leaders conspiring to establish world domination. It was instead an 1890s forgery produced by the Russian Tsarist secret police. The Elders never existed and their supposed weapons�??"'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’�?� Darwinism, Marxism, Nietzche-ism"�??were shorthand for elements of modernity that left many people disoriented and embittered.

Exhibit curator Daniel Greene attributed The Protocols’ success to its adroit manipulation of existing anti-Semitic myths. For those who already believed that Jews controlled the gold market, commanded mass media and entertainment and secretly manipulated nations into war, it was a short step to blaming a Jewish cabal for one’s hardships. For the tsarist regime, The Protocols afforded an irresistible opportunity to deflect popular discontent away from the Russian government to a despised Jewish minority.

After the 1919 Bolshevik Revolution, The Protocols spread through much of the world. Automobile magnate Henry Ford was for a time its leading American champion. His newspaper, The Dearborn [Michigan] Independent, began publishing Protocols-based materials in 1920. These formed the basis for that year’s The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, which was translated into at least 16 languages, selling more than 500,000 copies.

The Protocols arrived in Germany in 1919. By 1921, the book was in its 21st German printing. Daniel Greene told The Washington File that the book shaped Adolf Hitler’s views about Jews, and that Hitler referred specifically to The Protocols in his early political speeches. The Nazis would themselves publish 23 editions before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Meanwhile, The Protocols spread throughout Europe, and into the Middle East. The first Arabic language edition appeared in Egypt in 1921.

DEBUNKING

Researchers in the West have successfully and repeatedly exposed The Protocols as a fake. Curator Greene reports that no similar exposure has yet appeared in Arabic, and The Protocols’ charge of a Jewish world conspiracy continues to enjoy a disturbing popularity in much of the Middle East and in other parts of the world.

As early as August 1921, the Times of London established convincingly, by reproducing passages side-by-side, that The Protocols had been plagiarized from Maurice Joly’s 1864 political satire A Dialogue in Hell. Joly’s work was an attack on the French Emperor Napoleon III. The plagiarist simply attributed the Emperor’s despotic tendencies to the Jews, who were not mentioned in Joly’s book.

Other bodies have arrived at the same conclusion. In 1935, a Swiss court declared The Protocols a forgery and a work of plagiarism. Seven years later, a committee of leading American historians agreed, and Assistant CIA Director Richard Helms testified before Congress in 1961 that the document was a forgery prepared by the Tsarist secret police. In 1993, a Russian court declared The Protocols a forgery and ruled its publication an anti-Semitic act. A decade later, Osama El-Baz, chief political advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, concluded in the pages of Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly that “One needs only read the opening pages of The Protocols to realize its fraudulent nature.”

But debunking a book is not the same as dispelling the impulse behind it. As Greene explains, even Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels admitted that that The Protocols was a forgery. Even so, Goebbels argued, “I believe in [its] intrinsic but not factual truth.”

After the Second World War, proponents of The Protocols often charged that Jews had affirmatively encouraged the Holocaust. Typical of the genre was a Mexican reprint with a cover depicting a Jewish hand behind Nazism�??and behind Masonry, Communism, and religious and financial powers. A common charge was the Jews instigated the murder of six million of their co-religionists in an effort to secure the world’s sympathy, whether for the creation of the state of Israel or for other secret objectives.

The Protocols continues to be published and distributed in many nations, and via the internet. A Japanese edition displayed at the exhibition attests to the fact that the actual presence of Jews is not necessary for charges of a Jewish conspiracy to take hold.

Meanwhile, the forgery has found traction in much of the Middle East. Televised dramatizations of The Protocols have appeared on Egyptian television in October-November 2002 and on Al-Manar (Hezbollah) television in 2003. The latter version included scenes depicting Jews draining the blood of a Christian child as an ingredient in matzah (unleavened bread consumed by observant Jews during the Passover holiday; the actual ingredients are flour and water only).

In 2003, the manuscript library at Alexandria, Egypt reportedly displayed an Arabic edition of The Protocols as an example of a Jewish holy book.

In 2005, Iranian booksellers displayed copies of The Protocols and The International Jew at the Frankfurt (Germany) Book Fair, the world’s largest.

The tragedy of The Protocols, Greene says, is that “a piece of propaganda that nurtured anti-Semitism during the Nazi period is still doing the same today.”

Established as a public/private partnership, the United States Holocaust Museum serves as a memorial to the past and a living reminder of the moral obligations of individuals and societies. More than 23 million people�??including more than 7 million schoolchildren�??have visited the Museum since its opening in 1993.

More information about the Museum, its traveling exhibitions and educational programs is available at its Web site.[/i]

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
hedo wrote:
This is a traders market. Stay out if your not in. If you are, take advantage of the dips.

Ma and Pa are paying the mortgage. The subprime mess will sort itself out. Plenty of cash out there and lot’s of qualified buyers have to live somewhere. The homes will just be smaller.

If you are scared stay away. It creates too much anxiety. Buy financials on bad news, sell on good.

Rent until 2009.

There is NO cash out there and no one can afford the homes without sub-prime products.

The housing bubble has most definitely burst.

ALL of my friends in the sub-prime market are in the unemployment line.

We are getting resumes from analysts currently working at hedge funds on a daily basis (Unregulated Speculative Investment Pools).

They want to work for a money manager that has steady income from institutional accounts like we do.[/quote]

No worries. I own and don’t plan on selling. Might buy more if the market drops. I have never lost money on a real estate deal and don’t think I will.

I have a revolving line of credit for my business. I drew against it today in fact. It’s not a subprime instrument. Credit for a borrower who has the ability to pay it back is fine. A real credit crisis happens when even the credit worthy can’t get capital. 79-80 come to mind.

I agree with you the sub prime days are gone and a big shakeout will occur. I don’t find it unusual that this will hit Wall St. hard. It should, they pumped it up all along. Real estate will stabilize and people can and will be able to afford homes. They can’t afford 4000 sq. ft. houses w/4 car garages that cost them 60% of their monthly income in mortgage payments and they have no equity in. That’s the legacy of the sub prime mortgage industry. They can still afford a nice 2000 sq. ft. house that needs some tlc.

Anyway I still say buy on bad news sell on good.

[quote]hedo wrote:
Anyway I still say buy on bad news sell on good.
[/quote]

You are spot on correct.

Residential real estate has never been a good investment. A house is a great place to live and a Lexus is a great car to drive. They are both standard of living choices and not good investments by any stretch of the imagination.

The Worst Investment Ever - http://tinyurl.com/ypbzs3

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
hedo wrote:
Anyway I still say buy on bad news sell on good.

You are spot on correct.

Residential real estate has never been a good investment. A house is a great place to live and a Lexus is a great car to drive. They are both standard of living choices and not good investments by any stretch of the imagination.

The Worst Investment Ever - The Worst Investment Ever | The Motley Fool

[/quote]

Spot on is right.

Speaking of buy on bad news, if one had the cash and the balls, corporate debt from former LBO targets and certain companies like Countrywide could pay off handsomely – just don’t invest to high a percent of your nut in that stuff…

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Residential real estate has never been a good investment. A house is a great place to live and a Lexus is a great car to drive.
[/quote]

Depends on what you mean by investment. Residential rentals are good/great investments depending on how much maintenance you can do on your own and where your market is. Homes are good/great investments, again, depending on your location and your ability to pay the mortgage. The major advantages of home ownership are that you a) have to live somewhere and b) get a reduction in “rent” through tax deductions. If it costs you substantially more to own than to rent, then it is probably a poor idea in that market.

If you’re pointing out that homes aren’t reliable as short-term investment vehicles, I fully agree. There are a few exceptions to that rule, but you’d better know what you’re doing.

Can someone help me out here. From what I understand, the federal reserve injected about 70 billion into the market already, essentially buying up all these crappy CDOs from the hedge funds, and getting them at a really sweet price, in some instances fractions of pennies on the dollar.

Does this mean that the federal reserve now owns all these homes, and the land beneath them too? I don’t understand. This whole thing looks engineered. The only real winner I see is the federal reserve.

And what about the fund rate? Would loosening the rates have been a better solution than simply dumping cash into the market? The cash will take much longer to work it’s way through than loosening the rate, right?

I’m confused. I wish they wouldn’t use all this exotic language, and fancy shmancy jargon to explain this stuff.