Housing Doom

“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”  Bloomberg¹

Thank goodness for Tatjana’s 17th Century English Lit course.  The last few months would have made no sense at all if I hadn’t decided to make a close study of Donne’s sermons and Laud’s adventures in Xtreme Interior Decoration.

As it stands, I can just sort of work my way through the section on  "The Growth of Individualism" in Tawney’s 1922 Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and treat the whole affair as a kind of cosmic joke.

When the banking lobbyists marched up the Hill on September 18, 2008 and seized control of the economy it was the perfectly symmetrical event to the fall of Soviet Communism.  We’re now enjoying (on a compressed time frame) the same post-collapse rise of oligarchs that Russia experienced in the late ’90s.  Perhaps if Putin’s not too busy pulling the strings back home, Larry could sign him on as a consultant.  Obama’s got a serious problem if he lets these guys strut around unhindered.

Read the rest of this entry »

Clorox Co.’s earnings rose 23% for its fiscal first quarter on improved profit margins and increased sales of disinfecting products caused in part by concerns over the H1N1 flu virus. - WSJ¹

Talk about creative destruction, looks like these guys are gonna lead us on to permanent prosperity

Read the rest of this entry »

Doom Transcripts: Index & Guide

Housing Doom is pleased to present a third selection from our under-construction transcript of the American Enterprise Institute’s October 22, 2009 event "The Deflating Bubble, Part VI: The Lessons of the Bubble and Crisis".¹

The event site has a number of resources, including an audio and video of the proceedings. There is as yet no official transcript.

This is the presentation by IRA co-founder Chris Whalen.  I see Nouriel on deck, but this one’s going to be a tough act to follow.

So this is what the commenters at Calculated Risk have been going on about …

Chris Whalen: [0:27:02] I’m going to talk a little bit about the industry because we’re in the middle of earnings season, and I apologize for not preparing something, but I’ve been reading bank earnings statements, so I will share some of my impressions of that. And then I want to talk a little bit about not only lessons, but some of the enduring trends that I see that have not been affected by the extensive bailout that the government has put together for our largest financial institutions.

In general, when you look at the industry you have to recall the words of Mr. Feinberg, and I don’t mean the guy who was in the newspaper today, I mean my friend Bob Feinberg in the back of the room, who predicted several years ago in an interview we published that the GSE would become the business model of choice for the United States.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mr. Smith was a Limited Partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co. until its public offering in May 1999. He has been a director of public corporations in the U.S. and in the UK, and was a founding partner of a London-based financial services consulting company. He is currently an advisor to several small, entrepreneurial companies, a trustee of several family investment trusts and a charitable foundation, and a former member of the board of directors of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. - Professor Smith’s Stern bio

Myth #6: the Alumni have special access everywhere.

Doomer’s who merely want to chill out on the weekend can read the debunks here,¹ but IMHO the raw items might serve as a pretty good to-do list in their own right

1. The Wall Street bonus culture led to the financial crisis.
2. Wall Street is totally indifferent to Main Street.
3. With the job market like it is, Wall Street doesn’t need to pay huge bonuses to retain key people.
4. Wall Street will never restrict its own pay.
5. Wall Street pay is so out of line, only the government can fix it.

LATER: This blogger,² supposedly another former insider, provides some largely sympathetic criticism of the February WSJ piece.³

In truth, as usual, what we see happening with compensation, regulation and risk management of the remaining former-investment banks-cum-commercial banks, Goldman and Morgan Stanley, and the crumbling commercial banks, Citigroup and BofA, is simply the tidying up of the worst-performing, hind-end of the sector. The better players and their capital departed those publicly-held firms over a decade ago, the better to ply their trade in stealth and away from excessive governmental intervention.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sorry but CBS made me do it

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

It’s Friday, and the economy is bad.  Silverazor9, a poster on the Yahoo gossip boards shares just how bad it is.  I don’t know if he wrote it himself or it was forwarded to him by one of those friends that forwards everything, but it got a smile out of me.  Here it is to kick of today’s open thread:

The economy is so bad… That I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

The economy is so bad… I ordered a burger at McDonalds and the kid behind the counter asked, "Can you afford fries with that?"

The economy is so bad… If the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you call them and ask if they meant you or them..

The economy is so bad… Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.

The economy is so bad… Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children’s names.

The economy is so bad… A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico .

The economy is so bad… Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.

The economy is so bad… Motel Six won’t leave the light on anymore.

The economy is so bad… The Mafia is laying off judges.

The economy is so bad… Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.

And finally…

Read the rest of this entry »

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Sept. 30 that the U.S. economy will probably slow next year as the surge in stocks comes to an end. …“The odds are we flatten out,” he said of stocks in a Bloomberg Television interview. “That flattening out will put some sort of dull face on 2010.” - Bloomberg¹

Wasn’t it some guy name of Fred Nietzsche talked about hysteria repeating itself?

The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression cost Fisher much of his personal wealth and academic reputation. He famously predicted, a few days [October 17, 1929] before the Stock Market Crash of 1929, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." Irving Fisher stated on October 21 that the market was "only shaking out of the lunatic fringe" and went on to explain why he felt the prices still had not caught up with their real value and should go much higher. …

Read the rest of this entry »

If you have $735,000 to invest and are looking for a rental property with a tenant already in place, you might want to consider purchasing the Arizona State Capitol building.  Jon Stewart’s Daily Show does a video tour of the property: [Hat tip Freedom’s Phoenix

Read the rest of this entry »

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 last call for the lemmings presently in the profitless safety of debt to transfer across to a whole other platform. (But the banks are going to need all the fresh common equity sucker-money they can get their hands on to survive Shiela’s looming shakedown, and the victims at least will have the comfort that it’s all in a good cause.  I figure the process will take about 4 more weeks.)

Read the rest of this entry »

The Apology Act, which comes into effect Oct. 1, broadly defines an apology and states that it can’t be used as evidence in legal proceedings to establish fault or liability. - CBC¹

As usual, there is rather more than meets the eye here, and it’s not a case of an eccentric rookie mistake by our newly elected NDP (that’s socialist, by the way, a Maritime first) provincial government, either.  The story and a commenter in the thread below note that the majority of Canadian and American jurisdictions, Australia and the UK all have similar laws.  So what gives with this?

"An Act Respecting the Effect of an Apology and to Prohibit its Use as Evidence of Fault or Liability"

• …
• 3 (1) An apology made by or on behalf of a person in connection with any matter
  1. does not constitute an express or implied admission of fault or liability by the person in connection with that matter;
  2. does not constitute a confirmation of a cause of action or acknowledgment of a claim in relation to that matter for the purpose of the Limitations of Actions Act;
  3. notwithstanding any wording to the contrary in any contract of insurance or any other enactment or law, does not void, impair or otherwise affect any insurance coverage that is or, but for the apology, would be available to the person in connection with that matter; and
  4. may not be taken into account in any determination of fault or liability in connection with that matter.
• (2) Notwithstanding any other enactment or law, evidence of an apology made by or on behalf of a person in connection with any matter is not admissible in any court as evidence of the fault or liability of the person in connection with that matter.
• …

The deal is that there’s getting to be intense pressure from moral leaders like this guy² for the perps to publicly admit blame.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has expressed his disappointment at the lack of repentance among bankers for their part in the financial crisis.

Speaking on the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Tuesday, Dr Rowan Williams said that bankers, politicians and even the Church needed to repent for their complicity in the culture of excess that triggered the crisis.

These Empty Apology laws would seem simply to guarantee that such public expressions will mean precisely nothing.  My guess is that the banksters have been thinking ahead.

Read the rest of this entry »