Of course, a crummy economy should give me a lot to write about. But I'm one of those fellas who actually gets depressed (just like the economy!) on occasion about the gloom and doom and wonders, innocently,

Will the economy ever improve?

Jobs data was looking somewhat positive until the last report. We're heading into the holiday season, where most retailers finally hit black on their bottom lines for the entire year, and housing still sucks. Now we find that the US Treasury cannot even print money correctly!

What is the world coming to? I'd appreciate your thoughts.

(By the way, I'm ever the optimist. Sometimes, though, it gets pretty difficult to remain positive and not just start hoarding stuff and move to the country.)

Just last week, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to directly pay billions of dollars to banks as part of its scheme to bail out insurance giant American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG).

According to committee Chairman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, the testimony that congressmen heard just didn’t “pass the smell test.”

What really stinks about the whole mess is not only the cover-up of what really happened and why, but the inability of anybody in Congress to actually do their homework and be able to frame pointed questions and get to the truth.

It’s not complicated, but it is convoluted. Here are the facts and some questions that Congress needs to ask – and that the American people deserve straight answers to.

Read the entire article here.

Technorati Tags: recession, financial crisis, mortgage meltdown, credit crunch, business cycle

One of my "must read" newsletters is written by John Mauldin and it's called – appropriately – John Mauldin's Weekly E-Letter. I get it each week in my inbox; I suggest you do the same.

I will caution you, however, that it may scare the pants off of you! Lately (the last few years), his commentary has been rather harsh. But, hey, look at the economy!

All that said, I encourage you to read this week's letter. One astonishing number came out this week: GDP growth of 5.7 percent! Yay, roll out the marching band and dancing monkeys, the recession is over!

But wait.

The Statistical Recovery Has Arrived

Before we get into the main discussion point, let me briefly comment on today's GDP numbers, which came in at an amazingly strong 5.7% growth rate. While that is stronger than I thought it would be (I said 4-5%), there are reasons to be cautious before we sound the "all clear" bell.

First, over 60% (3.7%) of the growth came from inventory rebuilding, as opposed to just 0.7% in the third quarter. If you examine the numbers, you find that inventories had dropped below sales, so a buildup was needed. Increasing inventories add to GDP, while, counterintuitively, sales from inventory decrease GDP. Businesses are just adjusting to the New Normal level of sales. I expect further inventory build-up in the next two quarters, although not at this level, and then we level off the latter half of the year.

Did you catch that? If not for the build up of inventory, our economy grew by only 2 percent. And we know these things ALWAYS revise DOWN.

Read the rest of the letter here. I think you'll learn a lot; I always do.

No, two of the best and most objective forecasters, who are not connected to investment banks or to the CNBC noise machine, have recently called the upturn. Macroeconomic Advisers, the St. Louis-based consulting firm that compiles a monthly GDP index, reported to its clients Monday that while second-quarter GDP was tracking at negative 0.1 percent (recession), the third quarter was tracking at 2.4 percent growth.

The recession is over! (Technically.) – By Daniel Gross – Slate Magazine

What About Greedy Bankers?

Some like to point out that Wall Street creating the easy home securities like ARM and sub-prime loans, but realize that Wall Street would not have been able to create these things if Alan wouldn’t have allowed interest rates to drop well below market rates.

Its Official, Alan Greenspan Is To Blame | PennyJobs

Not sure I agree with the statement (it seems like a circular argument), but I, too, place a lot of blame on Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. And my opinion isn’t influenced, in this case, by the fact that I think the Fed does too much. It’s based on the idea that one of the, if not THE, central functions of the Federal Reserve is to regulate banks and other financial institutions.

The Fed failed in its oversight of the banks; in fact, they encouraged risky behavior. I think they were of the mind that all of these “derivatives” were reducing — if not eliminating — the risk naturally inherent in risk-based securities. After all, mortgages, for example, have inherent risks and their priced almost solely according to this risk (in the form of the interest rate).

A simple economic lesson: Higher interest rate = Higher perceived risk

As interest rates dropped to historically low numbers, the market clearly perceived lower risk. But people still lose jobs, hurricanes still happen, blight still occurs.

As the bubble inflated, more and more people pumped more and more air into it. As a bubble expands, it becomes more likely to burst.

And BURST it did.

It would be interesting to know what the money multiplier was during the early 2000s versus other 5- or 10-year periods. I would guess that it was rather high.

Technorati Tags: Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve, the Fed, Fed, Wall Street, Mortgage Meltdown, Credit Crunch, interest rates, housing, recession

It’s tonight, April 23, at 8 PM ET and 7 PM PT (West Coast delay, what’s new?) – sign up here – Town Hall For Hope with Dave Ramsey (Click the “Attend the Event” yellow button).

Pirates!

Hey, look, there’s hope on the horizon! The Obama administration is sounding a bit more optimistic lately, as they should -

1. The stock market has shown 5 weeks of gains.
2. Some of the “bailout” money is being paid back, as banks determine they are “out of the woods” (and only in the sticks).
3. Some banks are betting their earnings improve – some like Wells even showing a profit - which is a GREAT sign. Once all the “toxic assets (liabilities?) are accounted for, we can move on.
4. Money from the stimulus package should start rolling out soon, further bolstering the economy
5. We’ve moved past fighting wars with countries that have no money. Now we’re fighting pirates! In victory, we should get some loot, jewels, gold, and silver. Right?

Read more here – 5 reasons Obama sounds optimistic

I say this tongue-in-cheek, of course. There are many culprits in the Mortgage Meltdown and Credit Crunch and DeRecession that followed.

But it’s refreshing to see that some knucklehead with a propeller cap had something to do with it. And the great thing about it: We all knew this.

Ironic? Nope, we’re all just stupid. Read Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street for the full, horribly depressing story.

Here’s a recap of how correlation – the heart of the issue, or horrible assumption most everybody made – works:

To understand the mathematics of correlation better, consider something simple, like a kid in an elementary school: Let’s call her Alice. The probability that her parents will get divorced this year is about 5 percent, the risk of her getting head lice is about 5 percent, the chance of her seeing a teacher slip on a banana peel is about 5 percent, and the likelihood of her winning the class spelling bee is about 5 percent. If investors were trading securities based on the chances of those things happening only to Alice, they would all trade at more or less the same price.

But something important happens when we start looking at two kids rather than one—not just Alice but also the girl she sits next to, Britney. If Britney’s parents get divorced, what are the chances that Alice’s parents will get divorced, too? Still about 5 percent: The correlation there is close to zero. But if Britney gets head lice, the chance that Alice will get head lice is much higher, about 50 percent—which means the correlation is probably up in the 0.5 range. If Britney sees a teacher slip on a banana peel, what is the chance that Alice will see it, too? Very high indeed, since they sit next to each other: It could be as much as 95 percent, which means the correlation is close to 1. And if Britney wins the class spelling bee, the chance of Alice winning it is zero, which means the correlation is negative: -1.

Now, read the story to find out all the rancid, juicy details. Here’s the crux of the matter:

They [bankers] didn’t know, or didn’t ask. One reason was that the outputs came from “black box” computer models and were hard to subject to a commonsense smell test. Another was that the quants, who should have been more aware of the copula’s weaknesses, weren’t the ones making the big asset-allocation decisions. Their managers, who made the actual calls, lacked the math skills to understand what the models were doing or how they worked. They could, however, understand something as simple as a single correlation number. That was the problem.

Oh, snap, here comes the the guy letting the single culprit off the hook:

“Li can’t be blamed,” says Gilkes of CreditSights. After all, he just invented the model. Instead, we should blame the bankers who misinterpreted it. And even then, the real danger was created not because any given trader adopted it but because every trader did. In financial markets, everybody doing the same thing is the classic recipe for a bubble and inevitable bust.

Dammit, I want my goat, as in scape!

Oh, but let’s rejoice in knowing that Li is doing his “magic” in China now, and we can celebrate our competitor across the Pacific’s demise (I’m being flip here, I don’t want to see this sort of catastrophe again, to anybody. And I like China. So do most Americans, too, judging by their Wal-Mart shopping sprees.):

In fact, he is no longer even in the US. Last year, he moved to Beijing to head up the risk-management department of China International Capital Corporation.

It’s on!

Oh, wait. Li himself said,

The most dangerous part is when people believe everything coming out of it (his model).

I guess he sort of warned us. Read the article. It’s very interesting and it’s written in such a way that even I could understand it.

Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street

As in all complex things in life, there wasn't one specific cause. Here's my general thought process on this topic.

People who want to get to the root of any cause always use a root cause analysis to determine the true cause of any issue. One of the practices that process improvement folks use is the fishbone diagram, where if you keep asking "why?" to a question you'll get to the root of it.

But this simple approach often neglects the contributing factors to an issue or a failure. For example, a barn might have caught fire and burned to the ground. The root cause might have been determined to have been a spark from a passing-by freight train.

But the contributing factors were that there was damp hay in the barn, along with kerosene, dry timber, a poorly-maintained exterior, and weeds that had grown rampant over the course of several years.

All of these things led to the fire. Of course, the fire could not have started if not for the spark. But the weeds, hay, timber, etc. allowed the fire to spread at such a rate that the fire crew could not stop it before the entire barn burned down.

Such is the case with the economy. There were many contributing factors: Declining home values, rising bad debt, companies trying to stay afloat cutting staff, phoney financial instruments dreamed up by mathematicians rather than business folks, etc. The list is literally endless.

But what was the root of it all?

As in any mania, it was the madness of crowds. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" and "pursuit of self interest" was the downfall.

Home buyers thought, "If I don't buy this house now, somebody else will."

"Or, if I don't buy this house today, it will cost me $60,000 more to buy this house in 6 months." (By the way, this was the rate of price appreciation for a below-median home price in the Bay Area in California in 2003-2006.)

Lenders said, "If I don't fund this mortgage, somebody else will."

Insurers surmised, "If I don't insure this asset, somebody else will."

Bottom line:

If I don't _____ this, somebody else will!

It was all about getting "it" before somebody else got "it." Or, in other words, what I call "relative greed." It wasn't that everybody was greedy, in and of itself. It was more along these lines:

Scenario 1
You get a 10 percent pay raise. Your neighbor gets a 15 percent pay raise.

Scenario 2
You get a 5 percent pay raise. Your neighbor gets nada.

Do you know which one most people would take? Yeah, #2. It's getting "more" than your neighbor, co-worker, competitor. That's what happened here, in my humble opinion.

It's also "the market" filling in voids. If Bank of America doesn't do this mortgage, Wachovia will. And Wachovia did. And did, and did and did and did.

BofA saw this and said, "We're losing market cap. And we're the biggest and baddest bank around." So, they got into the game, and then some!

People did it, too. If I don't buy a house now, I may never be able to afford one.

"Investors" did it, too. If I don't buy this duplex now and flip it, I may never get another golden opportunity like this.

Do yourself a favor: Read Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

You only really need to read any one of the stories. They're all the same, really. Market goes up and up, creating self-fulfilling prophecy. Something happens. Market goes down and down, creating self-fulfilling prophecy. What stops it? Who knows?

Money isn't everything. It's the only thing. Wait. That's only for football.

Enjoy life. Spend time with your family.

There are two topics that immediately come to my mind: The financial crisis and the presidential election.

First, the easy one. The financial fubar we’re in will worsen as the year ends, compounding with a further reduction in the global stock and bond markets. As time goes on, and the few remaining big banks experience their own pain, stocks will shrink, sending the Dow down near 6,000 (yeah, you read that right) and sending bonds down with it. After all, who wants to own corporate bonds? The only “safe haven” will be Treasuries and they’ll pay next to nothing, if anything at all.

Sectors that will stay strong (i.e., won’t fall as far as fast) are staple industries, like food and beverage companies (e.g., Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and McCormicks, to name three).

There will be more bank failures, worse in Europe than in the United States, though the failures here will occur (but they may be quiet); we’ll call them “mergers.” I don’t think there will be many bank runs, but there will be some.

Inflation will stay in check, but it won’t feel like it because food prices and the seasonal upswing in energy prices will happen, just like they do every winter. Unemployment will rise to a nationwide 8- to 9 percent. This could get really ugly.

(It’s a good thing I’m independently wealthy.)
(What? I’m not? Oh, crap!!!)

The dollar will appreciate relative to the Euro, not because the US economy improves, but because Europe’s economy will decline relative to ours.

The US presidential election won’t matter. Really. Obama brings hope to roughly half the population. McCain brings Palin. Either way, we’ll feel better about things for a while.

I think Obama will win, but I’ve been wrong many times on these sorts of things. I thought Kerry would trounce Bush. That’s my most recent failure in picking these things. So maybe I’m due for a winning bet.

Either way, we won’t get that big tax cut both parties have promised. Nor will we get health care relief, war relief, or better corporate governance.

America is a huge ship, not easily righted. It cannot turn on a dime, nor can it be started quickly if stalled. We’ll — at best — muddle through. At worst, we’ll re-live the 1930s.

On this one, I hope I’m wrong.

Money isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. Wait. That’s only for football.
Enjoy life. Spend time with your family.