October 31, 2008
Janet Yellen Gripped by Mumbo Jumbo
U.S. Stocks Gain on Better-Than-Estimated GDP Report, Rate Cuts
“The S&P 500 is still down 35 percent in 2008 and 18 percent in October, poised for its worst month since 1987 … Janet Yellen said at a speech in Berkeley, California: ‘We are in the grip of an adverse feedback loop,’ in which tighter credit conditions are exacerbating economic weakness.”
Spare me the mumbo jumbo, you lousy Baby Boomer academic. Bureaucrats who use technical terms like ‘adverse feedback loop’ to describe economic conditions should be gripped by the neck and shaken. Having a Ph.D. should automatically disqualify anyone from working at the Fed (yes, I’m talking to you too, Benny). The best candidates to work at the Fed are first-generation Korean immigrants who started running their own laundromats from scratch.
If the flag in the SP breaks on the high side, 1050ish should happen.
October 31st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Can’t wait to look up “quantitative easing” in the financial dictionary again. There are now 1000 different ways to describe all the details of money printing.
I enjoyed this interview with Soros at MIT earlier in the week. It was refreshing to see some of the academics actually entertaining a practitioner and respectfully at that.
http://web.mit.edu/events/soros/ (video is archived here)
October 31st, 2008 at 5:06 pm
@Soulek: Yeah, I think so much of it is about intimidating and confusing people … Americans traditionally hate bullshit and bullshitters but the tide of crap has been rapidly rising (and being tolerated) in direct proportion to our national decline.
November 1st, 2008 at 1:48 am
Hey Mao. Haven’t been here in a month of Sundays.
>>>in direct proportion to our national decline
No doubt about that. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be anything on the horizon to change this, unless we execute all the “change agents” and get back to basics. I admire the Chinese method in that respect.
I saw this and immediately thought you might like to read it.
http://www.technologyreview.com/biztech/20978/?a=f
November 1st, 2008 at 2:04 am
Your flag looks like a handle that’s wedging upward.
Wm. J. O’Neil would not approve, methinks.
November 1st, 2008 at 8:25 am
@Donk: I too am in favor of executing the change agents. :-) Thanks for the link, I’ll delicious it and read it when I get a chance.
@Todd: Potato, po-tah-to, close enough for gub-mint work. :)
November 1st, 2008 at 8:30 am
Adverse Feedback Loop. Indeed!
Bush entered office as a social conservative and he is leaving office as a conservate socialist.
November 1st, 2008 at 1:31 pm
God damn…….. I never understood the youngsters flocking to Ron Paul early in 08. Of course, everything he said was music to my ears. I was flabbergasted by liberals espousing radical right wing economic policies. Abolishing the FED? I love it! Friedman always said so………..and here are these “diggers” swallowing it whole with out care! Part of me was in heaven, the other part was scared. Ending the FED? Ending FIAT currency? How was he going to implement a transition? You never heard that…….was my thought at the time………..all the while fearing what I am witnessing……..
First generation Korean born dry-cleaners, or a hoard of eurodollar traders………they seem the same to me right now.
November 2nd, 2008 at 5:57 am
That women is completely out of the loop. I just sold a 10k machine to a small local builder who is BUSY. His secret is providing short-term financing to his customers for construction and the time for them to find fixed notes. The commercial banks are now taking forever to issue mortgages. The builder likes the financing end so much, he is getting licensed. Life is going on, but the banks are too busy with each other to notice.
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
@ Hudson
The obvious question is what happens to the well capitalized builder (so far), if and when the people he is building custom homes are unable to secure a mortgage ?
Suddenly, he has spec homes as inventory. Uh oh !
He’s willing to put his money on the line short term, in the belief that the credit markets will unlock sufficiently so that those people can get mortgages.
That he’s getting licensed to to finance this stuff is interesting.
Builders build houses. Banks lend money. When one or the other tries to get into a business that they’re not likely properly suited, the end result is sometimes not very good.
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
One more thing Hudson. I hope you got paid in entirety for the $10K machine he sold the builder and didn’t finance it for him.
And if you got a check, run to the bank immediately and cash it.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:23 am
@Todd
The check was verified as good. The machine is in my possession until it clears. This guy is using a one million credit line and claims to have no problems so far in 250-350k market.(very tough market right now)
He did mention the homes are premanufactured so that cuts the down the building time a bit. “Banks lend money” well they had better get back to business!
My bank on Cape Cod sent me an email stating their foreclosure rate is .01%. I emailed the president saying he is breaking some kind of world record.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
this is what is strange about the left, they actually are conservative half the time without even knowing it. your Korean immigrant comment is one of the first wise things I have heard from you in a while, it mimics Buckley’s comment about preferring to be ruled by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book rather than the faculty of Harvard. You have to be aware that the left is the mindset of “bring in the academics, we will think it through, fix it, and impose it on you great unwashed out there”?
November 5th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
charlie k,
You do realize that his comment was somewhat sarcastic, right? The chairman has been on this shotgun shell meme that not everyone gets as a joke either. Education is actually a good thing. Btw, Buckley was not anti-intellectual, au contraire mon frere, unlike the state of modern conservatism.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:23 am
to Anthony: well, anyone who loves Buckley would appreciate the pleasures of the intellect. His point, however, was to not trust the academy, that experience and the building of laws and customs based on experience is to be trusted, and that the latest fad or idea from the academy is just that: the latest.