If Americans want to get ahead, they are going to have to work harder.  Apparently we worked all of 2008 just to pay for the bailouts: [Hat tip Freedom's Phoenix!]

March 31 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.

New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the chief executives of the nation’s 12 biggest banks on March 27 at the White House to enlist their support to thaw a 20-month freeze in bank lending.

“The president and Treasury Secretary Geithner have said they will do what it takes,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said after the meeting. “If it is enough, that will be great. If it is not enough, they will have to do more.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow!  it was more than a year ago on Explosion Day that Housing Doom explored some weird impact that Rhonda Byrne’s "The Secret" was having on a group of stressed-out  AZ Realtors.  Well, yesterday a fresh spring dandelion called Prosperity Radio abused YouTube’s notification system to send a couple of e-mails right past Doom Admin’s ordinarily rock solid anti-spam system.  Gonna be a long day at YouTube tech support …

This is classic Americana.  The New Thought Movement came out of Emerson, the early days of the Unitarian Church and a whole lot of other stuff generally rooted in that 19th Transcendentalist wave that hit Concord MA and caused a whole lot of pretty good literature you probably had inflicted on you in High School if you’re old enough to be pre-Politically Correct.  Your Grandad would have known it as The Power of Positive Thinking.  More recently, important parts of New Thought ended up under the aegis of Emotional Intelligence (aka "EQ").  I suspect that at the root of this phenomenon is an important issue in the theory of aesthetics that says something critical about ontology.

Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for a unique property with plenty of room and nice views in the San Francisco area? For $2 Billion, this 432 acre property could be yours:

Read the rest of this entry »

Put all of the authority in one institution, under one person–the Fed Chairman–and let the Federal Reserve sort out the regulatory pieces over banks, thrifts, insurance companies. investment banks, holding companies, hedge funds. The Fed can have “managing directors” and oversight units for those each industries all reporting to the Board of Governors or a Board governor for each of them, with his/her own jurisdiction. But, all financial services actions get coordinated by that Board.

Egad! he’s serious …

.

.

(Disclaimer: After working on the Hill for 11 years, I joined the Carter Administration, in 1980, as Director of Congressional Liaison at the savings and loans regulatory agency, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. I took a similar job with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, in 1981, when Paul Volcker was Chairman. After toiling at the Fed for 30 months, I moved to Fannie Mae, from which I retired in 2004, after 21 years of lobbying. The Fed was and still is a powerful place, with many thoughtful/capable employees. When I worked there, the Fed showed–and still may carry the vestiges of–a disdain for the mortgage finance industry. Home loans were not big banking business, then. They are today. But expanding the Fed’s regulatory role is a better alternative than perpetuating federal regulatory competition.)

How I would Remake Federal Financial Regulation

by Bill Maloni

Time for a Major Change!

The Obama Administration and Congress need to substantively refurbish the federal financial regulatory network, which failed us as a nation during the Bush years and continues to provide more questions than answers.

Rhetoric to the side, federal policy makers have an opportunity today to drive a significant restructuring or just could wimp out and merely change the coverlet on the financial regulatory bed, introducing some pretty new colors, but leaving in place soiled blankets and sheets underneath.

The early Obama/Geithner plans look more like the latter than the former. The President needs to be bolder.

I would take this historic opportunity, which combines national problems, international financial challenges, the American public’s desire for some serious new approaches to governing, and the popularity of President Obama to truly produce a whole new regulatory fabric.

Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you unfamiliar with Broker Outpost, it’s a forum for mortgage brokers.  They often post unusual situations that they are trying to help their clients finance. I’ve seen some really unusual situations posted before, but I have to tell you, I was really shocked when M sent me this one: [Edited slightly for spelling and grammar.  See original post here.]

Hello Everyone:

I am looking for a $300K USD loan. LTV will be 30% or less. It’s a commercial property in Tijuana, plus a junkyard, preschool and apartments.

The borrower is the landlord to my brother who leases a (w)arehouse (?) from them.

Their son was kidnapped, and they are $300K short for the ransom money. Their properties are free and clear. They asked my brother since they knew I was mortgage broker.

I can get aerial pictures of the property off of Google. It’s that big, I’d say that it’s almost a whole city block square.

Can anyone help? Time is limited, but I also know you have to cover yourself. Also it’s in Mexico.

Thanks

Read the rest of this entry »

Reality is stranger than parody today.  In my browsing around this morning, I ran across this video called "We’re the Government, and You’re Not" on Living the Scientific Life.  It’s a parody of the old "citizenship" films that many of us saw when we were young.  It encourages Americans to "Get Out And Spend".  I thought it was kind of funny, and posted it as a comment on our Crack of Doom this morning. [FYI- I am not in agreement with all the politics here.]

A little more browsing this morning however, brought me to this video from CNN. It basically says the same thing as "We’re the Government", but this time, the video isn’t a parody.

Read the rest of this entry »

"It’s not about rabbits out of hats. This is about trying to tackle an exceptional economic crisis - far beyond the financial system - and set in place measures … that really do make a difference over the short term and the long term." [1]

Doomers please contain your enthusiasm, the "leadership" of our world obviously doesn’t have a sweet clue. More likely getting out of this mess is going to take all 195 more-or-less independent, more-or-less countries on the planet, not to mention a whole lot of stateless, exiled or displaced folk we are sharing the place with.

Brad spent the weekend striving manfully to stuff the China Gambit genie back into the bottle [2] prior to the grownups hitting London.  That article is a must-read for Doomers who have been following the Zhou affair.

I am still struggling to understand precisely what motivated Governor Zhou’s white paper.

This is Doom’s Monday Open Thread. Please throw in your thoughts on this or any other issue, not to mention any information you’d like to share that might enlighten us on housing, market trends or just managing this monster that was largely born in some dark corner of America’s mortgage finance system.

Read the rest of this entry »

… mmmmmm Seafood!  Marcy and the gang at Versus Plus have a new comedy lyric that really nails the Zeitgeist. UPDATE: Doomers who want to here more new classic hits from The Great Recession (including another of Marcy’s) can check out this front page story from the Feb 6th WSJ.[1]

AND NOW, A WORD FROM THE ECONOMY HERSELF

Read the rest of this entry »

… Heads turned as the alarmed captain looked on in stunned disbelief. Bent on vengeance, the two lobsters scuttled swiftly after Madoff. They reached his table in an instant, and Silverman went for his ankle. Moscowitz, summoning the strength of a madman, leaped from the floor and with one giant pincer took firm hold of Madoff’s nose. Screaming with pain, the gray-haired con artist hopped from the chair as Silverman strangled his instep with both claws. Patrons could not believe their eyes as they recognized Madoff, and began to cheer the lobsters. [1]

Somebody’d better tell Woody before it’s too late.  You never put tomatoes in Lobster Stock.[2]  Anyway, this request goes out to Doomer V and #21.

Read the rest of this entry »