As a few know, I do follow the markets and most recently, one of the primary causes of 2007-2008 crisis is once again peeking out from under the rug. Peeking may not be the right word - it is gathering momentum - more like a tsunami. And it is important because it could bring down a few big banks and therefore the market. And like it or not, the U.S. is still the dominant player in the global economy so what happens there will affect you regardless of where you live.
The mortgage mess (that had been swept under the rug in 2008) is unravelling on several different fronts. I saw an article today alluding to two fronts but I think they are at least three.
First, the front that has gotten the most ink from the Main Stream Media (MSM) has been that individual home owners may have been improperly foreclosed upon because banks have forged documents such as affidavits and in some cases even signatures. Bigger than that is that the banks didn't follow the law which requires them to transfer the original paper (more on why they couldn't do that later). Some commentators have tried to pass this off as sloppy paperwork but it is fraud. There should not be two different standards - one for individuals and one for corporations.
The second front relates more to the origination of these loans and may be the most damaging. Banks sliced and diced these mortgages and stuck them into these complex financial products - mortgage backed securties (MBS). Luckily I found a great vid that cuts to the chase and explains what the banks did at a high level:
Why is this big - these loans were sold to mutual funds, pension funds and foreign institutions under false pretenses. A few of these third parties have already started lawsuits and I'm sure more are to come. For some reason the word fraud once again comes to mind.
The third front relates to local and state taxes. The fact that these banks didn't legally transfer all the paper work means they may have been skipping out on paying local taxes and fees.
A tsunami is the correct word - I'm not making any predictions except I think we are in for stormy weather for the next few months.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
You will take my healthcare from my cold dead hands ...
You will take my healthcare from my cold dead hands ...
I haven't written for a while and was going to do an update on the global economic situation including some explanation of the whole fraudclosure issue - fun!
But then I noticed that MarketWatch was running a special report on Canadian healthcare. Headlines include
Canada at the crossroads
Limited opportunities
The long wait
Reading the content of these articles and some of the comments pissed me off. Typical Canadian health care bashing (yes we are all commies!) I finally had to register to post a comment (yes I was a little angry):
As a Canadian who has lived in the US,, experienced the hell of an HMO and soon after decided to pay the extra fees for a PPO (because I could afford it as a single person) and also saw many, many not covered at all - not going to happen in Canada.
As you noted - your initial article said that the majority of Canadians, regardless of complaints about wait times, etc, would not give up our current system - so please move along and figure out what you are going to do about your bankrupt banks. I knew I should have shorted BAC!
I thought for sure I would be trashed - actually pretty sure my comment will be - but .... I was heartened by the first response to my comment:
couldn't have said it better. I don't give a rats behind what the US thinks of the Canadian system. If you don't like socialized medicine keep using your system, it seems to work really well (!)
Regardles of what the republican media says EVERY comprehensive health care study done since the 70's has shown that Canada's system ranks near the top in quality (usually just behind Sweden, Norway) and almost always ranked higher than the US. Read the last 10 years worth of OECD reports on health care if you want non-biased numbers based facts.
It works well, the majority people like it, and it is cost effective.
Why is Marketwatch running this story now? I would like to know why the Canadian Health Care system and all its woes is being featured on Marketwatch when there are so many more interesting domesstic stories to look at.
I haven't written for a while and was going to do an update on the global economic situation including some explanation of the whole fraudclosure issue - fun!
But then I noticed that MarketWatch was running a special report on Canadian healthcare. Headlines include
Canada at the crossroads
Limited opportunities
The long wait
Reading the content of these articles and some of the comments pissed me off. Typical Canadian health care bashing (yes we are all commies!) I finally had to register to post a comment (yes I was a little angry):
As a Canadian who has lived in the US,, experienced the hell of an HMO and soon after decided to pay the extra fees for a PPO (because I could afford it as a single person) and also saw many, many not covered at all - not going to happen in Canada.
As you noted - your initial article said that the majority of Canadians, regardless of complaints about wait times, etc, would not give up our current system - so please move along and figure out what you are going to do about your bankrupt banks. I knew I should have shorted BAC!
I thought for sure I would be trashed - actually pretty sure my comment will be - but .... I was heartened by the first response to my comment:
couldn't have said it better. I don't give a rats behind what the US thinks of the Canadian system. If you don't like socialized medicine keep using your system, it seems to work really well (!)
Regardles of what the republican media says EVERY comprehensive health care study done since the 70's has shown that Canada's system ranks near the top in quality (usually just behind Sweden, Norway) and almost always ranked higher than the US. Read the last 10 years worth of OECD reports on health care if you want non-biased numbers based facts.
It works well, the majority people like it, and it is cost effective.
Why is Marketwatch running this story now? I would like to know why the Canadian Health Care system and all its woes is being featured on Marketwatch when there are so many more interesting domesstic stories to look at.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Catching Up
I haven't posted for a while for a number of reasons - mostly work-related. Now, that it is fall, I'm looking forward to catching up. And there are tons of things I want to write about. I am going to start posting at least twice a week but for now ....
Will catch up soon -:)
Will catch up soon -:)
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Better than Expected
Though many economists say we may be in a recession, headed for a double dip or already in a depression, the stock market has been on a tear. It seems the market can rally on anything. These days a headline like "Mukluk Sales in July Better than Expected" could send the market up a point or two!
Reading the mainstream financial news you see phrases such as "better than expected" all the time. I have even seen the market rally on "not as bad expected".
I do sometimes wonder ..."expected" by whom? There is a diversity of opinions among economists, market watchers and even government economists as how to interpret economic data (more on that later).
This morning the market rallied because there was jobs data released that was Better than Expected! The US is still losing jobs but the initial claims for unemployment came in by 27K less than expected. And the market rallied.
But for anyone who looked a litte deeper - they might find a fly in the ointment. It appears that nine states (including a few of the worst off) did not provide real data on employment - the government made estimates. The fact that this data point was not released with the official figures at first surprised me (I think I'm past the stage of being shocked) and .... then it didn't. But it did.
Back to spin and "better than expected". So is the spinning of economic data a conspiracy to keep us peons from panicking (hey I'm reading Under the Dome right now), lack of decent financial journalism or just a willing ignorance? I do not know.
However, I conducted an ad hoc experiment using Google news (I firmly believe Google does not manually manipulate their news coverage but there is an algorithmic bias there - popularity feeds into popularity). I took the phrases "worse than expected" and "better than expected" and ran them through Google News Search with the terms "economy", "economic" and "employment" and recorded the number of news articles returned for each. The results are somewhat telling:
It looks like there is a bias ... but for now I will refrain from speculating as to where that bias is coming from.
Reading the mainstream financial news you see phrases such as "better than expected" all the time. I have even seen the market rally on "not as bad expected".
I do sometimes wonder ..."expected" by whom? There is a diversity of opinions among economists, market watchers and even government economists as how to interpret economic data (more on that later).
This morning the market rallied because there was jobs data released that was Better than Expected! The US is still losing jobs but the initial claims for unemployment came in by 27K less than expected. And the market rallied.
But for anyone who looked a litte deeper - they might find a fly in the ointment. It appears that nine states (including a few of the worst off) did not provide real data on employment - the government made estimates. The fact that this data point was not released with the official figures at first surprised me (I think I'm past the stage of being shocked) and .... then it didn't. But it did.
Back to spin and "better than expected". So is the spinning of economic data a conspiracy to keep us peons from panicking (hey I'm reading Under the Dome right now), lack of decent financial journalism or just a willing ignorance? I do not know.
However, I conducted an ad hoc experiment using Google news (I firmly believe Google does not manually manipulate their news coverage but there is an algorithmic bias there - popularity feeds into popularity). I took the phrases "worse than expected" and "better than expected" and ran them through Google News Search with the terms "economy", "economic" and "employment" and recorded the number of news articles returned for each. The results are somewhat telling:
| Better than Expected | Worse than Expected | |
|---|---|---|
| Economy | 87.37% | 12.62% |
| Economics | 82.97% | 17.02% |
| Employment | 83.22% | 16.77% |
It looks like there is a bias ... but for now I will refrain from speculating as to where that bias is coming from.
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