The Middle Class Is on the Edge of an Abyss

Keep the mortgage foreclosures data and the climbing unemployment rate in mind when people tell you about their doubts of a recession, and the bottom of the housing market, and an improving economy. It will be getting much worse.

And from what we can see the middle class still has not figured out that they are in serious trouble. A harder economic blow has not been dealt to the general public since the time of Herbert Hoover, exceeding even the stagflation of the 1970's. We have only just begun to see the effects.

The average Joe will sit back and smugly talk about preserving his 'wealth' from the socialists, and of the unfortunate but probably deserved troubles of those who have been hit by hard times. That is, until their own turn to hit the wall comes.

Then they will sit back in shock. And the politicians and pundits that they faithfully believed in will tell them to stop whining, and check into the nearest refugee camp. And then they will know they have been played for fools, and have been had.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.. for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Joseph Goebbels

U.S. Mortgage Foreclosures, Delinquencies Reach Highs
By Kathleen M. Howley
September 5, 2008 10:59 EDT
Bloomberg News

Sept. 5 -- Foreclosures accelerated to the fastest pace in almost three decades during the second quarter as interest rates increased and home values fell, prompting more Americans to walk away from homes they couldn't refinance or sell.

New foreclosures increased to 1.19 percent, rising above 1 percent for the first time in the survey's 29 years, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report today. The total inventory of homes in foreclosure reached 2.75 percent, almost tripling since the five-year housing boom ended in 2005. The share of loans with one or more payments overdue rose to a seasonally adjusted 6.41 percent of all mortgages, an all-time high, from 6.35 percent in the first quarter.

Tumbling home prices are making it difficult for even the most creditworthy owners with adjustable-rate mortgages to sell or get a new loan as their financing costs rise, said Jay Brinkmann, MBA's chief economist. Prime ARMs accounted for 23 percent of new foreclosures and subprime ARMs were 36 percent, he said....

Lehman Considers "Good-bank Bad-bank' Spinoff

Which one is the good bank? This sounds like Dr. Frankenstein and Mr. Hyde.

This is a classic 'off-balance sheet' play, as in 'we have to get this toxic debt off our balance sheet fast because no one will touch us otherwise, and even the Fed won't take it.'

Calling all Sovereign Wealth Funds...

Reuters
Lehman weighs real estate spinoff

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is considering a plan to put some $32 billion of its commercial real estate and mortgage assets in a new company and spin it off, Bloomberg reported on its website on Thursday.

Under the plan, similar to a good-bank-bad-bank model, Lehman will put in about $8 billion of equity in the new company, the news agency said, citing unnamed sources.

The remaining $24 billion will be lent to the new company by Lehman or outside investors, it said. Shares of the company would be owned by Lehman's current shareholders, it said.

The plan is one of several being considered, it said. Under another plan, Lehman would set up a company funded and run by outside investors to buy some of these assets, it said.

Lehman declined to comment.

Lehman, the smallest of the major U.S. investment banks, has not detailed its plans, but according to sources, the bank is looking at various options, including seeking buyers for commercial mortgages and property on its balance sheet.

At the same time, it is weighing the sale of part or all of its asset management business, including Neuberger Berman, sources have said previously. It is also in talks with state-controlled Korea Development Bank over a possible investment in the overall business.

Earlier on Thursday, Fox-Pitt Kelton analyst David Trone wrote in a research note that Lehman Brothers should consider spinning off its commercial mortgage securities and loans portfolio to shareholders instead of selling it.

A simple spinoff of the commercial mortgage securities and loans portfolio would ensure that shareholders have the option of owning two entities or keeping only the core Lehman stock, Trone said. (What is the choice for none of the above? - Jesse)

The Death of Capitalism. Not Yet but Close. Financial Tsunami Incoming

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow?

Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we will live through all time, or die by suicide."

Abraham Lincoln January 27, 1838

Bill Gross seems to be a smart and decent man. He is a savvy bond trader but like most traders he often 'talks his book' when speaking publicly.

And he is afraid. He is afraid of what he sees behind the scenes in the markets, as one of the largest holders of US debt, public and private. His words are a reflection of how bad it must be behind the facade of calm appearance. Bill Gross is a sincere voice of a probable victim coming out of a business sector most recently devoted to manipulation and deception.

Capitalism is sick, perhaps on its death bed. It has not been conquered from abroad by a competing ideology, jealous of its great success. It is slowly being strangled by the crony capitalists and a rogue financial sector out of control.

Crony capitalists do not want any part of free markets. They loathe them, run from them, seek to undermine them at every turn. Their intent is always and everywhere to create monopolies, sinecures for themselves, to wield inordinate power to keep what they win and give the public what they lose. They manipulate through words, and bribery, and deception.

Yes, Fannie and Freddie debt must be supported, with a haircut perhaps, because of the 'implicit guarantee' which was extended for years by the Congress. We cannot afford to default on anything that so closely resembles sovereign debt.

But 'buying assets' with public monies without reforming the system feeds the problem and makes the eventual solution more severe.

The Resolution Trust is a fee and commission generating machine for the same group that caused the problems. Receivership, investigation, orderly liquidation, position limits and transparency in commodity markets, a restoration of the laws created after the Crash and Great Depression to restrain reckless and fraudulent banking are essential to a genuine solution to these serial bubbles and financial Ponzi schemes.

It is what we do when no one is looking, or when you are under duress, or frightened, that takes the measure of our character.

We will stand free or we will fall. But if we fall it will be by our own hand and a lack of resolve, a reluctance to put aside our fears and prejudices and greed that are used to play us for fools and face the facts, and listen to the truth. When the banks make us an offer they think that we cannot refuse, we will be at the crossroads and will decide what we wish to be: slaves or free men. Yes, it really is that simple.

"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

Thomas Jefferson

U.S. Must Buy Assets to Prevent `Financial Tsunami,' Gross Says
By Jody Shenn
September 4, 2008 08:43 EDT

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government needs to start buying assets to stem a bourgeoning ``financial tsunami,'' according to Bill Gross, manager of the world's biggest bond fund.

A process of ``delevering,'' where banks are shrinking and cutting off lending, is sapping demand for loans, bonds, stocks and commodities, driving down prices of assets of even ``impeccable quality,'' Gross said. The decline may continue until the government steps in as a buyer, he said.

``Unchecked, it can turn a campfire into a forest fire, a mild asset bear market into a destructive financial tsunami,'' Gross of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co. said in commentary posted on the firm's Web site today. ``If we are to prevent a continuing asset and debt liquidation of near historic proportions, we will require policies that open up the balance sheet of the U.S. Treasury.''

The government should be used to support not only mortgage finance providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also ``Mom and Pop on Main Street U.S.A.,'' through subsidized home loans issued by the Federal Housing Administration and other government institutions, Gross said. A new version of the Resolution Trust Corp., which bought assets from failing institutions during the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, may also work, he said.

Pimco, sovereign wealth funds and central banks are reluctant to participate in new capital raising by financial companies after losing money on more than $400 billion of investments, Gross said. (and that's the money quote - Jesse)

Speculation Nation

The banks must be restrained and refocused or all the efforts to support the system with public funds are just adding to the debt, the imbalance in wealth, the malinvestment, and misappropriation of capital that has undermined the real economy.

A large part of the problem is that all the obvious things that Joe Stiglitz points out in this essay were denied and dismissed repeatedly at every turn by Alan Greenspan and the Fed, Wall Street and their economists-for-hire, and the financial media.

And the pity is that we have not yet made any progress in actually fixing the problem and restoring balance to the system. The deception and fraud continues impeded only by the dire condition of the victims. Without reform, the financial sector will merely go in search of others.

The New Republic
Falling Down
by Joseph Stiglitz
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

No manufacturing. No new ideas. What's our economy based on?

...The task of unraveling all that went wrong in our financial system is a difficult one, but in essence the financial system's latest innovation was to devise fee structures that were often far from transparent and that allowed it to generate enormous profits--private rewards that were not commensurate with social benefits...

One should have suspected that something was wrong with the economic system when millions of Americans owed billions to credit card companies and banks in "late fees," "penalties," and a variety of other charges, transforming a high annual interest rate of 20 percent into a truly usurious effective interest rate of 100 percent or more for those who fell behind in their payments...

Perhaps the worst problems--like those in the subprime mortgage market--occurred when non-transparent fee structures interacted with incentives for excessive risk-taking in which financial managers got to keep high returns made one year, even if those returns were more than offset by losses the next. Behind the subprime crisis were mortgages designed to encourage repeated refinancing of homes--a pyramid scheme that generated billions of dollars in fees for the mortgage company as long as home prices continued to soar...

To put it another way, had those in the financial sector allocated capital and risk in a way that fueled the economy, they would have had handsome profits. But they wanted more, and so established incentive structures that encouraged gambling. If they gambled and won, they could walk away with a share of the profits. If they gambled and lost, the investors would bear the consequences. It was almost as if the entire financial system was converted into a giant casino in which the system was rigged to guarantee those running the games huge returns, at the expense of the players.

But in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, the games are near zero-sum: The gains of the casino owners approximately equal the losses of the players. The financial-system-as-casino, on the other hand, is a negative-sum game. Those on Wall Street may have walked off with billions, but those billions are dwarfed by the costs to be paid by the rest of us...

The current woes in America's financial system are not an isolated accident--a rare, once-in-a-century event. Indeed, there have been more than one hundred financial crises worldwide in the last 30 years or so. Here in the United States alone, we have had the S&L crisis in 1989, the dot-com/WorldCom/Enron problems of the early years of this decade, and now the subprime-morphing-into-the-beyond-subprime collapse.... In each of these instances, financial markets failed to do what they were supposed to do in allocating capital and managing risk...

In short, the problem with the U.S. economy is not that we have allocated too many resources to the "soft" areas and too few to the "hard." It is not necessarily that we have allocated too many resources to the financial sector and rewarded it too generously... Too much energy has been spent trying to make an easy buck; too much effort has been devoted to increasing profits and not enough to increasing real wealth...

Joseph Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, and co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War.