theygolux, I hope we didn’t chase you off. You made a good devil’s advocate, friend!

Nah.

Oklahoma kiddo @ 33

Where do they get the money to do this?

AP – The nation’s three largest banks said Monday they will team up to buy tens of billions of dollars in investments that lost value after global credit markets seized up.

They are pooling their money and for good reason. By doing so they can prevent the sale of their assets at reduced value. They can hold on to them and keep the market rates high on the foreclosed homes and commercial properties. It’s self interest. And they avoid competing against one another for properties that are going up for sale.

Imagine a bunch of guys getting together and putting up inflated bids on EBay to encourage others to bid higher. Sure they might have to occasionally buy their own items (usually through a surrogate), but it keeps the bid prices higher and compels others that want the item to pay inflated amounts. Of course EBay and the Feds would likely declare this a case of “price-fixing”.

But in this case the Bush Administration is actually ASSISTING an illegal TRUST. The meetings were held at the Treasury Department!!

If the market was actually “free” they would have to put these foreclosed homes up for auction. Someone like me, who held off buying into the inflated Housing Bubble with dangerous Variable Rate Mortgages…who saw the risks…would be denied opportunity to purchase a home on the deflated market. The collusion between Citigroup, BofA, Morgan Stanley, etc. will allow them to simply carry these homes as vacant until the market allows them a soft landing.

Meanwhile those that they have evicted during foreclosure will have to find apartments, increasing rental rates…or bid on one of these “available” homes with the artificially inflated price.

Fantastic explanation. I’ll add one interesting idea which maybe someone can confirm or refute.

Pump & Dump!

If the CEOs of these banks and mortgage companies can inflate the value of their assets (the houses) by letting realtors (or other manipulators) pump up the prices and then repossess them when the ARMs force people out, then they might be able to PUMP up their company’s stock price. Then, the big IF, if they have compensation packages which benefit them more when the stock price is high or if they have stock options, then the CEO and other vested people make out like bandits by selling hyper-inflated stock. The DUMP!

Of course, after that the stock has to deflate and crash a bit, but they’re gonna be out, fat & happy. Let the little guy worry about the dump.

It’s the Wall Street way which has been used forever. Pump & Dump! Pump up prices to suck in the suckers and then Dump your hyper-inflated stocks.

Where do they get the money to do this?

AP – The nation’s three largest banks said Monday they will team up to buy tens of billions of dollars in investments that lost value after global credit markets seized up.

Maybe this will explain it.

http://www.forbes.com/business…..icorp.html

Fundamentalfreedom

left you a reply on previous thread (since it applied to your comment there)

Even your own links make the point that, regardless of everyone’s intentions and expectations, a foreign-to-foreign call that passes through telecom switches physically based in the US may be covered by FISA.

The ACLU LOL points dance past his as follows:

# FISA does not and has not ever limited the ability of the government to intercept foreign communications overseas. The NSA can listen to Iraqi insurgents all day every day without ever needing a warrant.
# FISA (as it existed before the Protect America Act) only limited the interception of communications inside the United States (the NSA is a component of the Department of Defense, so it was the military spying on Americans that FISA was intended to regulate).
# With the U.S. military fully engaged in Iraq the NSA should have no difficulty intercepting every communication in Iraq, as well as any communication coming in or out of Iraq. There was no need to ever implicate FISA.
# Changes in technology may have made it possible to seize foreign-to-foreign communications in the United States, but that doesn’t mean such conversations can only be seized in the U.S. The NSA could have seized them elsewhere.

In other words, if we were intercepting an Iraq-Iraq call in the US, well, we shouldn’t have been so stupid – we should have figured out how to snag it in Iraq.

Gee, thanks for the guidance.

OT and EPU’ed

Crude oil (Cushing spot) is trading at $85.25. The ostensible reason for this is concern over a Turkish attack on Iraqi Kurdistan resulting in a disruption of oil supplies. The truth is that even if the Turks crossed the border the impact on the flow of oil would be minimal. In the last 6 months, there has been a lot of money (from hedge funds and others after the subprime fiasco) entering into oil markets. It is causing a general bid up in prices by people who don’t understand the market that well (and apparently don’t care to know about it).

This is part of a larger bid up of prices in commodities generally.

A longer term adjustment in oil prices (~$15) occurred earlier in the summer due to the falling value of the dollar.

Hugh, I always enjoy your thoughtful and informed posts…

I have a little bit different take on immunity for the telcos. This is not going to be popular, but hear me out.

I don’t think anyone should be punished for obeying what they believe to be a lawful order of the government. I got into this argument some years ago here in NC when only people who filed their taxes with a note saying that they were paying under protest could get a refund taxes on a tax provision that was found to be unconstitutional. Th argument I made to a state supreme court justice of my acquaintance was that law abiding people who paid their taxes in good faith, believing that what the government was telling them to do was legal would be penalized for doing so. It almost falls into the category of an ex post facto law. In the end, he came to agree with me.

If, and this is a big “if,” the telcos believed that what the US was asking them to do was legal and proper, they should not be liable for helping. However, I would only support amnesty if 1) all was revealed about what they did, who told them to do it, and what their internal legal opinions told them, and 2) the people who wrongfully told them to do it were prosecuted.

Since neither of those things is likely to happen…

Excuse me, but do you know that telecommunications companies have very large legal departments with lawyers who have, no doubt, exceptional qualifications and experience in determining what the law is? If their lawyers didn’t do a good job, they should have hired better lawyers. When I was in law school the concept that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” was taught to us quite thoroughly. When I was arrested for DUI, I didn’t know I was .01 point over the limit. Etc.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..XhL8SyFz4D

But it will require a strong candidate to convince the voters in THAT District. It’s always been Republican territory: culturally conservative and supposedly pro-free markets.

In 2006 David Hobson (R) defeated William Conner (D) by 61-39%