Month: February 2008

Economics Update

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The dollar has flirted with crossing the $1.50:€1.00 for months, and not that it has crossed the barrier, it’s continuing to weaken to new lows, with it currently around $1.51:€1.00.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Alan Greenspan is suggesting that the Gulf states drop their pegs to the dollar. I guess that he’s shorting the dollar or something now that he is “retired”.

On the bright side, the falling dollars is attracting overseas investors to US real estate, as it is now cheaper to buy.

In California, we have the California association of realtors reporting that new home sales are down 29.8%, and median price is down 21.9%.

Make no mistake this is a blood bath, and the numbers would be worse if they corrected for home size. The housing market is collapsing from the bottom up.

It will get worse, Fannie Mae has posted a $3.6 billion q4 loss, and I would expect something similar from Freddie, and we are still very early in the collapse of the housing bubble.

We may very see the collapse of Fannie and Freddie in the next 3 or so years.

This may explain why new home sales nation wide are at a 13 year low and why Mortgage application volume is falling off a cliff.

It doesn’t help that mortgage rates are no longer following the Fed rates because of inflation fears.

As the big sh^%pile continues to collapse, we are starting to see the inevitable lawsuits, with HSH Nordbank deciding to file suit against UBS, alleging that, “UBS’s management of the portfolio has been in breach of its contractual obligations and fiduciary duties and that substitutions were made solely for the benefit of UBS”.

We’ll be seeing a lot more of this.

Testifying before Congress, Ben Bernanke is expressing concern about both inflation and recession, aka “stagflation”, though the Fed is still shoveling money out the door, with another $30 billion auction of cash for garbage.

In the world of more real world finance, where people make money by making things, durable goods orders fall 5.3% last month, but oil is down a bit after getting above $102 a barrel.

It’s under $100, for now, on expectation of a recession.

Welfare for American Arms Manufacturer

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The US Army is now planning to replace the Iraqi Army’s AK-47s M-16s, claiming, among other things, that the M-16 is more reliable.

Yeah, right.

While the M-16 is unquestionably more accurate, reliability and cost are on the AK’s side. Additionally, this will require significant retraining.

This is just a way to get the M-16 into service so that Colt (or maybe FN, when I last checked they made weapons in South Carolina under license) make lots of money.

Dem Wins State Senate Special Election in New York

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Darrel Aubertine beat Will Barclay, taking the state senate to 32 Republicans and 31 Democrats in a special election.

FWIW, the last time that a Dem won this district was in the 1800s, so this does not bode well for the Republicans.

If one Republican switches sides, control of the state senate changes hands.

After that, the first order of business should be redistricting, at least on the state level.

In a state where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by something like 4:1, it’s clear that some serious gerrymandering is going on and needs to be fixed.

Bush and His Evil Minions™ Choose Fat Cat Bankers Over Home Owners

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The ‘Phants in the Senate are threatening a filibuster, and the white house is threatening a veto over the Senate’s bill modifying bankruptcy laws to allow a judge to modify the terms of a loan on a primary residence.

Today, you can do this on your yacht, or your vacation home, or your rental property, but not on your loan.

Allowing so-called “cram downs” will not fix the problem, but it will make it better, and it will land squarely on the shoulders of the lenders who were the worst actors in this debacle.

Moussaoui Looks to Appeal His Guilty Conviction

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He is now claiming that he did not have effective counsel, because his lawyers could not fully brief him on the case, because of secrecy rules.

I don’t think that Mossaoui was the “20th Hijacker”. I think that he was a terrorist wannabee, and I think that he should be locked up for some time, though I’m not sure if that’s in a prison or a high security mental ward, but the fact that Bush and His Evil Minions™ screwed up this case just stuns me.

These guys could not organize themselves out of a wet paper bag.

Naomi Kline Nails It

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She has an article in the nation, Disowned by the Ownership Society, or as I like to refer to it, the Pwn3rsh1p society.

Go read it.

Here is a sample:

In November Nasdaq joined forces with several private banks, including Goldman Sachs, to form Portal Alliance, a private equity stock market open only to investors with assets upward of $100 million. In short order yesterday’s ownership society has morphed into today’s members-only society.

BTW, this private market will crash and burn, because there is no small investor left to hold the bag when the bubble bursts.

Economics Update

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The Consumer confidence index has dropped to 75, the lowest number since 2003, the expectations Index, which is on hop people see the future declined to 57.9, the lowest number since 1991.

In real estate, January foreclosures are up 57% from one year ago, the fall in house prices is accelerating, with the Case-Shiller home price index falling 9.1% year over year.

It appears that home improvement is stalling, with Home Depot having its first drop in sales ever. People don’t want to improve a depreciating asset.

Inflation (stagflation) is rearing its ugly head too, with Wholesale prices rising 1% for the month of January, and 7.4% in 2007.

In insurance, MBIA will stop writing policies for asset based securities for at least the next 6 months. Additionally, it is looking at spinning off its municipal bond business, and announced that it had eliminate its quarterly dividend.

In general investment news it appears that yet another complex obscure financial instrument will give the world heartburn, something called a “variable interest entity” (VIE). It appears to be another asset structured to keep sh&^ty investments off the balance sheets.

Sikorsky’s REveals Successor to It’s ABC Concept

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In the 1980s, Sikorsky had a test aircraft that they called the ABC (Advancing Blade Concept) helicopter. It used a coaxial rotor, and offloaded the retreating blades to eliminate retreating blade stall (as a helicopter goes faster, the blade going backwards goes more slowly relative to the air stream).

Sikorsky unveiled its successor, the X2 test aircraft at Heli-Expo:


It’s certainly a lot cleaner and more developed than its predecessor.

It also promises performance close to that of a tilt-rotor with the low speed handling and auto rotation of a helicopter.