The New Down Escalator
By Barry Ritholtz - November 17th, 2008, 4:30PM
I love the expression of the demon on the right:
Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem. —Bill Vaughan
Macro Notes
Fed Vice Chairman Kohn/It still is someone else’s faultPeter Boockvar
I know its late Friday and I'm sorry for the rant but a headline across the tape forced my hand. From a speech on June 25th to the BIS that the Fed officially released today, Fed Vice Chairman Kohn said that "the root cause of our problems was the underpricing of risk as the financial sector interacted with nonfinancial sectors" and that "leverage was a symptom rather than a cause of the underlying crisis." He has a Ph.D and I don't but I want to correct him that easy money policy under Greenspan that had the fed funds rate at...
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November 17th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Hey, that’s just what I looked like when I saw a 2 handle on GM!
November 17th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
When the demon is at your door…
there is a bloody enormous squeeze just around the corner !!
November 17th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Barry you devil you…
November 17th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
New closing low for the Nasdaq Composite and the Philly Bank Index (for the banks it looks like an 11-year closing low on my chart). The Russell 2000 and the S&P 500 sitting just a touch above their 52w closing lows - we sit here for the third time now.
Sign of the times fun fact: Despite being down about 10% ytd JNJ (165 bn) is now worth the same as BAC (69 bn), C (48 bn), GS (25 bn), MS (12 bn), AIG (5 bn), GM (2 bn) and F (4 bn) combined.
November 17th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
What did the Wall Street CEO’s ever do wrong???
November 17th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Barry, do you have your swimming trunks on?
November 17th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Hey, everybody! Have no fear, CNBC Sucks is still here. K-Fine just reported on Where is My Money? that hubby Larry Golub wants Congress to hold a Darwinian contest to determine which US automaker should receive government aid. She said only the best proposal and not all three should receive aid.
As a registered Republican, I agree with this. No, I am not fraudin’ this time, I agree with this. Actually, I prefer to give no aid to any failing companies, as many of you might remember from my sustained rantage about The $700 Billion Bailout.
Now, where were we? Oh yeah, the topic. I had revised my Dow 5K forecast to Dow 7K if Obama were to win (it was Dow 4K with McCain and Dow 1K with Palin), and it looks like I am going to be right again. But I see the market hitting a bottom at the beginning of Barry’s Presidency and going up eventually from there.
Oh crap, I was just about to leave a nice, happy comment for everybody, and now Larry Kudlow is blaming Obama for problems of the stock market, by not naming his economic team already. My annoyance meter is starting to get piqued again. I can feel the old “registered Republican” coming back…
November 17th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Look on the bright side!
Keep looking!
I know there’s one somewhere around here…let’s see…OH, I know:
New cars are going to be cheaper. Of course you need a source of income in order to service your car debt. That might be a problem.
Soup kitchens might be a growth industry. You’ll get volunteers cheap (will work for food), the cops will like you because you are keeping the riff raff off the streets and you could even get a government subsidy (just don’t import the soup).
For those who find all this depressing, I say cheer up. Most people in the world have always lived hand to mouth. This is a massive reversion to the mean. And it will get meaner so be nice to the people around you.
November 17th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
It looks like he’s thinking…Whoa!
November 17th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I see insurance got a royal thumping today. Good. Those jokers weazeled there way into legaly forcing us into every kind of insurance in the book. No insurance, no car loan. No insurance, no house loan. You don’t have unemployment insurence? Sorry, no dole for you. Did you insure your life? Then you better not die. No Health insurance? You must be a bad risk.
Isn’t it amazing that nobody gets paid by the insurance companies for being healthy or driving safely? It’s part of an insane society to charge you for insurance but not pay you for saving the insurance company money.
Our society needs a massive pushback on this required insurance crap.
November 17th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
The CEO’s aren’t going to hell, at least not just yet. A few probably will go to prison. The worst thing the rest will have to face is sending their kids to state schools.
November 17th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
yeh, the CEOs will do just fine. that downward-sloping curve looks more like the fortunes of the 90% of Amurricans w no liquid net worth. it’s going to get ugly
November 17th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Don’t you just love when guys like Bob Froelich, who absolutely never saw the credit morass coming, get on Kudlow and tell us it is more than half over?
November 17th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
The bright side is that nothing will cut carbon emissions like a world-wide depression. Might be just what the planet needs.
November 17th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
It just occurred to me that the DOW has lost about 560 points during the last two trading days. So much for that 550 point rally on Thursday. Must have been wishful thinking.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Do you think Wrong, Wrong, Wrong (and even More Wrong) Larry Kudlow took a page from ‘Orangelo’ “Tan Man” Mozilo’s playbook and Hit the Tanning Booth???
Or is it more likely that Mr. Disingenuous just went a little Overkill with a bottle of “Man Tan”???
You think the guy on the right in the Picture above has a special seat reserved for Larry Kudlow??
Hell, I certainly hope so.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
..”wallstreet CEOs..” and a certain Treasury Secretary, SEC boss or two, and a Maestro. I could go on.
Scott in Chicago
November 18th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Hey CNBC Sucks, don’t worry. Fox is outdoing Kudlow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46MEqEgdLTg
November 18th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Hehe, That was the expression on my face when I saw this morning’s PPI numbers.