For the most part, the consensus in the media seems to be that the housing market is showing some sort of tenuous "stabilization".  When I Googled "housing market" this morning, here’s what the main headlines looked like: The problem is that if housing isn’t falling, it’s because the government is propping it up: Over the past year, the government has intervened heavily at essentially every stage of the home-buying process. In fact, more than 80% of the new residential mortgage loans made this year benefited from some form of government support, according to the trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance. To…
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… While these advantages are measured in milliseconds rather than minutes, both high-frequency trading and flash orders enable certain investors to chisel a profit between bid and offer — the same abuse of inside market information and access that the S.E.C. tried to eliminate four decades ago. Now, traders have simply found different ways to tilt the playing field, … – David Silver, a former senior staff lawyer at the SEC, NYT1 Next week I’m workshopping "Aleynikov Blues" at Halifax’s Dublin St. Poetry Club.  The above should help my colleagues figure out what I’m talking about.

[Congressman Alan] Grayson: “So who got the money?” Bernanke: “Financial institutions in Europe and other countries.” Grayson: “Which ones?” Bernanke: “I don’t know.” Grayson: “Half a trillion dollars and you don’t know who got the money?” – Wall St. Cheat Sheet1 Twist was circulating the above around the Castle earlier today with the comment "… you could purchase a bunch of treasuries and agency debt with that," to which I’m going to add the thought — last week. Foreign central banks have been suddenly gorging on Treasury Debt, but an even bigger number is this week’s Puplava number, and it…
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