Archive for January, 2008
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
Barack Obama articulated a key point regarding housing in tonight's Democratic debate. He said that if you freeze interest rates as Hillary wants to in order to "protect" homeowners, you'd actually punish others by raising their interest rates. This is a fact that everyone in the mortgage/econo blogosphere knows.....if ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
But it's not all gloom and doom apparently. Slowing GDP growth points toward recession sure, but the jobs market seems still to be growing better than expected:The labor market may not be in weak shape after all. The latest forecast by payroll firm Automatic Data Processing shows job creation ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
This morning the commerce department released 4th quarter GDP growth figures:Gross domestic product rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.6% annual rate October through December, the Commerce Department said Wednesday in the first estimate of fourth-quarter GDP.If you factor in inflation near above 3% YoY in Q4, then the real economy ...
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Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
Anyone remember Countrywide's 3rd quarter conference call, when Mozilo said the company would be able to return to a profit in the 4th quarter? Didn't happen:
The latest results included $1.62 billion in write-downs on its mortgage-servicing rights -- which was more than offset by $1.99 billion in hedging ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
BankUnited's earnings call late last week was chock full of quotes that are worth noting for the record. I will post again once I've been through their detailed financials. In the meantime, this should entertain:--Mgmt noted that the stock is down (to $5, from a 52 week ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, January 25th, 2008
As part of the "stimulus" package Congress is set to approve, we're about to put taxpayers at far greater risk from the housing collapse. One of the most dangerous parts of the package is raising the threshold for "conforming" loans, which will raise, from $417,000 to perhaps $730,000, the ...
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Thursday, January 24th, 2008
It was another bad quarter for BankUnited in Florida.Non-performing assets jumped: The ratio of non-performing assets as a percentage of total assets increased to 2.99% at Dec. 31, 2007, up from 1.39% at Sept. 30, 2007. The allowance for loan loss was $117.7 million at Dec. 31, ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
That's a question I've been getting from some readers recently. Notwithstanding this afternoon's dramatic rise in stocks, the first 2.5 days of the week made it look as if the world was coming to an end. After Bernanke lowered interest rates, stocks fell dramatically anyway, before climbing back ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, January 21st, 2008
It has occurred to a few commentators that repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act may be partly to blame for the banking and real estate morass we find ourselves in today. Glass-Steagall, you may or may not recall, effectively locked commercial banks and investment banks out of each others' ...
Posted in banking, Fed, Wall Street | 9 Comments »
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
A priceless moment on Capitol Hill the other day. Marcy Kaptur is the Democratic Congresswoman from Ohio's 9th District. She's been in Congress since 1983. The woman is on the House Budget Committee and she doesn't know the difference between the Fed Chairman and the Treasury Secretary. ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
If you've been surfing the economics blogosphere recently, you've likely seen charts of various economic indicators pointing towards a recession. Forthwith, my (growing) collection. Lots more of these out there. If you've got one to add, send it our way:YoY change in unemployment, by month. From the ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, January 18th, 2008
.....to drop, that is. The large bond insurance companies, Ambac and MBIA, may soon see their debt downgraded to junk like their smaller cousin ACA. This will make the insurance the two have written against bond defaults virtually worthless. The fear many have is the havoc this ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
Below is an e-mail I received from a friend who was manufacturing CDOs for a big bank until very recently. The guy knows his stuff and offered the following thoughts. To follow his thinking, you might want to open up the image in another window and toggle between ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
Is the smart money really that smart? Remember how, back in August, B of A's $2.0 billion investment in Countrywide was interpreted as a vote of confidence? Investors voted by bidding up the shares significantly the day of the announcement. Watching CNBC this past week, the Power ...
Posted in bailout, banking, credit crunch | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
Not everyone is losing from the subprime mortgage bomb. Hedge-funder John Paulson is said to have earned $3-$4 billion last year profiting from the implosion of subprime mortgages. That's cash folks. Not the kind of illiquid paper wealth that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett have. And ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, January 11th, 2008
None of the serious major party candidates is talking about the looming entitlement crisis. Controller General David Walker is doing a yeoman's job spreading the word, but his sober, graphical, 20 minute presentations are too dry and long to reach folks who no longer seem able to process thoughts ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 11th, 2008
Never underestimate a clever salesman. Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo clearly knew that without a lifeline from a better capitalized bank, his wasn't long for this world. Why else accept $7.16 per share (in stock, not cash) for his company? I understand BAC's motivation is to buy a ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
I got a lot of interesting mail after I published that op-ed in the Baltimore Sun. Mostly I got hate mail from Ron Paul supporters who were unhappy that I'm "not actively supporting" their guy. For example:Like most of the media "shepherds" you are no doubt intent on ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
Rumors that the largest mortgage lender in the nation is headed for bankruptcy sent its shares down as low as $5.05 today--off 34% from yesterday's close--before it climbed back a bit. The company denied the rumor.Who knows where the rumor came from or whether it's true. You've got ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
America is going bankrupt. A hard truth that politicians in Washington won't face because Americans themselves refuse to face it. We can't come close to affording the Medicare bills we've already written for ourselves yet we have candidates, Democrats and even Republicans, who are insisting on giving health ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, January 4th, 2008
Pasted below, a copy of the op-ed I published in today's Baltimore Sun.
What will we do if big two go bust?
By Rolfe Winkler
January 4, 2008
They don't know it, but taxpayers stand to lose billions as the housing bubble bursts. And in a bipartisan effort to "do something" to save the ...
Posted in government spending, GSE, housing | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
The YouTube video below lays the blame for the subprime crisis at the feet of the Wall Street establishment and said Hank Paulson, for one, should be indicted for leading Goldman Sachs during the heyday of the lending boom.Yes, the Wall Street establishment deserves plenty of blame for feeding capital ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
