Good News and Bad News

          Number crunchers at a worldwide leader in financial services technology, whatever that is, just crunched out some gut-wrenching financial services technology numbers, and we’re passing a dalliance of them along, probably as a financial services technology public service announcement.

         The good news is, those of you who live in North Dakota have seen home prices rise by 17.7% over the past 5 years.  In Vermont, single-family housing values are nearly back to peak, as that state recorded only mild increases during what was a pre-2007 real estate bubble most everywhere else.

         If you’re from Nevada, however, where housing prices crashed a bubblicious 57.9% between early 2007 and the start of 2012, and you closed at the highs, the bad news is beyond awful.  It’s going to take your sorry a$$ 40 YEARS to break even.  In Arizona that time is 26 years, and Florida, 15.  If the financial services technology guys are right, many seniors in those three retirement meccas will never get their money back, forecast to otherwise occur between 2027 and flipping 2052.

        The number crunchers came up with a national average of 11 years, but it's probably meaningless to the individual homeowner given those financial services technology variations away from the financial services technology mean.

Fly on the Cyberspace Wall

         (Today’s piece in bloomberg.com by Andrea Tan, Gavin Finch, and Liam Vaughn provided so much material in and underlying this blog we don’t know where their part ends and ours begins.)

         “Must be damn difficult to trade, man,” the trader at the German bank replied. “Especially you not in the loop.”

         Not in the loop.  Nothing we at The MacDougal Post could ever write would describe the rigged-market pricing mechanism, and your financial chances because of it, clearer than that - understated as the observation may be.  Difficult, man.  Not in the loop.

         That’s you, subscribers, and all of us outside the Crime Families in every financial marketplace on Earth.

         The German bank’s trader was responding to a Scottish bank’s trader in cyberspace records the Scottish bank eventually used to explain why their guy was getting fired over this Libor thing.

         You’ll recall that Libor, the London Interbank Offering Rate, is a benchmark used to set oodles of interest rates, and consequently bond prices, all over the world. 

         “Libor”, as the Bloomberg.com piece explains, “is calculated by a poll carried out daily on behalf of the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) that asks firms to estimate how much it would cost to borrow from each other for different periods and in different currencies.  The BBA signaled yesterday it will give up oversight of the rate.  The top and bottom quartiles of quotes are excluded, and those left are averaged and published for individual currencies before noon in London.”  The two banks referred to above are among those that set Libor.

         “What’s the call on Libor,” the Scottish bank’s guy in Singapore asked one of the head office traders in another, and equally revealing, conversation.

         “Where would you like it, Libor that is?”

         “Mixed feelings, but mostly I’d like it all lower so the world starts to make a little sense.”

         "The whole HF ( hedge fund) world will be kissing you instead of calling me if Libor move lower,” another Scottish Bank trader joined in.

          “OK, I will move the curve down 1 basis point, maybe more if I can,” the wise guy with clout replied.

Priest Murders Nun, Part II

         The nun was very strict.

         We’ve been asked to pass that along.  If you went to parochial school, we’re told you’ll understand why. 

         If you went to parochial school, understand why we’re passing that along, and are planning to travel to Toledo to testify for the defense, don’t.  The fact that you shared the same kind of thoughts with the defendant for 13 years, or whatever, isn’t germane.

         You didn’t actually go ahead and do it.

Priest Murders Nun

         In a bizarre week that saw 1) a ludicrous rich man who stashes surplus money in secret bank accounts overseas trying to tell us we should lower taxes on rich men because that surplus money will magically stay in our banks to create jobs here, 2) a daffy Kenyan/Indonesian Muslim from this anti-American, White-bashing South-Side Chicago “church” trying to tell us we should redistribute wealth in our country because that redistribution will miraculously not sow the seeds of bloody revolution here, and 3) harebrained anonymous bureaucrats at the Post Office trying to tell us we should help them save their cushy Government jobs by increasing our junk mail …… in a week that saw all this happening, we read where …..

         A priest murdered a nun.

         Holy Toledo, subscribers, talk about your signs.  Okay, the slaying took place 26 years ago, but why are we just learning about it now? 

         Clearly, the End of Days is nigh.  Nine stab wounds left the mark of the cross upon her chest.

         There was more, but that part is too much even for us.  The Post will just go with the cross thing on her chest, and leave the rest of that defilement alone.

         Holy Toledo, were there signs.

A Monetary Boat Shipwrecked in Fiscal Waters

          With QE 1, Fed Chairman Ben Bananas fooled a lot of people, but thanks to informed bloggers like your MacDougal Post, by QE2 folks had started to understand that all the sneaky rapscallion was doing with his Q’s and E’s was …….

         PRINTING MONEY, PRINTING MONEY, PRINTING MONEY.

         By QE 3 even the talking heads were talking their fool heads off about this hooligan Central Banker and the hyperinflation vortex that is our Nation’s future unless …….

         Unless the Boogieman has his way with Bananas come next January.

         That’s right, subscribers.  We don’t like it any more than you do, but if Carried Interest wins, a Paul Ryan on the ticket may turn out to be the only good thing that’s come out of our nation's capitol since that peanut farmer got attacked by a wascally wabbit and lost out at the box office to Bonzo Goes to Washington, whence all manner of things started tumbling down, runaway consumer price increases notable among them.

         The Boogieman is a world-class Fed basher, maybe the Number One Bananas basher of all time, and, after a cursory review of his bloodier attacks, turns out The MacDougal Post editorial staff is on board with everything the VP candidate has been sparring over.  All of it is spot on.

           A GOP win in November may be the only chance you’ve got.  Well, the only chance your wealth management account has got anyway. 

         That’s what it’s come to with Ben Bananas at the helm.

         Monetary policy being dead in the water, the Fed’s flagship marooned on a treacherous fiscal reef.  And the Mother of all Tsunamis approaching our negligently exposed financial shore.