From the category archives:

The Fed

Controlling Class Smack Down For Mortgage REITs?

October 7, 2008

I went for a ride on my mountain bike last week. Is it any wonder that all I could think of during the long, steep, uphill grades was REITs? The analogy is apt, as making money in this sector is almost as strenuous. This afternoon, however, after I wiped the vomit from my shirt luckily [...]

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The Treasury’s New Mortgage REIT

September 21, 2008

I just had some fun reading the text of the proposed treasury bill. It’s basically a $700 billion Mortgage REIT that has yet to be named let’s just call it expensive. Not only that, the draft of the enormous bill, which requires an increase in the federal debt ceiling in order to accommodate its incredible [...]

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Cash is King

September 14, 2008

Confirming today that the subprime crisis is “largely contained”, Lehman Brothers Holding Inc., declared bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch confirmed it doesn’t need to raise more capital (“these problems are behind us”), it just needs to sell out to a commercial bank in Charlotte. And the Fed has now added equities to the list of assets [...]

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U.S. Treasury to Make Open Market MBS Purchases

September 9, 2008

WASHINGTON, DC-While market participants work to digest the details of the government’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Globest.com is reporting that one of the more intriguing aspects is a new program in which Treasury will purchase agency mortgage backed securities on the open market, in addition to the direct portfolio acquisitions that the [...]

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Fed Extends Emergency Measures

July 30, 2008

Gonna be alright…
Everything is under control The WSJ
Remember FDR’s alphabet soup? It consisted of a series of government programs intended to end the Great Depression. It gave birth to the WPA (the Works Progress Administration), the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp), and household names such as the TVA, the FDIC and the SSA – the spenders [...]

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Will Greenspan’s Legacy be the Bernanke Bust?

March 17, 2008

The world, once awash with levered up Greenspan housing dollars chasing assets of almost any kind, is now drowning in debt. In response, Bernanke’s beleaguered Fed dramatically announced another cut in its discount rate late on a Sunday afternoon, just minutes after rapidly orchestrating and ultimately approving the sale of Bear Stearns (BSC) to J.P. [...]

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Fixing the Mortgage Mess: Operation Twist, Take II

March 11, 2008

Note to Readers: This updates the previous related post Fixing The Mortgage Mess: an Old Twist?, which was written just before the Fed actually Twisted.
Historians say that if we are unable to learn from the past, we are condemned to repeat it. Economists, who study the dismal science, may simply believe that we are [...]

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Fixing the Mortgage Mess: An Old Twist?

March 10, 2008

Historians say that if we are unable to learn from the past, we are condemned to repeat it. Economists, who study the dismal science, may simply believe that we are condemned. While I hold those who study these two influential and important social science disciplines in great respect, I like to embrace a more sanguine [...]

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