Senator Dodd Says Mark-To-Market change may be part of Obama Plan - Reuters According to CNBC. Here we go again. Who do you believe?
You better believe that Dodd will do everything he can to make it so. His backers are are desperate that it be so.
I tend to agree. If the market rallies when information like this is leaked, it puts more pressure on the lawmakers who oppose it, whether it be mark to market, good bank/bad bank or whatever is in his (their) agenda.
Dodd started talking about this possibility on Feb 5th and the market was up nicely that day and the next. I assume that Dodd's current puppet masters are the same people who contributed so heavily to his Presidential campaign, all the CT hedge fund guys. What I don't know is if they were trying to create some short covering or suck in some longs so that they can add to shorts before the plunge or because they were already long and want to jump start a rally. I'm positioned for either eventuality. I just need a big move out of this range/pennant/wedge.
Don't think Dodd cares either way about the Hedgies in CT, I don't think relaxing MTM would matter much to them anyway. However, as head of the Senate banking Cmte he can push this and maybe one of his biggest tax payers in CT would stop having multi-billion dollar losses ($7B today, $20B ytd '08) - UBS in Stamford, CT.
Good point,I lumped them in with the financial types who had contributed to his campaign. At this point all these IBs are hedge funds to me given the speculative risks they were taking.
Holy crap! Gee....of course marking to reality is bad. Sometimes reality is not so pretty. Marking to make believe is SO much better because fantasy can be anything you want it to be. So much nicer. I'm sure the market is so stupid that if they mark their assets to $1 when they're really worth $0.10, everyone will just believe that number. You know, if the institutions didn't have to up and TELL everyone that rising default rates and higher interest rates reduced the price of the assets they were holding, none of this would have happened! idiots.
What a plan..... Reality sucks, so lets just ignore it. Isn't that the reason Japan had a "lost decade?"