Three days ago Galveston's refineries went through Hurricane Ike and we
lost a few oil platforms.

Today, Charleston's gas stations are "out of gas" to fill the cars.....or
are telling their customers they are out of gas, when they're not. I can
say that because I just saw a guy headed out to the tanks of a local gas
station near my home, after dark, so I swung around on the scooter and
parked in the lot across the street to watch him. There are plastic bags
covering all the pumps and they've taken down the prices from the sign,
turning out the lights.

He dipped that long measuring stick down into 5 tanks full of fuel.

The damned SOBs are trying to pull the same **** they did in 1973 all over
again......closing full gas stations to get that price up over $5, 6, 7 or
$10/gallon.

Is your city out of fuel, too?

I got a new law. Any gas station closed is to be inspected for fuel
storage. Any station found with fuel and closed has its business license
revoked. Any COMPANY owned station found with fuel has ALL the company
owned stations in the city's license revoked.

*******s....

Lehman Brothers Holdings went bankrupt, today, another scam on investors.
Tonight their stock is worth 19c/share down from $67 this year.

Isn't it amazing how Wall Street can simply make billions vanish in a day.

Set up the gallows. I'll pull the first levers.

"Larry" wrote in message
...
Lehman Brothers Holdings went bankrupt, today, another scam on investors.
Tonight their stock is worth 19c/share down from $67 this year.

Isn't it amazing how Wall Street can simply make billions vanish in a day.

Set up the gallows. I'll pull the first levers.


That should put a lot of luxury yachts, penthouse apartments, and cars on
the market.

These *******s have been paying themselves too much for too long, using your
money, now their chickens are coming home to roost with a vengeance.

Dennis.

"Dennis Pogson" wrote
now their chickens are coming home to roost with a vengeance.

Chickens are the most brutally vindictive of all poultry...

In article ,
"Dennis Pogson" wrote:

"Larry" wrote in message
...
Lehman Brothers Holdings went bankrupt, today, another scam on investors.
Tonight their stock is worth 19c/share down from $67 this year.

Isn't it amazing how Wall Street can simply make billions vanish in a day.

Set up the gallows. I'll pull the first levers.


That should put a lot of luxury yachts, penthouse apartments, and cars on
the market.

These *******s have been paying themselves too much for too long, using your
money, now their chickens are coming home to roost with a vengeance.

and no-one will be brought to book for this debacle.

*Someone* dreamed up this sub-prime crap, and with some forensic
accountancy, they can be found, but it won't be done because it will
tread on too many toes.

--
Molesworth

--
http://www.stcustards.free-online.co.uk/

On 16 Sep 2008 10:30:05 -0500, Dave wrote:

*Someone* dreamed up this sub-prime crap, and with some forensic
accountancy, they can be found, but it won't be done because it will
tread on too many toes.

Sub-prime was dreamed up because there was only just so much
legitimate mortgage debt to go around. The whole business of
packaging debt and then selling/securitizing it via bonds was highly
profitable while the fun lasted. Even more profitable was borrowing
money at very low interest rates and using the funds to buy high yield
bonds. The profits were limited only by your ability to borrow and
the availability of high yield investments. Sub-prime was invented to
meet that demand. It was clear to me 5 years ago that the bond
holders would eventually be left holding the bag just like the Savings
and Loan industry was caught out back in the 80s. What wasn't clear
to me was that the financial industry had drunk a lot of their own
toxic Kool Aid and would end up being the ultimate bag holders.

On Sep 16, 10:26*am, Wayne.B wrote:
....
Sub-prime was dreamed up because there was only just so much
legitimate mortgage debt to go around. * The whole business of
packaging debt and then selling/securitizing it via bonds was highly
profitable while the fun lasted. *...

If you need one person to blame it is Alan Greenspan. But, at a macro
scale I think sub-prime was a symptom rather than the root problem.
The problem writ large is that real wages haven't kept pace with
industrial growth. The distance between what consumers can afford and
what producers need to sell has every increasingly been bridged with
consumer credit. As traditional credit sources backed by well
understood collateral were used up "innovative" lines of credit, like
sub-prime and many new "derivatives", were created to support a
"healthy" growth rate. Rules that were put in place in the last
great consumer credit crunch have been loosened all around to maintain
liquidity. The result is that this correction comes with an
unprecedented amount of leverage. The scale and depth of this crisis
is daunting but it is fundamentally a question of balancing
consumption and production. Blaming greed is like blaming gravity;
they're just part of the structure of the world and they are with us
always in good times and bad.

-- Tom.

On Sep 16, 11:38 am, Dave wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:26:06 -0700 (PDT), "
said:

Rules that were put in place in the last
great consumer credit crunch have been loosened all around to maintain
liquidity

What rules were those?

Rules like my rule against posting off topic! My apologies to the
group and I'll let you have the last word, Dave. My thesis is that
banking deregulation, securities deregulation and insurance
deregulation have been driven by the need to expand consumer credit.
Many of those regulations that were loosened were legacies of the
Great Depression and included collateralization requirements for banks
and insurers, strict separation banking and securities services and
book keeping among others. Gory detail is available to a Google user
and there's some general discussion he http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation.

-- Tom.

Wayne.B wrote:
On 16 Sep 2008 10:30:05 -0500, Dave wrote:

*Someone* dreamed up this sub-prime crap, and with some forensic
accountancy, they can be found, but it won't be done because it will
tread on too many toes.

Sub-prime was dreamed up because there was only just so much
legitimate mortgage debt to go around. The whole business of
packaging debt and then selling/securitizing it via bonds was highly
profitable while the fun lasted. Even more profitable was borrowing
money at very low interest rates and using the funds to buy high yield
bonds. The profits were limited only by your ability to borrow and
the availability of high yield investments. Sub-prime was invented to
meet that demand. It was clear to me 5 years ago that the bond
holders would eventually be left holding the bag just like the Savings
and Loan industry was caught out back in the 80s. What wasn't clear
to me was that the financial industry had drunk a lot of their own
toxic Kool Aid and would end up being the ultimate bag holders.


For years people have been whining that they couldn't buy houses
because they didn't have good enough jobs, if they had jobs at all. So
credit requirements were loosened and loosened by our illustrious
govmint so ALL could buy houses. So much for socialism.
Gordon

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:00:44 -0700, Gordon wrote:

For years people have been whining that they couldn't buy houses
because they didn't have good enough jobs, if they had jobs at all. So
credit requirements were loosened and loosened by our illustrious
govmint so ALL could buy houses. So much for socialism.

The government does not set credit standards for lending, at least not
in the US.

On 16 Sep 2008 16:27:02 -0500, Dave wrote:

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:13:48 -0400, Gogarty said:

How do you say "Glass/Steagall?" Outmoded? No longer relevant to the modern
world? Ha!

Please explain how repeal of Glass-Steagall is responsible in any way for
the current mortgage problems.

While not the whole answer, repeal of G-S allowed mortgage origination
and bond underwriting to live under the same corporate umbrella which
created incentives to originate more mortgages.