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Where’d you sots go? You were here 20 minutes ago!
FRIIIIIIIIIIST!!!!!!1!
I haven’t had time to work up a post around this, but Digby over at Hullabaloo posted a t’rif post on how the wingnuts and other conservatives in the USA have been “Mainstreaming Crazy” for a depressingly long time now in order to shift debate to the right. Mightn’t be entirely new material to many of us, and it’s very centred on the upcoming US presidential election, but it’s very well put together.
Second.(I think.)
As promised : Popefest hospital story. My absence on LP over the past fortnight has been because of a sojourn in Armidale Hospital. You will all no doubt be glad to hear I am, as a result, in sonewhat better health than I have been for some time as the excellent medical care provided repaired me as much as I am repairable after a long and joyous life of 53 years of partying which commenced when I was about 10.
Some of you may be aware that a medical faculty opened at UNE this year, as a consequence of which Armidale hospital is now a teaching hospital. What this means is that 3rd year students previously at Newcastle I think inspect you with various specialists and first year students come in and test out their ability to extract your medical history. Hopefully I inspired a few to consider delving more deeply into the mysteries of cerebral palsy. Other first year groups come round to learn the mysteries of the human body, in this instance four seventeen or eighteen year olds intent on learning the position of the intestines, liver and spleen.This involves them tapping one’s stomach and seeing if they can feel the shape of said organs beneath the skin, an utterly harmless procedure, since they do it supervised by their lecturer (who incidentally prescribed me a pill that got my guts working properly for the first time in years.)All well and good - in fact, given the age of these sweet young girls a somewhat pleasant experience for an old man like me. So, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised later that afternoon when one of these pretty teenagers dropped back to visit. I didn’t consider this overly unusual as in previous stays I had been visited several times by 3rd years from Newcastle for whom I’d been something of a human guinea pig.I was somewhat touched by her professional dedication and didn’t mind if she watched me eating dinner. However, there was a catch. This young girl had apparently been down to the Popefest and was seriously infected by Christianity. Within minutes of arriving she was asking me what I thought of Jesus and the Bible. I didn’t have the heart to tell her straight out that I thought she was subjecting a sick old man who was emotionally and physically vulnerable to spiritual abuse, nor did I want to be so cruel as to tell her that if she believed Jesus could walk on water, stop storms like Gandalf or rise from the dead that she was suffering from a form of mass delusional insanity. I’m not really into wrecking the illusions of the young. Time will do that for them. I did tell her though, that within ten minutes I could probably give her two opposing philosophical arguments that would prove the existence of God and disprove the existence of God, but I couldn’t be bothered because it was best she went out and looked them up for herself, and told her to look up the reading list in the relevant uni philosophy course. We then got on to discussing bionic medicine, terraforming Mars and George Pell’s theory thjat climate change is in fact the working out of Catholic eschatological theology.I figured that would give her enough of a sleepless night, since she was so obsessed with religion and probably feared the end of the world.
Well, blow me down if she doesn’t come back the next afternoon and start on what do I think of Jesus and the Bible again. At which point I said, Enough! and told her she was behaving unethically and highly inappropriately, especially since I has specified ro the hospital that I did not want to be bothered by God-botherers. She nearly shat herself, and did not return.
One up for the socialist athiests. (And I was wearing a Socialist Alliance T-shirt at the time, though it read Medicine, not War. Pity it didn’t say F**k the Pope!)
No Paul. You may be physically vulnerable but emotionally you have been a rock to so many of us in so many ways. You have been a firm compass of wisdom and kindness. Go forward into your troubles knowing that there are so many people there with you in return for your goodness who you can draw on to give you strength in your worst of times.
Have courage in your battles and know that we are with you in them.
Greg,
Things are great now. I’m better than I’ve been in years. Thanks for your kind words.
Christian Kerr, Stephen Mayne and Christopher Pyne go into a bar…HAR! HAR! HAR!
( Well - you had to be there )
Top scientists agree revolutionary climate control project will reduce hurricanes, droughts and wildfires.
Climatologists, biologists and physicists from all corners of the globe agree that U.S. based Gravitational Systems,
L.L.C.’s revolutionary clean power climate control project INDRA will improve the lives of billions of people around the world.
Concerns have been raised about the projects impact on biodiversity as deserts are terraformed to rainforests.
Gare Henderson, director of research and development for Gravitational Systems, L.L.C. ( a clean power developer), explains that the INDRA project, a proposed network of specialized evaporation channels moving sea water from the oceans toward the deserts, will convert world deserts into biodiverse rainforests. Deserts which cover 1/3 of all dry land will be terraformed into productive land.
The INDRA systems will give mankind control of the weather, ending dangerous storms such as hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, and dry heat waves within a decade.
Vast rivers can be turned on and off in hours, and reservoirs and salt marshes drained or replenished in days.
The increased bio-mass of the terraformed deserts will begin to reverse both global warming and thermal sea level rise. UNFCCC cap and trade certification of the INDRA project will allow individuals and business to fund the plan through carbon offsets. The initial projects will be targeted north American, and north African deserts.
For more information contact:
Gare Henderson
gare.henderson@gravitationalsystems.org
Gravitational Systems, L.L.C.
P.o.Box 2066
Washington, D.C. 20013
website: http://www.gravitationalsystems.org/INDRA
Shit, the sun has risen! I’ve been up all night drooling over Amazon Books, making a list of books I intend to order on Visa once I’ve got my head together later on today. Which, of course, gives me an excuse to regale you all with a paen [sp?] on the books I was lucky enough to read while in hospital. Reading and taking notes from John Ferling’s A leap in the Dark, a wonderfully written political history of the American Revolution;Doing the same with John Drinkwater’s History of the Siege of Gibraltar, 1779-1783 -3 of the First Fleeters were caught up in the Siege, and Drinkwater’s account is the main primary source;+ reading a wonderful book on the American Revolution and the British West Indies; and another, First Founders, on how the Virginia Gentry were impelled to become revolutionaries (they didn’t want to pay their debts to the Poms, were terrified of a slave revolt, and were pissed off the English wouldn’t let them steal Indian land. Nice blokes, Washington, Madison and Jefferson! Forget al the idealistic bullshit about republicanism and democracy.); plus I’ve just received a couple of books from London to review.
As for Amazon: I’m planning to order, so far, a book on the navigation Acts and the American Revolution -a collection of ptimary source documents; an account of the Battle of Bunker Hill;a British sergeant’s account of the war, one John Peebles; an account of the Brits view of the rebels; another on smuggling to and from the West Indies;and maybe one or two primary source accounts by the Brits in revolutionary Boston.I’m flush with cassh this foretrnight, even afterr paying bills, because I’ve still got a fortnight’s worth of food from the previous pension day before I went into hospital. Have only had to buy some bread and a bit of fruit.Suppose it will depend on how much the postage is going to cost.
Paul Burns.
Glad to read that your visit to hospital chieved a positive medical outcome.
Re intrusive proselytising. That’s a damned imposition and a breach of good manners. Hospital authorities should stamp on such behaviour.
Katz,
More to the point, the university medical faculty should make it clear to 1st years they are there to learn to heal the body and the mind. If they’re obsessed with the soul they should study theology or go off and be a nun or a priest or a minister of religion.Anyway, I doubt the poor kid will do it again. I left her in no doubt she had behaved very very badly. I suspect I was the first non-believer she’d ever met. Over the past fifteen odd years I’ve noticed more and more kids infected by this plague of religion. I fear that among other things there’s a danger of it shrinking critical thinking faculties when one is so young. Unfortunately over the years I’ve seen too many good minds destroyed by God, indeed, seen good minds fail to develop at all. And yet, paradoxically some of my really good friends are Christian (Catholic, actually, which is a whole different disease)and we adjust quite comfortably to our differing world views. They even manage to get through the occasional Socialist piss-up and survive the spluttering guffaws of disbelief thar run round the room when the topic of religion comes up.
I would like to commiserate this morning about the total death of Easts’ season. While we will still make the finals, we are just making up the numbers.
TV on the Radio’s new track (streaming here: http://www.tvontheradio.com/) is pretty good.
Feel free to dismiss this as conflating two completely different issues, but I was interested in the idea of doctors treating body and mind, but not soul. I’ve just finished my first read through of On Rage, and so I thought of that when I read your comment.
I realise that the term ‘mind’, can cover pretty much every aspect of how we perceive, conceptualise and react to the world both intellectually and emotionally. Despite that, I can’t help wondering if approaching some of the issues discussed in On Rage with a scientific perspective where body and mind are all that are addressed is really adequate.
When treating people who have suffered the destruction of culture will a doctor or psychiatrist, and the government policy which may result from their treatments and experience, be able to deal with a client adequately if they begin treating just the body or mind. Is mind an adequate term to describe the site of damage to the self resulting from the history of cultural destruction and humiliation that lead to the rage discussed by Greer, which could be described as damage to the soul or spirit.
So, basically, making clear to them that they should only deal with the body and mind might make them less conscious of important aspects of the clients background, and less willing to address these issues, as it would be seen as lying outside their field of responsibilty. This neglect would then feed in to policy and discussion of the issue, leading to a series of inadequate responses because the repsonses only address some aspects of the problem.
Having said that, I can’t imagine anything worse than a highly religious doctor, so they should be given a few guidelines on when to shut the hell up.
Teaching nubile God-botherers to fiddle with your organs, wooo!
Even at my advanced age I’d be uncomfortable with that. Some ugly uninvited organ might try and crash the party.
zorronsky, twas fun, though. And after 63 years I finally worked out exactly where all those things fit in in that tiny space in your torso. (And, that predneslipone, which is a terrible cortisone they give you when you have CODP, creates hard fat they even doctors can’t shift around.
Yeah, B. Lyle, I thought about that subtle distinction between mind and soul/spirit even as I was paying out on this poor little wet-behind-the-ears bugger, and even more so as I was writing the comment. I think there’s a difference between soul and spirit. A soul is that very large thing inside you that doesn’t show up on X-rays, etc. shaped like a big white jellybean that gets black marks on it every time you don’t do what Jesus, the Bible, the Pope or the Queen tell you, and that Jesus collects and keeps in a very very big glass jar. Spirit is the very essence of one’s interior being, and, as you suggest can only be ignored by doctors at the patient’s peril.
Hope that clarifies things.
I was killed today, and kicked out of a pub, in that order. It was most annoying.
Sounds reasonable, Paul.
Have just spent the last half hour or so trying to log on to ABC TV iview to watch last week’s episode of Cr. Who. Unsuccessfully. Did all the right things, registered, got a name, password etc, but just couldn’t type the info in to login. Doesn’t matter. Its not that I’m desperate to use the service, and its not likely I’ll really want to for quite a while.
Just sayin.’
Paul Burns the bandwith test on the Aunty iView site is great and confirmed that our broadband service is just slightly better than dial up.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/iview/
We are changing to ADSL2 with a new provider for what seems very little extra cost. Fingers crossed because we would also like to tune in at some time.
WA Liberal Party TV ad, for the State Election - note the ALP have been running theirs for 2 weeks
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsz3ugRsss&eurl=http://www.wa.liberal.org.au/
‘LYMPICS are OVER but will Auusies grow up?
Aussie AOC blokes said we should aim for fifth on the “medal tally”. We didn’t get there. Conclusion? More $ for elite athletes!!!
AOC and Sports Minister said “we should at least beat the Brits”. Failure there too. So now wheel out: i) excuses ii) brickbats for the un-Australian competitors who got silver or bronze instead of gold iii) more calls for funding iv) myths about how well we’ll do in London.
FFS - it’s kindergarten level: sulking, taunting, boasting.
At least LP rises to “undergraduate level” comments.
Have managed to miss the entire Olympics. Being in hospital had its benefits. Did catch one piece of specious analysis on the Today Program this morning. According to Karl Stepanovic or some other mathematical whiz if you total up the number of medals won per head of population, we won more medals than the Brits. But, then, if you really care about this kind of ephemera, you’re a pretty sick puppy.
What irks me about this waste of money on sport, much of which has dubious social value because of the bad example some sportspeople give to our children, is there are real problems of underfunding out there in areas dealing with poverty, health, homelessness, education etc, and these characters are crying out for us to spend scarce resources on muscle-bound oafs.
Paul, I don’t think you missed much by not watching last week’s Dr Who. I can’t even remember what it was about. Last night’s, otoh, was pretty good.
Last night was excellent! V. scary.
V. scary and haunting, e.g. to listen to a dying woman after she had died…. ummm if I understood correctly
Dr Who spoilers please to be carrying warnings!!!
Paul Burns, you’re not alone in attracting the unwelcome and unprofessional attention of a person in a caring profession (or in training for same) who has treated the professional/client relationship as a Trojan Horse to do some proselytising to a captive audience. Some years ago I sought professional counselling for a particular problem which was becoming difficult to manage, and was counselled that I was at a stage of life at which I should be giving more thought to “metaphysical and theological issues”. I ignored this part of the advice, and as far as I can tell am none the worse as a consequence.
Paul B - I’m impressed with how you handled that BTW. You’ve always struck me as a sensitive soul, and I can only echo what Greg and others have said.
Go Paul Burns @ 21!!
“sensitive soul”
Ummm, would you believe mind?
There’s nothing wrong with anyone at any stage of life confronting metaphysical and spiritual issues, Pauls Norton and Burns.
Confront them with ice, and a mixer according to taste, would be my recommendation.
I also refer you to Proverbs 31:6.
FDB sorry!!
but it was a tiny part of the whole, which will still impress you, I think.
Paul Burns: I echo GregM in saying your contributions here are valued, and so are you. Get well, be strong.
This has to be a good idea.
Kev reckons those school truants and family should all be made hungry so they will wake up to their senses.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24236168-29277,00.html
Tones reckons the measures do not go far enough and soft. A sermon on the work ethic will help, as well.
I like this:
Some background. There was much discussion recently about the seriousness of the current condition of US public and private finances. Some folks opined that we are currently witnessing just another dip in the business cycle. I begged to differ.
Since that discussion, the US government has been authorised to bail out Fannie and Freddie on the taxpayer’s dime. This liability was pegged at about $800bn. Unfortunately, Fannie’s and Freddie’s liabilities are considerably north of that figure.
A sizable chunk of that liability is owed to Chinese banks.
The above quote threatens that these Chinese creditors will cease to buy US Treasury debt (of which F and F bailout money is now a part) unless the US government pays up on ALL F and F liabilities.
Or else “it is the end of the current international financial system”.
An idle threat? Maybe.
An unprecedented threat since the US threatened Britain with the same in late 1916? Certainly.
Whatever else, this is no ordinary market fluctuation.
Mark -
Talking about you not to you. Might be good form to let you know - http://catallaxyfiles.com/?p=3684&cp=6#comment-105100
Thanks for the heads up, Adrien. I hadn’t realised you were around UQU. I’m not sure in what capacity - you might have noticed my “partner in crime” - Dirk Moses - and I had a bit of a political falling out. We were never that close personally.
May I also say that I’m not surprised that I was guilty of undergraduate humour or whatever when I was… um… an undergraduate?
It was a very long time ago though. Two decades.
No, Lolkatz, you begged to quibble, hedge and otherwise avoid defending a number of particularly stupid assertions.
What’s been proposed, amongst other measures, is a recapitalisation of the two GSEs by the government. As both currently have assets well “North” of their liabilities, the actual impost on the taxpayer will be well “South” of the figure you mention.
And US, and British, and German, and Swiss, and so fucking what? The US government has already stated that these two quasi-socialist dinosaurs are too big to fail, for systemic risk reasons. Whether Chinese banks own some of their paper is frankly trivial relative to the systemic issues.
It says nothing of the sort. You’re engaging in ill-informed hysteria again.
These assets are mortgages over houses. The cashflow from them is insufficient to repay lenders.
These entities haven’t openly threatened the US government, yet.
Shorter Little Grasshopper: The problem of quasi-socialist dinosaurs is to be cured by making them completely socialist. No systemic problem to see here folks. Move on.
I’ll leave it to others to judge the comparative hysteria of LG’s contribution.
O rly? Show, don’t tell. I can help you find the accounts if it’ll make it easier for you.
The issue is not cashflow; it’s capital. I could explain this to you now, but it’ll be more fun for me to watch you stumble a bit further. Enjoy.
Neither have Chinese banks, nor the Chinese government. You’ll note that Yu Yongding does not speak for China, and he didn’t threaten anyone either.
That’s typically the way it works, Lolkatz: if the government makes a mess, it’s usually the one required to clean it up. As for systemic “problems”, I’ve already noted systemic risk issues.
Shorter Lolkatz: *splutter* no, YOU are!
Spotto monocausal explanation.
The truth is that both are “issues”. Bondholders can be paid off either out of cashflow or liquidation of assets, or both. Liquidation of F and F’s assets would require someone willing to buy these mortgages. For the foreseeable future this is unlikely to happen, except at a deep discount. The cashflow problems of F and F arise from borrowers in millions defaulting on repayments.
Spotto ignorance. Until legislation was passed to fund a bail out F and F were privately-owned corporations. The US government owned no stock and all dividendes were paid to private shareholders.
What “mess” did the US government make, at least before it passed legislation to bail out these businesses?
Did I say that Yu Yongding spoke for the Chinese government?
Let’s hope Birdy doesn’t hear there’s a banking stoush on!
Here we go again. You said, at #37, “The cashflow from them [mortgages] is insufficient to repay lenders.” Now you say that, “The cashflow problems of F and F arise from borrowers in millions defaulting on repayments.” On neither occasion have you substantiated these assertions, despite my challenge to you to show me the data.
As for liquidation, net worth, i.e. capital, is the issue, as I noted at #38.
“Ignorance”? LOL, Lolkatz, LOL. FFS, do your homework. The US government created these businesses and gave them - through specific regulation and perceived government support - preferential treatment in the market. The fact that they were subsequently privatised does not alter these market distortions. THAT is the mess the government created.
I didn’t say that you did, Lolkatz. Of course, if Yu Yongding is just voicing his own opinion, and doesn’t speak for the Chinese banks or government, then your original comment at #33 about “threats” was simply ill-informed hysteria, as I noted.
Yours truly has managed to ingage in a bit of serious computer incomptence. I have accidentally used my new firewall to lock out Firefox search engine. Any hints on how I can undo this piece of idiocy?
Windows firewall?
Don’t block ports 80 or 8080, Paul.
“Don’t block ports 80 or 8080, Paul.”
SPLITTER!!!
Zone firewall.
FDB, watch out son. They’ll start training smartarses in Dubai and you’ll be out of a job.
Paul, from a quick googling about, try this out:
ZoneAlarm->Firewall tab->Program Access
And make sure Firefox is on the list of allowed applications.
“Dubai”, “MUA”, now there’s a coupla names to conjure with, when carefully considering the question: “Has Australia changed at all, under Mr Rudd?”
Yeah, along with Kyoto, Sorry, Pacific Solution, TPV, mandatory detention and Workchoices.
Oh, sorry, they’re only “symbolic” cos Abbott doesn’t like them and is pretending they haven’t happened.
Perspective, folks!
Firefox back on, thanks all.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid=%7BF534B933%2DD64B%2D4CB8%2D8875%2D459D61690C2E%7D&siteid=rss
Yu Yongding doeesn’t speak
Spotto fallacy of causation. F and F were privatised as far back as the late 1960s. Since then they have been profitable until 2008. The poor decisions that have undermined profitability were made by the current officers of F and F, not by the government. These poor decisions caused the problems, not any implied guarantee. There was no legal requirement for the US government to bail F and F out, until the recent legislation. That is why the legislation needed to be enacted.
Your link doesn’t refer to cashflow from mortgages, or the repayment of lenders, Lolkatz. Care to try again? I’ll even give you a hint, as accounting’s clearly not a competency of yours: credit losses are a non-cash expense.
Irrelevant detail that does not change the fact that their preferential position in the US financial system constituted a gross distortion, created and maintained by the US government. Moreover, you have it, typically, arse-about: FNM and FRE are not proposed to be rescued simply because they got into trouble. They are to be rescued because their size and role in the mortgage market make them “too big to fail”. Their size and role in the mortgage market are a direct result of the US Government placing them in that position.
I am curious, though, about what you think were the “poor decisions” by FNM and FRE that caused the problems. Please, do tell.
Li Kao, how about buying a shitload of subprime mortgages and CDOs?
BBB
I was friends with Dirk’s brother before uni. Dirk once went to the beach and applied zinc cream to his face. He did this in a meticulous grid pattern. When he came back his face featured lots of little red squares.
.
I saw him give a seminar on the Holocaust or something in Melb years back. Couldn’t take it seriously kept seeing the red squares.
.
I wasn’t at UQU. No I won’t tell you were my information comes from. (Sound of diabolical laughter as shadows are cast upon the wall).
Neither FRE nor FNM were big investors in CDOs.
As for subprime, are you fucking kidding me? it’s hard to avoid the subprime segment when you have half of the entire mortgage market either on, or guaranteed, by your balance sheets. It’s also hard to avoid “subprime” segments (i.e. poor credit risks, like poor people) when you’re chartered by the government explicitly to support “affordable” housing precisely to this segment of the population. It’s just another of the great ways in which the US government has helped to create the sub-prime mess in the first place.
You could argue with the benefit of hindsight that they coulda and shoulda dodged the subprime and Alt-A segments, but buying these mortgages WAS and IS their job. Their exposure to subprime simply reflects their (very large) share of the underlying mortgage market. Unfortunately, their problems aren’t confined to sub-prime - the looming problem is deterioration in “prime” mortgage credit in the face of the housing downturn, which is a market-wide issue. Because the prime segment is so much larger, the downturn there is what’s likely to cause the really big losses.
“…it’s hard to avoid the subprime segment when you have half of the entire mortgage market either on, or guaranteed, by your balance sheets.”
Look you obviously know much more than I do about all this stuff, but aren’t you getting things backward now? As far as I know, there is no legislated or otherwise mandated minimum share that they must maintain that would oblige them to buy subprime mortgages or CDOs (however few). Their share reflects their foolishness in investing in these areas. Perhaps I am missing something that would compel them to go for these instruments (other than, of course, a desire to enrich themselves and their shareholders).
“You could argue with the benefit of hindsight that they coulda and shoulda dodged the subprime and Alt-A segments, but buying these mortgages WAS and IS their job.”
I thought that traditionally the mandate was to provide finance to conforming borrowers (ie. good credit risks). Where is the evidence that their raison d’etre is/was to fund poor credit risks (recent investment decisions most certainly don’t count)? Seriously, I’d like to see the evidence. My understanding is that this all changed fairly recently when the OFHEO gave, presumably at the GSEs’ request, the go ahead for subprime investments (cue shot of Scrooge McDuck with dollar signs in his eyes).
BBB
I think youse shoueld all get ovah it! Missys sexuality is hwer own businzess!
That’s the problem. Subprime loans WERE conforming. Because we now have a “SUBPRIME CRISIS” there appears to be a generalised attitude amongst hoi polloi that there’s is something nefariously new about subprime. There isn’t. Subprime simply means of below “prime”, “normal” or “standard” credit rating, and has been around forever. Don’t have enough money to get a decent deposit together? “Subprime”. Defaulted on a couple of credit cards 10 years ago? “Subprime”. Don’t have much income to cover debt service costs? “Subprime”.
And, yes, both FRE and FNM are required, under their charters (Fannie Mae’s is here, Freddie Mac’s is here), by the US government, to support disadvantaged [read: poor credit] segments of the economy. And, as I noted earlier, if you have a large chunk of the mortgage market and a large chunk (around 25% - definitions vary - of originations in the past couple of years) of that market is “subprime”, then you’re going to cop your share of nasties. Now, when the housing market is travelling OK, there are no major problems, and losses across diversified portfolios are low. However, when the US experiences the worst housing market since the Great Depression, well…not so much.
10 points for Gryffindor.
Li Kao, could you explain something for me ?
The NAB recently wrote down the value of it’s CDO style investments in the US to zero - I think this lead to the one loss in reports of about $890 million.
This appears to be an inconvenient truth being put into the market place but how has the US banking sector avoided noticing this prominent price signal ?
I agree that the problem could have been avoided .There were many crusty old style banking analysts making this point over many years( Bank of Santander for example).
The same people who were NOT acting as rainmakers for their banks in the newer style loan syndication markets and anyway ” who listens to old people anymore” is the usual bull market attitude.
The role of the two mortgage guarantee companies was made perilous by the larger number of subprime loans given out as the low interest rate environment prevailed and the risk assessment model incorrectly priced the risk inherent in these loans.
Okay, can we at least agree that we have on our hands a subprime crisitunity?
I was ignorant of the complexities of the GSEs especially as they related to the US Government.
This document outlines just how politicised were the commercial transactions of the GSEs under the regulatory framework administered by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
This document appears to have been authored in 2005. HUD is articulating onerous social goals for the GSEs in the jaws of the current housing crisis.
An example:
http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/gse/gse.cfm
Blogging can be a learning experience.
NAB’s exposure was predominantly to subordinated layers (i.e. “senior”, as opposed to “super senior” tranche at the top) of 10 CDO structures. In one of these CDO structures, the “super senior” tranche above NAB’s position was liquidated, thereby taking priority possession of security and crystallising losses on a mark-to-market. There was assessed to be insufficient value left for remaining subordinated tranches to make a recovery, forcing a total write-down of NAB’s subordinated tranche in that structure. On the basis of that experience, and NAB’s expectation that further liquidations were likely in its other exposures, NAB wrote down - pretty conservatively, IMO - its overall CDO exposures by 90%, to 10c in the dollar.
It didn’t go unnoticed in the US banking sector (e.g. it got a write-up in the FT), but it’s not necessarily representative of broader CDO experience. Clearly, NAB chose to “kitchen sink” its write-down to kill the issue, but that is not an option for US banks given their much greater proportional exposure to these instruments. Not only would it be suicidal, it would also be unrealistically conservative to write down these assets across the board by the same magnitude as NAB given that default rates on the assets underlying these structures are well under 90%.
That’s easy to say in hindsight, as default rates currently being experienced are well above ex ante expectations. As often happens, the models were wrong.
Leave Missy alone! I thinkyouse are all fecked!
Why have Missy’s PA and the girly in Grade 12 (Year 12??) chosen the same cute picture to accompany their deathless prose? Coincidence??
I think we should be told.
-The Wizard of OT-