Yes sir, Mr. Young Sir! Roll Over, Robert Frost … like, this is so totally outside Doom Family Values, but what the heck:

Hat tip to CRisk for finding this: Part II is below (don’t miss the last 30 seconds )

… All those phrases were used to describe a man you may never have heard of: Jim Johnson, the C.E.O. of mortgage giant Fannie Mae in the 1990s. Fannie was then one of the largest, most profitable companies in the world, with a stock-market value of more than $70 billion and more earnings per employee than any other company in America. (By comparison, G.M. at its peak, in 2000, was worth only $56 billion.) On one level, Johnson, now 65 years old, was just another businessman with a lot of money and multi-million-dollar houses in desirable locations from D.C. to…
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Just a thought (and maybe not original — I haven’t checked).  It is quite likely that Obama will be outlining a rapidly evolving economic program for the next several months not unlike what Sullenberger and his crew brought off in the real world in bare seconds, and then over a couple more minutes with further help, yesterday. UPDATE: He received a congratulatory phone call from President-elect Obama on Friday night. Now, a trip to D.C. could be "in the works" for Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and family, says the heroic pilot’s wife. [1] The blast of uniforms at the 2005…
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Bush did as he was told: “Mr Bush gave an order to Secretary of State Rice and she did not vote in favour of it—a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised, and manoeuvred for,” said Olmert triumphantly. “She was left pretty shamed, and abstained on a resolution she arranged.” The Security Council passed the resolution 14-0, but the United States, its principal author, abstained. [1] No way Rahm Emanuel’s going stand for this sort of thing after Tuesday, never mind Obama.

As he added to the government debt holdings last month, Gross sold mortgage-backed bonds, sending the fund’s holdings of the securities down to 62 percent from 81 percent a month earlier, data on the Web site show. [5] [new stuff from Bloomberg with more detail] Looks like the keenly awaited burst of the T-bill bond bubble will have to wait for some other week. After the New Year’s pit stop, the folks in East Asia seem to be back to their old tricks. And speaking of tricky, there’s a fascinating tidbit in the preview to this WSJ story.[1] Pimco’s $132.267…
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The Securities Investor Protection Corp. is seeking data on clients’ withdrawals from as far back as they can remember, that could lay groundwork for clawbacks. [1] Holy revictimization, Batman!  Did SIPC just go through an exercise in mailing out 8,000-odd sheets of fly-paper?  Looks like the big-time, long term Madoff investors who retained a large balance at the end but took significant withdrawals over the years have some heavy cost-benefit analysis ahead of them: Of course, investors who prefer to disappear into the weeds need not file the form. But those wishing to make a claim for lost funds, and…
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Under the plan, dealers can re-package collateralized mortgage obligations, or CMOs, with attributes similar to plain-vanilla "agency" mortgage debt. Reconstituted issues can trade in the so-called "to-be-announced" (TBA) market — one of the most active markets in the world where investors trade MBS before actually taking delivery of the bonds. [1] This may not exactly be perpetual motion, but it sure looks like the ruminant digestive system. A few days ago, SIFMA’s bizarre recycling scheme was approved.[1] Doom asks the obvious question: If  canned fish is selling for less than fresh fish, how is it going to help to open…
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"The evolving thinking is that electronics extends our central nervous system, and that economic news in particular has hit the point of speed and saturation that our microeconomic daily freak-outs are be­coming the new macroeconomics" [1] The cover story in the Sunday Supplement to yesterday’s local print newspaper carried a veritable FNORD-fest of great reasons to turn off the catastrophic economic news which is finally seeping into even mainstream sources. My favorite was the above, by respected Canadian postmodern novelist Douglas Coupland, who continues: "As we know, bad news travels in­stantly, good news ends up on a slag heap. Remember,…
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I’ve already vented my spleen at enough of the powers-that-be today, so this re-post can go up pretty well without comment.  I can’t even remember which blogger first recommended it, but at least a couple of places have already pointed this out as a good read, and Doom is happy to expose the first couple of charts above the fold here. The author does do a good job on the old Birth Death Model   The December Non-Farm Payrolls Report: Portrait of a Ponzi Economy by Jessie The ‘headline number’ is the seasonally adjusted net change in jobs. The drop…
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In my humble opinion — this image is no accident (click the pic for context [1] ): The mainstream media routinely uses modified or carefully selected images for ad hominem attacks, but this example deserves to become a Communications course classic.  Note the stark primary color-scheme and a cropping that places Neel’s right ear squarely at the center of the frame.  The ear is also emphasized by the white arrow formed by his shirt collar, and as an added bonus, his left index finger is precisely in line with top edge of cartilage, fortuitously lit to suggest a point.  What…
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Among the options: Get in line with other victims looking for restitution. Keep quiet and hope nobody notices. Return the money. Or hire a lawyer and fight to keep profits that were probably fraudulent. [1] Doom saw this one coming a few days ago, but Caruso’s headline pretty well nails it: "Madoff ‘victims’ do math, realize they profited" … as in, oops!

Still, while such a transformation is, to put it mildly, undesirable, the policies are necessary. As outlined in these pages, the U.S. and many of its G-7 counterparts over the past 25 years have become more and more dependent on asset appreciation. Under the policy-endorsed cover of technology and somewhat faux increases in financial productivity, we became a nation that specialized in the making of paper instead of things, and it fell to Wall Street to invent ever more clever ways to securitize assets, and the job of Main Street to “equitize” or, in reality, to borrow more and more…
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The Twists are old Asia hands, and they remind me that, for whatever reason, Western calendar year-end is a big deal for the host cultures of the foreign central banks that have been buying America’s debt over the last few years. Their increasing appetite for single-malt has become legendary around here — maybe they’ve started celebrating Hogmanay? Anyway, I had a look at our data-set, and indeed the first couple of weeks in a year don’t usually see big moves (it’s not universal, though, early 2006 was pretty lively). This year’s early days aren’t just quiet, though, they’re just about…
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U.S. Treasury debt prices eased on Wednesday as spotty auction results confirmed fears about the market’s ability to absorb a growing need for new issuance, offsetting any safety bid from careening stocks. [1] The last few weeks of the Bush lame-duck term is obviously cloaked in a financial fog of battle, so there’s got to be something heavy going down, but what it is I don’t know. One safe assumption is that the powers-that-be are trying to steer retail investors into decisions that will benefit their rich buddies — not retail investors. What about America’s risk-free sovereign Treasury Debt? Barron’s…
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