Barney Bubbles

When Barney says he was always worried about the housing market he isn't being frank with us.

Comments

[Charlie (Colorado)]

What timing. See this at Instapundit.

[Ignatz]

I about shot my TV, Elvis style, while watching this turd on Kudlow's show yesterday.
And Larry thanked him profusely for his sage words afterward.
Guess Larry has gotten the "be kind to pinkos" memo from Immelt. CNBC is wrecking his show with format changes.

[Jane]

I don't see that Barney boredom has hit MA at all. I don't even think anyone is gearing up as an opponent. Unlike Chris Dodd fatigue, his constituents still seem perfectly content.

[PMII]

Everytime I see me or hear him, I think "TERM LIMITS". But I starting to think that with all 535 of them.

[anduril]

Can anyone somehow link to Rush's "Banking Queen" parody?

[jorod]

He should change his name to Barney Rubble. He left the financial system in rubble.

[hit and run]

Here it is, anduril -- though it might be restricted to Rush subscribers...

http://mfile.akamai.com/5020/wma/rushlimb.download.akamai.com/5020/New/bankingqueen.asx>Banking Queen

(the link should open your media player of choice to play the song...it's not a webpage)

[hit and run]

OK, in the fear and loathing that is typepad, the link may or may not be appearing in that last comment.

So, again...

http://mfile.akamai.com/5020/wma/rushlimb.download.akamai.com/5020/New/bankingqueen.asx>Banking Queen

And if that doesn't work...here's the tinyurl version you can copy/paste into a brower address bar...

http://tinyurl.com/6m96tf

I ♥ Typepad!

[anduril]

Heh. The first link worked. I think that's got to be on Rush's top ten most requested list. Thanks, hit.

[PMII]

Both links worked.

I ♥ hot chicks.

[hit and run]

Heh. The first link worked.

It's funny (typepad, I mean), I refreshed like 10 times and didn't see the original link working -- figured it was gone forever.

Silly me. Typepad moves in mysterious ways.

But, to be fair, I've had fewer issues with typepad than others here, and for that I can only credit providential favoritism.

[anduril]

Here's a reasonable facsimile of a post I somehow lost this morning. Just a series of links, but connected to the economy. My own overall take is that the Obama crowd is basically trying to reinflate the bubble--a fool's errand in any case but even more so when the Messiah is simultaneously seeking to inflate government's take to unheard of, possibly even undreamt of this side of Maoist China, levels.

First is an article by W. Joseph Stroupe, of Global Events Magazine: Profits mask coming storm. It's his take on the recently reported bank profits. He ends with this:

We may see Wall Street rallies like the one that began six weeks ago, but they won't resolve the fundamentally grim picture for the US, which is firmly in the grip of forces that it unleashed upon itself. The US government and its Wall Street accomplices lack the insight, power, ability and integrity to break the downward spiral anytime soon. Thus, it will run its own course, just as it has been doing for many months already.

Next, two from the Mogambo Guru. I'm not a regular reader of the Guru, but I found these entertaining--and he does have some points. The first is for the benefit of all those (like me) wondering wtf Paul Volcker is doing in this admin:

Volcker punctures the nonsense. And the gist:

Paul Volcker, the legendary former chairman of the Federal Reserve who heroically and against powerful political opposition defeated raging inflation arising from massive government spending in the 1960s and 1970s on wars and increased entitlements, and who is now mysteriously part of the ridiculous Barack Obama team of economic nitwits occupying in the White House, has finally said something.

After all these months of sheer economic idiocy flooding from the White House, Congress, the Federal Reserve and everywhere you turn, Paul Volcker has finally spoken.

And, even more deliciously, he said it to Fed vice chairman Donald Kohn, one of the arrogant, lowlife mental defectives whose egregious monetary actions got us into the mess we are in, at some dorky "question-and-answer session at a conference" in Nashville, Tennessee.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, "The former Fed chairman grilled Mr Kohn over the Fed's effort to convey that it considers a 2% inflation rate to be appropriate for the US economy in the long term" and he, "questions how the Fed can talk about both 2% inflation and price stability".

Mr Volcker actually said, "I don't get it", which is a Big Fat Lie (BFL), because he understands it perfectly...

That article is in some respects of the Guru's amusing Black-magic dollars. And again the gist:

As usual, I put on an adult-sized diaper and my tinfoil hat in careful preparation to look at the change in Total Fed Credit last week, and it is a good thing I did, too, because the Federal Reserve (as expressed in their secret motto "We Are Evil") created, out of thin air, a new US$29 billion in bank credit! Wow!

The interesting part is that the Federal Reserve used that new money - and a lot more - to buy $62 billion of US government debt last week! Hahaha! What a fraud! $62 billion! In one week! We are so freaking doomed!

...

And now here - here! - is Greenspan successor Ben Bernanke’s monetary insanity to create, in One Freaking Week (OFW), $62 billion whereas it took old Greenspan an entire month to come up with $10 billion! Yow! This is indeed insanity!

And finally a long and highly anecdotal account from Fortune of How Bernie did it. I can't even begin to synopsize that one.

[lurking]

Easy, anduril, like Father, like Son.
====================

[anduril]

Clusterstock notes that Insiders Selling Like Crazy, quoting Bloomberg:

Insiders from New York Stock Exchange-listed companies sold $8.32 worth of stock for every dollar bought in the first three weeks of April, according to Washington Service, which analyzes stock transactions of corporate insiders for more than 500 institutional clients.

That’s the fastest rate of selling since October 2007, when U.S. stocks peaked and the 17-month bear market that wiped out more than half the market value of U.S. companies began. The $42.5 million in insider purchases through April 20 would represent the smallest amount for a full month since July 1992, data going back more than 20 years show. That drop preceded a 2.4 percent slide in the S&P 500 in August 1992.

and linking to a Barron's article that asks: If everything's coming up roses, why are corporate insiders selling? The actual title of the Barron's article is "Shareholders Be Damned!"

[anduril]

Another Clusterstock piece: Economy: Don't Look Now, But The Worst Is Over. Unfortunately the details are less promising than the Headline:

Paul Kasriel and Asha Bangalore of Northern Trust lay out the case that the economy is turning. Highlights of their report (and the full report) are embedded below.

Importantly, Paul and Asha are NOT saying that the economy has "bottomed." Just that the rate of decline is now decelerating.

This is consistent with what even bearish economists like Nouriel Roubini believe. Where Nouriel begs to differ is when growth will resume. Paul and Asha's view, which is in line with the consensus, is that the economy will begin growing again in Q4. Nouriel thinks the economy will shrink 2% in Q4 and struggle all through 2010.

And then there are John Mauldin, Kyle Bass, and others who think that even if the economy stabilizes, it will just collapse again in 2010 and/or move sideways for years--like Japan's.

Obviously graphs and charts don't have a life of their own--they depend on the data that's fed in. However, looking at the first two graphs it occurs to me that they resemble the trajectory of a car going off a cliff. The good news is that the freefall is over and that the car has even bounced slightly upwards, however one doubts that the upward bounce will get the car back to the plateau anytime soon.