Bernanke Word Cloud
A good use of Wordle:
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Hey, its late! Open thread!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 | 09:14 PM | Permalink
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I was curious where you heard/read about the FDIC using 10% of their resources with Indy Mac?
Posted by: David Troyer | Jul 16, 2008 9:38:01 PM
David,
In various articles, it has been cited that IndyMac brings a $4-$8 billion problem for the FDIC. Various sources have also cited that the FDIC has resources of $53 billion to combat bank failures.
Posted by: TheGuru | Jul 16, 2008 9:50:36 PM
Well...what goes around, comes around...?
TBP Wordle, formed by using the RSS feed as a source:
http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/72431/Untitled
Putting the two side by side, it looks like BR and BB are speakin' the same language on prices--big and prominent on both. Barry likes inflation a bit less and Ben, it seems. Also! The Big Picture is brought to you by the numbers 0.7, 3.8 and the time 07:00 am!
Posted by: DivisionByZero | Jul 16, 2008 9:51:01 PM
I'd like to nominate the following for BenSteinery quote of the year:
"Heck no they're not saving, because their net worth is growing. If your net worth is growing, in financial assets and other assets, you can spend more than your annual income!"
Stated by Michael Perry, ex-CEO of ex-mortgage lender Indymac, nine months to the day before his bank was shut down.
I guess that would have to be last year's BenSteinery quote of the year.
-btc
Posted by: BelowTheCrowd | Jul 16, 2008 9:59:32 PM
Why no outrage about the SEC's ban on naked shorts of Freddie and FAnnie and the 17 broker-dealers? I would love to have been a fly on the wall in that meeting...how did they choose the 17. How 'curious' that GS is among them? Will we see massive massive write-offs announced in the next 30 days? We could set up a pool.
Posted by: Bob Brandt | Jul 16, 2008 10:44:41 PM
What about things like:
malfeasance
lumber-jack beard
helicopter
printing press
subprime is contained
power grab
The shorts must have conspired to reduce the importance of those words
Posted by: mattt | Jul 16, 2008 10:45:53 PM
Does anyone have an idea about how/why the 19 stocks chosen to receive the benefit of Cox's short protection were selected, other than good ol' boys' crony capitalism?
Fannie/Freddie - ok, I get that. Lehman? I'll give it to you. But to name GS, MS, JPM and C which each have <3% short interest, and bag the most shorted like WM, WB, with >20% short interest reeks of borderline criminal preferential treatment. Perhaps they've selected the firms they feel represent the epicenter of this whole fragile framework we're teetering on. What are they hoping to prevent? JPM's short interest rising from 3 to 5?? For if THAT happened... god help us!
...never-mind that pesky stagflation, oil, wage pressures, real estate, current account deficit, unfunded future liabilities... "Let's make sure we've got equity prices sufficiently propped up first; then we'll deal with all that other nonsense!"
Is this really the best idea we've collectively got? This is their latest magic bullet?
I guess this brings us back to Barry's missive about idealistic idiocracy.
Man, we're in some deep shit...
Posted by: CPJ | Jul 16, 2008 11:01:36 PM
Amazing that the SEC would restrict shorts on the Financials!
http://www.reuters.com/article/fundsFundsNews/idUSN1517759420080716
Posted by: Strasser | Jul 16, 2008 11:42:02 PM
I'm surprised Wachovia's not on the "do not short" list. There's been rumors about their lack of cash lying around. I mention them cause they're my bank.
I saw elsewhere that naked short selling is and always has been illegal by the SEC. So why don't they apply it for every stock instead of just 18?
Posted by: rj | Jul 17, 2008 12:04:49 AM
I believe the DNS list comes from being a "money-center bank", whatever that means.
Wachovia and Wamu will not be long for this earth if & when their lending sins of 2004-2007 start sucking capital like they should.
One thing I don't understand, though, is that I thought that with fractional reserve lending the lender just gets money for "free" from the Fed, eg. takes $20,000 in deposits and writes out a $180,000 loan. If the loan goes bad can't the bank just tell Bernanke, "sorry, money's gone now!"???
Also, there happens to be a very simple mechanism that would save the housing market for a lot less than $5 trillion, more like $100B/yr. . . . just double the mortgage interest deduction. That would add hundreds of thousands of dollars of buying power to today's consumers and boost prices right back up to 2006.
Posted by: Troy | Jul 17, 2008 12:27:36 AM
Interesting market rallied so much on Wells Fargo...they weren't smart dumb enough to partake in some of the exotic securities...from last November article:
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, the fifth-largest U.S. bank, so far has fared far better than virtually all of its peers.
That's because Wells Fargo sold most of the $2 trillion in home loans that it has originated since 2001 and invested relatively little money in the mortgage-backed securities that have been saddling other big banks with huge losses. In contrast, Wells Fargo ended September with $581 million in unrealized investment gains on its books.
Stumpf said he didn't even know about some of the exotic mortgage investments that enticed other banks until he read about them in the newspaper.
"It's interesting that the industry has invented new ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine," Stumpf said.
So Wells is not indicitive of what we may see the rest of the week in earnings.
Posted by: Steve Barry | Jul 17, 2008 12:52:39 AM
Steve Barry:
Wells changed their charge off policy to 180 days from 120 days. So they're spreading out their losses to improve their earnings.
Posted by: Juhuti | Jul 17, 2008 1:52:46 AM
"and bag the most shorted like WM, WB, with >20% short interest reeks of borderline criminal preferential treatment."
To me it reeks of triage. There are those who can be saved by immediate treatment (limiting short activity). Then there's those that can't be saved period.
Posted by: CathyG | Jul 17, 2008 2:40:06 AM
"Why no outrage about the SEC's ban on naked shorts of Freddie and FAnnie and the 17 broker-dealers?
IMO, the absence of outrage is a very encouraging sign. It means that, at last, we have stopped pretending that there are free markets in the USA.
The first step to deal with a problem is to acknowledge its existence.
Posted by: Francois | Jul 17, 2008 3:08:04 AM
I would be as interested in Bernanke's ThoughtCloud... would it be dominated by words such as Princeton, Retirement, Stressed-out, Losing-my-hair, Hospital-Pass, Maestro-my-@ss, Greenspan and B*st*rd...??
Posted by: Hedge Thing | Jul 17, 2008 4:43:57 AM
