This cartoon, from Jimmy Margulies of the Record, is probably the most ominous I have seen regarding Legman Brothers collapse:
"My formula for success is rise early, work late and strike oil." —John Paul Getty
Consumer Credit outstanding fell $14.8b in Sept seasonally adjusted, almost $5b more than expected and marks the 11th month in the past 12 of declines. At $2.456T outstanding, it is 4.9% below the record high in July '08. After a flat reading in Aug, (didn't fall b/c of the CARS program), non revolving debt outstanding fell by $4.9B. Revolving (mostly credit cards) balances outstanding fell by $9.9B. To fully put into perspective today's data, look at the current level of consumer credit (doesn't include mortgages, the biggest chunk of consumer credit) relative to GDP. As of Q3, it totaled 17.2%...
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November 29th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
We are not even close to recovering from the LEH collapse from what I gather… still being unwound, assets still frozen…
On another note, anyone ever hear of Fusion IQ? mentioned in this current article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_49/b4111070916088.htm
November 29th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
> anyone ever hear of Fusion IQ?
That name sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place where I have heard it before.
November 29th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Lehman’s going to take a lot of time. It’s like an airplane bomb going off and pieces of the plane falling to the ground. They have to glue it all back together to see what is what. It’s the same with Lehman paper which is attached to properties somewhere. Well, it’s supposed to be anyway. That will be the other trick I bet. There are mortgages on the paper which don’t exist.
November 29th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Fusion IQ = https://www.fusioniqrank.com/
November 29th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Fusion IQ is your hosts company (Barry’s)! [lol]
November 29th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
> Fusion IQ is your hosts company
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-dry-humor.htm
November 29th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
“Lax Gov’t Regulation”
http://www.snoety.com/truth-in-advertising/
or
http://hawtymcbloggy.com/2008/11/15/truth-in-advertising/
though, ominous would be the whole corpus of Reality, re: these ‘Failures’, being dragged into the Daylight..
November 29th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Mark, Mark, Mark, I beg you to review the usage of commas. May I recommend “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk? You’ll revel it in, i’m sure!
November 29th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Unedited Jeremy Grantham interview. I hope you all can see it, because it’s the best and the brightest speaking…
http://www.wealthtrack.com/exclusive_video.php
i love the part where the talks about his hope hat the US government would put a floor under oil prices to protect/promote our environment and environmental enterprises….
November 29th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
karen,
do me a favor, the next time you see an egregious error, in my usage of commas, point it to me..
I’ve seen Strunk’s EoS, and many other books, of similiar ilk, on Grammar; I’ll guarantee my usage, of punctuation marks, hews closer to ‘the book’ than most others..
November 30th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Lehman collapsed, there was no bailout, yet the U.S. economy did not grind to a halt.
Paulson can be credited with one good decision, at least.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:16 am
For those that are interested, Bloomberg TV online now uses BitGravity to broadcast. You don’t need Windows Media Player to view. This makes it much easier on those of us who use Macs. So now you get the scroll at the bottom with the broadcast.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. The problems from LEH will continue for some time. It takes a long time to find all of the counterparties in the deals. I still believe that if we’re giving them money then they should have to pay dearly for it (10% minimun). All executives and board members involved in securitizations should be removed. True laissez faire is no (or very little) government involvement. If you fail then you close up shop, sell off assets, etc. Just like the stock market, if you take on too much risk you may get burned.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I don’t agree that only culprits at Lehman were lax government regulation and risky investments. How about a ridiculous compensation system which vastly overpaid executives for extremely short term performance? This of course fed into the risky investments which brought Lehman down. And the seeds of the ridiculous compensation system really date back to 1993 when the Clinton administration tried (admirably) to reign in executive compensation by limiting tax deductible salaries to $1 million. Problem is that the corporations and salary consultants got around this by creating the stock option craze – which lead to a greater emphasis on shorter term performance. Once again, the unintended consequences of government regulation!!!!!