Wow. I’d stopped paying attention sometime in the middle of the day when it looked like the Dow had partially recovered from its dramatic first-thing-in-the-morning plunge. But there was a late-day sellof and it’s closing down more than 500 points.
During August and September 2007, as the sub prime crisis swept through the Global financial market, Merrill Lynch announced losses of $8 billion. In October of the same year, he announced his retirement and walked away with a compensation package valued at $161.5 million.[2]
On January 17th, Merrill Lynch announced 4th quarter writedowns and provisions of $14.1 billion, bringing total writedowns for 2007 to the sum of $22.5 billion.[citation needed] The company recorded a $12.8 billion pretax loss for all of 2007, versus a pretax profit of $9.8 billion for 2006.”
————-
Ha ha ha ha. That certainly sounds like our boy.
there’s been an extraordinary amount of denial in the market, as people have refused to focus on what deleveraging actually means.
i think we have a ways to go down: stocks are valued on PE, and with E in question (industrial production sank), no reason for stocks not to drop further.
““You look at Obama’s economic advisers, the guys he has counted on from day one and who have raised him a ton — and I mean a ton — of money: Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, both of them are waist to neck deep in the mortgage debacle.”
Both Raines and Johnson have served as CEO of Fannie Mae, with Raines taking over from Johnson. Both are key political and economic advisers to Obama.
“How can Obama go out with a straight face and saw it was Republicans who made this mess, when it is his key advisers who ran the agencies that made the big mess what it is?” says a Democrat House member who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. “It’s his people who are responsible for what may well be the single largest government bailout in history. And every single one of them made millions off the collapse that are lining Obama’s campaign coffers. If the McCain campaign lets this one go, they deserve to lose.”
————
Barack, baby, say it ain’t so.
I spent three hours last Sunday hoofing it through the Main Line suburbs knocking on doors for you.
Anyone hear if the shorts are making up nooses for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley?
Yep, it is a vicious cycle. Hedge funds and others on the street short the stock, making it harder for the firm to raise capital, rating agencies downgrade the credit worthiness making it harder for the firm to borrow, hedge funds short the stock even more. Rinse, repeat.
Don’t worry, E. O’Neal will soon explain to us how these 500 points represent ‘liabilities’, and how if you multiply a negative by a negative you get a positive, so that they’re really ‘assets’ now.
Raines left as CEO in 2004. He was also White House budget director under Clinton (you know, the last time it was balanced). He’s not squeaky clean but people like Biden and Dodd aren’t either. In any case, that seems like way too much of an inside baseball story to have any traction. I mean, both sides agree the bailout was absolutely necessary, and it’s the lack of regulation that led to it as much as any former CEOs.
Re Texan’s comment “Except McCain doesn’t want to talk about Phil Gramm, and no Republican wants to talk about what Bush did with the OCC.”
———–
Hmmm. So is this one of those situations in Washington where everyone grabs their dinner partner by the nuts and says “We’re not to hurt each other, are we?”
And we get the REAL bad news sometime ,oh, around November 5?
Re: Anyone hear if the shorts are making up nooses for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley?
Goldman avoided the mortgage meltdown altogether, and MS did the sackcloth-and-ashes bit late last year and got out while the getting was still good. Expect those two, and also JP Morgan, to survive and (eventually) prosper– they just lost two more competitors after all, and they stand to pick up business as a result.
“On December 21, 2004 Raines accepted what he called “early retirement” [2] from his position as CEO while U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators continued to investigate alleged accounting irregularities. He is accused by The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulating body of Fannie Mae, of abetting widespread accounting errors, which included the shifting of losses so senior executives, such as himself, could earn large bonuses [3].
In 2006, the OFHEO announced a suit against Raines in order to recover some or all of the $50 million in payments made to Raines based on the overstated earnings [4] initially estimated to be $9 billion but have been announced as 6.3 billion.[2].”
————-
ha ha ha. Going on the lam with the loot right at Christmas was a classy touch. It was a Christmas present, right?
I’ve been an equity trader for almost 10 years now, and today was a top 10 crazy day. It is impossible to know where the craziness will come from next.
Financials are in bad shape, but metals, agriculture stocks, and even oil and natural gas stocks are no picnic either.
We’ll see if Goldman or Morgan fall significantly over the next few weeks, but I sort of doubt they will go the way of Lehman, Bear, and Merrill.
Even the hedge funds need someplace to put their money and clear their trades.
I think we need to refocus on the important issues facing the country, like did Obama call Palin a pig and just what exactly poor bowling scores tell us about Obama’s elitism. You nation of whiners, you.
But the fundamentals of the economy are still strong. McCain just said so! Stop being a nation of whiners.
During a time of crisis, can you imagine entrusting the nation’s financial well-being to McCain who admits he doesn’t understand the economy, Palin who doesn’t understand … well, much of anything, Luskin (another McCain economic adviser) who was a pump monkey until recently, and Gramm who is personally to blame for much of today’s woes? Let’s do the math:
0 McCain Experience Points plus 0 Palin
Experience Points minus 1,000,000 Luskin
Bad Experience Points minus 999,999,999
Gramm Bad Experience Points
So is this one of those situations in Washington where everyone grabs their dinner partner by the nuts and says “We’re not to hurt each other, are we?”
If Obama and Biden aren’t out 24/7 reminding people that “McCain said he wants to trust now-bankrupt Wall Street firms with your Social Security,” they’re out of their minds.
This is the dumbest group I’ve ever associated with — only virtually, thankfully. No, I’m not Stan O’Neal. I wouldn’t mind having his money, but not his reputation and feeble brain. foolfrommars, I was correct about the taxpayers assuming $5.4 trillion of Fannie and Freddie liabilities, most of which is off-balance sheet (remember Enron?).
Don Williams, I’ve been posting about Raines and Johnson, two former Fannie CEOs, perpetrators of accounting fraud, and Obama top advisers. Do you remember the Sopranos? Fannie and Freddie were the Dems’ Bada Bing. That’s where loyal capos went to make their fortunes and funnel campaign contributions back to the boys. Larry Summers tried to take them on and got his ass handed to him.
“….Raines left as [Fannie Mae] CEO in 2004….He’s not squeaky clean but people like Biden and Dodd aren’t either…”
I don’t think either of the “2 parties” (wink, wink) will raise a stink about Freddie and Fannie (now known collectively and far more appropriately as Franron, thanks to Bill Fleckenstein).
Franron sprinkled tens of $millions to buy influence from (as is always the case these days) both parties. In situations like these, the pols just keep their mouths shut rather than shooting themselves in the foot.
kafka, you’re right. Like most D.C. scams, it was bi-partisan. However, McCain has long called for reform of Fannie and Freddie, while Obama has taken more than $140K in contributions from their PACs, and he is close to two of their crooked former CEOs.
e. o’neal, my favorite AIRHEAD! life is short and the tedium of correcting your misunderstandings grows ever more severe, but i’m going to outsource the bulk of this to the incomparable Tanta at Calculated Risk.
I’ll just say that your original claim – that the receivership of fannie and freddie expanded the national debt by $5T or so – was, of course, completely wrong, as even you now appear to concede (i’ll also repeat that costs could be somewhere between 0 and $300B simply taking the best and worst case scenarios we know right now).
your additional claim – that this is “off balance sheet” – is a giveaway that you’re just repeating some drivel passed along to you as insight. the phrase has no meaning here.
as for your core claim – the media has generically told me that we now have $5.4T in “liabilities” – i will leave that to tanta (and if you’d like a real education in the housing market and its economics, spend some time at calculated risk and delve into tanta’s ubernerd posts and you’ll see how limited your grasp actually is), who wrote several days ago:
I’m sure some regular readers of this blog think it’s silly to be concerned about the level of ignorance and inanity appearing in USA Today, but I’m guessing that most voters get their information about things like the Fannie/Freddie deprivatization from headlines in the mainstream press, not the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal. So the claim that $5.4 trillion in mortgages represent net liabilities of Fannie and Freddie, instead of assets, and that these are now liabilities of the taxpayers, is going to become one of those things that a lot of people “know” and quite possibly the only thing they “know” about this subject. Eradicating that “knowledge” is going to be tough.
I recall Freakonomics mentioning that someone who bought a nominal value in Loonies in 2000 would have had better returns by 2006 (pre-credit crash), adjusting for the depreciation of the dollar’s value during that period, than a straight investment in the DJIA. Remember, that was before the Countrywide mortgage collapse that precipitated this whole thing.
howard, what you’re doing is like the 128th seed demanding a re-match with Roger Federer, since I’ve already trounced you on this matter several times. Off-balance sheet items can be very damaging, as Enron shareholders learned. The GSEs have guaranteed trillions of mortgage-backed securities — these guarantees are not on the balance sheet, but the taxpayers are now on the hook if the mortgages don’t perform. They are liabilities in a real sense, though not in standard accounting.
I found this article in about ten seconds. Just read the first paragraph. I’ve also heard and read the number $5.4 trillion as the total amount of liabilities and guarantees. As you mention, these “liabilities” are offset by assets, so the ultimate loss to the taxpayers is still unknown. It will depend on what happens in the housing market and general economy. http://www.bus.umich.edu/NewsRoom/ArticleDisplay.asp?news_id=14032
Since Fannie/Freddie cover about half of all mortgages , their portfolio presumably includes beachfront property in Galveston Texas and the suburbs of Houston. Are any of those mortgages likely to have payment delays?
Just ignore E. O’Neal. He is in way over his head. He thinks that Fannie and Freddy are “off the balance sheet”. Nationalizing them brought them very much on the federal balance sheet. And he keeps citing two Obama advisers who ran these companies when the followed much tighter lending standards.
Yesterday he suggested that there are no economists who say we are in a recession, and that the eye of the “hurricane” may still miss us.
Re kxf’s question “And no one’s mentioned the Keating Five at this point?”
———
I mentioned it in an earlier thread as an example of why McCain’s claim to be the “Reform Candidate” is such a crock of shit.
McCain’s claiming that he’s going to “reform” Washington to prevent things like today’s mess from ever happening again.
But we saw the same clusterfuck happening in 1990 –due in part to McCain leaning on federal regulators when they tried to halt dangerous speculation in real estate by the S&Ls. How much “reform” has McCain done in the 17 years since and why didn’t he avert today’s mess?
Read this Arizona newspaper account of the McCain as one of the Keating 5 and tell me if that’s a “Reform” candidate.
e o’neal, i’ve actually reached my limit with your delusions: neither article you link to says what you claim it says.
the first article says “own or guarantee” and the second discusses 1.7T in unsecured liabilities, which is more or less the figure i’ve given you before (i used 1.4T because that was the number i’ve seen).
the second article also says – as i was fairly sure yesterday in contravention to your wrongheadedness – that the US government has not (you hear that sonny? not) put a full faith and credit backing on anything.
so you’re just plain wrong again. those mortgages represent a claim on tangible property, they are not disconnected payables accumulated in the normal course of business.
now the fact is, these are very complicated organizations, and the reporting is very superficial, and much remains to be discovered (perhaps even written) in the fine print.
but what isn’t complicated is understanding that you don’t know what you’re talking about….
Re howard’s comment “the second discusses 1.7T in unsecured liabilities, which is more or less the figure i’ve given you before ”
———–
Isn’t the dispute a matter of different definitions? The Bloomberg article says that Fannie and Freddie have $1.7 Trillion in unsecured debt — but that they also have
guaranteed $3.5 Trillion of mortgages. That adds up to $5.2 Trillion of potential liability and the government itself is trying to figure out how it should be accounted for on the government balance sheet.
Obviously, a mortgage is secured by the property. Equally obviously, the value of that property can fall depending upon changes in demand, what the national economy is doing and what the local economy is doing, amount of excess supply,etc.
Plus depreciation in unoccupied homes due to rodent invasions, roof leaks and water damage, burst pipes, vandalism, drug addicted squatters,etc.
FOr example, the Washington DC suburbs are one of the most stable housing markets in the country because of the federal government. But circa 1990 , houses in the $280,000 range lost about $70,000 of their value –fell to around $210,000 — within a matter of months due to defense cutbacks/layoffs with the end of the Cold War and the need to dead with the massive Reagan debt. And that decline was seen elsewhere around the country. A co-worker of mine who had moved from San Antonio to Philly had to come up with around $50,000 of his savings because the value of his house in San Antonio had fallen below what he owed on his mortgage.
In my home town (i.e, where I was reared as a child) housing values have collapsed whenever the coal business goes from booming into one of its periodic busts.
That’s why real bankers used to require 20 percent down on a house and gave mortgages only when they were sure the applicants had secure jobs and were likely to pay the mortgages off.
If the economy goes into the tank, the taxpayer losses could well exceed $300 Billion. If, on the other hand, any recession is brief and immigration brings in wealthy foreigners to work off the surplus, then the taxpayer liability may fade in a year or two.
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) — The Bush administration is considering whether to fold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s $5.2 trillion in debt into the federal budget, the White House budget office and the U.S. Treasury Department said.
Maybe it’s Bloomberg and the U.S. Treasury that don’t understand assets and liabilities. It couldn’t be you, could it? Here’s an article on off-balance sheet liabilities. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/analyst/022002.asp
Don, here’s the issue: fannie and freddie, when they own or guarantee mortgages, have an asset claim associated: the mortgage fails and they’ve got the house.
so these are assets, not liabilities.
the great unknown, of course, is what will happen to the housing market, how many of those mortgages will fail, what will happen to the asset values, and so forth. that’s why it’s an unknown.
but that’s not the same as saying – as e o’neal has said in various ways – that we simply expanded the national debt by $5.4T (not true), the the full faith and credit of the united states is backing these guarantees (not as yet true). or that the mortgages are liabilities.
here’s where e o’neal’s inability to understand what he’s reading costs him so dearly. he reads the lead, which he quotes. he then doesn’t follow on to discover that no actual government official uses the term $5.4T and that the distinction is very clearly drawn between actual liabilities (it was fannie and freddie’s inability to roll over debt that triggered this whole receivership) and mortgage guarantees and ownership.
in the broad sense, don, this is a tempest in a teapot, in that even e o’neal concedes that there might be an asset in here somewhere, but his basic misunderstanding nonetheless is troubling.
Hey, hey, hey – no sense getting into spats about a few trillion dollars (ok, over 5 trillion), especially when both John McCain and George Bush assured us today that the economy is sound. I have to admit, I was starting to worry a little until then. But with two of the best economic minds the Republican Party has on the case, I’m betting Dow 36,000 by Christmas. Any takers?
I’m not understanding the news out of AIG. When they got their downgrade, the word was it had everything to do with someone in management getting picked up by the cops and AIG wasn’t explaining why.
The guy that got picked up, I knew of sort of third hand. A different brokerage than the one I used to work for was at the time employing the son of the owner. The son and this guy from AIG are out at a conference in Vegas and the casino has comped them the limo service. They got loaded and decided to go to the Spearmint Rhino and stiffed the limo driver. They proceeded to knock down a five figure tab on drinks and lap dances. Obviously, the way this is supposed to work is the life company is supposed to entertain the broker, but this guy says “I don’t have that kind of money, and I can’t submit this bill to expenses. You pay for it and I’ll have AIG cut you a check a later”. So the son uses the company card, and the AIG guy pretends it never happened and stiffs the broker like he stiffed the limo driver.
There is something bad going on over there, I bet it’s not anything near honest errors either.
howard, there is a difference between balance sheet assets and liabilities and off-balance sheet assets and liabilities, like guarantees. I’ll concede I haven’t always clearly distinguished the two. What’s important to me as a taxpayer is that we have $5.2 trillion of new liabilities as a result of the GSEs shortfalls, and we have no idea how valuable the assets are that offset these liabilities. That’s all I was trying to say all those posts ago, however inartfully.
Please don’t be troubled by my “basic misunderstanding”. I’m surely too ignorant to see it. Peace.
The Chinese have sobered up from their 3 day weekend and are going “What the FUCK?” Hang Seng down almost 6 percent.
I suspect they are about all out of favors when it comes to making more loans to the US.
George the Moron has probably already asked the Secret Service to make that white trash trailer park of his in Crawford into a “fortified compound”.
For a survival retreat, I myself would prefer Del Rio, TX on the border — population density is lower, few Mexicans on the other side because of the desert (got to plan on the US Army collapsing due to lack of pay ) and the drug smugglers are a better class of people. Plus no nuclear targets upwind for a couple of hundred miles so fallout risk is minimal.
“What’s important to me as a taxpayer is that we have $5.2 trillion of new liabilities as a result of the GSEs shortfalls, and we have no idea how valuable the assets are that offset these liabilities. That’s all I was trying to say all those posts ago, however inartfully.”
Well, the CBO estimated that the total cost of the Iraq war will be $2 trillion when interest on borrowed money is tabulated, and the US will have few financial assets to show for that adventure. As far as F+F; I have no idea what the real value of their assets are, and neither do you. Obviously, those liabilities looked pretty good about two years ago, as did the policy of encouraging Americans to purchase homes.
Don, there’s an old saying: If you owe the bank ten thousand, then they’ve got you; but if you owe them ten million, then you’ve got them. Well, we owe the Chinese tens of billions — but I’m not sure who has whom.
They have the whip hand. If they move first to reallocate they win. The move in and of itself devalues their position, but they “win” in that case. It would be painful, but it’s a “use it or lose it” scenario, and it can’t be that far off the trigger finger right now.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
The Dow is worth 4.5% less now than it was worth this morning. I can’t really wrap my head around how that is possible.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Yah, I did the same thing. When I saw the final number, my heart skipped a beat.
Damn. Worst day on the market since 9/11.
Too bad for the rightards’ phony “Obama tried to delay troops’ removal from Iraq” story. Better luck next time, guys!
.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
I can’t help wondering if our “E O’Neal” poster has a first name of “Ernest” and a middle name of “Stanley”.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_O%27Neal
“O’Neal earned USD$48 million in 2006.
During August and September 2007, as the sub prime crisis swept through the Global financial market, Merrill Lynch announced losses of $8 billion. In October of the same year, he announced his retirement and walked away with a compensation package valued at $161.5 million.[2]
On January 17th, Merrill Lynch announced 4th quarter writedowns and provisions of $14.1 billion, bringing total writedowns for 2007 to the sum of $22.5 billion.[citation needed] The company recorded a $12.8 billion pretax loss for all of 2007, versus a pretax profit of $9.8 billion for 2006.”
————-
Ha ha ha ha. That certainly sounds like our boy.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Even GS got a big haircut today. Death watches now on AIG, WB, WaMU,…
September 15th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
there’s been an extraordinary amount of denial in the market, as people have refused to focus on what deleveraging actually means.
i think we have a ways to go down: stocks are valued on PE, and with E in question (industrial production sank), no reason for stocks not to drop further.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I also think I’ve discovered why Obama has been so mum on the massive taxpayer bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Two words: Franklin Raines
Ok, Two more words: Jim Johnson hee hee
From
http://overthehilloracles.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/the-obama-fannie-freddie-connection/
““You look at Obama’s economic advisers, the guys he has counted on from day one and who have raised him a ton — and I mean a ton — of money: Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, both of them are waist to neck deep in the mortgage debacle.”
Both Raines and Johnson have served as CEO of Fannie Mae, with Raines taking over from Johnson. Both are key political and economic advisers to Obama.
“How can Obama go out with a straight face and saw it was Republicans who made this mess, when it is his key advisers who ran the agencies that made the big mess what it is?” says a Democrat House member who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. “It’s his people who are responsible for what may well be the single largest government bailout in history. And every single one of them made millions off the collapse that are lining Obama’s campaign coffers. If the McCain campaign lets this one go, they deserve to lose.”
————
Barack, baby, say it ain’t so.
I spent three hours last Sunday hoofing it through the Main Line suburbs knocking on doors for you.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Re “Death watches now on AIG, WB, WaMU”
———
Anyone hear if the shorts are making up nooses for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley?
September 15th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Anyone hear if the shorts are making up nooses for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley?
Yep, it is a vicious cycle. Hedge funds and others on the street short the stock, making it harder for the firm to raise capital, rating agencies downgrade the credit worthiness making it harder for the firm to borrow, hedge funds short the stock even more. Rinse, repeat.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Right. Except McCain doesn’t want to talk about Phil Gramm, and no Republican wants to talk about what Bush did with the OCC.
.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Don’t worry, E. O’Neal will soon explain to us how these 500 points represent ‘liabilities’, and how if you multiply a negative by a negative you get a positive, so that they’re really ‘assets’ now.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
I have substantial holdings in B of A. I don’t like how their managing my money. But, they pay a good dividend!
September 15th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Don,
Raines left as CEO in 2004. He was also White House budget director under Clinton (you know, the last time it was balanced). He’s not squeaky clean but people like Biden and Dodd aren’t either. In any case, that seems like way too much of an inside baseball story to have any traction. I mean, both sides agree the bailout was absolutely necessary, and it’s the lack of regulation that led to it as much as any former CEOs.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Re Texan’s comment “Except McCain doesn’t want to talk about Phil Gramm, and no Republican wants to talk about what Bush did with the OCC.”
———–
Hmmm. So is this one of those situations in Washington where everyone grabs their dinner partner by the nuts and says “We’re not to hurt each other, are we?”
And we get the REAL bad news sometime ,oh, around November 5?
September 15th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Re: Anyone hear if the shorts are making up nooses for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley?
Goldman avoided the mortgage meltdown altogether, and MS did the sackcloth-and-ashes bit late last year and got out while the getting was still good. Expect those two, and also JP Morgan, to survive and (eventually) prosper– they just lost two more competitors after all, and they stand to pick up business as a result.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Re Adam’s comment “Don,
Raines left as [Fannie Mae] CEO in 2004….He’s not squeaky clean but people like Biden and Dodd aren’t either…”
———–
Hmmm. My understanding is that he didn’t so much “leave” as he fled from the posse around Christmas 2004. From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Raines
————–
“On December 21, 2004 Raines accepted what he called “early retirement” [2] from his position as CEO while U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators continued to investigate alleged accounting irregularities. He is accused by The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulating body of Fannie Mae, of abetting widespread accounting errors, which included the shifting of losses so senior executives, such as himself, could earn large bonuses [3].
In 2006, the OFHEO announced a suit against Raines in order to recover some or all of the $50 million in payments made to Raines based on the overstated earnings [4] initially estimated to be $9 billion but have been announced as 6.3 billion.[2].”
————-
ha ha ha. Going on the lam with the loot right at Christmas was a classy touch. It was a Christmas present, right?
September 15th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I’ve been an equity trader for almost 10 years now, and today was a top 10 crazy day. It is impossible to know where the craziness will come from next.
Financials are in bad shape, but metals, agriculture stocks, and even oil and natural gas stocks are no picnic either.
We’ll see if Goldman or Morgan fall significantly over the next few weeks, but I sort of doubt they will go the way of Lehman, Bear, and Merrill.
Even the hedge funds need someplace to put their money and clear their trades.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I think we need to refocus on the important issues facing the country, like did Obama call Palin a pig and just what exactly poor bowling scores tell us about Obama’s elitism. You nation of whiners, you.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Hmmmm. All Donald Luskin has to do is write a Wash Post OpEd claiming “The Economy’s FINE!” and the Dow falls 500 points.
I can see how the old boy would have his uses.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
But the fundamentals of the economy are still strong. McCain just said so! Stop being a nation of whiners.
During a time of crisis, can you imagine entrusting the nation’s financial well-being to McCain who admits he doesn’t understand the economy, Palin who doesn’t understand … well, much of anything, Luskin (another McCain economic adviser) who was a pump monkey until recently, and Gramm who is personally to blame for much of today’s woes? Let’s do the math:
0 McCain Experience Points plus 0 Palin
Experience Points minus 1,000,000 Luskin
Bad Experience Points minus 999,999,999
Gramm Bad Experience Points
Ugh. That’s a pretty big negative.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
If Obama and Biden aren’t out 24/7 reminding people that “McCain said he wants to trust now-bankrupt Wall Street firms with your Social Security,” they’re out of their minds.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
This is the dumbest group I’ve ever associated with — only virtually, thankfully. No, I’m not Stan O’Neal. I wouldn’t mind having his money, but not his reputation and feeble brain. foolfrommars, I was correct about the taxpayers assuming $5.4 trillion of Fannie and Freddie liabilities, most of which is off-balance sheet (remember Enron?).
Don Williams, I’ve been posting about Raines and Johnson, two former Fannie CEOs, perpetrators of accounting fraud, and Obama top advisers. Do you remember the Sopranos? Fannie and Freddie were the Dems’ Bada Bing. That’s where loyal capos went to make their fortunes and funnel campaign contributions back to the boys. Larry Summers tried to take them on and got his ass handed to him.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Does this mean the stock market is now lower than it was when Bush moved in to the White House? Four more years! ! !
September 15th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
So at least we can assume that Cindy McCain lost some money today? Makes me feel a little bit better…
September 15th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
“….Raines left as [Fannie Mae] CEO in 2004….He’s not squeaky clean but people like Biden and Dodd aren’t either…”
I don’t think either of the “2 parties” (wink, wink) will raise a stink about Freddie and Fannie (now known collectively and far more appropriately as Franron, thanks to Bill Fleckenstein).
Franron sprinkled tens of $millions to buy influence from (as is always the case these days) both parties. In situations like these, the pols just keep their mouths shut rather than shooting themselves in the foot.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
kafka, you’re right. Like most D.C. scams, it was bi-partisan. However, McCain has long called for reform of Fannie and Freddie, while Obama has taken more than $140K in contributions from their PACs, and he is close to two of their crooked former CEOs.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
On Friday I was looking at 5 more years to retirement. Today, it looks like 6 or 7.
That’s change you can believe in.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
e. o’neal, my favorite AIRHEAD! life is short and the tedium of correcting your misunderstandings grows ever more severe, but i’m going to outsource the bulk of this to the incomparable Tanta at Calculated Risk.
I’ll just say that your original claim – that the receivership of fannie and freddie expanded the national debt by $5T or so – was, of course, completely wrong, as even you now appear to concede (i’ll also repeat that costs could be somewhere between 0 and $300B simply taking the best and worst case scenarios we know right now).
your additional claim – that this is “off balance sheet” – is a giveaway that you’re just repeating some drivel passed along to you as insight. the phrase has no meaning here.
as for your core claim – the media has generically told me that we now have $5.4T in “liabilities” – i will leave that to tanta (and if you’d like a real education in the housing market and its economics, spend some time at calculated risk and delve into tanta’s ubernerd posts and you’ll see how limited your grasp actually is), who wrote several days ago:
I’m sure some regular readers of this blog think it’s silly to be concerned about the level of ignorance and inanity appearing in USA Today, but I’m guessing that most voters get their information about things like the Fannie/Freddie deprivatization from headlines in the mainstream press, not the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal. So the claim that $5.4 trillion in mortgages represent net liabilities of Fannie and Freddie, instead of assets, and that these are now liabilities of the taxpayers, is going to become one of those things that a lot of people “know” and quite possibly the only thing they “know” about this subject. Eradicating that “knowledge” is going to be tough.
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-09-09T12%3A13%3A00-04%3A00&max-results=20
September 15th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
However, McCain has long called for reform of Fannie and Freddie
And yet, what’s he actually DONE about it? Zero. Zip. Zilch.
That McCain dude’s all talk, isn’t he?
September 15th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Commodities trading is tax-free, right?
I recall Freakonomics mentioning that someone who bought a nominal value in Loonies in 2000 would have had better returns by 2006 (pre-credit crash), adjusting for the depreciation of the dollar’s value during that period, than a straight investment in the DJIA. Remember, that was before the Countrywide mortgage collapse that precipitated this whole thing.
The fundamentals are strong!
September 15th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
howard, what you’re doing is like the 128th seed demanding a re-match with Roger Federer, since I’ve already trounced you on this matter several times. Off-balance sheet items can be very damaging, as Enron shareholders learned. The GSEs have guaranteed trillions of mortgage-backed securities — these guarantees are not on the balance sheet, but the taxpayers are now on the hook if the mortgages don’t perform. They are liabilities in a real sense, though not in standard accounting.
I found this article in about ten seconds. Just read the first paragraph. I’ve also heard and read the number $5.4 trillion as the total amount of liabilities and guarantees. As you mention, these “liabilities” are offset by assets, so the ultimate loss to the taxpayers is still unknown. It will depend on what happens in the housing market and general economy.
http://www.bus.umich.edu/NewsRoom/ArticleDisplay.asp?news_id=14032
September 15th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Since Fannie/Freddie cover about half of all mortgages , their portfolio presumably includes beachfront property in Galveston Texas and the suburbs of Houston. Are any of those mortgages likely to have payment delays?
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//080915/480/8393331032024a748416190fcaf91b99/
The idea of the government trying to run a real estate business with my money scares me. You have to know what’s really behind the balance sheets.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
And no one’s mentioned the Keating Five at this point?
September 15th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Just ignore E. O’Neal. He is in way over his head. He thinks that Fannie and Freddy are “off the balance sheet”. Nationalizing them brought them very much on the federal balance sheet. And he keeps citing two Obama advisers who ran these companies when the followed much tighter lending standards.
Yesterday he suggested that there are no economists who say we are in a recession, and that the eye of the “hurricane” may still miss us.
What a moron.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Don, I saw this article saying the government is trying to decide whether to add the GSEs $5+ trillion in liabilities and guarantees, and their losses, to the federal budget and national debt.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aH_KkmVv0kfM&refer=home
September 15th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
And no one’s mentioned the Keating Five at this point?
Joe Klein did today. Man he’s fallen off the tire swing, hard.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Re kxf’s question “And no one’s mentioned the Keating Five at this point?”
———
I mentioned it in an earlier thread as an example of why McCain’s claim to be the “Reform Candidate” is such a crock of shit.
McCain’s claiming that he’s going to “reform” Washington to prevent things like today’s mess from ever happening again.
But we saw the same clusterfuck happening in 1990 –due in part to McCain leaning on federal regulators when they tried to halt dangerous speculation in real estate by the S&Ls. How much “reform” has McCain done in the 17 years since and why didn’t he avert today’s mess?
Read this Arizona newspaper account of the McCain as one of the Keating 5 and tell me if that’s a “Reform” candidate.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/mccain/articles/0301mccainbio-chapter7.html
September 15th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Here’s Joe Klein taking McSame to the woodshed today, bringing up Keating along the way for good measure.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
e o’neal, i’ve actually reached my limit with your delusions: neither article you link to says what you claim it says.
the first article says “own or guarantee” and the second discusses 1.7T in unsecured liabilities, which is more or less the figure i’ve given you before (i used 1.4T because that was the number i’ve seen).
the second article also says – as i was fairly sure yesterday in contravention to your wrongheadedness – that the US government has not (you hear that sonny? not) put a full faith and credit backing on anything.
so you’re just plain wrong again. those mortgages represent a claim on tangible property, they are not disconnected payables accumulated in the normal course of business.
now the fact is, these are very complicated organizations, and the reporting is very superficial, and much remains to be discovered (perhaps even written) in the fine print.
but what isn’t complicated is understanding that you don’t know what you’re talking about….
September 15th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Over the week-end, I thought I saw a $50 billion bailout for AIG. The NYT this evening has it at $70.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Re howard’s comment “the second discusses 1.7T in unsecured liabilities, which is more or less the figure i’ve given you before ”
———–
Isn’t the dispute a matter of different definitions? The Bloomberg article says that Fannie and Freddie have $1.7 Trillion in unsecured debt — but that they also have
guaranteed $3.5 Trillion of mortgages. That adds up to $5.2 Trillion of potential liability and the government itself is trying to figure out how it should be accounted for on the government balance sheet.
Obviously, a mortgage is secured by the property. Equally obviously, the value of that property can fall depending upon changes in demand, what the national economy is doing and what the local economy is doing, amount of excess supply,etc.
Plus depreciation in unoccupied homes due to rodent invasions, roof leaks and water damage, burst pipes, vandalism, drug addicted squatters,etc.
FOr example, the Washington DC suburbs are one of the most stable housing markets in the country because of the federal government. But circa 1990 , houses in the $280,000 range lost about $70,000 of their value –fell to around $210,000 — within a matter of months due to defense cutbacks/layoffs with the end of the Cold War and the need to dead with the massive Reagan debt. And that decline was seen elsewhere around the country. A co-worker of mine who had moved from San Antonio to Philly had to come up with around $50,000 of his savings because the value of his house in San Antonio had fallen below what he owed on his mortgage.
In my home town (i.e, where I was reared as a child) housing values have collapsed whenever the coal business goes from booming into one of its periodic busts.
That’s why real bankers used to require 20 percent down on a house and gave mortgages only when they were sure the applicants had secure jobs and were likely to pay the mortgages off.
If the economy goes into the tank, the taxpayer losses could well exceed $300 Billion. If, on the other hand, any recession is brief and immigration brings in wealthy foreigners to work off the surplus, then the taxpayer liability may fade in a year or two.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
howard,
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) — The Bush administration is considering whether to fold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s $5.2 trillion in debt into the federal budget, the White House budget office and the U.S. Treasury Department said.
Maybe it’s Bloomberg and the U.S. Treasury that don’t understand assets and liabilities. It couldn’t be you, could it? Here’s an article on off-balance sheet liabilities.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/analyst/022002.asp
September 15th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Don, here’s the issue: fannie and freddie, when they own or guarantee mortgages, have an asset claim associated: the mortgage fails and they’ve got the house.
so these are assets, not liabilities.
the great unknown, of course, is what will happen to the housing market, how many of those mortgages will fail, what will happen to the asset values, and so forth. that’s why it’s an unknown.
but that’s not the same as saying – as e o’neal has said in various ways – that we simply expanded the national debt by $5.4T (not true), the the full faith and credit of the united states is backing these guarantees (not as yet true). or that the mortgages are liabilities.
here’s where e o’neal’s inability to understand what he’s reading costs him so dearly. he reads the lead, which he quotes. he then doesn’t follow on to discover that no actual government official uses the term $5.4T and that the distinction is very clearly drawn between actual liabilities (it was fannie and freddie’s inability to roll over debt that triggered this whole receivership) and mortgage guarantees and ownership.
in the broad sense, don, this is a tempest in a teapot, in that even e o’neal concedes that there might be an asset in here somewhere, but his basic misunderstanding nonetheless is troubling.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Hey, hey, hey – no sense getting into spats about a few trillion dollars (ok, over 5 trillion), especially when both John McCain and George Bush assured us today that the economy is sound. I have to admit, I was starting to worry a little until then. But with two of the best economic minds the Republican Party has on the case, I’m betting Dow 36,000 by Christmas. Any takers?
September 15th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
I’m not understanding the news out of AIG. When they got their downgrade, the word was it had everything to do with someone in management getting picked up by the cops and AIG wasn’t explaining why.
The guy that got picked up, I knew of sort of third hand. A different brokerage than the one I used to work for was at the time employing the son of the owner. The son and this guy from AIG are out at a conference in Vegas and the casino has comped them the limo service. They got loaded and decided to go to the Spearmint Rhino and stiffed the limo driver. They proceeded to knock down a five figure tab on drinks and lap dances. Obviously, the way this is supposed to work is the life company is supposed to entertain the broker, but this guy says “I don’t have that kind of money, and I can’t submit this bill to expenses. You pay for it and I’ll have AIG cut you a check a later”. So the son uses the company card, and the AIG guy pretends it never happened and stiffs the broker like he stiffed the limo driver.
There is something bad going on over there, I bet it’s not anything near honest errors either.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Economy — stop being sexist!
There. Fixed it.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:17 am
howard, there is a difference between balance sheet assets and liabilities and off-balance sheet assets and liabilities, like guarantees. I’ll concede I haven’t always clearly distinguished the two. What’s important to me as a taxpayer is that we have $5.2 trillion of new liabilities as a result of the GSEs shortfalls, and we have no idea how valuable the assets are that offset these liabilities. That’s all I was trying to say all those posts ago, however inartfully.
Please don’t be troubled by my “basic misunderstanding”. I’m surely too ignorant to see it. Peace.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:21 am
The Chinese have sobered up from their 3 day weekend and are going “What the FUCK?” Hang Seng down almost 6 percent.
I suspect they are about all out of favors when it comes to making more loans to the US.
George the Moron has probably already asked the Secret Service to make that white trash trailer park of his in Crawford into a “fortified compound”.
For a survival retreat, I myself would prefer Del Rio, TX on the border — population density is lower, few Mexicans on the other side because of the desert (got to plan on the US Army collapsing due to lack of pay ) and the drug smugglers are a better class of people. Plus no nuclear targets upwind for a couple of hundred miles so fallout risk is minimal.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:25 am
“What’s important to me as a taxpayer is that we have $5.2 trillion of new liabilities as a result of the GSEs shortfalls, and we have no idea how valuable the assets are that offset these liabilities. That’s all I was trying to say all those posts ago, however inartfully.”
Well, the CBO estimated that the total cost of the Iraq war will be $2 trillion when interest on borrowed money is tabulated, and the US will have few financial assets to show for that adventure. As far as F+F; I have no idea what the real value of their assets are, and neither do you. Obviously, those liabilities looked pretty good about two years ago, as did the policy of encouraging Americans to purchase homes.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Don, there’s an old saying: If you owe the bank ten thousand, then they’ve got you; but if you owe them ten million, then you’ve got them. Well, we owe the Chinese tens of billions — but I’m not sure who has whom.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:06 am
but I’m not sure who has whom.
They have the whip hand. If they move first to reallocate they win. The move in and of itself devalues their position, but they “win” in that case. It would be painful, but it’s a “use it or lose it” scenario, and it can’t be that far off the trigger finger right now.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Capitalism happens.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Re: That’s why real bankers used to require 20 percent down on a house
You could always get a mortgage with less than 20% down, but you were required to pay PMI which indemnified the bank against loss if you defaulted.
March 17th, 2009 at 3:27 am
It is the coolest site,keep so!
tramadol
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:26 am
tramadol
It is the coolest site,keep so!
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
buy cheap viagra
April 8th, 2009 at 3:41 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
viagra
April 16th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Very interesting site, Hope it will always be alive!
viagra