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
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
The Black Swan Theory or “Theory of Black Swan Events” was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain 1) the disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology, 2) the non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events [...]
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 2, 2010
Crisis mode? Hmm…..their words not ours! ECB Keeps Key Interest Rate at 1%, May Maintain Crisis Mode By Christian Vits Sep 2, 2010 The European Central Bank kept interest rates at a record low today and President Jean-Claude Trichet may signal the bank will stay in crisis mode into next year. The ECB’s Governing Council [...]
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
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 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
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
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
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
Pension funds everywhere had better pay attention to what’s going on with the Illinois Teachers Retirement System. It’s a wake up call……Hello, anybody there! When the financial crisis erupted, it first hit banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, real estate/ private equity funds, asset managers, and then hit pension funds. But pensions remain very vulnerable because [...]
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
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 23, 2010
One more reason that the average person on main street has no chance, and that’s official! Interest rates continue to drop for the U.S. Treasury, large companies and home buyers, but for most of the 381 million U.S. credit-card accounts borrowing rates have been flying to the upside at an alarming pace. Amoung the reasons: [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 22, 2010
The Phillie Fed report was just awful. Buried in the details was the fact that the hours-worked index is collapsing, consistent with previews to past recessions. Very worrisome. (From my favorite slicer and dicer of data, Greg Weldon: www.weldononline.com) Bottom line? It is going to be a tough environment for the next 6-8 years. That [...]
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
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 20, 2010
We’re sure that everyone has the best intentions to pay these hardship loans back, but……. A new study by Fidelity says record number of workers tapped their retirement funds and made hardship withdrawals from their accounts in the second quarter. According to the Fidelity study, “Among the 11 million workers whose 401(k) plans are run by Fidelity, [...]
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
The ECRI index is an important leading indicator. It has now fallen for 10 straight weeks. There are three insurmountable problems in the US economy that are of a magnitude and gravity which can only be remedied by money printing: Federal and state deficits will soon escalate at an exponential rate. The US Federal debt [...]
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
Even after looking at the market’s rebound from the lows of 2009, nest eggs remain severely impaired. As of the first quarter of 2010, net household assets—homes, 401(k) plans, pension assets and other investments minus debts—stood at $54.6 trillion, down an average of 18% from the end of 2007. We actually think the losses are higher but we’ll [...]
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
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 13, 2010
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 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 10, 2010
www.jsmineset.com
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 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 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
The 30 year Freddie Fixed Rate Mortgage has just printed under4.50%, at 4.49%: a new all time record low. Japan has already watched this movie…….It doesn’t matter at what rate the mortgage is, but more importantly for now is the security of having 1) cash flow and 2) a job. Both seem to be in short supply [...]
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 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 [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 2, 2010
Key Elements Of This Article Are: In the United States, the Fed’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances revealed that current or close retirees have roughly $50,000 of retirement savings, excluding the now questionable equity in their homes. Those born before in a macabre sense, the financial crisis couldn’t have been better timed, if it [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 1, 2010
Why this is the Titanic and the life boats have already been launched! The household debt/income ratio is (still) near record highs of 120% and one-quarter of the consumer universe has a sub-600 FICO score – which means they are ineligible for Fannie or Freddie mortgage financing. The banks have few opportunities to lend – households [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 1, 2010
Here are some of the comments from Alan Greenspan on NBC’s “Meet The Press”. We should keep in mind that Alan Greenspan told congress a year or two back that his “model” was broken! Joshua Zumbrun August 1, 2010 “We’re in a pause in a recovery, a modest recovery, but a pause in the modest recovery [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 31, 2010
The economy of the U.S. grew at a weaker than expected 2.4% in the second quarter, but the first quarter was revised back up to 3.7% on the strength of stronger-than-projected inventory rebuilding. But the recession years were revised downward rather significantly for this late in the cycle. We find now that the recession was [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 30, 2010
Posted Friday July 30, 2010 By: David A. Patten Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned Thursday that President Obama and congressional Democrats appear to be on the verge of repeating the same mistakes that aggravated the Great Depression, adding that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would prove “very dangerous” for the nation’s economy. Speaking [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 30, 2010
Hint……this is not a pretty picture! Posted from zerohedge.com Exerts from a Goldman review are shown below. The chart below provides an integrated look at the GDP growth impact of fiscal policy at the federal, state, and local level. These numbers are based on our current assumptions that (1) Congress will not extend emergency unemployment benefits beyond the [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 29, 2010
Exerts from: Bill Gross Investment Outlook August 2010 Observers will point out, as shown in the following chart, that global population growth rates have been declining since 1970 with no apparent ill effects. True, until 2008, I suppose. The fact is that since the 1970s we have never really experienced a secular period during which [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 27, 2010
This is going to be the new normal……specifically the savings part! American consumers lost confidence in July, shaken by mounting concern over jobs and wages that threatens to constrain the economic recovery. The Conference Board’s sentiment index fell to 50.4, below the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and the lowest level in five months. [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 20, 2010
Source: Institute for Policy Studies The above shows a solid plutocracy is already here. Wealth is the key issue. As many people are now finding out simply having a massive home with a jumbo mortgage and a leased foreign car is no sign of wealth. In fact, that can be taken from you quickly (and [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 20, 2010
Write up from Byron Wein…………”The Smartest Man In Europe” Commentary courtesy of www.fmxconnect.com We recently came across an interesting piece from Blackstone on the European Stimulus and the road to recovery. Bryon Wein is a well known strategist. The most salient points are outlined below: No clear way out of the enormous debt burden [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 19, 2010
July 19 (Bloomberg) – Billionaire investor George Soros said U.S. lawmakers should refrain from withdrawing stimulus measures because the economy hasn’t strengthened enough.“I think the timing is wrong with withdrawing the stimulus,” Soros said at the Hamptons Institute in East Hampton, New York on July 16. “Cutting employment benefits, cutting aid to states that are [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 14, 2010
How do we know stocks are still overvalued? We know by looking at Professor Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted PE chart for the past 130 years. The cyclically adjusted PE is one of the only measures of valuation that has some long-term predictive validity, and this chart suggests that stock returns are going to continue to [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 14, 2010
Speaking of credit, or the lack thereof, the U.S. has been stripped of its AAA credit rating. So have Britain, France and Germany… This morning, the Dagong Global Credit Rating Co., China’s first real attempt at a ratings agency, initiated coverage on the sovereign debt of 50 different countries. “Dagong’s sovereign credit ratings are based [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 14, 2010
Jim Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, appeared on Bloomberg TV to talk about the Fed’s three potential additions to the Board of Governors. Jul 14, 2010 Here are the key highlights from the interview, courtesy of Bloomberg Television: Grant’s thoughts on new Fed additions: “I think the first order of business will be [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 12, 2010
2010-07-12 “Figures provided by FICO Inc. show that 25.5 percent of consumers — nearly 43.4 million people — now have a credit score of 599 or below, marking them as poor risks for lenders. It’s unlikely they will be able to get credit cards, auto loans or mortgages under the tighter lending standards banks now [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 11, 2010
By Michael McDonald Jul 11, 2010 States can’t count on the federal government for more budget bailouts, the heads of President Barack Obama’s debt commission told governors today. States that are expecting Congress to authorize more bailout money are “going to be left with a very large hole to fill,” said Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 8, 2010
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The federal budget deficit for the first nine months of the 2010 fiscal year was just over $1 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office reported Wednesday. The shortfall, reflecting $2.6 trillion in outlays for the first three quarters and $1.6 trillion in receipts, narrowed slightly compared with the same point in fiscal 2009. [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 8, 2010
By Vincent Del Giudice Jul 8, 2010 Consumer borrowing in the U.S. dropped in May more than forecast, a sign Americans are less willing to take on debt without an improvement in the labor market. The $9.1 billion decrease followed a revised $14.9 billion slump in April that was initially estimated as a $1 billion [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 8, 2010
Nice of the IMF to warn us………. By Tyler Durden 07/08/2010 The IMF has issued a less than stellar outlook of the US economy after consultations with US government authorities, in which it cautions that even as the outlook has generally improved, major downside risks remain: “On the downside, the backlog of foreclosures and high [...]