What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

PPPPPPPpsssstttttttttttt, hey, merc...

today...​

could



be




the





day




we





break




12,000!​

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Looks like a big selloff shaping up in the futures this morning. Maybe Merc can come by and tell us the Eurozone bailout is working just fine, like the UD recovery.


Greek Referendum Threatens New Euro Zone Crisis
Published: Tuesday, 1 Nov 2011 | 3:35 AM ET


Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou risks a new euro zone crisis with his shock announcement that he will put the bailout deal struck last week to try to contain the bloc's debt mountain to a referendum of voters already angry at harsh cuts.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45113793

It "saved" the world economy and in 6 months, Zandi will prove it!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

President Obama says the Occupy Wall Street protests show a "broad-based frustration" among Americans with the financial sector, which continues to kick against regulatory reforms three years after the financial crisis.

"You're seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place," he complained earlier this month.

But what if government encouraged, even invented, those "abusive practices"?

Rewind to 1994. That year, the federal government declared war on an enemy — the racist lender — who officials claimed was to blame for differences in homeownership rate, and launched what would prove the costliest social crusade in U.S. history.

At President Clinton's direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties.

Bubble? Regulators Blew It

The threat was codified in a 20-page "Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending" and entered into the Federal Register on April 15, 1994, by the Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending. Clinton set up the little-known body to coordinate an unprecedented crackdown on alleged bank redlining.

The edict — completely overlooked by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the mainstream media — was signed by then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, Attorney General Janet Reno, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, along with the heads of six other financial regulatory agencies.

"The agencies will not tolerate lending discrimination in any form," the document warned financial institutions.

Ludwig at the time stated the ruling would be used by the agen cies as a fair-lending enforcement "tool," and would apply to "all lenders" — including banks and thrifts, credit unions, mortgage brokers and finance companies.

The unusual full-court press was predicated on a Boston Fed study showing mortgage lenders rejecting blacks and Hispanics in greater proportion than whites. The author of the 1992 study, hired by the Clinton White House, claimed it was racial "discrimination." But it was simply good underwriting.

It took private analysts, as well as at least one FDIC economist, little time to determine the Boston Fed study was terminally flawed. In addition to finding embarrassing mistakes in the data, they concluded that more relevant measures of a borrower's credit history — such as past delinquencies and whether the borrower met lenders credit standards — explained the gap in lending between whites and blacks, who on average had poorer credit and higher defaults.

http://news.investors.com/Article/589858/201110310805/Housing-Crisis-Obama-Clinton-Subprime.htm
__________________
A_J's corollary #9b, “When a Democrat does it, the accusing woman is trashed, when a Republican does not do it, then the Republican is trashed.”

 

[unregistered]

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Which rock is racist?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rcC1ojVkGKk/TM63QlseQSI/AAAAAAAAEkM/WOtAkhvZ5pc/s1600/CharlieBrownHalloween.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yt2jBjLqJnc/TkfvuV6X7rI/AAAAAAAAL-0/H4aITCQ79do/s1600/rock.jpg

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Merc stepped up in grandiose "UD" fashion to proclaim that all was well with the Eurozone bailout and suggestions to the contrary were essentially bullshit, yet world markets are about to sell off in grand fashion at the news that Merc's assumptions are all fucked up. My my what could possibly be wrong?

*chuckle*

Stepped up or in it?

The Greeks LOVE the pernicious evil of DEMOCRACY and as long as they are too big to fail, they're gonna vote the Germans bail!

Mama always said, Stupid...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Rock of Ages,
Heft for me...



It should be illegal for shit like that to have a tan line...

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

He may be late, I hear he's sitting on the curb with a stick, scraping the bottom of his shoes.

The stick may be the sharpest thing in that picture....

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Pass the plate back, merc needs some hope and our change...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Real Doom and Gloom for the Left if they ever allow students to actually be educated...

I hate to be the bearer of good news just as the Occupy Wall Street movement is gathering steam, but protesters can stop worrying about rising inequality and go home. New evidence suggests that the super-rich got hit by the recession much harder than the rest of the 99 percent. This doesn’t mean that they will be filing for food stamps any time soon. But it does mean that, contrary to progressive mythology, natural market forces might be restoring some semblance of cosmic justice.

There is no doubt that the cupidity of Wall Street fat cats combined with the perverse incentives established by federal policy created a financial bubble from which the uber-wealthy reaped rich rewards. In fact, over the last three decades, the top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the national income from 8 to 17 percent, the Congressional Budget Office said last week. And it wasn’t because they generated real value for the economy. Rather, notes Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, the expectation of government bailouts prompted financial managers to engage in riskier investment practices such as “shorting volatility” than they otherwise would have, ignoring long-term consequences in exchange for fat, immediate paychecks.

But “long-term” eventually arrived. New data from the University of Chicago’s Steven Kaplan shows that, despite government bailouts, in 2008 and 2009 the adjusted gross income of the top 1 percent—a disproportionate number of whom work in the financial industry—fell to 1997 levels. All in all, the fat cats took a 20 percent income hit, compared with the 7 percent lower earners suffered in the aggregate. Few economists believe that the super-rich will ever reclaim all their pre-bubble earnings.

But if the wealthy are not as well off as they once were, the middle classes were never as poorly off as liberal pundits claim. Indeed, their case that income disparity is growing rests on the notion that national productivity grew four times faster (1.95 percent per year) than median household income (0.49 percent per year) between 1979 and 2007. The remaining 1.46 percent in annual productivity gains, they postulate, must have gone straight into the Swiss bank accounts of the rich.

But there are enough holes in this argument for a Zuccotti Park cleanup crew to drive a fleet of garbage trucks through. For starters, Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon has pointed out that this analysis is based on the common price index, a number that both overstates the growth in real income among the haves and understates it for the have-nots. Indeed, globalization and big-box shopping outlets such as Walmart—the very forces that liberals blame for inequality—have vastly reduced prices for modest-income folks who shop at such venues. But the Paris Hiltons of the world who patronize stores like Versace and Roberto Cavalli haven’t benefited as much, because these businesses are almost completely immune to competitive price pressures. Once the productivity data is adjusted for such factors, Gordon found, the gap between the rich and poor grew only by 0.16 percent per year—or one-tenth of the 1.46 percent that liberals tout.

But none of this says anything about what Cowen has dubbed the “personal well-being gap”—the only gap that matters. Indeed, this gap, which measures the difference between basic goods that average people and gazillionaires like Bill Gates can afford, has been steadily closing. Gates might have personal physicians, private jets, and multiple computers. But thanks to technology-driven increases in productivity, almost everyone can afford bypass surgery, vacations and Internet access.

In America, well-being mobility, in a sense, comes to you without you having to go it. You don’t have to be income-mobile to improve your quality of life. But that doesn’t mean that Americans don’t have income mobility. Far from it. Odds are, anyone who makes basically sensible life choices such as going to college, getting and staying married (preferably to a working spouse), and working full-time will find themselves in the top income quintile in their peak earning years.

http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/01/dont-mind-the-gap

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yt2jBjLqJnc/TkfvuV6X7rI/AAAAAAAAL-0/H4aITCQ79do/s1600/rock.jpg

I'm sorry, but this just SO deserves to be quoted...

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Give peas a chance!

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It looks like she wants to play a a part in Greeks...




You're the one that I want,
o-hoo-hooo...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Warning!

Radical rw sourcing will be employed in this post.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The besieged housing market has even further to fall before home prices really hit rock bottom.

According to Fiserv (FISV), a financial analytics company, home values are expected to fall another 3.6% by next June, pushing them to a new low of 35% below the peak reached in early 2006 and marking a triple dip in prices.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/31/real_estate/home_prices/

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Communist News Network must have been infiltrated by a Bircher.

Future's pointing sharply up...


At least in the stand on your head economic world view of Merc & the Keynes!

Do wop! Do wop!

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

If you mention Franklin Delano Raines, then you are a racist and you probably want to lynch Herman Calin...




:nods:

 

[unregistered]

 

[rosco rathbone]

PPPPPPPpsssstttttttttttt, hey, merc...

today...​

could



be




the





day




we





break




12,000!​

Got me loling here at the picture of you sticking pins in a waxen image of the Dow, cackling with glee as you await the big crash that will finally usher in the era of austrian economics.