How many credit swaps can dance on the head of a bailout?

They keep blaming this on John Q public's bad mortgages rather than banks' questionable decisions in granting those mortgages to insolvent people followed by the bundling of those junk mortgages, sold and resold again and again, and the insuring instruments for those bundles the magic, indecipherable derivatives. 

I did a little calculation and if I have it right (and i might not) then 800 billion would be enough for 2o billion $400,000 houses at full price.... So we must have more than 20 billion people losing their homes since the gov will only pay some change on the dollar for this paper. There just can't be that many...

And Where are the properties that go with this paper? Who is going to check the properties, go to the foreclosure proceedings... Pay heat on the empty houses..... 20 million of em all over map.... Maybe these will be the jobs of the "PAULSON NEW DEAL" hahaha. I can barely believe there could be so many displaced persons. I am betting there are multiple higher ticket items in there - like builders who went bankrupt holding paper on an entire development project or condo projects.
This just seems like such a bad idea and there must be more stuff than just residences........

my dash board calculator stopped at 800 million..... .

JP Morgan will buy WaMu? Bye Bye Washington Mutual

Another surprise deal announced on CNBC did I hear that right?. Wish I could hit instant replay and hear that again... Things are moving fast - if you don't count legislators. But I want them asking questions. 11th-hour must-do deals worth $700 billion are always suspect...... Just heard it again on Larry King - JP Morgen Chase "has acquired" the assets of Washington Mutual. so WAMU must have tanked or been seized.... Then Larry King moved on to Palin. Who cares.
========
ADENDUM
PS At this moment (Friday evening 9/26/08) ABC news reports that 17 billion in assest had been withdrawn from WaMu in the space of a few weeks putting it in an untenable position. ABC said it was the largest bank failure in American History. WaMu's assest were sold to JP Morgan Chase at the firesale price of $1.9 billion.

So long for now to Wed Poetry, returning the mezzo gig

Though I will still be doing the email update and maintaining the wedpoetry.net website, I will be missing my weekly Wed Night Poetry fix from now until summer. And I will be missing it very much.

Next Wed. I have committed to slamming in the first White Plains Public Library Slam of the season.  After that, I will be attending a choir rehearsal every Wed. starting Oct 8 until the end of June and I will so miss the marvelous community of folks I have met over the incredible 14 years of this poetry series.  This seasonal music gig as a paid mezzo/alto in a church is my only job right now and I cannot afford to not go back. I do enjoy the work, just wish rehearsal was some other night.   Rehearsal gets out at 9:30 p.m. or so. I will head right to Molten Java  from there and try to catch the very tail end of Q&A.

I plan to take up the slack by going to other poetry events around the area and to music open mic nights at several local venues. 

Consumer reaction to Wall Street woe is a no-brainer

President Bush has now gone to the American People and said we have an enormous financial crisis on the horizon. Of course  this is the same American public that has been losing its homes and jobs for a while now.   

    The treasury and the fed - in the form of Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernekie - set that gigantic $700 billion figure to restore WALL STREET CONFIDENCE.    And now, suddenly the talking heads are worried that CONSUMER CONFIDENCE is low and people aren't buying.    DUH.     

    They have been using some stern-faced scare tactics to get this almost-a-trillion dollar financial stabilization package/BAILOUT passed - calling pension funds, 401ks into question and painting a picture where your credit card and ATM card stop working.  ERGO consumer sentiment is going to get even worse.  The general public (the bulk of folks who weren't losing a home or job), they are only now becoming aware of this crisis so we can expect spending AND saving will decline even further. Where will the money go? Check your local mattress.

    When the financial crisis of the century is on the horizon --  why on earth do we want to spend what little we have left?

Blood Brothers from Inverse Origami

The poem Blood Brothers was included in Inverse Origami (1998) and also in From We Shijin Book I" 2004, from Hanover Press
    

Hemoglobin shovels O2
into the furnace of this flesh,
Mt. St. Helena hot in the veins,
the blinding burn of this mortal mess:

Volcanic Serb and Croat erupting
Christian, Muslim, Jew, Tutsi
Hutu spew fire and ash, Skinhead
Treader of the Shinning Path, smoke
and vent like Irish Catholic and Protestant
pro-life bombers, policemen with plungers
unemployed militiamen with
fertilizer and fuel oil.

We all wear the white hat and
god is always on our side as
hungry and hissing we blister
to flame ---- and blood flows always
just as red as the time before.

Whatever cause we cite, there is another   
and we avert our eyes --- In each generation
the ancient animal wakes anew, the sleeping
mountain rumbles, metaphysicians mumble
incantations, the people bring their offerings to the craters rim:
.....learning and law
.....compassion and tolerance
.....forbearance and forgiveness.
These spread their opium salve and the   
Blood-beast dozes a while
under a gilding of grace.

Pick the scab of blessedness
and blood roils forth once more.
Some new Pompeii is burned or buried
smothered in sulfur, an ocean boils
but the mountain does not care

for blood has no age of consent
no theology nor dogma   
blood holds no point of view
no nationality, no vote
no academic certification
no credit rating, no latex condom.

And the blood dries to a crust,
of ugly smudges down the pages
of every sacred text.

Cain and Abel were brothers
blood-brothers.   
O blood without end --

Ah men.

---

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

/

Warren Buffett backs Paulson plan.... and Paulson

I heard Warren Buffett interviewed on CNBC this morning. Buffett is buying 5 billion dollars worth of Goldman Sachs, his first buy of an  investment house since 1978, according to CNBC.  (It's not the common stock...)

    "The Market could not have taken another week like the one developing last week," he said, adding that the Paulson plan is absolutely necessary to avoid "going over the precipice..." 

    "If they do it right,  I think they'll make a lot of money," he said. He insisted that they shouldn't be buying this paper at what the institution paid, nor at the carrying value  -- but at bargain basement prices.  He said nobody can "leverage up" right now. If they could and would, there's 15 to 20 % profit to be made.  "I like a market related price," he said. He suggested the government might want to sell off some of it into the market to see what the real price is before buying more....  He said they have the staying power to hold these things until things improve. Holding 700 billion is beyond private entities.

    "You couldn't have any better guy," doing this than Paulson, Warren Buffett said. 

     If you weren't watching the market last week, it went down 300 points one day 340 the next and 405, next  topped by the sequential collapse of  Lehman Brothers, AIG etc etc.  AIG was a crucial fall since it underwrites the debt of every major corporation around the world. 

    "AIG would be doing fine right now if they never heard of derivatives," Buffett said.

REMEMBER WMDs? This gambit seems strangely familiar....

My letter to  the White House,  one letter of millions that no one will ever read:

Sent to: comments@whitehouse.gov, vice_president@whitehouse.gov, president@whitehouse.gov

Dear Executives:

Well,well, when you said IRAQ had weapons of mass destruction, I thought oh surely you must know and now we have spent 500 billion making war on the wrong country. Fooled me once. That's enough. Now you say, OH WE HAVE TO SIMPLY HAVE TO SPEND a trillion dollars, immediately,  without oversight, bypassing all the established protocols on spending and contracting.  Big surprise.  Could the end of the financial system you are declaring be a lot like those weapons of mass destruction we never found only the fraud is even more expensive and would enrich your pals for years and leave main street drained dry...  You have cried wolf fraudulently once too often and I for one will urge my representatives and senators to vote down paying your pals trillions.

MM Walker

-- 

That is the letter. However.  Big trouble may arrive even if  they buy up a trillion dollars worth of bad paper. Across the globe everything economic is grinding to a stall or might in the next week or month.  Untenable derivatives/credit swaps, and deals so complex and flagarently under "collateralized" if you will,  are so utterly unregulated and opaque, that the treads of causality can not be untangled.   A simple solution will not be found for this one.  Maybe Uncle Hal was right.  (YIKES)