It’s been too long since we’ve reposted one of old Doom friend Bill Maloni’s articles. In this piece Bill puts some forthright suggestions on the table. He certainly has some definite ideas as to how the new Administration should proceed in dealing with the present crisis. Please welcome Fannie’s former chief lobbyist back to Doom Castle. I hardly ever agree with his policy prescriptions, but they’re always intriguing. (The version below has been edited; click on the title below to see the original.) "Banks and the Mortgage Mess" by Bill Maloni … Let’s discuss what the Obama Administration needs to…
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One coffee break and you’re on your way to being up to speed on High-Frequency Trading, Flash Orders, Co-Location, etc.  Big hat tip to Reuters’ irreplaceable Matt Goldstein. . . . . .   High-frequency trading from Marketplace on Vimeo.   UPDATE: This story arc is going seriously mainstream  Here’s a bit from TIME’s next newstand issue.[1] In a competitive market, it’s a little hard to say why the exchanges shouldn’t engage in all this. But there is one nagging concern: that equity markets now move so insanely fast that they could go off the rails spectacularly. "I can’t tell…
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Remember these "green shoot" comments on Aug 3? Even as Americans suffer rising unemployment, foreclosure rates in three states hit hardest by the housing bust — California, Arizona and Florida — stabilized in June, offering hope that the worst of the real estate crisis is over, according to The Associated Press’ monthly analysis of economic stress in more than 3,100 U.S. counties. We have additional information today: NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The foreclosure plague continued to devastate last month. There were more than 360,000 properties with foreclosure filings — including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — an increase…
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I can understand it when people with lovely homes want their agents to put Ready for your prequalified buyers in the listing.  No one wants to have lots of people wandering through the house who aren’t serious buyers and don’t have the resources to buy it. I had to wonder about this little number though on Missouri Ave in Phoenix, AZ.  The listing starts, Well priced home. Ready for your prequalified buyers…  Here’s the main photo: [MLS #4224996] I think it has granite countertops in the kitchen: [Or maybe that's mold, I'm not sure]

“Any comment in those files can be pursued by the gentleman’s attorney about what was intended, what it means,” said Allan Grody, president of the New York-based risk management consultancy Financial InterGroup and a former professor of risk management at NYU’s Stern School of Business. “Worlds not though to be damaging or of concern when one fills out a profile of an individual, in light of a prosecution for criminal behavior can take on new meaning.” [1] So now you know What I’ve been trying to do today is work through a psychological analysis of Molloy, Malone Dies and The…
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Ominous chart yesterday over at Paper Economy.[1] . . . . . Which is to say that we are likely at a crisis in the present historic Bear Rally and folks are pulling out all the stops [2] to convince the credulous that they’re not about to get murdered on world equity markets. The Federal Reserve releases charts intended to show the probability of a recession in the following twelve-month period. During 2008, it got just above 40 percent. At the end of July 2009, it was 0.09 percent. Our National Unemployment Rate decreased in July from June (to 9.4…
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“Yeah, [high frequency trading's] increased liquidity, but if you’re an institutional buyer, if their counterparty is a high frequency strategy, they’re getting picked off.” – researcher Matt Samuelson, see also below [1] Indeed that’s the point of HFT but, as usual, the money quote is buried deep in the industry-friendly article. The piece at [1] is mostly dedicated to drawing a bright line between HFT and Flash so that the former can cleanly escape now that the latter has to be sacrificed. Tyler notes that Flash is a bit broader than most of us have thought,[2] and one of Seeking…
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Meet the newest massive subprime lender- Ginnie Mae: [Hat tip Freedom's Phoenix] Much to their dismay, Americans learned last year that they “owned” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Well, meet their cousin, Ginnie Mae or the Government National Mortgage Association, which will soon join them as a trillion-dollar packager of subprime mortgages. Taxpayers own Ginnie too. Only last week, Ginnie announced that it issued a monthly record of $43 billion in mortgage-backed securities in June. Ginnie Mae President Joseph Murin sounded almost giddy as he cheered this “phenomenal growth.” Ginnie Mae’s mortgage exposure is expected to top $1 trillion by…
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  For those of you who didn’t like the Obama Administration’s foreclosure prevention programs, you’re really going to dislike this idea for "improving" the Home Affordable Modification Program  (HAMP) from ACORN.  In a recent paper entitled Improving Outcomes in the Obama Administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program, ACORN advocates principal reduction rather than forebearance for the following reasons: Without the ability to build equity, many of the economic benefits of homeownership are lost.  The homeowner will not qualify for a secured loan for home repairs, medical expenses, or college tuition and they will receive nothing at the settlement table when they…
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Under the glaze of transient empire       earth goes on as before       colouring summer, sea, sky a concordant azure. (90) Aiken Drum. by Peter Sanger, Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2006. Sanger’s sixth poetry collection obviously required, for him, thousands of hours of silence.  The lines move slowly and many of the words were unfamiliar, like bent knives or Ike’s hand-made spokeshaves that Alice’s Dave took back to Montreal over the weekend. It felt weird just touching this book.  Fifty years from now you’d need a pile of documentation and white cotton gloves just to handle it.  The little presses…
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Flash orders are the host stage for algo trading to run trade matching functions to uncover opportunities in what I like to call a "liquefied resonance application server state" for millisecond transactional efficiency. The biggest industry sluggers are trading firm experts like Renaissance Technologies, Quantum Group and Goldman Sachs. [1] see also the original blog post OK, Doomers, we’ve been here before.  When the predators get this far ahead of the prey Bad Things Happen.  Tyler thinks that regulator concern enriched with public outrage may close this idiocy down soon,[2] but I’m just hoping that happens before the bulk of…
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  Peter Siris, writing for the New York Daily News is highly critical of the Cash For Clunkers program. [As am I, but that's beside the point.] Rather tongue is cheek, he offered up other programs: If the government really wanted to improve gas efficiency, it would have applied Cash for Clunkers only to U.S.-made hybrid or electric cars. But since there are few of those and many consumers don’t want one, that would have been less popular. Consumers and politicians like simple programs with easy gratification. Of course, they could have applied the same formula in other industries. Take…
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Check out the caller in this Q and A session.  His income has dropped by almost half, and he’s hoping for a loan mod. [video here]

Foreclosures are spiking in Phoenix.  Here’s Channel 12 News in Phoenix interviewing a woman from my hometown of Gilbert, AZ, and showing the $4.25 million foreclosure we featured yesterday: [Thanks L!]

  It’s Friday, and fortunately I got my morning laugh from the folks at Freedom’s Phoenix.  This may not be as funny though for the folks who’ve invested with Dung-Beetle Investment Bank- and you know who you are! [There seems to be trouble with the imbed, but you can watch the video here.]