The Fed’s own holdings of MBS settled down by $4.671 billion and foreign central banks lurched back into a buying mood, taking on a bit more last week than they dumped the previous week. And speaking of FedMBS, which is the green line in twist’s main busy chart below, doomers should have a close look at twist’s post from earlier today. You can see that the FRBNY is having one heck of a time divesting itself of those legacy bonds from the bubble era, and and its present honour of being America’s third largest (and only large solvent) housing GSE….
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I do believe that Internet Bubble 2.0 has just experienced its New Coke moment Last Thursday Google broke my second gmail account.  Hat tip to Gizmodo for … “How To Keep On Logging Into Multiple Google Accounts” Guess what? There’s a better way. And it’s super easy. You just need to enable multiple accounts. I found “easy” a bit tedious. You click on the tiny “options” wheel in the upper right, which brings up the “Preferences” window. Click on the link titled “Google Account Settings” near the upper right of this. This brings you to the “Account Settings” page; the…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS were again unchanged and foreign central banks turned back to selling off US obligations, dumping over $1 billion / day over the previous week. This week’s Reuters report1 is, 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. Treasury Debt holdings have now advanced $96.931 billion above their 11/17 ’10 level, but the small positive contribution from agencies still places the combined advance at just over $100 billion. Treasury Debt dipped $5.147…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS was unchanged and foreign central banks turned around and bought back most of the US obligations they dumped the last time. This week’s Reuters report1 is, 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. Treasury Debt holdings have now advanced $102.078 billion above their 11/17 ’10 level, nudging above the $100B point just in time to avoid the appearance of a definitive top Treasury Debt surged $14.124 billion, erasing all but…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS dropped again this week by a modest $5.473 billion. Tyler’s got some thoughts on their difficult task of escaping from their uncomfortable role as a Freddie-sized housing GSE (look at the remarkable asymmetry to the right developing in our green FedMBS line in the chart below) … ZeroHedge (6/30 ’11): “Fed Halts Sales Of Toxic AIG Sludge Upon Realization Any Balance Sheet Unwind Crashes The Market” Three weeks ago, when discussing the failed (yes, failed) Maiden Lane 2 auction by the New York Fed, we said: ‘Something quite disturbing happened during today’s latest attempt…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS dropped again this week, but by a tiny $0.180 billion and foreign central banks’ holdings of US obligations also dipped by less than $1 billion. For all the sound and fury of the markets, the official institutions don’t seem to be in any hurry to move. This week’s Reuters report1 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. Treasury Debt holdings have now advanced $104.217 billion above their 11/17 ’10…
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… because they can no longer afford the membership fee.  Igor thinks the Association should waive the fee, seeing as the utility has suddenly become world-class on failure Bloomberg (6/20 ’11): “Tepco Leaves Group Founded By Fukushima Probe Chief to Cut Costs” The utility known as Tepco notified the Association for the Study of Failure in April it won’t renew its membership for the year ending March 2012 because of financial constraints, Kenji Iino, executive director of the research group, said by telephone from Tokyo today.

What with stock markets trying to collapse, the buck has been on a tear lately with the amero gap closing yesterday at just -168 basis points. Maybe the NA union will be part of the 40th anniversary celebrations (in less than two months) of America’s abandoning real money Meanwhile the Fed’s own holdings of MBS dipped a smallish $3.350 and foreign central banks’ agencies went down over twice that amount while treasuries surged strongly. What with Chairman Paul mischievously suggesting audits for US central banking and gold holdings we may soon discover just how much of those figures derive from…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS were unchanged again and foreign central bank holdings agencies were flat, while treasuries had another strong gain, though not as strong as last week. This week’s Reuters report1 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. Treasury Debt holdings have now advanced $89.618 billion above their 11/17 ’10 level. Treasury Debt was up $8.539 billion, so that we’re only $0.222 billion short of the May 18th figure. Agencies continued down,…
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One Romeo’s meltdown may be getting most of the attention in the ten ring circus, but the most ominous part of this narrative is that neither the authorities nor the MSM will confirm or deny whether Fukushima No. 4 has developed a lean since the Ides-of-March blast nearly three months ago.  However, this latest update, if you read / listen between the lines of the brief article and its must-see embedded video, clearly shows that the engineers’ dramatic race against gravity is the most important news story presently happening in the world. NHK World (6/7 ’11): “Work continues to support…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS were unchanged and foreign central bank holdings of treasuries swung to a strong gain this week. This week’s Reuters report1 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. Treasury Debt holdings have now advanced $81.079 billion above their 11/17 ’10 level. Treasury Debt was up $9.922 billion, erasing more than half of last week’s big loss. Agencies continued down, but by only a tiny $0.145 billion *Agen-FM: The dotted line…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS dropped an accelerating $5.723 billion and foreign central bank holdings of treasuries dramatically plunged ending a long winning streak, following up on last week’s dramatic sell-off in agencies. However, ZH has been reporting very strong demand for treasuries over the last couple of days, which doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense except, perhaps we’re starting to see some odd effects coming out of the debt ceiling “crisis” … WSJ (5/26 ’11): “Treasury Prices Rise As T-Bills Shortage Drives Demand Into Notes” Indirect bidders, which include foreign buyers and central banks, expressed…
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This would be funny if it weren’t so serious. More than a week later and our intrepid journalists still haven’t figured out the problem at No. 4 is not the reactor but the pool, although the more serious condition now at No. 3 seems to have inspired them to heat up the rhetoric just a bit. The blogosphere’s been all over this one for a couple of weeks, but it’s still nice to get (re-)confirmation, if only in a short inside paragraph.  Doomers will recall that the spent fuel pool in this building has over a thousand assemblies, many really…
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I nearly swallowed my wad a couple of years back when past-master NL thief Tim Raines’ old gang was almost bought out by a consortium backed in part by Frank’s (no relation) Fannie swag.  Now over at Little Brother tenure at the analysis department is starting to look a bit like entitlement … BL/BW (6/22 ’05): “Housing Bubble — or Bunk? Are home prices soaring unsustainably and due for plunge? A group of experts takes a look — and come to very different conclusions” Frank Nothaft, chief economist, Freddie Mac:… Housing is local, local, local by nature, and it’s the…
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It is only rarely in the home that the exercise of reading, in the old sense, now takes place. — George Steiner Funny, but the 1972 essay “After the Book?” appears to be quite unavailable within the withering confines of free Web 1.0. The above is transcribed from a dead tree I borrowed from my local library the other day. Meanwhile, back in a dystopian future that seems to have evolved into the present while I wasn’t paying attention … Wall Street Journal (5/20 ’11): “Liberty Media Sees More Than Just Bookstores In Barnes & Noble” The deal, which values…
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