Cynical Responses to Bush's Initiative

Ah yes, the President himself rides in on his white stallion to save the poor sub-prime defaulters. And my, what cynical responses from pragmatic bloggers:

*Ritholtz says Politics as Usual

* Mish parses the real thought process behind the initiative

*The Fundamental Analysist is wondering why Bush is asking Paulson to look into the sub-prime mess when Paulson doesn't even think there is a problem.

* The irony is not lost on Financial Armageddon either.

Normally accusations of cynicism have a pejorative connotation associated with them, however in this case, the cynicism is entirely justified. Antisthenes, the founder of cynicism, would be well proud.

On the other hand, the goofy permabulls have an entirely different view.

*The Fly says Fuck you, we're going higher.

In the short term, they are probably right.

The World's Oldest Blogger

At 107 years old Olive Riley is the world's oldest blogger.

Good Morning everyone. My name is Olive Riley. I live in Australia near Sydney. I was born in Broken Hill on Oct. 20th 1899.Broken Hill is a mining town, far away in the centre of Australia. My Friend, Mike, has arranged this blog for me. He is doing the typing and I am telling the stories. He thinks it’s a good idea to tell what’s going on. He already made a film about me a few years back and people liked that, so they might like this blog too, he says. We’ll see.

Lots of interesting stories, check it out: http://www.allaboutolive.com.au

The Correction in Context

A timely post from Ducati over at Shenandoah Capital regarding historic, verses the current decline. It kinda puts the current squealing of Wall Street assholes into context. i.e. Puleeeeze, shut the fuck up.

The following charts are from Jim Stack.

What he has done is take the most recent high in the Dow Jones Industrials, 14,000 and then chart the various declines using that 14,000 high as the starting point. The point being made, is that the current decline comes nowhere near a historical bear market, and if this pullback is causing you undue stress, then, quite honestly you probably have no business in the market.

The Fed Guessing Game

Perhaps every person in the world who owns at least a token parcel of TelstraII shares is wondering what is going through the minds of Uncle Ben and his fellow FOMC (or is it the PPT) cohorts. The Wall Street assholes have been screaming for a base rate cut ever since the sub-prime grenade blew up in their faces.

Most sensible commentators not reliant on fee income caution against such a move; more booze for alcoholics is the basic thinking.

Now we learn that the US economy grew at a 4% rate in the last quarter.

The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 4 percent in the second quarter, as strong business investment led the fastest pace of expansion since early last year, the government reported Thursday.

The Commerce Department raised its estimate of gross domestic product -- the measure of total goods and services output within U.S. borders -- from a 3.4 percent gain that it published a month ago. That was in line with Wall Street economists' forecasts and far outstripped the first quarter's anemic 0.6 percent rate of expansion.

Admittedly, those figure are for the period before the "credit crunch" and the above article points out that it is not likely to be sustainable, but based on those figures, how can the Fed cut? Other sections of the economy concur that things are just fine and dandy.

I have managed to convince myself that they will cut, caving in to the Wall St assholes, but equally remain convinced that it will be a very bad decision. As many point out, it might not make a hell of a lot of difference, apart from providing for a brief rally. Ultimately, many think we are headed for recession.

If you detect some cognitive dissonance in the above, you are right... mixed messages abound.

So my guess is they cut.

WTF are "Normal Conditions" Uncle Ben?

Well I got a timely kick up the arse for not keeping up this blog, so an update from my cognitively biased point of view. (... and you think you're not? LOL)

Of course, in the intervening time I've had a fiddle with my blog template, as I do. And also of course, I've fucked everything up, as I do. LOL! So now I have to rebuild my blogroll and all the other shit I had in my sidebars. Anyway, I digress.

Interesting article at CNBCs site today... actually it wasn't interesting at all, more speculation of interest rate cuts and all is going to be OK nonsense. Read it here. The statement that caught my eye was this:

Bernanke and his central bank colleagues "expected a return to more normal market conditions," but they recognized that might not be the case, according to minutes of the closed-door meeting released on Tuesday.

I thought to myself: What the fuck are "more normal market conditions" then? Resumption of the bubble economy, the Goldilocks fairytale, the ridiculous discounting of risk?

Apart from the credit market problems as highlighted by the Cramer buffoon a couple of weeks ago, a 10% correction in the stock market every now and then is pretty much..... ummm, normal. What is abnormal is how easy it is, still, to get credit. at least in this country and the UK. It's abnormal that asset values are so fucking stretched (and don't give me the "stocks are cheap" bullshit; they aren't), particularly real estate.

I still don't think there will be a "crash". The goverments' (plural) willingness to intervene is all too apparent and obvious, that is unless something big-time happens. However I would be surprised to see a new high for a while.

Meanwile the stock market has provided a few nice short swing setups. That always make a bear happy.