Fannie Mae holds or guarantees over $5 trillion in mortgages. A mere 1% decline would wipe them out. Is that adequately capitalized? I do not think so and neither does Minyanville’s Kevin Depew.
The Next Bail Out
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Author Archives: the editor
Nations without futures
Demography Matters on Germany….
Germany lost about 97,000 inhabitants in 2007.
And Japan…
The Japanese government reported at the end of May that the number of children (all individuals under the age of 15 years old) had fallen to approximately 17,400,000. According to Japanese government estimates, if this trend continues, Japan is on course to lose somewhere between 26% and 31% of its total population.
From Russell Shorto essay in the New York Times….
I put this to Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau, who monitors global fertility on a daily basis from his perch in Washington. Is it possible that these are basically “good problems,” that Europeans, having trimmed their birthrates, are actually on the right path? That all they have to do is adjust their economies, find creative ways to shrink their cities, get more young and old people into jobs, so that they can keep their pension and health-care systems functioning?
Haub wasn’t buying it. “Maybe tinkering with the retirement age and making other economic adjustments is good,” he said. “But you can’t go on forever with a total fertility rate of 1.2. If you compare the size of the 0-to-4 and 29-to-34 age groups in Spain and Italy right now, you see the younger is almost half the size of the older. You can’t keep going with a completely upside-down age distribution, with the pyramid standing on its point. You can’t have a country where everybody lives in a nursing home.”
I will take Global Warming over living with this…..
While safety agencies in France are playing down the risk to public health from Tuesday’s uranium leak at the Tricastin nuclear plant, water-usage bans have worried skeptical residents and environmental organizations.
Following Tuesday’s accidental leak of over 30,000 liters (7,925 gallons) of a solution containing uranium in southern France, nuclear safety agencies are minimizing the possible danger. But emergency bans put on water use in the area by local authorities have worried residents and environmental organizations at a time when much of Europe is re-embracing nuclear power as way to slow global warming.
Try it, it's really neat. . .
The thing that’s actually funny about this video is the commentor who says, “i gave that to my fish and they all died.”
He probably used some cheap imitation brand. For tricks like this you really have to buy the name-brand stuff.
Real Pasture
Go to this Blog post by Gene Logsdon and look at the picture. Then go for a drive in the country and look at the pasture that the cows are eating on. It makes Logsdon’s argument for him.
The FDIC is about to get its first real test
Don’t have time to write more at present. Read this for a good overview.
You have to admire the Chinese's sense of style Part II
Don't Go To New Jersey
This would just be silly if it were not for real…..
Caught speeding in Highland Park in April in his father’s Acura RSX, Ryan Narciso found out the hard way about a recent change in a New Jersey gun law that could send him to prison for three years.
The 20-year-old sales clerk at a shop at Menlo Park Mall and former Middlesex County College student had a pellet handgun in the car, according to an indictment filed last week in Superior Court, New Brunswick.
The gun, a Gamo P-23, was sitting under the rear window of the 2004 coupe. Looking like a larger-caliber handgun, the firearm drew a quick response from the bicycle-patrol officer who stopped Narciso for doing 40 mph in a 25-mph zone. With gun drawn, the officer arrested him.
Narciso’s father, an architect, bought the pellet gun at a garage sale a few years ago to fend off squirrels that made their way into the attic of the families home on Mount Pleasant Avenue in Edison, the father and Narciso’s lawyer, Amilcar Perez of Perth Amboy, said.
Under a new state law, Narciso’s possession of the weapon qualifies as a Graves Act offense. Narciso could face what prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys call a “hard three,” meaning three years with no prospect of parole.
All this trouble because New Jersey defines an air gun as a firearm. What part of fire don’t they understand? With reasoning like this, it is only a matter a time before they start arresting people for firearm violations because they have a pocket knife in their pocket.
This Reason article has the explanation of how New Jersey defines a fire arm in the comments section.
Will GM go bankrupt in the next 2 years?
As of June 30th, GM slipped beneath $20 billion in remaining cash assets but is burning $17 billion per year. In other words, GM probably has just 9 to15 months of life left, at the most. And if I were one of GM’s creditors, I’d prepare to swoop in and call all my loans after Congress goes on holiday break shortly after the election. No one will be able to stop it and GM will be history. And the lenders will still only get pennies on the dollar for each dollar they loaned.
I am not sure where this gentleman gets his figures from. Best I could tell from a quick search no one else is using them at the moment. But it could be he has a more updated source then I have.
At any rate, there is no doubt that a lot of mainstream forecasters have started worrying about GM going bankrupt. And lately, when mainstream forecasters start worrying about something, it means that it is a sure thing.
Poem of the Week: 7/6/08-7/12/08
This week’s essay of the week made me think of this song from Bob Dylan.