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This may be a Doom first, an advertisement. 
Doomers who will be near Tucson Thursday evening should take note of this event from the Arizona Daily Star Business Calendar (published Jan 12th).
Thursday
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Economic Outlook and Developments in Mortgage Markets — Berger Auditorium, McClelland Hall, University of Arizona, 1130 E. Helen St. The Eller College of Management’s Distinguished Speaker Series presents Susan Bies, member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The lecture and reception following are free and open to the public. Arrive early. Space is limited. 5:15 p.m. 621-9400.
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Amid record after record for the Dow Jones average, plunging gas prices, fabulous employment stats and daily proclamations of a bottom in the housing market, well, it’s just hard to be a bear these days. Still, if you can hear under the cacophany, some worrisome signs have stubbornly refused to evaporate.
The last bear standing may be credit contraction, but a big ugly beast it is. K has been sending almost daily warnings on the issue to us at Doom, and he’s not the only one worried. A month ago, Reuters reporter Walden Siew warned [1] that "the era of easy access to cash may be ending". Many other bloggers and MSM reporters have touched on the story in recent weeks. One of the first was blogger Crispy of California’s BakersfieldBubble blog. Since mid-December, Siew’s ominous warnings of trouble in sub-prime land have borne fruit with many small to medium sized warehouse lenders ceasing operations or going out of business. Crispy’s been on hand for most of this, in a sort of informal partnership with fellow blogger Aaron whose tracking site, The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, now looks like a battlefield. A Ben’s post Sunday discussed sub-prime (warning: gold-bug OT sub-thread). Don’t be surprised if another casualty has been posted since this article went up at 12:01 AM.
