thestatedtruth.com | September 5, 2010
So even though we have nearly 8,000 banks, the bulk of the assets sit with a small number of banks and the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF), the fund that backs the assets of the banks is actually in the red for $15 billion: www.mybudget360.com
thestatedtruth.com | September 4, 2010
Without tax incentives, this may all be for not……..John Mauldin explains the simple facts of job growth…..Want to increase productivity and jobs? The best way it seems, is to encourage private business, and especially startups. “So we can’t count on the Intels or Microsofts to create employment: we need the entrepreneurs.” Delta Force There are [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 4, 2010
A must listen to interview with Jim Rickards about our economy and more. We all need to be aware of the direction of things to come. This interview from Jim Rickards will help in understanding these things better. Click on the following link or paste into your browser: http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/9/4_Jim_Rickards.html Biography of James G. Rickards…..James G. Rickards is [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 3, 2010
Very interesting, but also a worst nightmare for tax payers……….Under Pennsylvania law, Ambac Assurance (which insures some of Harrisburg’s debt) can take Harrisburg to court to seek an order to raise property taxes to pay debt. This is the nature of “full faith and credit” of general-obligation bonds. So the tax payers are stuck for the [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 2, 2010
Key message here is….. for liquidity ratios, equity fund portfolio managers are at an all-time record low of 3.4%, down from 3.8% in June. Tack on the fact that there are less shorts to be covered – being that the market peaked in April, and short interest is now 4.3% of the S&P 500 market cap (in August 2008 it [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 2, 2010
Key words here are…..”public debt had served for decades as the ultimate shock absorber — rising in bad times but not declining much in good times.” Now things have to change as the wealthiest nations face years of belt-tightening. International Monetary Fund Warns G7 on Debt Thursday, 2 Sep 2010 By: Sewell Chan The world’s most [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 1, 2010
Front Running the Fed September 1, 2010 “… the public is no longer investing in stocks, but rather in bonds. So far this year through July, bond mutual funds have attracted $224.4bn in net inflows including reinvested dividends. Equity funds have attracted only $17.2bn ytd, with $32.2bn going into International funds while $15.0bn flowed out [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 30, 2010
According to the Investment Company Institute (ICI), bond mutual funds have attracted more money than equity mutual funds for 30 consecutive months through June, the longest stretch in more than 23 years.
thestatedtruth.com | August 30, 2010
Another fraudulent entity, this time it’s a state……The state of New Jersey’s most recent report said that as of June 2009, its pension funds should have assets of $112 billion to meet their future obligations, but have only $66 billion now — This is one of the largest shortfalls of its kind, and is known as an unfunded liability! The state [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 30, 2010
Interesting facts we haven’t heard of before! For the first time since at least 1997, fewer than 29 percent of ratings for stocks covered by brokerages worldwide are buys, according to 159,919 recommendations compiled by Bloomberg. Analysts are turning more pessimistic even as they push up estimates for profit growth among Standard & Poor’s [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 30, 2010
The Daily Reckoning Presents AAA Ratings: A Grim Fairy Tale How the ratings agencies have managed to emerge from the credit crisis unscathed and unregulated is a mystery…and a sham.”Nothing is ever clear or certain in public,” we wrote in The New Empire of Debt. “Every error is someone else’s fault. That is [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 29, 2010
Only three states had declining revenue, Illinois revenue declined 7%, while Michigan’s collections fell 3.8%. So, not sure just how this could happen, but….California, tax revenue declined 0.9%, despite 12% increase in income-tax collections, this according to the Rockefeller Institute. Hmm Best to remember it’s just one quarter and most state budgets are still busted. Question: Inquiring minds want to [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 29, 2010
Some food for thought from George Friedman, CEO of STRATFOR, who believes China “will have a collapse” in the coming decade due to internal striff, an export based economy, and low internal rates of return, It will set America up as the primary beneficiary in a new Golden Era. Mr. Friedman’s views are controversial but well worth listening [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 29, 2010
Last week, the Liscio Report posted an interesting comment on their blog, Where we are?: Here’s an updated guide to “where we are”—how the U.S. economy is faring relative to the average of previous financial crises around the world. Though individual details vary, we’re following the script pretty well. In the graphs of four major [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 29, 2010
Yep, this is a true fact….Lawmakers have changed the tax code more than 15,000 times since the last major overhaul in 1986. Unbelievable! The current income tax forms (other than the 1040 short form) are so complicated that the average educated person still needs a tax preparer to do their taxes. This new report from Paul Volcker proposes a [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 29, 2010
By Todd Harrison of Minyanville Seeking Solutions In An Uncertain World We used to play for silver, now we play for life; ones for sport and one’s for blood at the point of a knife. –Grateful Dead We live in interesting times. During the last two years, a financial virus spawned and infected the economic [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 28, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 28, 2010
This continues to be a hot subject and the problems continue to get worse. Question: Why should communities have to support bloted state and government pension and benefit plans that are guaranteed no matter what the loses are, and totaly out of control while the rest of the country in the private sector has to live with less because of loses to IRA’s and [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 27, 2010
Here is a summary of parts of a Wall Street Journal article by California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger on government pensions and employee benefit compensation. Roughly 80 cents of every government dollar in California goes to employee compensation and benefits. Spending on California’s state employees over the past decade rose at nearly three times the rate our [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 27, 2010
08/27/2010 The WSJ’s Simon Constable interviews Robert Shiller. He says that an economic double dip may be “imminent.” Shiller also believes that when the NBER looks back at the data, Q3 of this year will mark the beginning of the second dip of the recession. Ironically, since up to now the previous recession has never actually [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 26, 2010
We’re on the road to no where as things degenerate, Rome is burning and the President is on another vacation…..what’s the matter with this picture? By Wes Goodman Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — The signals from U.S. economic data are “alarming” and the recovery has lost momentum, Mohamed A. El-Erian, Pacific Investment Management Co.’s chief executive officer, wrote in an [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 26, 2010
Modest is putting it bluntly…..There was some modestly encouraging news. The percentage of mortgage borrowers receiving foreclosure notices fell slightly to 4.57 percent in the April-to-June quarter. Government efforts haven’t made much of a difference. Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who have enrolled in the Obama administration’s main mortgage-relief program have been cut loose [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 26, 2010
One reason of many for a tough road ahead….. From JPM……The latest profit recovery (the three red dots) is reliant on declining labor costs like none before it. A profit recovery whose foundation is so reliant on sustained high productivity and low real wage growth should not command a very high P/E multiple. A recent JPM [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 26, 2010
The Canary in the coal mine. Sounds like a bad situation is setting itself up here…… We went over some of this just a few days ago……It’s an unfolding disaster…. Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, Springfield, plans to sell $3 billion in investments, or about 10% of its $33.1 billion in assets in the current fiscal year [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 26, 2010
Hmm…..Two months in a row, right in the middle of the traditional best seasonal time of the year for real estate….not one new home was sold valued above $750,000 in the whole U.S. according to David Rosenberg (he worked for Merrill Lynch and now resides in Canada as chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff). …..Attitudes towards [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 26, 2010
In a bid to stem taxpayer losses for bad loans guaranteed by federal housing agencies Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) proposed that borrowers be required to make a 5% down payment in order to qualify. His proposal was rejected 57-42 on a party-line vote because, …………Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) explained, “passage [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 25, 2010
An economic recovery doesn’t look anything like this: www.dailyreckoning.com
thestatedtruth.com | August 25, 2010
The big players always knew that real estate loans were non-recourse loans. They walk-away voluntarily. Remember the commercial market is more professional than housing. As more of the big boys bite the dust, the huge bounce will crest, and down she comes. Pension funds, insurance companies, small banks, retirement accounts etc. get hammered. Commercial Property Owners Choose to Default By [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 25, 2010
Yra Harris. ……..Listen carefully, he knows what is coming! CNBC-CME Trader Sounds Off August 25, 2010 at 9:19 am More at: www.jsmineset.com/
thestatedtruth.com | August 24, 2010
Existing home sales fell to their lowest level in over 15 years in July as inventories soared. It portrays a grim picture for the housing market absent government support. Home resales dropped a record 27.2% or nearly twice as much as analysts had expected to an annual rate of 3.83 million in July, according to the National Association of [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 23, 2010
By Todd Harrison of Minyanville Seeking Solutions In An Uncertain World We used to play for silver, now we play for life; ones for sport and one’s for blood at the point of a knife. –Grateful Dead We live in interesting times. During the last two years, a financial virus spawned and infected the economic [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 23, 2010
Let’s keep this in mind…..Quoting PIMCO’s Bill Gross on real estate mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac….”To suggest the private market can come back in and take the place [of the government] is simply impractical. It won’t work”. Sources say the Obama administration is floating the idea that any federal backing of mortgages be paid for [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 23, 2010
Bill Gross reviewed demographics in his PIMCO August Investment Outlook, and he showed a graph, “Deep Demographic Doo-Doo”…..Now we can read David Rosenberg’s take on the matter. Today David Rosenberg begins to tackle the U.S. demographic issues from his own perspective, with his preliminary conclusions, not validating any current optimistic perspectives in the U.S. economy: “starting next [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 22, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 20, 2010
HAMP stands for Home Affordable Modification Plan…… The key here is that these borrowers are still up to their eyeballs in debt after the modification. From Treasury: HAMP Servicer Performance Report Through July 2010 According to HAMP, there are 255,934 “active trials”, down from 364,077 last month. There is still a large number of borrowers in limbo [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 20, 2010
Quoted from Art Cashin on the floor of The New York Stock Exchange Yesterday, there was a bit of floor buzz on a Bloomberg TV item. The story was that when the President headed off to vacation, he assigned two top defense aides to follow him. That raised some discussion about whether an Israeli move [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 20, 2010
Aug 20, 2010 PIMCO’s Bill Gross Has A Big Idea…..Actually JP Morgan might have started these thoughts. Question: Is It Fair To Save The Irresponsible At The Expense Of The Prudent And Conservative? Where is the bonus for being fiscally responsible? Auh, there is none unless your in financial trouble! At Tuesday’s [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 19, 2010
Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf who said that in reality the budget deficit could come in much higher than the just disclosed estimates, and the recent economic data releases have been “more negative” than data factored into the projection. Which, in government talk, means that the real deficit will likely come at least 20-30% higher, [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 19, 2010
U.S. commercia real estate mall prices fall almost 11% in second quarter. Question……To whom would one sell commercial property to if forced in this environment? The red ink is going to be massive. The plunge is on. Let’s hope the powers to be never require this stuff to be marked to market by the small banks or pension funds [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 19, 2010
A scary setup……Greece is just the beginning, not an end, we have started a spiral. The dominoes are now falling one by one. Life will get a lot harder for the entire world including here in the U.S (we haven’t even got to the austerity part here), we’re now entering the twilight zone. The solutions are [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 18, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 18, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 18, 2010
By David Mildenberg and Jody Shenn // Aug 18, 2010 Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are among 11 lenders that could suffer $133.8 billion in combined losses as mortgage-bond investors and insurers demand refunds for soured loans, according to an analysis by Compass Point Research and Trading LLC. That’s the base estimate by [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 17, 2010
From Zerohedge.com 08/17/2010 The one must watch interview of the week (if not of the year) features Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass. Bass, who correctly called the subprime implosion (and profited handsomely from it) as a iconoclast contrarian to conventional wisdom, tells David Faber that “given my outlook on the world, I don’t know how I [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 17, 2010
American households pared their debts last quarter, closing credit card accounts and taking out fewer mortgages as unemployment persisted near a 26-year high, a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed. Consumer indebtedness totaled $11.7 trillion at the end of June, a decline of 1.5 percent from the previous three months and [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 17, 2010
Big changes coming to the housing market. One thing you can be assured of, this will end badly, it always does when the government gets heavily involved. “To suggest that there’s a large place for private financing in the future of housing finance is unrealistic,” “Government is part of our future. We need a government balance [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 16, 2010
Debt unwind means deflation! The U.S. is facing a “painful period” in the next five years as homeowners and governments unwind debt built up during the housing boom, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s David Sokol said today. “All of that just feeds into a slow-growth environment,”“It’s going to be a painful period” “People have been shocked into [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 15, 2010
A major class struggle lies dead ahead! The gap between the super-rich, the wealthy and “the rest of us” has widened, forming what is in essence two Americas. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have reported that the top 10% of earners took home about half of all income. According to Moody’s Analytics research, the top 5% [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 15, 2010
The FHA is almost broke, is government supported and they back 30% of all loans outstanding….To make matters more interesting, in its 76-year history, the FHA has never required a credit score from borrowers. (No wonder they’re broke). At a 580 credit score and above, borrowers would be eligible for a 3.5% down payment (still ridiculous). It is well below scores [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 14, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 14, 2010
This couldn’t be a worse investment for the average person, they call them Junk Bonds for a reason. Take a guess why! It will end in a very bad way. U.S. companies issued risky “junk” bonds at a record clip this week, taking advantage of keen investor (idiots) appetite for returns (fools gold) amid declining interest rates and [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 14, 2010
The Gulf Oil Spill Disaster By John Mauldin August 13, 2010 From Unmitigated Disaster to Merely Disaster First, let’s begin with the “good” news. The ecological destruction that was first feared is not going to be as bad as once thought, for a variety of reasons. It is not good, but it [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 13, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 13, 2010
Alabama is suing BP Plc and Transocean for damages sustained from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the state’s attorney general said on Friday. “We are making this claim because we believe that BP has inflicted catastrophic harm on the state,” attorney general Troy King told Reuters. “We are suing them for the amount it [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 13, 2010
Rosenberg Starts Off In Style: “If you don’t believe there’s going to be a double dip, it’s because the first recession never ended. If there is going to be a double dip, the odds are certainly higher than 50-50.”
thestatedtruth.com | August 13, 2010
08-13-2010 Bloomberg: “Manhattan Luxury Condos Try FHA Backing in Sales `Game Changer‘” in which “The Federal Housing Administration agreed in March to insure mortgages for apartments at the 98-unit Gramercy Park development, known as Tempo. That enables buyers to make a down payment of as little as 3.5 percent in a building where apartments [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 12, 2010
The Oil Spill August 12, 2010 It has been over three months since the beginning of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then it has cost billions of dollars in terms of lost jobs, tourism, and the battering that local fishing industries have had to endure. At Cumberland Advisors, we have written [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 12, 2010
We’re looking at what will likely be a multi year process of cleansing. Debts will have to be paid down, leverage decreased and ultimatly spending will have to be cut too! That will make things even worse. Asset values will continue to fall. At some point in the future the system will complete its debt recycling and [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 12, 2010
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary This is simply not going away. There is no practical means by which it can be drained ever! It is growing in a way that is unsustainable by any measure. Rather than being contained we are on the threshold of another round of unprecedented paper money creation. The reason it is happening [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 11, 2010
08-11-2010 The Mortgage Bankers Association released its weekly numbers and the Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was up 0.6% from a week before. Yet despite mortgage rates hitting all time record lows, this number was a reduction from the previous mortgage application change of +1.3%. As the press [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 11, 2010
By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY Just how much should Uncle Sam do to help Americans buy their own homes?For 70 years and for the last 15 in particular the answer has been: Whatever it takes. Now, policymakers are pausing to reconsider. In the next few months, they’ll weigh whether there can be too much [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 11, 2010
Millions of houses on the verge of foreclosure threaten to send homeownership to its lowest level in 50 years, according to new industry estimates. Latest projections say the rate could plummet to about 62% as early as 2012 but certainly by the end of the decade. Homeownership rates haven’t been that low since they hit 61.9% in [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 10, 2010
A deflationary debt spiral is the killer of the American middle class. Little equity is left because the debt level has stayed basically the same, while most or all their assets including retirement are falling in value. In total, roughly $7 trillion in U.S. residential real estate values have been lost in the last few years according to the Case [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 10, 2010
The following chart demonstrates that consumers are retrenching, and “just saying no” to both residential and consumer loans. We also see that Small Businesses has contracted and, that credit demand is collapsing at every avenue of US society. QE, or cheaper money, has and always will be a “push” phenomenon, for which there is simply no [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 10, 2010
Drought, Fire and Grain in Russia August 10, 2010 By Lauren Goodrich Three interlocking crises are striking Russia simultaneously: the highest recorded temperatures Russia has seen in 130 years of recordkeeping; the most widespread drought in more than three decades; and massive wildfires that have stretched across seven regions, including Moscow. The crises threaten the [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 9, 2010
Gene Inger’s Daily Briefing . . . for Tuesday August 10, 2010: Good evening; ‘A recessionary relapse’ ……. .is the biggest unreported forecast story of the day. Not by us (though we unfortunately concur but see real risk sooner), but rather from none other than the San Francisco Federal Reserve. I read the key [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 9, 2010
John Williams of Shadowstats.com uses m-3 velocity of money (or turnover of money) as an important barometer, here is what he is saying now, Williams’ assessment of the economy was spot on in 2008…….. A greater systemic solvency crisis is closer then ever . . . within the next six months to a year. What is happening [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 6, 2010
Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross said the Federal Reserve is unlikely to raise interest rates for two to three years as it seeks to keep the economy from slipping back into recession. Treasury two-year note yields dropped below 0.50 percent for the first time today after the Labor Department said the economy lost more [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 5, 2010
These two companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could very well lose money forever! At some point the government has to just say enough of this and either shut both of them down, or require higher down payments on home purchases to protect their assets. Simple as that! By Lorraine Woellert Thursday August 05, 2010 Fannie Mae, [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 5, 2010
Jim Sinclair says….Nothing has been cured and the potential for a second and more shocking economic event is real and in the present time! Posted August 05, 2010 By Min Zeng NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–The total outstanding notional amount for all interest rate derivative transactions reported by the 14 major dealers including Goldman Sachs & [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 5, 2010
By Tami Luhby, Senior Writer Posted August 5, 2010 NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Senate overcame a key procedural hurdle Wednesday to send $26 billion more in federal aid to cash-strapped states. The measure, which passed by a 61-38 vote, contains $16.1 billion in additional Medicaid money and $10 billion to prevent layoffs of teachers [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 4, 2010
Well plugged…..Let’s hope so. ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — In a significant step toward stopping the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, BP said Wednesday mud that was forced down its blown-out well was holding back the flow of crude in the Gulf of Mexico and it was in a “static condition.” There is [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 4, 2010
General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. reported U.S. sales in July that trailed analysts’ estimates as consumers concerned about the economy limited large purchases. Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. topped expectations. GM’s sales rose 1.5 percent, including an adjustment for the number of selling days in July. On that basis, the largest [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 4, 2010
Contracts for pending sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell to a record low in June as buyers sat on the sidelines, a survey from the National Association of Realtors showed on Tuesday. The June decline followed a 30 percent drop in May after a popular tax credit expired at the end of April. The [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 4, 2010
By Bloomberg News – // Aug 4, 2010 China’s banking regulator told lenders last month to conduct a new round of stress tests to gauge the impact of residential property prices falling as much as 60 percent in the hardest-hit markets, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Banks were instructed to include worst-case [...]