SAR # 8121

Being wrong is understandable;
being right too soon, unforgivable.

One View : The reigning economic theorists explain starvation this way: "The world doesn't have enough trade in foodstuffs." I thought it was that there weren't enough foodstuffs to trade.

With 2 You Get Eggroll: The US national debt is $9.3 trillion - that's the government, we citizens have own burdens on top of this. The IRS says 134 million Americans work, so the individual worker owes $70,000 to... mostly Japan (30%). Yes, Japan, not China. China only holds 20% of US debt. Why aren't we nicer to Japan? Or more afraid of them?

Delayed Gratification : Not only are those Brazilian oil deposits that were going to save civilization 6 miles below the ocean's surface, they require equipment that can cut through salt a mile thick, withstand pressures of 18,000 psi and take temperatures of 500 degrees. That's Fahrenheit; it's only 260º in Celsius.

Biblical Verse: I don't know about evil, but the love of money certainly seems to have been the root of a lot of bad mortgages.

Location, Location, Location : Half of Cambodia has been sold to foreigners. Half the whole country, and in the process the same peasants uprooted by the Khmer Rouge are homeless again. Not just swaths of forest, but sections of rice paddys and cities too. Nearly all of Cambodia's coast has been sold to tourism developers and the protesting residents jailed, beaten, or simply turned away as their homes were destroyed. All inclusive, these places.

Contrary: Over 95% of mutual fund 'families' (Fidelity, Vanguard, etc.) experienced net cash outflows so far this year. If Joe & Josephine are bailing out, it may be time to get back in.

Mighty Oak, Not : North Dakota's Bakken shale formation has about 167 billion barrels of oil. But, according to scientists, only 1.25% of it is recoverable with current technology. Those 2.1 billion barrels of crude will not save civilization, but at $115 a barrel it's big money at my house.

Bargain: Countrywide took over $3 billion in write-offs for bad loans in 1Q2008, up ten times over last year, ending up with a loss of nearly $1 billion in the quarter and $2.5 billion in the last 9 months. Don't worry, Bank of America will turn it into a silk purse.

Remember the Swamp! The Fed has invented twenty-eleven ways to 'inject liquidity' into the system to overcome banks'' reluctance to lend to other banks. Now it wants to start paying interest on the excess reserves banks have on deposit with the Fed. Wouldn't this encourage banks to leave their excess reserves at the safe and solid Fed rather than lend them out, thus cutting liquidity?

Sudden Clarity: Among all the pleadings and scheming and vote-seeking plans to rescue the poor homeowner, the obvious goes unstated: A mortgage bailout is a bad idea because (a) house prices are too high and must fall to about 3 times median income - about 10% a year for the next 3 years. (b) Not everyone working at the local grab and run should own a house. (Perhaps in a more equitable society... ) The economy is making more and more renters, not more homeowners, and (c) Actions and decisions have consequences, or damned well ought to, none of which should involve the use of taxes to reward the greedy, the cheats, or the stupid.