Once upon a time there was a commenter who used to write economics by haikus.

Now, we have a new one with mystic love poems, in a post about SIVs.

Global attraction for you, Brad!

So you put these two companies in a room and have them beat each other up until they come up with a number.

My guess is that the same will be true for future-powers China and Europe. They have a certain amount of economic power now, but military power will lag, perhaps for a generation, because there is a certain sense in focusing on practical things — and leaving ruling the world to others, who have arguably lost their minds!!

Yup. In other words they took the other banks to the cleaners. Cool…….

You can’t have it both ways. Either the mortgage derivatives are worthless or are valuable. If you think that the mortgage derivatives are worthless, then you must think that the GS made a ton of money, since what GS did was to put a huge bet that the subprime market would blow up.

If you think that GS is cooking their books, then you must logically believe that the sub-prime crisis isn’t quite as bad as people present it and those mortgage-backed securities are actually valuable.

Look at the y-o-y debt numbers, they never ever tie out to the deficit.

In fact it used to be easy to do at this link:

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdhisto4.htm

…however it was taken down a few months ago. And guess what the new link stops… just before the Bush administration took office.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm

Now why would they stop at 1999? They used to have the old data up there.

…from the people who brought you a strong dollar policy.

2nd rate power->Great Depression->WW2->world power->Iraq War->coming depression->2nd rate power

Whatever we’re seeing in the economic/financial problems is just a prelude to that slide.

The US was a second rate power because before the Great Depression she practiced pure capitalism with no social bonding in place. She was run by monopoly interests and leaders who were average to incompetent. By catering to a small group of elite, the nation’s people and resources were serving that small group of coterie rather than being used to produce greater economic good. The continual demands of the elite to do away with regulations and law in order to maximize/justify their predatory activities also served to maintain her 2nd rate economic status. It was only WW2 and a spur of manufacturing activity for the war that brought her onto the world stage. Now she has done away with manufacturing and, once again, created monopolies/coterie, the natural state is to return to the past.

IL

Goldman’s two fund managers generated abuot 30 points of negative alpha in each 2006 and 2007 (ytd). A firm simply does not reward that kind of trading behavior without other things going on.

In mid-August, Goldman was leveraged to the hilt. It was getting eaten alive.

Goldman stuck all its garbage alternately in the Level 3 (toxic crap) accounting category–Goldman has the highest Level 3 composition in the industry–and sloughed the remainder onto its two hedge funds.

Why the hell else could they be keeping those two guys on board, if not to shut them up?

Not to mention those Fed repos that Goldman allegedly took extra-extra-extra long to pay back.

Maybe it’s time to short the CAD, considering that they just put a Goldman boy in the top slot. You can’t bail yourself out if you are the central bank, after all.

The best part is Goldman Sach shorted securities they themselves created and marketed.