Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1303 | -9.5 | -0.72% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2412.9 | -23.710 | -0.97% |
| Oil (WTI) | 99.02 | -0.540 | -0.54% |
| LIBOR | 0.5469 | -0.004 | -0.77% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 79.32 | 0.484 | 0.61% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 1.83% | -0.06% |
Stock index futures are lower this morning as Europe becomes the focus again. The Germans have proposed creating a commissioner with veto power over Greek budgetary decisions as a condition for aid. Greek Financial Minister Evangelos Venizolos rejected the idea. Portugese spreads are 180 basis points wider this morning as well.
Merger Monday is back with a couple of deals – The Gores Group (a West Coast private equity group) is buying Pep Boys. Swiss engineering giant ABB is buying Thomas and Betts. Eastman Chemical bid for Solutia on Friday. Merger activity seems to be picking up, another sign that the economy is gathering strength.
Personal income came in at .5% for December, slightly higher than the .4% estimate. Spending however was flat, lower than the .1% estimate. The spending number may be explained by the marked strength in spending in 2010. Spending started to gather momentum from Q310 – Q111 before falling off as the European crisis began to coalesce. So the weakness may simply be a tough comp problem.
The earnings parade continues this week with McKesson, ADM, Exxon, Eli Lilly, UPS, Amazon.com, Pulte, and Dow as the major players releasing Q4 results.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Tied to the disinclination of lenders to refinance 30 year mortgages at the current low rates of prevailing interest, a perfectly rational disinclination and one with ramifications that both Brent and John have pointed to, is the bind FreddieMac now faces.
“We” own FAN/FRED. “We” want to permit mortgagors to refinance. At the same time, FRED is trying to collect on the paying mortgages at a rate that lets some/most/all of the taxpayer bailout of FRED to be “repaid”. In other words, FRED is both a quasi-governmental agency with a public policy agenda to lend, and a too big to fail bank, with an enormous debt to the taxpayers. Thus it must either make sound banking decisions or fulfill its policy directives. I do not see how it can do both.
See:
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/30/145995636/freddie-mac-betting-against-struggling-homeowners
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I hope you will forgive my reposting of this concerning the Schneiderman investigation.
“Due to the failure of small competitors and mergers facilitated during the 2008 crisis, the nation’s biggest banks — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo — are now bigger than they were pre-recession. Pre-crisis, the four biggest banks held 32 percent of total deposits; now they hold nearly 40 percent.
The four biggest banks issue 50 percent of mortgages and 66 percent of credit cards: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup issue one out of every two mortgages and nearly two out of every three credit cards in America.”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/07/338887…
Two reasons it will fail:
– the largest individual shareholder in Wells Fargo is none other than Warren Buffett
– in August, Buffett invested 5 billion in Bank of America and holds warrants for another 700,000,000 shares at a strike price of $7.14 which would be worthless if the bank came under attack.
Two more reasons:
“JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said President Barack Obama’s decision to expand investigations into home lending and sales of mortgage securities could stop settlement talks with the states over foreclosure practices.
“It has a pretty good chance of derailing it,” Dimon said in a televised interview with CNBC from Davos, Switzerland on Thursday.
Obama, in his State of the Union address Tuesday, said he has asked his attorney general to create a special unit of prosecutors to expand investigations into home lending and packaging of mortgage-backed securities. It is not clear how the new unit will be different from earlier investigations.
“I think it would be better for America if that settlement took place,” Dimon said. “If this thing derails that, so be it.”
http://dailybail.com/home/jamie-dimon-says-foreclo…
Dimon, the leading vocal Obama supporter on Wall Street in 2008 is considered a possible replacement for Geithner
Jack Lew the President’s new cheif of staff, was formerly a COO of proprietary trading at Citigroup from 2006-2008
So I think we have the four largest US banks farily well insulated, wouldn’t you say?
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As someone with a ten-year-old 5.875% first mortgage and a floating rate HELOC (currently ~2%) I would love to refi at a rate lower than the combined effective rate of these two loans, but I dread the paperwork hassle. I just need to buck up and consider it giving myself a raise.
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yello:
Like yesterday!
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Back in the 80s I used to hear that we had too many banks in comparison to places like Japan and that it made the lending market inefficient. I don’t see how the consolidation has improved that any. At least we still have smaller regional and community banks to prevent a complete and total oligopoly from forming, but we aren’t far off.
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John, thanks for commenting re: Schneiderman. Buried in the Buffett open thread was my request to you to actually post about it. But this will do for conversation purposes.
My contribution, as a one time prosecutor over 40 years ago, is that Schneiderman can push the banks harder than Holder did, and squeeze out a bigger settlement, without actually materially hurting the banks more than Holder would have. He can claim a big victory while leaving the players in tact. Because of the numbers involved, it is more than a shell game. On a % basis, it is not so much.
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OT to Mark: Just saw your post re: the ACA. Take a look at this re: the ACA and primary care. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Blog/2011/Jan/Affordable-Care-Act-Bolsters-Primary-Care.aspx
There’s bonuses to physicians, the “free” preventive care and a couple of other things that are designed to support and encourage the use of primary care.
But one of the things that often is overlooked is the time factor. Lower income people go to the ER not only b/c it might be the only option, but they don’t have the luxury of time either. These are people who would rather go to the ER after work (nights/weekends) than take time off (and not get paid) to sit around a GPs office. so unless your physician is willing to see people after hours, i think you’re going to have a hard time getting people to avoid using the ER.
clinics can help (provided they are open late) see here for details on the ACA and clinics: http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/8098.pdf
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YJ, I think the only rational response to the FRED problem is to not seek refi where FRED was the servicer. Does any lender in your neck still do table loans? Are you a member of a big credit union? Is your first mortgage conventional, jumbo, VA, FHA? I ask this rhetorically; I have no need to know, and you should not broadcast it on the internet where Google’s new privacy policy is that your info is theirs. But the answers to these questions will mark your path.
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THANX, NoVAH. I will read the links. I think the ER problem must be solved, from the taxpayers’ viewpoint.
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mark:
As to Dimon, he virtually said it publicly, I don’t think you can push the insitutions that you need for your economic recovery very far. To the extent that this investigation becomes real it will have a similar economic effect to the Russian ban on vodka in 1914 for Obama
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i think clinics can be a big help in that area. the CVS minute clinic model can make a difference in this area. i use it — 15 minutes and no appointment for something minor, like an upper respiratory infection — compared to at least an hour (more like 3) for an office visit with a physician. it can help triage — clinic, primary care doc, specialist, urgent care, emergency.
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My first mortgage is totally conventional fixed rate with one of the MegaBanks. I don’t even escrow taxes or insurance. My HELOC is with USAA, perhaps the fairest and most reasonable financial institution in existence. My druthers would be to wrap it all up with them but that requires some initiative on my part.
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So, John, where do you draw the line on investigations that are real and ones that by reason of the threat of reality force better settlement terms for the states? I am thinking there is an area for pressure beyond what has been on the table that will nevertheless not lead to vodka banning, etc.
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USAA! The best. Beg them.
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mark:
I can’t recall if you were part of the discussion or not, but last week we discussed the difficulty of getting the banks to lend at all at these rates, 4% for 15-30 years when the Fed is promoting 2% inlfation.
The bigger the settlement the lesser the proftis for the banks that are already “hurting” at least from their perspective.
In my view, the ability of those four banks to crush the economy is proportional to the Fed’s abiltity to crush those banks.
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I read what you and Brent wrote last week about the interest rate trap and it made sense and was part of my intro to my first comment, above, about the FreddieMac story. But I did not participate. I am taking your view to be there is verylittle safe room to negotiate, here, and that where I suggested Schneiderman could do something unheroic you suggest he can safely do virtually nothing. Got it.
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brent:
As in Casablanca, you can always round up the usual suspects. There are no doubt names of those so isolated from the big guys that they can be sacrificed. I just think that whatever the outcome, the list won’t inlcude the big boys.
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duh, my last was supposed to be addressed to mark.
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Nova
it can help triage — clinic, primary care doc, specialist, urgent care, emergency.
And I think you know Nova that I agree with your observation here…triage is one place where we can improve access and affordability of health care.
Now if we can eliminate the “profit” motive from procedures. Procedure driven medicine is a huge cost. For some reason folks assume that free enterprise always drives prices down..perhaps in a pure free enterprise system, but that purity simply does not exist in our marketplace, and especially in health care where consumer decisions are warped by pain and life and death decisions….and where provider decisions are too often warped by trying to maximize profit which frequently means doing a far more expensive procedure without any additional benefits.
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ruk:
For some reason folks assume that free enterprise always drives prices down.
Maybe some folks, but I’m not sure who they are or why they would think that. Free enterprise drives prices to the “right” level, the right level being defined as the point at which supply and demand are in equilibrium. At any given moment that might mean prices need to go either up or down.
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“decisions are too often warped by trying to maximize profit which frequently means doing a far more expensive procedure without any additional benefits”
I don’t disagree with this — but would add, it’s not so much maximizing profit as it is taking advantage of the reimbursement system and accounting for the underpayments in other areas. Docs will say if we don’t run that MRI machine 8 hours a day there will be no practice at all, as it is not possible to keep the doors open otherwise
But it’s really small potatoes compared to the end-of-life costs. If we can get those costs under control, you can over use imaging services and other diagnostic tests forever.
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nova:
But it’s really small potatoes compared to the end-of-life costs. If we can get those costs under control…
Isn’t the only real solution to getting those under control to stop trying to keep people alive? That’s the hard truth, isn’t it?
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Hospice two months sooner, in most cases, Scott, I would guess. LMS should have a personal perspective on this.
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I see custodial nursing home care as another biggie.
ER
end of life
custodial nursing care
Big 3?
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RUK: Big 4:
procedure costing
ER abuse
end of life costs
long term nursing home care
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“This paper profiles Medicare beneficiaries’ costs for care in the last year of life. About one-quarter of Medicare outlays are for the last year of life, unchanged from twenty years ago.” It’s a bit dated, but nothing has really changed:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/20/4/188.full
FY 2012, gross current law spending on Medicare benefits will total $548 billion. About 25% is spent on those who will not live a year. At the same time, Medicaid cover vision or dental benefits at “optional”. We’re putting our resources into the wrong population. We won’t pay $100 (or whatever it is) to have a tooth pulled before infection sets in, but we’ll pay billions to keep people who will never, ever leave the hospital and the ICU until they are carted out, hooked to machines
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“custodial nursing home care as another biggie”
and that’s not covered under Medicare. but it is Medicaid. so you get the “spend down” and asset shuffling phenomenon.
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nova:
…so you get the “spend down” and asset shuffling phenomenon.
A phenomenon I am becoming well acquainted with at the moment.
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“A phenomenon I am becoming well acquainted with at the moment.”
refundable first class airfare. you can spend it and give it away, but not to family.
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Make it profitable for people to minimize their end of life care. Any other way will be demagogued into oblivion.
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Make it profitable for people to minimize their end of life care. Any other way will be demagogued into oblivion.
That’s exactly the sort of thing a grandma killer would say.
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That’s exactly the sort of thing a grandma killer would say.
I keep thinking of all the stories when people thought the rate was going to go up on the inheritance tax and theoretically might hurry the process along to get the timely death in before the fact.
End of life care is a huge problem but it’s not very easy to push people in the direction of saving money, neither the patient nor the family, when in their minds money isn’t the issue. We have better luck in Hospice using other incentives…………just sayin’.
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I really don’t know how you address it. not outside of a total overhaul of the health and retirement systems.
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LMS, I suggest that the hospice decision be made earlier in the course of a terminal illness than it is, now. This requires more funding for hospice, but hospice is big bang for the buck compared with hospital procedures, in these matters.
I know that in Austin, hospice care is limited to the “imminent” time frame, not to “she has six months to live, all we can do is make her comfortable”. That is a funding issue. Spending big bucks in the wrong place, I would say.
In 2010, a friend of mine, age 74, single man with adult children, learned he had stomach cancer in mid October. He was independently wealthy; there was no issue of public funding. Because he was a diabetic with a compromised immune system he was not a candidate for chemo. He died four weeks later, having spent only $10K+ in a nursing home, with hospice visitations, as there were no hospice “places” for him. He perhaps could have lived until 2011 if he had been fighting for his life, but, in fact, once he accepted the inevitable, he let go BECAUSE 2010 was the estate tax free year. He also wished he had shot himself before he became too weak to go home.
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We are doing relatively well!
http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Financial_Markets/Uneven_progress_on_the_path_to_growth
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Mark
I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m just saying that there are other incentives for people to go on Hospice besides money, but when you put people in too soon the way the program is designed, and it’s only partially a funding issue, you’ll have some patients and later survivors wondering if they jumped the gun. The work I do for Hospice deals with some of that back end stuff so I’m acutely aware of the balance that needs to be struck. There is an acceptance that is part of Hospice that is neither easy nor always susceptible to suggestion, if that makes sense.
I keep saying I’m going to do a post on Hospice but as I’m not an actual employee, just a volunteer, I’m not sure I’m particularly qualified to be the one to do it. I’ll have to think about it some more.
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In addition to my comment to Mark above at 11:26 I’ve also found in the last 20+ years that most people don’t really like hearing too much about the realities of Hospice, another reason why I try not to bring it up very often.
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LMS, I get your point. The main incentive, I guess, should be that the patient accepts the inevitable and wants to be comfortable and leave on her own terms, so to speak.
Thanks for reminding me that we are dealing with stressed folks, here.
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NYTimes DealB%k
“January 29, 2012, 7:56 pm
Investment Banking
U.S. Banks Tally Their Exposure to Europe’s Debt Maelstrom
By PETER EAVIS
After a hurricane, homeowners check nervously to see if their insurance will cover all of the damage. With the European financial crisis still threatening a trail of defaults, United States banks are betting that their insurance is going to pay out.
Five large American banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have more than $80 billion of exposure to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece, the most economically stressed nations in the euro currency zone, according to a New York Times analysis of the banks’ financial disclosures.
But these banks have made extensive use of a type of financial insurance, the credit-default swap, to help them offset any losses that might occur if defaults swamped the five troubled nations.
Using these swaps, along with other measures, the five banks have cut their theoretical exposure to the troubled countries by $30 billion, to $50 billion. The analysis also shows that Citigroup has the greatest percentage of its exposure potentially protected, at 47 percent, while Bank of America has bought the least protection, at 12 percent.
On Sunday, the Greek government appeared close to a deal with the majority of its creditors that would lead to big write-downs in the value of its debt. But even a deal could spawn a series of events that could lead to payouts on Greek credit-default swaps. While the Greek swaps would probably be paid, they represent only part of the $602 billion of swaps that have been written on the five troubled countries.”
I wonder how the CDS exposure is split up. Hopefully it’s more diversified than the housing bubble and not all with AIG again.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/u-s-banks-tally-their-exposure-to-europes-debt-maelstrom/?hpw
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“I keep saying I’m going to do a post on Hospice but as I’m not an actual employee, just a volunteer, I’m not sure I’m particularly qualified to be the one to do it”
I think we’d all be interested to read what you have to say.
Second that! -Mark
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Haaaaaahaaaaaaaaa, I’ve been known to clear a room discussing Hospice, maybe you guys are just more curious than most of the people I know. I’ll think about it a little more, the angle to take, and then see how it goes…..fair enough?
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lmsinca
I keep saying I’m going to do a post on Hospice but as I’m not an actual employee, just a volunteer, I’m not sure I’m particularly qualified to be the one to do it. I’ll have to think about it some more.
I’m with Nova on this one. I’m sure the majority of us would love to hear what you have to report. Some of us (mark,me,you,and now okie) may take it a little more personally..:-) but the day could be arriving for any of us or someone in our family.
I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know more about Hospice. I think your disclaimer about simply being a volunteer and not an employee covers any “credibility liability” you might perceive you have. I suspect you know more than the rest of us so any information would be valuable.
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One of the best interviews I’ve read recently.
“Julian Assange: The Rolling Stone Interview
Under house arrest in England, the WikiLeaks founder opens up about his battle with the ‘Times,’ his stint in solitary and the future of journalism
By Michael Hastings
January 18, 2012 8:00 AM ET”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/julian-assange-the-rolling-stone-interview-20120118?link=mostpopular3
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John – you may appreciate this quote from Assange as I believe it applies to your attempts to educate the PL community about finance:
“From the glory days of American radicalism, which was the American Revolution, I think that Madison’s view on government is still unequaled,” he tells me during the three days I spend with him as he settles into his new location in England. “That people determined to be in a democracy, to be their own governments, must have the power that knowledge will bring – because knowledge will always rule ignorance. You can either be informed and your own rulers, or you can be ignorant and have someone else, who is not ignorant, rule over you. The question is, where has the United States betrayed Madison and Jefferson, betrayed these basic values on how you keep a democracy? I think that the U.S. military-industrial complex and the majority of politicians in Congress have betrayed those values.”
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Don’t look for me at PL anymore. I just blew my stack over another attack from DAWD:
“Greg:
Do you care about your board (as opposed to the column itself) at all?
If so, why is the adolescent DAWD still here personally attacking people day after day and contributing nothing more than youtube links and “Hannity” comments?
Are we so akin to his nonsense that moderators don’t even notice anymore?
. . . this!
You don’t want respectful discussion”
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banned (to Greg S.):
Do you care about your board (as opposed to the column itself) at all?
I haven’t been to PL in some time, but I think you should consider the possibility that the atmosphere at PL is exactly what Greg wants it to be. In my time there I never once saw him put forth a scintilla of effort to control the more nasty posters among his acolytes on the left, but I regularly saw him engage in friendly banter with them. He used to regularly say that his blog was all about the commentors. I take him at his word.
My guess is that PL is precisely what Greg wants it to be, and he should be judged by the company he keeps.
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jnc:
Did you see Portugal blew up today?
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“jnc:
Did you see Portugal blew up today?”
Missed it. By blew up you mean the premium spread on it’s debt increased substantially, or an actual default?
Also, expecting a different experience out of PL is unrealistic. It is what it is. Your only choices are to put up with it the way it is currently, or leave. Hence the founding of ATiM.
Edit: I believe I found the answer to my question:
“JANUARY 30, 2012, 12:49 P.M. ET
Portugal Borrowing Costs Hit New Highs
BY ART PATNAUDE
LONDON—Concerns that Greece’s delay in striking a deal with private creditors could infect other European economies brought unwelcome attention to Portugal, where borrowing costs Monday pushed into euro-era highs.
Other euro nations that have been linked to such contagion fears—such as Italy and Spain—were comparatively insulated, in a large part due to inexpensive cash pumped into the financial system from the European Central Bank.
The market for trading in Portuguese government bonds has stalled, with buyers and sellers of the debt limited, and the bid and offer prices traders see very far apart. ”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204652904577192572929829292.html
Edit #2: Not the first time Portugal’s borrowing costs have “hit new highs”. Deja Vu all over again.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/mar/25/portugal-borrowing-costs-ratings-agency-downgrades
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Also, care to speculate as to how the counter party risk for the CDS’s that the large Wall Street banks are holding on European debt are distributed?
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jnc
Yes yields:
“Portugal’s slide towards becoming the next Greece—needing a second bailout to avoid chaotic bankruptcy—geared up a notch on Monday as untrusting underwriters hiked the cost of insuring Lisbon’s bonds to new highs and insisted it be paid up front.”
That’s almost like when a vendor stops extending credit to a retailer. Good thing they’re a sovereign!
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jnc:
Not banks, you and me:
“This story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this morning. Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.
This means that the investment bank’s European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn’t get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to “give relief” to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.
This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input. You will also read below that JP Morgan is apparently doing the same thing with $79 trillion of notional derivatives guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve.
What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.
This is a recipe for Armageddon. Bernanke is absolutely insane. No wonder Geithner has been hopping all over Europe begging and cajoling leaders to put together a massive bailout of troubled banks. His worst nightmare is Eurozone bank defaults leading to the collapse of the large U.S. banks who have been happily selling default insurance on European banks since the crisis began.”
http://dailybail.com/home/holy-bailout-federal-reserve-now-backstopping-75-trillion-of.html
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banned:
This is a recipe for Armageddon.
Let’s take a step back and relax. Perhaps it would have been more informative to have linked to the actual bloomberg article rather than some sensationalized blog’s interpretation of what it means.
First, I would point out that when the article talks about BoA holding $75 trillion of derivatives, it is speaking of notional amount, not exposure. Since we don’t know what kind of derivatives they are, (CDS, IRS, CCS), we have no way of estimating what the exposure actually is or could be, or to whom (counterparty) or what (rates) it has expsoure. But since we (well, at least I) know that BoA holds a huge IRS derivatives book, we do know that the exposure from those derivatives don’t come anywhere near approaching the reported notional amount.
CDS exposure actually can climb to be equal to the reported notional amount, and if BoA has written credit protection via CDS on European names, then they, and hence the FDIC, would indeed be at risk to exposure should Europe blow up. But we know, from the article linked by jnc earlier, that BoA is actually a net buyer, not seller, of CDS protection on Europe. If this is correct, then far from FDIC being at risk for covering BoA CDS derivative losses if Europe blows up, BoA will actually be owed money on its derivatives if Europe blows up. (According to jnc’s article, BoA does, of course, have significant exposure to Europe, but that exposure is not derivative exposure, which is what your “armageddon” article is talking about.)
It is certainly legitimate to question whether the movement of these derivatives from Merrill ot the deposit taking institution is proper. But let’s try to keep things in the proper perspective. And I suspect that, after spending 5 minutes perusing it, proper perspective is not a high priority for your site The Daily Bail.
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ScottC: On PL you are right on.
I like the Madison quote as well. It says a lot abut the quality of leadership we have.
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“My guess is that PL is precisely what Greg wants it to be, and he should be judged by the company he keeps.”
The annoying part is Greg’s frequent “where did all my regulars go” postings, and the seeming inability to put 2+2 together and get 4, but I suspect that would be written off as yet another example of elevating financial understanding above all other concerns thus showing your bankrupt morality.
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you’ll all be happy to know that I’ve filed my LD-203 with the clerk of the senate and have disclosed my contributions to members of the House and Senate. $0.
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“jnc:
Not banks, you and me:”
Remember though, President Obama promised no more bailouts in the State of the Union.
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Ok, I’m over it. LOL
Doing more work on exactly what type of backstop the movement of derivatives to BAC might have.
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Nobody’s talking, never a good sign:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/bofa-said-to-split-regulators-over-moving-merrill-derivatives-to-bank-unit.html
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jnc:
This was in October, so i guess he was literally right!
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I don’t know what happened to the PL really. It was always sort of a hot bed of opinions but we used to at least duke it out to a conclusion and I just don’t remember anyone suggesting that they should quit posting or go away or even just pretending that they were in charge. I’m talking almost 3 years ago though and the dynamics have really changed. It seems most people just want to chase people off who don’t agree with them. I know some of them still blame us for “stealing” commenters, but I don’t think we’d have so many ex-Plumliners here if there hadn’t been a need. I feel bad for Greg still, but I’m not always sure why. I’d like him to be successful I guess and I think he’s frustrated but doesn’t quite know what to do about it. I agree though he hasn’t done anything to really mitigate some of the worst tendencies by a few people over there. I noticed Bernie was back, maybe that will do some good.
John, didn’t BofA make that move re transferring some of their risk to an FDIC depository arm a few weeks ago? Or is this something different?
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lmsinca
What you said about PL!!!
Without an ignore button or troll blocker the blogs are at the mercy of the commenters. A blog founded and moderated by the very people who founded it and participate on a regular basis is one of the only ways to have “pleasant” conversations. Hence ATIM is much more civil than PL
The PL is out there in the open, they don’t get to control who they invite, and banning is largely ineffective and actually absurd since some folks come right back with a different sock puppet. There are two egregious offenders, one from the left, one from the right, who have done this repeatedly. I’m not really sure what Greg can do.
Although I certainly understand john/banned’s frustration…I’m here aren’t I? lol
I guess at minimum john/banned and others would feel better if Greg at least admonished them publicly, and pointed out that he finds such posts offensive.
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Every time I drop into PL, Liam or DDAWD reminds me why I left.
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lms:
Yes it was October, and since then nobody has said a word. I only noticed it because I did a search about BAC. There was even a big story today in the NYT about banks’ CDS exposure to Europe and that didn’t mention it either.
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Greg griped about how we kept commenting about the prez race even on a non-prez race thread.
Nothing about personal attacks, trolls, etc.
This is what WaPo wants. Greg may or may not, but that’s what he has to live with.
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John
I’ll have to do some research but I seem to remember talking about it here not that long ago. Maybe Scott will remember because I think he was part of the conversation. I think it might have been one of my Naked Capitalism links or something. I’ll try to look into, but not until I file my sales tax report tomorrow.
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John,
I have always suspected that the mergers done at the height of the crisis were involuntary transactions. If “Bald” was using his bazooka to perform shotgun marriages in the banking sector, then you have to expect that taxpayers would have to backstop the liabilities of Countrywide, ML, Wachovia, WaMu, etc.
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didn’t meant to start a rant, really.
I posted yesterday on the open in reply to sue about the Schneidermen investigation with similar liks to what I put here this morning. overnight, beach, dawd, and cao attacked me with the usual.
So early this morning, still on the open, i did a post comparing beach to Baron Munchausen, dawd to a 13 year old on a sports blog, and called cao an expatriate psuedo-Marxist who attacks posters when he’s done beating his servants at home. (cao liked the Baron characterization but denied he had servants LOL)
So later in the day I went back to retrieve a link and found that I had been deleted, not surprisingly. What then set me off, was a post where yello brought up Romney’s wealth, and I pointed out that Buffett was worth 200 times more. LOL
dawd then called me a retard, which of course wasn’t deleted and it just bit today, who knows why..
So now you know the rest of the story
now back to financial stuff!
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In my time there I never once saw him put forth a scintilla of effort to control the more nasty posters among his acolytes on the left, but I regularly saw him engage in friendly banter with them.
It would be like sweeping the beach. The open forum policy and easy registration make it flypaper for axe-grinders. Policing the riff-raff would be a full-time job and WaPo can barely keep the hamsters fed, let alone do anything as labor intensive as actually moderate comments. Plum Line is actually one of the better WaPo boards. The old OnParenting was a cesspool of judgmentalism.
Over at the Achenblog we have an elaborate neighborhood bar metaphor where we tell newcomers to enjoy the banter a little before trying to pick fights with the regulars. It also helps that it started life as a humor blog. Plum Line is more like a downtown happy hour place with drink specials aimed at frat boys.
ATiM is perhaps a couple of people with a deck that have given the neighbors an open invite to the beer cooler. And just because everybody knows everybody, that still hasn’t prevented folks from taking drunken swings at each other.
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scott:
yes you’re right in terms of notional amounts. For RUK, that’s essentially the bookies hedge with other bookies versus the nominal exposure, as your father used to do.
The NYT had a story today trying to figure out the exposure. The answer is of course that nobody knows, becuase we have no exchange on which these CDS are listed.
yes, i was a bit sensational, because it’s fun and yet there’s real story behind the fun. i did link to the Bloomberg article later. Really without knowing the current corporate structure of Merrill vis a vis BAC, we still wouldn’t have a definitive answer.
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Lehman Brothers didn’t just accidentally fail. It was pushed. Goldman Sachs’s fingerprints are all over the body. Where are all these industry insider chicken coop guarding foxes coming from? Not a mystery.
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yello :
sort of , maybe
What started the end was in 2007 when Goldman went to market with MBS prices that were way lower than everybody elses. The other banks were forced to change their marks anc chaos ensued. Collateral calls everywhere. Was it intentional? There’s ample evidence if you want to say so.
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All of you acquitted yourselves with aplomb at the Plum.
I noticed. I applaud.
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scott
BTW I am currently out of all banks but JPM, precisley because I cant figure out the numbers. I’m fine with taking risks, but too scary when you can’t quantify what it is.
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That was strange. I inadvertently hit a key or key combination that completely closed my browser and ditched the comment I was trying to post. I didn’t even think that was possible. Oh well.
My guess is that PL is precisely what Greg wants it to be, and he should be judged by the company he keeps.
This is precisly right and not very debatable in my opinion . Greg has openly greeted and encouraged some of the most abusive commenters, after some of their most abusive fllurries of comments, as in, for example, wishes for genocide and the most vile personal attacks you can imagine. He has lashed out at conservative commenters now and then. He threatened me for citing his own words about Sarah Palin and “violent rhetoric”–what a sorry performance that was, accusing me of lying by citing his own words six months earlier (he had no further comment when I linked his own post proving he had said it). The only time he has personally banned anyone to my knowledge, it was a conservative whose “abuses” paled in comparison to many regulars, past and present.
There is absolutely no reason to feel bad for him or guilty in any way. PL is exactly what he has shaped it to be. He gets hundreds of comments, 90% of which are absolute garbage. His own writing has veered so far into propaganda, hyperbole, and dishonesty that I don’t take him at all seriously. This was absolutely clear not long ago when he misrepresented comments of Rick Santorum and then justified his misrepresentation by saying it was a paraphrase of what Santorum was actually thinking, mixed with some reductio ad absurdum. Wrap your mind around that one before feeling sympathy for Greg and his self-made internet home. It was especially enlightening, given the daily accusations of Republican “Big Lies” he posts.
No one should ever expect Greg to make the slightest effort to rein in the worst offenders or bring any decency to his board. It has nothing to do with his goals for PL. He made that abundantly clear long ago. Yes, I’m a conservative and so an ideological adversary, but these are objective facts.
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The only time he has personally banned anyone to my knowledge, it was a conservative whose “abuses” paled in comparison to many regulars, past and present.
He attempted several times to ban Save The Rain Forest, whose abuses were pretty severe.
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PL is exactly what he has shaped it to be.
And the WaPo comment tech staff. They play a big role in that mess. I would have kept it up with the Troll Hunter, if the new AJAX format had made it impossible to post process the pages.
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Kevin,
I’m curious about your Troll Hunter. What exactly did it do? That comments are now no longer searchable or linkable says volumes about the value WaPo puts on them.
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DDAWD is just mean. He and Cao figure in highly into why I don’t do PL much. That and the commenting software. I actually get on well enough with Liam.
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I still slum-dive over at PL but don’t hang out for long periods. I think I last stayed a while a few weeks back when cefly saw me there and decided to take another wack at disproving the Laffer Curve. Much hilarity ensued, especially when it turned out that he didn’t actually know what the axes are but was nevertheless supposedly working on a mathematical proof that the tax revenue function can never have negative slope.
You just can’t find entertainment like that in a lot of places. But I have no expectations of quality debate there.
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working on a mathematical proof that the tax revenue function can never have negative slope
It would be difficult to envision a system in which 100% taxation did not depress tax revenue.
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Yello,
They are no longer searchable or linkable for the same reason (well, they could, in theory, provide a static feed of the comments to solve that problem that still wouldn’t help me Troll Hunt, but it’s all about the AJAX, and dynamic display).
The Troll Hunter (a User Script, or a Greasemonkey Script) allowed you to customize your experience. Hilight commenters you liked, block commentors you didn’t, and reorganized the presentation so it was more informational. It also allowed for special tags to include formatting (though only for Troll Hunter users), and kept a count of the posts so you could refer to comment by number. A few other things. Alas, it was a post-processing Javascript, and the source page now loads without comments, no matter how many comments there are, so there is nothing for a script to process as regards raw data.
While it would be possible, in theory, to hack it . . . I saw that easily taking 50 times the amount of time it took to develop the original Troll Hunter, and in the end it might not have happened, and there was just no way I was going to put that kind of time into it.
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That sounds like a really useful add-on which is now non-functional. We had an anonymous commenter at Achenblog who once a year gave a comment count by user. Great fun.
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It would be difficult to envision a system in which 100% taxation did not depress tax revenue.
It probably seems impossible that I am not making that up, but believe me I’m not. I linked an old article by Paul Blinder, a leading economist of the liberal and Democratic persuasion, acknowledging the obvious point you make and essentially calling the Laffer Curve a truism (indeed a mathematical truism) about which empirical matters are the only controversy. But in PL-world tax revenue keeps right on increasing to the 100% rate. I guess Blinder just isn’t the right Princeton economist and doesn’t know math like commenters know it.
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We are doing relatively well!
Mark, while I agree with the sentiment generally, I don’t trust McKinsey any further than I can throw them.
Is McKinsey The Root of All Evil?
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QB: So, the solution to all our problems should be to immediately levy a 200% tax on everybody, and then redistribute the proceeds. We’ll all be rich!
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Yello, that’s right. I also kept a count of how many posts each contribute posted. Sigh. Stupid WaPo.
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