I’ve noticed that after a certain level of advancement in politics/corporations, no one gets laid off or fired. They always leave for “personal reasons”. On the rare occasion that a CEO does get fired, he had to have done something crazy like kill 3 major clients.

Hell, one of the CEOs at my last job left to “go back to Australia to spend time with his sick mother”. Only he ended up in Scotsdale, Arizona. Poor guy couldn’t spell, I guess.. we have this sad image of him driving around Arizona looking for his mommy, but can’t find her…

And why not? Because he knows that he will moving back in a few months.

Unlike Igor, I won’t be surprised if this happens.

How many times did he object to Fed policy from the minutes? Zero?

Russ may be right, we may be in for Krugman and Orszag in those posts before long.

I love when they want to “spend more time with their family.”

Al Franken joked that he wanted to spend less time with his own family when he decided to run.

Is anyone familiar with underwriting standards for VA loans? It looks to me like members of our military are being encouraged to knife-catch at relatively high loan levels. Recent example, a slight acquaintance (friend of another acquaintance, someone I see every couple of years) closed in January on a house in an outer suburb of Phoenix. The location’s proximity to Luke AFB makes it a reasonable choice, but its size and price do not. The place is newly built and around 3,500 square feet. I guess that part does not matter too much, but the kind of utility bills required to cool that place to my level of comfort would be enormous (maybe they like it warm). But the 100% loan amount was over $280,000 (checked recorder info at maricopa.gov).

While surely this is well below peak bubble prices for similar exurban houses, it strikes me as way too much to borrow. I do not what this enlisted guy makes, but I know that is not anywhere near the $90K-plus needed to make this a reasonable loan. They have two kids and his wife does not work outside the home.

My picks:

1. Bernancke: Will announce that he will return to Princeton economics faculty, starting with the winter 2010 semester. Look for the announcement by the end of September 2009.

2. Geithner: By the end of September 2009.

3. Summers: Will announce that he wants to spend more time with family. Look for the announcement just before the start of the 2009 holiday season, say, in October 2009.

And your picks?

I think part of the overall problem was that not only did a bunch of subprime and alt-a and prime borrowers bought houses near the tail of the ‘boom’, but so did a lot of ‘financially-savvy’ experts…..hence the bubble-denial for quite some time.