"What we are witnessing may be the greatest destruction of financial wealth that the world has ever seen -- paper losses measured in the trillions of dollars."
-Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, "How to Clean Up a Category 4 Financial Storm," September 18, 2008
(be afraid folks. be very afraid.)
September 21, 2008
HousingPANIC Quote of the Day
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29 comments:
Let's not play the blame game, people. Mistakes were made, but we've got you by the balls now.
By any means, we must keep these mortgages in pools, so the underlying fraud never comes to light.
Find some good bible prophecy scholars and authors and start studying ASAP.
This, and much more, was all foretold in the bible if you understand the typologies, similes, etc. used in the Holy Bible.
This post is not intended to offend or denigrate those who don't believe, but can you imagine the hate-filled venom that will consume you when you realize you've been sentenced to an eternity of unimaginable torment because you dismissed all those who tried to warn you?
By the way there are reasons why many of you characterize Christian Evangelicals as ignorant, etc., and that reason has to do with the way God uses the weak and the meek to convey his message. If you study the bible, you'll know he hates arrogance as much as sin, and that's also why he had Christ come the first time as a suffering servant on a donkey with no kingly trappings. It was so those blinded by their own arrogance would also be blind to his message.
When Christ was asked why the parables, similes, typologies, etc. he used were so confusing, his answer could have easily been paraphrased as "so the damned won't get it".
I wish no ill will to those of you on this site who have blasphemed Christ and his followers. The reason Christ admonished his followers against vengeance is because his vengeance against you will be for eternity, so nothing done to you here in this life will compare and would be like a grain of sand on the beach of the universe.
There is so much most of you could learn by not reading, but studying the bible, but alas the blind don't see and the deaf don't hear, just as it was prophesied for the end days. Just amazes me how so many of you can be so blind, deaf and dumb with all the evidence at your fingertips with a book that has a greater circulation than any other in the world. Just amazing.
But Greg Swann at Bloodhoundblog said year round golf would make everything OK!
Our founding fathers are rolling over in their graves.your gubernment is screwing you once again.They are basically telling you the caseys of the world were right to buy several homes w/ no down and then give them back to the bank.Somehow I think the banks were in cahoots w/ the govt.They made huge money selling these bullshit loans knowing all along the govt would bail them out.Now the executives have made millions off the taxpayer once again.thank you hank paulson.Why don't all the lenders have to pay the money back off the bad loans.this would raise a few hundred billion I imagine.
One day you are flipping burgers and the next you are selling loans to dumbshits who can't read nor comprehend a contract.Way to go mortgage people.I heard walmart will hire your sorry asses now that your out of work.Some of you might be able to get use to a stripper pole.
Paulson plan now includes bailing out the WHOLE WORLD.
We're all F*CK*D......
http://tinyurl.com/3v773u
Lehman execs bought luxury penthouses on eve of collapse
Several executives at the failed investment bank bought apartments in Eyal Ofer's Central Park West 15.
It appears that Wall Street's heady boom days are over, which will also bring an end to the record-breaking real estate prices in Manhattan. "The New York Observer" notes "a staggering number of the recent multimillion-dollar real estate purchases in New York were made by executives at the free-fallen Lehman Brothers:
In January 2007, of course, the firm’s chief executive, Dick Fuld, and his wife paid $21 million for a Park Avenue co-op, despite the fact that it needed massive amounts of work."
Lehman Brothers executives also liked 15 Central Park West, developed by Israeli tycoon Eyal Ofer, New York developers Arthur and William Zeckendorf, and the real estate arm of Goldman Sachs Inc. (NYSE: GS). "The New York Observer" notes, "the co-head of Lehman Brothers Real Estate Partners, Raymond Mikulich, paid $17.9 million for a spread; Lehman CFO Erin Callan paid $6.48 million; the head of Lehman’s European fixed-income sales, David Bizer, paid $5.3 million; and managing director Arthur Estey bought one of the building’s biggest non-penthouse units for $16.9 million."
"The New York Observer" goes on to comment, "None of those deals looks more ironic in hindsight than the $25 million and $2.4 million spreads that Bear Stearns’ ex-CEO Jimmy Cayne bought in February at the Plaza. Still, it’s not that Mr. Cayne (or Mr. Walker, Ms. Callan, Mr. Fuld) could be blamed for spending handsome Wall Street profits on handsome apartments with ever-increasing price tags. It’s just that the tiptop of the high end of the market will miss them if there are suddenly a lot fewer buyers with a lot of money to spend." The Plaza is owned by Yitzhak Tshuva's Elad Properties LLC.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docView.asp?did=1000383943&fid=1124
To Occassional visitor-
I agree with you in that all this seems straight out of the OMEN with biblical shadowings...But when will the Christian Right admit then that they chose the evil incarantion of lies as their president TWICE?
Deregulation and stopping all criminal procedures versus big business is what got us here...I don't want to sound crazy but I do believe that Bush and his neo-conservative friends are being controlled by the devil.
There is no explanation for all the lies, mistakes and straight up criminal behavior under the guise of christian values...Except that they ARE evil.
Keith:
Please don't bother us-- it's Sunday we're worried about the point spreads for today and Monday night.
The only goal of the Bush adiministration was the feed private contractors, oil companies and other business elites. Nothing else. They didn't even care about their party. And they succeeded enormously. I still don't understand how this mess added up to $700,000,000,000 in losses. With 20 million American homeowners, the entire country's mortgage debt could be erased. How did the mortgage debt get multiplied this much?
I cannot be bothered. NASCAR is on.
Woo Hoo, Billy Bob.
"There is so much most of you could learn by not reading, but studying the bible, but alas the blind don't see and the deaf don't hear, just as it was prophesied for the end days. Just amazes me how so many of you can be so blind, deaf and dumb with all the evidence at your fingertips with a book that has a greater circulation than any other in the world. Just amazing."
More mumbo-jumbo, highlighting the type of sheeple-think that got us here to begin with. This is the result of greed on top of greed and clinging to power and more greed. Nothing a few very public hangings wouldn't straighten out in short order. It's happened before, you know...the aristocracy getting pitchforked.
Didn't old man Kennedy pull his money out prior to the Great Depression.
It seems like the rich get the inside information first.
http://www.time.com/time/world/
article/0,8599,1841548,00.html?
imw=Y
If Wall Street is hoping that Prince Alwaleed bin Talal will ride to the rescue of America's crumbling banks, here's the word from the Saudi billionaire:
Thanks, but no thanks.
Having bailed out Citicorp on a couple of occasions — most recently by helping in its recapitalization earlier this year
— Al-Waleed says he's not in the market for any more U.S. financial sector assets.
Words on the street is that many Washington Mutual consumers have been taking their money out of Washington Mutual last week and putting it into different banks.
One worker from another banks said she never seen a busier week making new certificate of deposits (CDs).
Many of the new CDs she was making were in the $100,000 to $200,000.
Did any other banker seen this happening in their bank?
Time to pray.
Where did all the money go that went to the final sellers of those overpriced houses?
This dude is just another idiot that doesn't believe in prosecuting anybody. Basically he just wants to move forward and fix things, but hold nobody responsible. I like the part where he talks about nobody fooling anybody.
"They fooled themselves. They didn't fool us, they fooled themselves, and they were fooling us in process."
What the fuck?
Erin Burnett is a hotty.
Oh ya gonna rush out and put my $$$ there
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080921/bank_change.html
Synopsis
1) We are finally admitting there is a problem
2) Nobody is to be held accountable
3) Let the same people on whose watch the ship ran aground fix the problem
4) Let's have more talking head shows that just state the obvious and offer no real solutions
5) Gee its too bad that the taxpayers are gonna get hit with all of this
Our financial system does need bondo, it needs dynamite. And all the execs and "captains of industry" need to have ALL their wealth confiscated as the first step in paying back the 700 Billion.
The root problem is that there is no accountability by those doing the raping and pillaging.....
"What we are witnessing may be the greatest destruction of financial wealth that the world has ever seen -- paper losses measured in the trillions of dollars."
Wrong. We are witnessing the greatest redistribution of wealth the world has ever seen.
"...How did the mortgage debt get multiplied this much?...
By collateral fraud; that is why we must prevent foreclosure at all costs. There are no houses underlying a significant portion of this.
"...Our financial system does [not]need bondo, it needs dynamite..."
Yes. The cover story is that the world will stop without taxpayer debt re-capitalizing the banks.
What about all the money out there looking to invest itself? We should form our own lending associations and let these parasites die.
"Destruction" of wealth?
Is that so?
Seems more like we are seeing a transfer of wealth.
By collateral fraud; that is why we must prevent foreclosure at all costs. There are no houses underlying a significant portion of this.
If you want to keep deadbeats in homes they cannot afford, do so with your own money, you left-wing fool!
There is much less destruction than claimed, because the value wasn't there to begin with. The books showed big profits and the managers got big bonus, but the former was imaginary and only the latter was real.
Keith, as the great bailout of September 2008 unfolds, I'm increasingly seeing a parallel between bad loans and surplus houses to agricultural subsidies. Since the Great Depression the Federal government has been in the business of buying up surplus production of farm commodities when surpluses threaten to bankrupt the producers in bumper crop years. The farmer doesn't get rich from those programs, but it insures him or her from going broke, especially if they operate on a large scale and can game the system, extracting every ounce of the various subsidies. Now we've go the bankers, stock brokerages, and other financial sector players with their type of surplus, and Uncle Sam is going to step into the breach, buying up what was basically valueless in terms of mortgage backed securities, and saving the reckless lenders from ruin. The full details of the program will probably be worked out over the next few days in a mad bi-partisan rush to save Wall Street from its own follies. I'm wondering when the next logical step will be taken, and at least some of those millions of surplus homes now sitting vacant will also be bought up by Uncle Sam and disposed of in some manner which removes them from competing with other houses in the marketplace.
There are some assets, but the fact is there was a lot of "money" that was never really there. It was keystrokes. I have read that paper money only makes up about 10 percent of the "money" in the system. It is interesting to me that M3, the total money supply in the whole system, is not published anymore as of just a few months ago. This number used to be available to all. The excuse was that it isn't necessary - it is already counted in M1 and M2. I don't believe that. Somebody is paying alot of attention to M3.
...millions of surplus homes now sitting vacant will also be bought up by Uncle Sam and disposed of in some manner which removes them from competing with other houses in the marketplace.
YES what about those homes? I totally agree - more market manipulation.
"I'm wondering when the next logical step will be taken, and at least some of those millions of surplus homes now sitting vacant will also be bought up by Uncle Sam and disposed of in some manner which removes them from competing with other houses in the marketplace."
I'll always remember the photos of dairy farmers in the 1930's who were PAID by the U.S. Gov't to spill the milk of cows, just so it wouldn't come to market.
During the last housing downturn in the 1990's, we had entire neighborhoods in the exurbs of L.A. that were basically vacant, as the developer went belly-up during the construction and the houses sat half-completed. Many of these neighborhoods were condemned, or marked as off-limits by the city, and one housing tract in Palmdale was intentionally destroyed for one scene of the "Die Hard" movie.
Guess it was cheaper to destroy an unnecessary housing tract than to reproduce the effect with models, LOL! I bet that'll come as welcome news to our homeless vets!
Anonymous said...
This dude is just another idiot that doesn't believe in prosecuting anybody. Basically he just wants to move forward and fix things, but hold nobody responsible. I like the part where he talks about nobody fooling anybody.
The best revenge and the best way to prosecute these guys is to have a bankruptcy reorg. wipe off their claims as unpayable and re regulate the system.
Believe me that is the worst punishment they could receive.
Then force them to listen to FDR speeches for about 5 years. They'll commit suicide
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