G_T wrote just this past Saturday, 9/29: (#98617)
"Why does your friend [Gene Arensberg, the R.I. columnist] think this credit upheaval is so darned serious? I submit for yours and his recall, the words printed just last week about the "increase in loss reserves" being currently cooked into the nations banks, and not really visible until UPCOMING quarterly earnings on banks are released.
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Damn, I must be prescient...did anyone besides me notice the Citibank's 60% haircut pre-announcement today on their earnings, due to increasing loan loss reserves, and "writing down" various structured products (aka derivatives) and some CDOs as well, and think of my postulates regarding same on Saturday past?
And all the fools on the street saying how much better Q4 is going to look due to Citi's courageous pre-announcement today by comparison. What a short-sided bunch of talking heads!!!
That crowd needs to go back and study how many quarters of write downs in the So. American' loan gambit it took just to get the mess OFF the banking industry's books and back into the Federal Reserve's possession so it could be cancelled, and the banks survive. That was a DARK ERA indeed.
It should be noted that So. American fiasco occured BEFORE the hedging indexes and all this derivative (structured products) modality was created and then implemented in 1989.
Ayup, waaaaaaaaaay before.
Do I mean to imply it will be worse this time, due to the creation of Derivatives YES, THAT'S WHAT I'M IMPLYING allrighty... Why? Because the derivatives have permitted a minimum of 10X magnification of the problem due to derivatives.
As Sinclair's legal beagles' published opinion have proven to my satisfaction, CDO's are 6% actual real estate backed and 94% derivative paper on that 6% actual. That's somewhere between shocking and absolute knock the wind out of the economy frightening to get my arms around.
Good thing Saudi Prince, Al the Weed, has deep oily pockets, yes?
G_T
PS...V.P.,
We've all been using "Got Gold?" and "Ingot We Trust" for darn near 8 years...long before Gene A got long this current secular bull mkt in Au... |
