It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

So today, our governator signed an executive order to force the state to pay all non-essential personnel federal minimum wage, lay off all temporary workers, and suspend all payment programs until the state passes a budget. Basically, this is what the California constitution requires (not spending money without a budget), but the legislature has been wink-nudge ignoring it for the last 5+ years of budget impasses, and this year looks no different. Arnold is hoping the order will prod the legislature to do their f-ing jobs (not likely), and the political backlash won't be inaccurately attributed to him instead of the legislature (also not likely). It's a good idea, I think, overall, but I don't think it goes far enough. The order allows for back-paying of everyone's normal wages after a budget is passed, so it really only hurts the lower-class employees who are less financially secure. Personally, I'd like to see a constitutional amendment which provides this action ...

Rather than being down on Congress for being corrupt and acting against the interests of the American people, maybe I should offer some suggestions for what they could better spend $300 billion dollars on than giving it to the lenders who created the housing bubble and resulting recession. So, in no particular order, here are some things Congress could spend money on which could help: Reform GSE oversight (cost guess: couple million) I'd suggest restricting their loan buying to conforming loans (eg: 20% down, fully amortizing) with a cap of say 5x the average annual income for areas. Enough to finance houses at sustainable prices, but restrictive enough to not get them into the $5.2 trillion dollar debt disaster we are currently bailing them out from. Develop national RE listing/info database (cost guess: hundred million) A national database for real estate listing, freely accessible to anyone, with uniform data presentation and historical information, would greatly help illuminate...

It boggles my mind that the only people who honestly and bluntly report what the US Congress is going is not the mainstream media, but rather the small blogs and whatnot. Something has to change; it's just ridiculous that our government so blatantly acts against the interests of the people, and our media ignores it. Or worse, acknowledges their actions but misrepresents them as neutral, or even worse as beneficial. I'm not sure if their actions or the general stupidity of the American people in analyzing them is a worse blight on the country, but they are both pretty horrible. Today's idiocy is Congress spending $300+ BILLION dollars on absorbing bank losses for giving out the bad loans which fueled the housing bubble and kept housing unaffordable for responsible Americans. ...but wait, that's not all! In addition, they are refinancing millions of borrowers who "own" properties they cannot possibly afford and most of whom will default on their home loans into ...

So an interesting thing is happening in the stock market, and I thought I'd blog about it cause it was interesting to me. If stock market stuff bores you, you might want to skip this post. So, recently (a week ago or so), the SEC made a new temporary rule that investors will not be allowed to naked short the stocks of select, large, financial institutions. Basically, this means in order to sell shorts on those stocks, the brokerage selling the short must own the stock shares. Since there's was not really an issue with defaulting on naked shorts, and it's very market specific, the rule is not designed to prevent any negative effects, but rather strictly to manipulate the market. Now, normally, a stock is pushed in both directions by stock buying and shorting. Buying pushes a stock higher, as more bids are fulfilled. Shorting pushes a stock lower, as it's basically the opposite pressure on the stock price (the brokerage is selling shares it holds for someone else onto the...

I was reading the wikipedia page in the New Deal today ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal ); it makes for fascinating reading. In particular, if you massage the timeline a little, and replace FDR with Obama, you get a fairly accurate representation of what's likely to be the case in about 6 months. Which makes the New Deal a fairly good model of what the government is likely to enact to try to pull us out of the current mess they have created. Let's look at the surviving long-term programs from the New Deal: Social Security This Ponzi scheme is the pride and joy of the New Deal, providing retirement and disability benefits for all Americans. It will be bankrupting the country around 2040 if not substantially modified/abolished before then, because it's a financial disaster which is a Ponzi scheme. I think we can count that as a negative outcome. The FDIC This institution provides insurance to prevent runs on banks, and establishes rules to prevent them from over-levera...

A quick recap, in case you're not familiar with the recent financial news. We're in a housing asset price correction, driven by a lack of easy risky credit and an unwillingness of big banks to continue to sponsor deficit consumer spending at their own loss. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two enormous companies who have reaped massive profits for their executives and shareholders during the bubble, are now being forced to acknowledge their losses, and rely on their implicit government bailout, which looks likely to eventually cost US taxpayers trillions. I ask: is anyone surprised? This entire economic cycle has been about privatizing gains and socializing losses. Everybody has been operating under the assumption of bailouts, from the large investment banks, to the GSE's, to the individual consumers. The GSE regulators have either been completely asleep at the wheel, or letting the GSE's do whatever they want with a "wink-wink" for an eventual bailout. How dense a...