In 1993 it was "Newt", then "Bush" for recent years, today's subcategorial version of Bush is "Ben".. fricking idiots all over the place krapping up the forums and the public discourse in general, all they accomplish is a little twinge of the stomach and the use of the ignore button..
Kudlow and two of his guests just blasted it out of the ballpark on what the Fed needs to do - cut, they're way, way too tight for a secondary market in near seizure. And they finally got guests that know something about real estate finance. Tide has turned. Angell looking for 50 BP cut within 2 weeks. Lyle Gramley, that ran Mtg. Bankers Association, looking for 50 BP cut at Sept meeting. They also had that Bill Ford on - - the moral hazard guy - looked silly, same as that fool Poole. Bernanke has the message now how wrong he is.
that's exactly what we need is more credit, so we can get this graph to go vertical give the drunk more booze...........
They're saying 'why cut rates to bail out speculators' when speculators are already 2 weeks short and looking for more fuel.Economists can't admit they're all fakirs and the poor sod who trusts his pension pot to salesmen has been conned.
where/when did Lyle say it? He is not that stupid not to know that lowering the target is a way to hell. It would not help ultimately anybody. The long rates would immediately start to creep up which would kill consumer - just look what happened in March when they f*ucked up the communication about focus on inflation....
People in the RE money end are far beyond inflation, subprime, bubbles, what bond markets think and all that - what's being looked at is right now and going forward - we can't have a freeze or collapse of the whole finance structure and nationwide depository bank lenders going down. This craziness from Poole was incredibly reckless and damaging today. RE is big money - big vested money and political interests - a coastal village in this country has a bigger asset value than an IB or a Dow component and everything they own. People have their lives tied up in it and can't be exposed to some kind of sick goddam standoff about inflation fighting, moral hazards, calamity, or some such nonesense. Anyway, it's done, the fix is going in - they'll cut to restore confidence. Ben got carried away with his first crisis, same as he did with Maria's titties or whatever that was. He's still the right guy. BTW, don't even think I'm advocating money drops, reinflating bubbles or that a cut will fix the housing mess - this housing pain will go the rest of the decade, maybe a generation, and all those recent buyers, borrowers and MBS holders are still dead meat. Also, there's a whole constellation of problems still left in getting the secondary markets out of the ICU.
As of today..........Aug. 16th, 2007, IMHO Bernanke is clueless and has no balls and is plain dumb, so what if he has a PHD, he has no street smarts and no common sense. Let's see what we/I think of him in 2 months............Oct. 16th, 2007. Better or worse??
that's quite contradictory to say the least. Why on earth would they cut if it is not going to help a bit? What confidence are you talking about? In Fed or in what? How is cut going to help and who, e.g. hedge funds etc...? Why do consumers need it now and not say last autumn? To cut target is simply a bullshit - it will not ease credit per se - you still need to pump grease to dealers. And mortgage rates are determined by longer rates rather than o/n funding. Poole said it quite spot on - as long as economy is fine there is no way we will bail this out.
It's true, I live in a small town that went to zero real estate value when peace broke out in the 90's or whenever it was. Mexicans bought houses during the recent real estate run up and upped our total value by one Billion dollars!! That makes me think that if things don't unwind in a good way that it could be a lot bigger than the S&L thing...