Tonight, I am winging my way to Detroit, where I am one of the speakers at the Detroit Jewish Book Fair tomorrow, one of the oldest and largest of its kind.
Meanwhile, we have not had an Open Thread in a while.
So what’s on your minds? No holds barred, post what you want, no limitations (please be civil).
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What say ye?
Fascinating case with my buds over Mortgage Implode-Explode as defendants. This might impact if bloggers have the same first amendment rights as traditional journalists; Also, can blog websites protect the identities of those who post comments anonymously?
At issue are postings on the website called Mortgage lender Implode-O-meter. That’s a Las Vegas blog that tracks the mortgage lending industry. Last year, the blog reported the Plaistow-based Mortgage Specialists had been sanctioned by the state banking department, and posted a confidential document the company had sent to regulators. In response to that posting, someone calling themselves brianbattersby then posted that Mortgage Specialists President Mike Gill was under a tax lien, and had bought his way out of a fraud committed in 2002. The lawyer for Mortgage Specialists says neither claim is true. Mortgage Specialists asked the blog’s editor to remove the confidential document, which he did, and asked for him to identify brianbattersby, which he didn’t. A Superior Court Judge ordered the website to permanently remove the posts and reveal brianbattersby’s identity — a ruling the website’s attorney, Jeremy Eggleton, told the justices was wrong-headed, in the extreme.
“The trial courts order violates basic principles the 1st amendment, of the US constitution and essentially tramples on the rights both of implode explode both to speak, and to publish and to speak, as well as on the rights of the public to receive information and speak anonymously.”
The court seemed to have some fun with this, with justices leery of drawing any bright lines.
Justice Gary Hicks:
“But the information is newsworthy; people want to know about trends in the mortgage industry, and secondary markets, credit-default swaps.”
Justice James Duggan:
“So they print rumors, right? So does the national enquirer, and that’s a newspaper.”
“It’s a newspaper.”
“Not that I read it (laughs).”
I (obviously) think blogs should be afforded the same protections . . .
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Source:
Fight Over Blog Comments Hits High Court
Josh Rogers
NHPR, November 5, 2009
http://nhpr.org/node/27722
As of today, our automated tool to gather FDIC bank call reports and generate Stress Index ratings has gathered data on some 5,063 institutions. Users of the professional version of the IRA Bank Monitor can see the ratings on a list we have built on the Bank Monitor home page that is sorted by assets. The largest institution CALL reports in so far start with the Ally Bank unit of GMAC, followed by a unit of Toronto Dominion Bank (NYSE:TD).
Perhaps most important is the fact that the overall level of observed stress in the industry is not rising significantly. You can see the public widget we have built that shows the preliminary ratings for the current quarter and the final ratings for the past quarter by clicking here. One of these days, when Barry actually joins our affiliate program, we are going to build him some little toys using our web technology for visitors to The Big Picture theme park.
The current bank stress index for the smaller banks in the US banking industry is 6.45 vs. 1 for the benchmark year of 1995. Being more than half an order of magnitude above the mean for banking stress is not good. But given that the preliminary rating in Q2 2009 was 6.7, this when we had about 7,000 bank CALL reports available, the overall message from the Stress Index is that levels of pain in the banking industry are about where they were in Q2 2009. You can read our public comment about the Q2 2009 ratings in the Institutional Risk Analyst.
While it is possible that the overall level of industry stress could rise or fall as we see the rest of the FDIC bank units report for Q3 in the next three weeks, we think that this preliminary result confirms the general trend in the industry toward moderating loss rate increases. Since only the 19 Stress Text banks were really under pressure to window dress Q3 results for compliance purposes with the Fed’s SCAP stress tests, the inference we draw is that the rate of change in terms of stress throughout the industry was likewise more moderate in Q3.
Chris
Dow up 181!
Upon closer examination, the market likes the FOMC announcement . . .
Tomorrow is NFP day — and when those numbers come out, we won’t have much time to discuss much else.
So while I am winging to Austin early this a.m., I wanted to share these interesting run of charts, via Flowing Data, showing relative unemployment in the US.
Here are all of the years in between:
click for ginormous chart
Indiscriminate.
That’s what Senator Dodd’s proposal is. He wants to create an entirely new regulatory agency to replace the Fed (a good idea) and the FDIC (a bad idea).
Excerpt:
“A key Senate lawmaker is readying legislation that would dramatically redraw how the financial system is regulated, setting the chamber on a collision course with both the House of Representatives and the Obama administration, which have championed markedly different approaches.
The bill, which is being readied by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), would strip almost all bank-supervision powers from the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. In their place, the bill would create a new agency in charge of supervising all banks and bank-holding companies, even the country’s largest and most complex institutions.
Mr. Dodd’s proposal also would create a powerful council of regulators, overseen by an independent White House appointee, charged with monitoring risks to the financial system.”
There are lots of proposals floating around, and very few of them — this one included — actually addresses the underlying cause of the crisis . . .
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Source:
Clash Looms on Banks
DAMIAN PALETTA
WSJ, Nov. 5 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125738375151929771.html
Shorter Floyd Norris:
“Goldman Sachs is trying to arrange to buy tax credits from Fannie Mae. Obviously, it would buy them at a discount.
Goldman, you may recall, was saved with taxpayer money when the panic spread last year. A naïve person might think such a company would see a patriotic virtue in paying taxes.
Fannie Mae is currently a ward of the government. So this boils down to a proposal to pay Uncle Sam perhaps 15 cents to avoid paying 20 cents to Uncle Sam.
The gall involved in even proposing such a thing is awesome.
I could not possibly agree more — its simply insane . . .
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Let’s see what the Fed Release does to this rally . . .
The key line is: “Exceptionally low rates for extended periods of time…”
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"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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