SOTD: Zero 7 - Somersault

No End In Sight

SOTD: Audrey - Mecklenburg

SOTD: Fairmont Ft. Sebastian Leger - Gazebo

SOTD: I Am Kloot - To You (live)

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Here's a good one...Impac Mortgage Holdings posts a quarterly loss that is 24 times their market capitalization. That's like Warren Buffett losing about a trillion and a half dollars.

Irvine-based Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc. posted a staggering $1.2 billion third-quarter net loss on Thursday, nearly 10 times as large as the struggling company’s losses a year earlier.
Impac, which acquires mortgages as investments and had made home loans itself before quitting that business in the third quarter, has lost $1.5 billion for the first nine months of the year.
The loss is massive given Impac’s interest income of $313.8 million for the quarter and its recent market value of about $50 million.

Here's another good one...

Fitch Places 173,022 MBIA-Insured Issues on Rating Watch Negative
Concurrent with its related rating announcement earlier today on MBIA Inc. (MBIA) and its financial guaranty subsidiaries, Fitch Ratings has placed 173,022 bond issues (172,860 municipal, 162 non-municipal) insured by MBIA on Rating Watch Negative.

As the great Jim Grant said, the "subprime" problem has been contained - to planet Earth.

SOTD: Sofia Rubina & Villu Veski Group - Close To You

Wow

America's Road to Zimbabwe

Recent economic news has been troubling. For those concerned about hedge fund managers, Wall Street billionaires, trust fund babies and investment bankers, and their ability to continue to make millions while laying off thousands, there is some wonderful news!

From the NY Times today, "Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster":

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher. The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.

The report is the latest to document the growing concentration of income at the top, a trend that President Bush said last January had been under way for more than 25 years.

So Bush says that this road-to-Zimbabwe American economy has been going on for more than 25 years - as if his Administration hasn't worked tirelessly to push most Americans off the economic cliff.

Maybe Bush and his cronies aren't so incompetent after all. It looks like they've gotten exactly what they want.

SOTD: Sofa Surfers - Can I Get a Witness

SOTD: Club 8 - Love in December

Is The Fed the New FEMA?

I have full confidence that this Administration will handle the credit crisis with the same foresight and competence they displayed in handling Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War.

George W. Bush Explains Gas Prices to Us

Hedge Fund Peter Principle

$36 billion Cerberus Fund (soon to be the $10 billion Cerberus Fund) rides Aegis Mortgage into the ground, then buys GMAC at peak. Hilarity ensues.

QOTD:

"Industry returns have been extraordinary, 20% to 30% a year," says Katharina
Lichtner, managing director of the private equity advisory firm Capital Dynamics. "Returns will come down, revert to a more normal 16%."

Yes, 16% is normal. More like -16% for these geniuses.

Cerberus is one of the largest private equity investment firms in the US (apparently Dan Quayle runs one of their units, so you know they must be super smart guys). Oh yeah, they own Chrysler too, which is now run by uber tool Bob "I drove Home Depot into the ground" Nardelli.

Don't worry, the taxpayers will bail these jokers out. They won't have to sell the third house in the Hamptons.

SOTD: Hooverphonic - Magenta (Live @ B-2 / Moscow)

Compare This Guy's Brain to GW's

SOTD: AC/DC - Dog Eat Dog

Goldman Sachs Theme Song

Republicans Screw the Little Guy Again

Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bid to debate legislation that would stop an alternative minimum tax increase this year on 23 million American households.

The legislation included a $54 billion tax increase on managers of hedge funds and buyout firms that Democrats said was needed to keep the federal budget balanced. Republicans said Democrats shouldn't raise taxes permanently on Wall Street executives to relieve burdens on middle-income Americans for only one year. The vote to debate the measure was 46-48, 14 votes short of the 60 necessary to proceed.

Thank you, Republican Party for standing up to millions of Americans who wanted some tax relief in order to protect the obscene paydays of a small group of Wall Street contributors.

"Every generation needs a new revolution." - Thomas Jefferson

Debt Slaves

From Sudden Debt:

Was there a Grand Conspiracy to create debt slaves in America? No, I don't believe so. But the profit motive as a sole driving force in business was more than enough - and stupid in the extreme. Any fool of a manager can increase profits for a short period of time - all it takes is a sharp axe and a dull conscience.

We see now what happens when we let loose a whole pack of smart operators and financiers upon the US economy offering them billions, if only they boost share prices from X to Y.

SOTD: Grant Lee Buffalo - Truly Truly (live on Letterman)