cleetussnow

thanks man, and spot on here as well!

tons - I could try to breakdown what a securitization is, what tranches are, and what credit ratings roles are...and the concept of what a rating enhancement is. ratings play a big part in the landscape. then I can talk about the crazy derivatives that Rochester Dave was talking about then we can talk about TALF, and go back to TARP. Of course I have to do the day job but I think the above stuff is important

Way over simplistic. Fraud was the principal cause of the crisis. My whole statement never mentions borrowers. it does say the government relaxed rules to allow lending to sup prime borrowers, which ran against the government agencies charter (like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, etc.). Fraud ensued as all lenders, independent brokers, servicer, etc. all followed suit. The whole market right up to the top looked the other way. Borrowers were enabled to get in over their heads. I don't blame them 100%, but I would say 60% since many were not truthful on their applications. The worst part came when that information was deemed "verified" (it wasn't) when the loans were put into securities. Investors had no idea that they were buying junk. Rating agencies affirmed that the underlying loans were investment grade when they were not. The latter compounded an already ugly situation. Bush very pointedly said the market was broken. Its on the record and you can check. The derivatives contracts were in response to the fraudulent lending. Banks and a handful of investors discovered anomalies in the securities, and took out hedges. The most famous one was when Goldman took out a contract with AIG to cover the derivative contract they made with a hedge fund. The hedge fund and Goldman didn't do anything wrong in their transaction. Where Goldman got in trouble is when they took out a insurance policy with AIG to cover this trade in the event it went south on them. Goldman wanted to be risk neutral so they covered their butts. They only wanted to receive fees. The FLAW in this trade is they did not ask themselves if AIG would be able to actually cover the contract they made with Goldman. That is called counter party risk. Goldman wanted to receive the fees for the contract with the hedge fund, but they did not want to pay the $1 Billion. Covering a risk with a contract with a counter party is common, just contracts this huge are not. The hedge fund took advantage of information asymmetry to set up the trade, which is why markets exist. I won't argue that wall street didn't play a role because they were BAD actors. They can't run their own books for example (See Volcker Rule). WHOLE other story. But the entire mortgage system was rife with fraud, mismanagement, lax rules and LAWS, from stem to stern. And so it exploded literally. Many people spoke up about the potential risks, going back to 1998 even! My own view is there are 2 factors: Home ownership for everyone was viewed to be a noble cause (and it is) Principal mortgage market participants looked the other way on fraud and anomalies in order to make money, taking advantage of the above sentiment. it was a perfect storm! Greed synced with public good in an effed up distorted way to create a global crisis.

Lawn needs the rain. Brain does not!

You may not be interested in a war with China, but the war will be interested in YOU.

Cuomo and his alliance of governors has trump by the short and curlys. The national economy won’t open until Cuomos group says so. They control a lot of the economy and also have the most illness of course.

Wtf

If it made sense you could predict the future.

Well, everyone gets some of the blame...rating agencies, originators, banks. Fannie broke the rules...ok fine. But what followed was rampant fraud by guilty parties. Borrowers who lied about income and work committed fraud too! Fubar Wall Street incentives fueled the inferno. So investment banks and other banks own some of this.

We have record tax hauls in 2 of the last 3 years. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. And OMG trump is as guilty as the next person! I think we can get behind that. The Starbucks CEO...that was his platform, before he bailed on running. He had my vote.

Fannie started it. See my post.

It’s exploding already.

Bush said in 2000 that the mortgage market was in great peril and the GSE’s needed reform. It is the most prescient thing he ever said. I joked he should gave got the Nobel prize in economics for that. Most winners aren’t that prescient. the problems arose when then Clinton appointee to Fannie Mae Franklin Raines started subprime lending, which was outside their charter and put taxpayers at risk. GSE cop Armando Falcone went after them in 1999, but the administration did nothing. The problem spiraled and mortgage lending became a haven for fraud. Bush tried to stop it categorically. He was thwarted by Congress many times.

Followed it carefully. I only state facts above so judge Clinton actions for yourself. However, I don’t find Clinton’s actions defensible. Nor do I find mueller or comey defendable. I’m not defending trumps actions only because I can find no actions to speak of and neither can mueller. Mueller report didn’t even result in a vote in Congress from people who want to kill him. Stop it. And Congress was wrong. Adam Schiff lied. He said he had indisputable evidence trump and Russia colluded. So did the former director of the CIA (who recanted his statements. Publicly!) Schiff said trump was an agent of Russia, and tried to destroy democracy, categorically and in the public record of the House of Representatives. Of course, this all before the mueller came out and you haven’t heard from schiff since. The reason is, he lied, produced no evidence, and now has no credibility. The press wants to kill trump and they even gave up on it. Charade over. Both Schiff and former cia Director Brennan said trump was a liar. Mueller didn’t. You say trump lied to you..fine. But let’s not be selective based on your book of business. All of us were lied to for 2 years and in this case, it wasn’t by trump. Now, maybe the people investigating trump and Clinton and everyone else were incompetent. Plausible, federal investigator Durham has been working on this for a year. At best they were incompetent. At worst, corrupt. Read the horowitz report. The FBI got scolded hard. The judges who signed the FBI FISA warrants took away those agents privileges to come to the FISA court again. Why? They lied to the judges. Durham will tell us why they lied. And the FBI hasn’t fixed their policies even today per the judges order. Looking 360 degrees is best before you call someone delusional.

I am nervous about opening things up too quick. Could backfire.

A subtlety here...to keep the conspiracy interesting. Imagine an inside man at a lab who knows the potential of the virus is acting as an agent of the executive. A small group inside Ji’s Intelligence and executive action committee are the ones who designed the plan. Recognizing its potential, they decide now is the time to act. Regime change in the US must happen. Trump must go by any means. Very few people in the executive of the PRC know about it, like 10 people. Very powerful group, and this is an executive action undertaking like none other. Ji gives it the green light, the inside man executes his mission, and the virus is in the markets the next day. They may have miscalculated. They are known to do that.

I think manufacturing will shift to developing countries that have transparent governance. So by comparison, mexico is transparent. And frankly we want Mexico to have a good economy and transparent governance. We may enact laws that require such. Maybe India and other Southeast Asia areas benefit. Would not surprise me if Chinese expats who know what they are doing lead the charge and open and manage new industry. Then the power balance shifts back to the US. Europe has been frustrated with China, and have been in line to a certain degree with the us actions against China. This is a real possibility and we will see how that develops. The big loser is Australia. They got rich off Chinese expansion, and I’d say that’s in the lurch. They went to a service economy, and that will disappear along with the mineral industry.

China was militant about the lockdown, and also lied.

Changed my mind. Conspiracy theory goes like this: China creates and releases virus into the world, using it’s own population as vectors. They convince WHO that person to person isn’t happening to facilitate global spread. Western powers follow along, US notwithstanding, but China only needs Europe to go with the WHO. China shrewdly calculates its authoritarian government can manage the sickness internally better than the west, so they accept losses. History proves China doesn’t value life anyway. They have killed 50 million of their own people in more than 1 instance in the last 100 years. China calculates the US will have 150 million cases, similar to early CDC projections due to the failure of government and will of the ‘decadent’ population to manage the spread and lethality. With the western powers destabilized with internal strife, China can advance its interests around the world while the west is mired in chaos. Their gambit calculates civil unrest in the US from the gun toting part of population, and other protests, with the media eagerly fanning the flames of politic discord. Trump is persecuted and removed from office prior to the election and the US government weakens substantially. China knows regicide in the US is their ticket to the top. Playing the long game, China waits as the west bleeds out, and then takes their interests to the final level they desire, and that is to be the dominant economic and military super power they are destined to be. The virus is the tool to accelerate their position. Plausible.

On January 14th, The Who said there was no human to human transmission, which was the PRCs official stance. There was no basis for this. WHO took China’s word, for one of 2 reasons, incompetence or corruption. China knew the virus was h2h transmittable in November and possibly last summer. Only when the virus showed up outside China did WHO and China change their official position, in lockstep. Coincidence? I left China on the 22nd. The coast was clear officially but something was very wrong, masks were on everyone everywhere. They knew what was up. So, during the peak of Chinese New Year, Chinese people were flying all over the world with the disease, as well as non Chinese going into and out of China, and Chinese moving around China. Italy got hit because of the large Chinese expat population living there. My view is that China coerced the WHO into keeping quiet on h2h until the Chinese New Year was over, and that was a global disaster. And if the WHO were incompetent, same difference. JI is a bad man, but not incompetent.

Well, I say the European collective is a close third, but China and the US are tightly connected. Now back to the regularly scheduled covid virus programming, the US and China are not getting along, and the virus is going to alter the economic dynamics going forward. Something will change and it might be painful for awhile!

Plus 1. Politics has been this ‘base’ before, but like in the 1800s. There were new parties formed all the time.

Agree. And PS we aren’t the only developed economy doing this, which kind of makes the relative value of major currencies stable, so we aren’t getting ‘devalued’ if that makes sense. We stay on top, even if the bar is moving lower for everyone. We kind of have loaded dice too which helps.

Actually, trump has placed more sanctions on Russia than any president since Gorbechev was their dictator. It’s amazing no one knows this. The days of Yore... in the 90s Clinton actually gave Yeltsin money to pay the collapsed Russian pension system...we were their best hope as a partner for a bright future, you remember glasnost and all. Relations between Russia and the US...seemed like world peace was at hand! Gorby, the beloved Nobel peace prize winner (who prosecuted the Soviet war in Afghanistan with bloodlust - he even threatened to nuke Pakistan if they didn’t close the Khyber pass to arms smuggling), was made into a international hero. What a turnabout! It really seemed like flowers and sunshine everywhere. Now that’s all ****ed up. It’s known as the new Cold War, and it’s totally contrived, and we started it up again like an old habit. Russiagate just gave it more nourishment. We should be friends with Russia , and we will be soon enough. We have a common foe, and you know, the enemy of my enemy...is my friend. The global power struggle will align Russia and the US, damn the politics of it. But it won’t be trump. There is a much much bigger picture here than some fleeting contrived conspiracy. You don’t have to like Putin, but For my money I’d rather work with him than some of the other options out there (namely Ji). Putin is the most impressive (I mean successfull) statesmen of this century.

What he said.