frank's blog

Welcome to the Minsky Moment

A Minsky moment is the point in a credit cycle or business cycle when investors have cash flow problems due to spiraling debt they have incurred in order to finance speculative investments. At this point, a major selloff begins due to the fact that no counterparty can be found to bid at the high asking prices previously quoted, leading to a sudden and precipitous collapse in market clearing asset prices and a sharp drop in market liquidity.[1]

The Minsky moment comes after a long period of prosperity and increasing values of investments, which has encouraged increasing amounts of speculation using borrowed money.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsky_moment

What the GSE Bailout Really Means


Economic Freefall

A Billion dollars here... a Billion dollars there...

(no source specified)

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in
one of it's releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain...let's take a look at New Orleans ...It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D)
is presently asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans .

Interesting number...what does it mean?

Update to Option-Arm resets

From CalculatedRisk:
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/06/option-arms-moving-from-negam...

Sooner is better than later?

Interest Rates Forecast

Nice Graphic

Derivatives - don't be late to the next party

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/commodity-derivatives-new-curre...

The potential WHY commodities are at all time highs.

From 2003 - How to escape the liquidity trap

This is some very timely advice...

http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text144_p.html

I especially paid attention to this part:

The most unorthodox expedient he examines is a tax on money , if not spent by certain dates. This was proposed by academics a century ago, but is not as cloud cuckoo as it seems. When the Swiss were trying to repel short money inflows ago they imposed a tax on overseas held bank deposits. This surely could have been extended to cover domestic deposits as well. Admittedly notes would have been a more difficult proposition, but not impossible with modern electronic means.

Hmmm... "tax on money if not spent by a certain date" sounds alot like inflation to me...

The myth of "fossil" fuels

If this is true, it just kinda changes everything...

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59991

"A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a "fossil fuel" derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs."

Paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5863/604

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