The problem with the markets today is that they are dominated by a few major players. These marketmakers have become, in effect, market manipulators. … – TIME1 I love it when the MSM gets it right.  The story at the note1 below is a must-read for any Doomer who successfully connected the dots4 between GS’s 7/3 exploit in NJ and Ken’s efforts to suppress Misha in IL. UPDATE (3): The big guns at Wharton have also joined the party3 today.  About time, guys. UPDATE (2): The Themis guys are asking some tough questions today. HFT’s Dominance May Be Affecting the…
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Yahoo Finance asked this question about the home buyer tax credit yesterday, "Should it expire?"  Short answer:  Yes! [Thanks L!] Now while the Yahoo article gives a number of dumb reasons for letting the program expire [The panic is over, things are "normalizing", the usual.] they have a couple of good reasons too.  For one, this is continuing some bad lending practices: For example, some state housing agencies are allowed to provide second mortgages to buyers who don’t have enough money for a down payment so that they might "monetize" the tax credit and get the cash up front. Down-payment…
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The insurance piggy bank at the FDIC is on the low side these days, so regulators have come up with an idea to fill the coffers- have the banks pay three years in advance: [Hat tip Freedom's Phoenix] WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. banking regulators proposed on Tuesday that banks prepay three years of fees to help cover the rising cost of bank failures, now put at $100 billion through 2013. Banks would prepay $45 billion of regular quarterly assessments under the plan, but would not have to recognize the hit to their earnings until the fees are normally due.

Starbucks promises I won’t be able to tell the difference.  Yeah, from the stuff I was swilling the last time I was on The Ocean. Our crack team of Doomish researchers has already solved the riddle of how these top-notch marketing geniuses managed to come up with a uniquely Doomed-in-Canada campaign.  Look carefully at what led them astray — the subliminal flash in this 2-decades-old TV spot.  In case you’re not fast enough to interpret it, we’ve reproduced the image under "Read More" below. Doomers should carefully study the second link in my comment from yesterday.  That, folks, is a…
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  I suppose if I were stuck on a desert island somewhere, I would want to be stuck with a bunch of housing analysts.  If optimism helps you survive, these guys should guarantee it.  How’s this for a strange conclusion: “The worst has passed,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. “We expect prices to bottom out around the middle of next year and then look for modest price appreciation for the next several years. There is still a tremendous oversupply of homes in most major markets.” Modest price appreciation coexisting with…
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  It was just over a year ago that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed in conservatorship.    Federal officials on Sunday unveiled an extraordinary takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, putting the government in charge of the twin mortgage giants and the $5 trillion in home loans they back. The move, which extends as much as $200 billion in Treasury support to the two companies, marks Washington’s most dramatic attempt yet to shore up the nation’s housing market, which is suffering from record foreclosures and falling prices. The sweeping plan, announced by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and…
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There are all kinds of "experts" out there who are claiming that the housing market has bottomed, stabilized, halted it’s precipitous drop, etc.  So why does Doom remain so "doomish"? UPDATE (10/4, by jm): The good folks at NY City based Multi-Family Investor report (see comment #1 below) that they’ve got the scoop on the Amherst report in their post "Exclusive: How Did She Come Up with Seven Million?" (9/29).  Back during the boom we complained that all the bullish reports out there constantly considered demand [which apparently was going to grow forever] without considering supply, and supply remains the…
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It’s Monday, and seeing stripped down foreclosures is nothing new in Phoenix.  I wouldn’t have posted this video at all, but check out the cavalier comment by the house stripper at 1:08: This woman has been in this home for ten years.  She was not originally sold a home she could not afford.  I’ll take a wild guess that she refinanced or got a HELOC at terms she couldn’t afford and spent the money.  Now it’s the bank fault? Just how prevalent has an attitude of "Well if the bank was stupid enough to lend me money, it must be…
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There is no single individual or entity that can take the blame for the housing bubble and bust.  The cast of characters includes the criminal, the stupid and the naive.  There is no question though that one of the main characters in this tragedy is good old Uncle Sam: [Washington's] crime: pushing federal policies that favored ever-increasing home ownership, particularly from the mid-1990s on, and thus helping spawn the housing bubble at the center of the devastating meltdown. The sheer scope of the bipartisan, federal pro-housing undertaking is mind-boggling. As Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard University economist, noted in testimony this…
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I did my rant on Wednesday already, and even the Puplava number shows just a modest $8.539 billion rise in the Fed’s little hoard of MBS, so let’s cut right to the chase, such as it is. This week’s Reuters report1 was positively dull after last week’s historic treasuries buy. The report was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.2 Here is Doom’s updated CSV version3 of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set. The treasuries buy sagged back to $4.549 billion, about an 85 percent reduction from last week’s…
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Home buyer credits and low interest rates might tempt some brave [or foolish] souls back in the water.  But the big worm in the "recovery" apple is unemployment: The housing recovery remains weak and could take a turn for the worse if more Americans lose their jobs, analysts say. "The market’s incredibly fragile," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys. "As long as job losses are rising, the housing market is at risk of continuing along a decline. Any recent stability would be in danger." The unexpected drop in existing home sales for August was the latest sign of just…
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Remember last year when Paulson proposed a new TARP program to take troubled assets off of the books of banks?  The Irish have decided to give it a shot: Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) — Ireland is providing a case study for what might have been if former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had gone ahead with a plan to buy banks’ hard-hit assets. Irish taxpayers are guinea pigs in a government experiment to buy property loans from banks at prices higher than market values yet lower than the amounts banks carry them for on their books. Although markets are reacting favorably,…
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My thanks to John for keeping the wheels turning around here and keeping Igor in line the last while.  He’s been pulling more than his share.  Things will mostly be in his and Igor’s capable hands (and claws) for the next couple of days.  I’m off to the Big Apple to visit family. Consider this an open thread.  Please help us keep abreast of things.   Cheers, Twist