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Politics : Welcome to Slider's Dugout -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SliderOnTheBlack who wrote (9065)	4/7/2008 7:33:20 AM
From: TH	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50769

Good information Slider. Now I have to get busy buying up foreclosed homes in the depths of Detroit for $500 bucks a piece. I think I'll get me a dozen, and collect 84K of that free tax credit milk from the Fed's endless udder. GT TH

To: SliderOnTheBlack who wrote (9065)	4/7/2008 7:44:50 AM
From: re3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50769

slider, any more thoughts on the swissie (FXF)? is any time a good entry point or do you have a particular suggestion for that ? thx

To: SliderOnTheBlack who wrote (9065)	4/7/2008 8:21:53 AM
From: Kpain	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50769

Fed Didn't Inflate the Housing Bubble: Greenspan By Reuters \| 07 Apr 2008 \| 04:36 AM ET Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has defended himself from charges that easy U.S. monetary policy created the current credit crisis by inflating a housing bubble, and instead blamed professional investors. In an article in Monday's Financial Times newspaper, Greenspan wrote that the housing bubble which inflated between 2001 and 2006 had not been unique to the United States. "The U.S. bubble was close to median world experience and the evidence that monetary policy added to the bubble is statistically very fragile," Greenspan wrote. Under Greenspan the Fed cut rates from 6.5 percent in late 2000 to 1.0 percent in mid-2003. Most other leading central banks followed suit, although not to such low levels apart from the Bank of Japan. The Fed has been accused of keeping rates too low for too long as it sought to help the U.S. economy following the collapse of internet stocks and the blow to confidence from the Sept.11, 2001 attacks. But Greenspan noted that U.S. economic conditions were still sluggish as late as June 2003, when the Fed cut rates to the 1.0 percent low. It began raising them a year later but even then, he said, monetary conditions were not bubble-making. "Both the monetary base and the M2 indicator rose less than 5 percent in the subsequent year (2004), scarcely tinder for a massive credit expansion," he wrote. Instead, Greenspan placed blame for the U.S. housing and subprime mortgage crisis at the door of investors. "The core of the subprime problem lies with the misjudgments of the investment community," he wrote. Subprime-mortgage securitisation exploded because it appeared mis-priced and there were few delinquencies and defaults, "creating the illusion of great profit opportunities." Lenders were then pressed by securitisers for mortgage paper "with little concern about its quality." Greenspan also said he doubts tightening of regulation would have solved the problem. "The problem is not the lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations about what regulators are able to prevent," he wrote.

To: SliderOnTheBlack who wrote (9065)	4/7/2008 9:10:07 AM
From: jim_p	Respond to of 50769

"Mo weaker dollar = Mo Flation" According to our Fed we don't have an inflation problem....just look at our "new" calculation of "core" inflation. What they fail to tell you is that in the past, energy prices were part of the “normal” business cycle. As the economy heated up, energy prices would rise due to increased demand and lagging new supplies. The economy would then go into a mild recession and energy prices would fall. A major part of prior business cycle recovery was the decline in energy prices which acted like a tax reduction that helped stimulate the economy along with the lower interest rates brought on by the Fed. Today we have a Fed who doesn't believe in a normal business cycle. They believed we could go from bubble to bubble without ever having a recession. The Fed still uses "core" inflation, but without a business cycle "core" inflation has no meaning. The only reason "core" inflation was ever used in the first place was because energy and food prices would have wide fluctuations as part of the normal business cycle. Today food and energy price have been going up for a sustained time period and they have not been having fluctuations, they have only been going higher and higher. Now that's it clear that we have been slowing for over a year and that we have been in a recession for the last 3-4 months, energy and food prices are not only still going up, but food and energy inventories are at multi decade lows. So why would anyone still make reference to "core" inflation when it has become completely meaningless? Jim