What the hell is going on? Just a few weeks ago, it seemed like GM and Chrysler's bankruptcy was almost guaranteed and now their getting more bailout money? And on top of that, everyone earlier this year was saying unemployment was going to peak later this year and now it's slowly sliming its way into "sometime" next year. And all these banks got the money they wanted but yet credit is still worsening? It's all bullshit!

They still may be dancing, but we know who is paying the band.

Citi is not a bank but a lobbying/marketing firm that does some trading.

Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit struck a positive, even hopeful tone, at the embattled banking giant's annual meeting, insisting that it is well prepared for success in an economic recovery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukeHdiszZmE

SOMALI PIRATES: Shitty CEO wants do stand-up comedy.

"It's all bullshit!"
---------------------

More than you know!

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645

The casino is now hopelessly broken, and beyond repair.

when I make money at the casino, the casino operates efficiently.

when I lose money at the casino, the casino is "hopelessly broken beyond repair"

@NIceCriticalThinker:

"Basically these people are betting the big banks will be forced into some sort of default. Now, if enough people bet that, and if the banks can't draw on enough external support, which in their case would be from the U.S. government, then these runs can be self-fulfilling. It's extremely dangerous and a situation that's really not been addressed by the U.S. authorities."

What Johnson should have said was this:

Basically these people are betting on the inevitable, once the idea was finally floated by the government that the Treasury's deep pockets were not infinitely deep. Now, if enough people figure out what's inevitable, and the banks can't keep the fraud going any longer, then the market will implement the obvious solution. The idiots who are still holding the debt will finally take the haircuts they deserve. It's extremely justified, and a situation that doesn't need to be addressed by the U.S. authorities -- because Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" will dispense market justice regardless of what Uncle Sam's (or Goldman Sachs'?) minions do. Better to excise the cancers now and get on with rebuilding the economy, rather than to let the cancer spread further.

All will be well...in the Casino.

"these companies are trading their own shares up amongst each other"
----------

Just like Japan.

http://www.stock-market-crash.net/nikkei.htm

"The keiretsu philosophy was one of cooperation, where all facets of business and government worked hand in hand. As the Japanese stock market soared, the keiretsu purchased each other's shares. "

popeye has some worldly advice for all to heed. I'm frankly getting tired of flipping FAS and FAZ (today out of FAZ on open into FAS) with these small lot sizes however if you waited too long with FAZ today you have a decision to make about now. As far as the small lot sizes.....all my stomach can take at this point.

Ciao
MS

Don't think I've ever seen RD say WTF.... sooner die.

Must be a real WTF.

Whitehouse interns reportedly annoyed of Obama incessant singing to Geithner and Gang, "Here I am, signed, sealed, delivered, Im yours. Here I am baby Oh, youve got the future in your hand, signed, sealed delivered, Im yours!

Oh....and there is nothing broken with the 'Casino'. The only standing rule one has to remember is that the house always wins. That seems to still be holding up just fine.

Geithner Says `Vast Majority' of U.S. Banks Have More Capital Than Needed
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=azqWyof8VIRo&refer=home

"Currently, the vast majority of banks have more capital than they need to be considered well capitalized by their regulators," Geithner said in testimony to a congressional oversight panel on the government's financial-rescue program. He added that there will be a "series of options" for lenders deemed to need additional money at the conclusion of the tests.

Poor Vikram didn't realize that the dance was actually a game of musical chairs, instead of the Hokey Pokey.

Borocco Mama wrote on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 9:54am.
All will be well...in the Casino.

Chauncey Gardner... is that you?

An then what, Michael? Go shoot up, or bomb a school?

One of my favorite movies... watched it recently and it hasn't lost a thing... even better with age.

DC-

hear you there....that's one of the reasons that we have not seen mass protests. Think about it....anyone who doth protest is really asking for the deflation of there own assets. Sounds simplistic but the system has already decided that asset inflation is where we all "need to be".....actively protesting against it is sort of a zer0-sum game for anyone who thinks about it for any period of time. Don't get me wrong...there needs to be a general insurrection IMO however when the masses savings, retirement, etc. are all tied to the system re-inflating itself........

In any case that would also be giving the "masses" way too much credit to realize it. Since they all know what time "Idol" is on I don't want to be extending smarts to people who can't read a few things outside of the little world they live in.

Ciao
MS

Pandit = Lord Cutler Beckett, as his ship explodes around him: "It's just…good business…"

It's amazing that the current and past 535 congress bums et al and their families are the ultimate Welfare Queens living on the taxpayer dole. They're handing it out like lollipops to their spouses and buddies under the guise of abc's soup of TARP( subsidies, and no bid contracts. Selling our jobs and future labor to foreign rivals. Next, they have the audacity to tell the taxpayers that medicare, medicaid, and social security are in the shithole while they collect a life pension and free healthcare for life. They are a pustulous boil. Pustulous boils cannot live without a host, but the host can live without a boil. Lance the sucker off.

Yeah, dude, we'll bomb you back to the stone ages.

mama, yer hopeless: "There is no cause for concern for Pandit. He's just a well paid front man."

No, yer hopeless. You think there's justice to be had? That's BBAD talk.

Pandit will be lucky to escape Lord Mountbatten's fate. - RD

I don't know, if assassination were in the picture, somebody would have tried it by now. Pirates and banksters seem to be the theme of this movie. Come to think of it, the East India Company started this whole global banking thing...

Probably idle threats but it still shoud not be tolerated. You also tolerate a lot of personal attacks on your blog. This is not productive to any discussion either.

Probably idle threats but it still shoud not be tolerated. You also tolerate a lot of personal attacks on your blog. This is not productive to any discussion either.

Vikram?

Did the St. Louis and Minnesota franchises merge?

The garden will be healthy.

Rob Dawg (member) wrote on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 10:35am.
Anonymous wrote on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 10:27am.
Whether you like it, it is a bankrupt nation - which means America has finally joined the club...
------------.
Snigger. Just keep telling yourself that while Germany reports 5.9% contraction Q1 '09.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C'mon , you can't be serious ! How can you try to refute Anonymous/10:27am claim that "America is bankrupt" with a reference to Germany's GDP (which btw. is "faaar better" than your's) ?

What kind of logic is it to refute the claim rhat nation A is bankrupt with a reference to nations B GDP ? You need to be showmaster on CNN !

Furtermore you seem to miss the origin of Germany's current woes . (hint : that mess did not originate in Frankfurt or Berlin) .

Get real !!

From TickerForum:

PRICE OF TOXIC ASSETS

To all those in the .gov and Main Street Media that continually talk about the inability to price the toxic assets, here is an update on where things are trading. First off Billions of bonds are out for the bid weekly, the market is well defined based upon the following factors:
1)year of origination
2)type of collateral
3)subordination, or lack there-of

Option Arms, the senior classes 05 thru 07 trade from low $30's to high $30's. Mezz trade from teens to $20's, junior mezz trade in the high single digits.
Alt-A (~10-20% 60+ day delinquent) trade from high $30's for 07 production, to around $60 for the best quality '05 production.
Alt-A (~30-40% 60+ delinquencies) trade low 30's to mid $40's for Senior tranches.
Alt-A subordinated tranches trade teens to upper $20's.
Prime (5-10% 60+ delinquent) mid 50's to high 60's for seniors.
Prime (0-5% 60+ delinquent) mid 60's to upper 90's for the cleanest paper.

Just a sample of what the bonds that are on the books of the Banks, Insurance Companies, Pension Funds are worth.

Here is Hoenigs hole testimony

Fed's Hoenig: "Too Big to Fail" a Farce

http://www.kc.frb.org/speechbio/hoenigpdf/Hoenig.Testimony.04.21.09.pdf

Does the 5.5 to GM / Chrysler mean they're not going to declare bankruptcy in the near term? I mean, there's no way the USG is stupid enough to give them that money if they are going bankrupt, right?

Bank Regulator: "Lets see what capital you have."

Vikram Pandit: "Here it is."

Bank Regulator: "Are those frozen squirrels?"

Vikram Pandit: "Uh, maybe...."

Bank Regulator: "Looks good to me!"

The "Irish Problem" took generations to boil over. Things happen faster these days. - RD

Not the same thing at all. There's no racial component here.

It would be easy to get too caught up in the daily kerfluffle, as everyone has an incentive to grab eyeballs by making the news cycle as emotional and dramatic as possible. What's going on now is infotainment, not history. And you may be surprised at how boringly non-violent it all turns out to be-- more of a long, slow grind toward a rather dull and humdrum future, I suspect.

O/T :
There was another hearing before the Joint Economic Committee where Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City chief Thomas Hoenig argued that "insolvent firms must be allowed to fail regardless of their size, market position or the complexity of operations."
Haven't found the video yet , but this (http://www.housingwire.com/2009/04/21/feds-hoenig-too-big-to-fail-a-farce/) contains a link to Hoenig's introductory remarks ! Very blunt and candid .

Journalists all over the world trying to do their job of reporting are emotionally or physically threatened. Free speech should be tolerated in a democracy. But if free speech can be mislabeled as hate speech, the attempt to find out what's going on will be crushed by the 'chilling effect'. Nuff said.

Oh say can you C, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we bailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

'Snigger. Just keep telling yourself that while Germany reports 5.9% contraction Q1 '09.'

You honestly believe only 5.9%? You do know that orders for many of the leading export categories have fallen by 50% or more, right? That many municipalities are staring at major, major collapses in tax revenue? I have been talking to people here for several years about how this collapse will be much deeper and faster than they can imagine - just recently, Zetsche actually agreed that Mercedes should have reacted more forcefully in the summer, back when I was writing the same thing here, saying that Mercedes was deluding itself. We have customers going bankrupt (ERP software is a German invented software category), or who have seen their orders fall 90% in less than a month.

It is a global economic collapse. Why do you think in such binary terms?

But America is bankrupt in a very public fashion, going ever deeper into debt it will never be able to repay, public and private. It isn't just a few posters here that have recognized that fact.

And bankrupt has so many different meanings - for example, where are the American ideas to solve its problems? America has been very free for decades telling others how to solve their problems, and now?

Germany will suffer, but the odds of that pain being spread more fairly is much higher here. Germany doesn't really need to rebuild much infrastructure - it hasn't been neglected for a generation. And it doesn't really have to rebuild its industrial base - it still has one. And it doesn't have to train a competent work force of people with skills - it has one.

My not so bold prediction is that the German economy will contract more than anticipated. Big deal - that statement applies to pretty much the whole world.

But try to understand that when the rest of the world looks at the U.S., they no longer see the Hollywood facade, and what is now no longer possible to deny looks like a bankrupt nation, not simply financially, but ethically. Do you think blame is something that only gets assigned in blog comments? And keep in mind that the world knows the difference between a creditor and a debtor. A bankrupt nation is one that needs external funding to keep itself running in its accustomed fashion- sound familiar?

MS wrote on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 11:29am.
"(and btw. this is not Bush's government anymore but Obama's .)"
--------------
It may be at the top of the list however you sort of don't factor in the 8 year's he had to appoint many stooges into positions that do not change when the president moves on.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So the 8 year's of Bush government obliges Obama to give GM / Chrysler another $5.5 billion ? Right . Impressive "change, yes we can" !

'as is their rising unemployment rate'

Yes, unlike the U.S., - 'The US unemployment rate reached 8.5 percent, its highest level in a quarter-century, ... 663000 Jobs Lost in March.' http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/business/economy/04jobs.html?hp (Just the Google summary, actually, is quoted.)

In contrast with the unemployment disaster happening here - 'Germany's unemployment rate rose to 8.6% in March as the global economic downturn continued to tighten its grip on Europe's largest economy.

The rate rose slightly from 8.5% in February, on an unadjusted basis.

In seasonally adjusted terms, the rate rose to 8.1% from 8%, official figures also showed. This equates to 3.4 million people, an increase of 69,000. '

Hmm - depending on your number, the U.S. actually does manage to squeak out a victory in that unemployment column.

And remember, the German rate is not distorted by having the world's largest prison population (bankrupt is such a varied concept), and its unemployment rate is measured by including anyone who is currently working 15 hours or less a week, but who wants full time employment. The German rate is currently around 7.5%, by that measure (actually, 7.1%). I will let the various 'U' experts here compare and contrast.

If I was to have a tag line (thankfully, most people have not adopted that habit), it would be along the lines of 'What part of global economic collapse can't you understand?'

Nope - I am thrilled to no longer have to use cookies, turn Javascript on and off, and quite honestly, the idea of always having to provide an identity is getting onerous, to put it mildly.

Ooops - scratch this line 'The German rate is currently around 7.5%, by that measure (actually, 7.1%).' Those are my remembered figures for Baden-Württemberg, before actually checking Google - no javascript means no running preview underneath, either - a more than acceptable trade-off.

Magical Thinking (member) wrote on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 12:04pm.
Blunt and candid is useful . The majority of people are not afraid of "the truth", they have been living with it , it is right in front of them - day in and day out, it is all the lying.

Amen !