Mark F. Barnes

They are searching for Crunchie, fleeing the scene of the crime with her Ruben on Rye in tow.

Funny you mention that, I talked to Pete Miller two days ago about a bunch of stuff I have back-order and some issues I am having out of the Clarksburg office, he's not in any bind, other than he's still got stuff prepaid on the mill line for the next three years. That activity they are seeing in the market is just paranoia out of those that got in late and are now in their ass pocket in the market. They must have thought that $148.00/bbl oil was going to last forever. They should have got in when it was @ $25/bbl, and thought it was junk. Wait until OPEC shut about six valves.

OPEC is already plotting to shut a few valves to run the price back up, and believe me it won't take long. Have you noticed any relief at the pump? The last time Oil was at this price gas was two dollars a gallon. Oil prices go up and within a few hours the pump prices go up. Oil has been dropping for weeks now, where's the relief. Keep listening to James Cordier and you will be broke, if you are optioning oil stocks.

Anyone with any automaker stock better dump now, because bankruptcy will kill you and leave you without anything.

More specifically, they aren't evicting tenants who have been paying their rent but are living in a place where the landlord hasn't been paying the mortgage and is being foreclosed on.

flipper

I think that if there is going to be a direct relief plan by the government, these should be some of the first targets. Buy the note and restructure the loan to allow those renters to become buyers and if there is any equity in the home, they gain all that after one year of good payment history. And the landlord, he gets squat but a hit on his/her FICO.

You mean other than the obvious?

Rum and Cigarettes! What's your favorite brands? I might stock up if I need a "good" lawyer!

Hey Red, when XON went 59.50 straight out of the blocks, did you go check your shorts, that was ugly for a while.?

Hang in there Wayne, we will bounce back, I am figuring how to buy a few thing when we hit bottom and level out. The ride back up will be slow, but profitable to those that make the right picks.

People were going to be dumping first thing this morning, hopefully it will rebound and level off around a -200, that's certain a lot less damage

Why? What happens Friday?

Do I need to still answer that for you this morning?

7885 and dropping

He thinks he's back in the Hanoi Hilton

Well all day today they've argued who's Idea this 300 million dollar mortgage buyout, it really was. Obama says he said it 3 months ago, McCain dropped the bomb the other night in the debate. I really don't give a damn who's idea it was, I've read the bill, the wording is already there, but I can't see this working very successfully unless certain things are done. First off every loan that will be considered for this better be closely audited and scrutinized for one thing, proper documentation. If there is any funny business involved there by either party, tough nookies, liquidate the house, see you later. Or make those houses available for VA loans for our men and women coming home from that godforsaken litter-box, across the drink. If the loans are valid, and everything was done correctly, then try and restructure the loan to help these people stay in their homes. But if there were any professionals that were involved in illegal conduct, that mean appraisers, mortgage brokers, bankers, whoever, jerk their license and get them out of the business. And if at all possible, prosecute them for fraud or theft. So before one penny of that money is spent, their needs to be some guidelines laid down, and there has to be equal enforcement of those guidelines.

Since this is the 21st Century, will we have drive-thru bread lines and GPS locaters for the soup kitchens?

I have to really appreciate your levity Red......

Certainly variable rate credit is a scam. But, I would disagree only slightly with Mark's premise that it is not the buyers' fault at all. When it comes to government bailouts of homeowners' mortgages it IS the buyers' fault. Like Mark, and like Kinkaid, I only borrowed what I could afford, NOT what the mortgage broker said I could afford. Though my first mortgage was only 10% down, I only borrowed $105,000...HALF what my friends were borrowing.

Now, when it comes to the LENDERS, blaming the customer is dodging responsibility. If I buy a car cheap, and the dealer goes under because he lost money, is that MY fault? Of course not! Lenders post the rates they will lend at. They create the down payment requirements. THEY control the documenting process! If they are uncomfortable with the documents, NO LAW IN THE UNITED STATES requires them to lend to that applicant! Anyone telling you otherwise is lying. Lenders under the gun for making ridiculously risky loans with NO documentation, and selling those loans to investors as low risk investments are looking for scapegoats. And, lo and behold, the poor and the minorities get to take their lumps once again. Hogwash!

This crisis is still brand new. Cadillac is still running their "it is good to be rich" commercials, incongruous as they seem today. It will take some time for all of us to come to grips with the fact that our excessive greed and consumerism guaranteed this outcome. Until we reach that point where we can accept our share of the blame for our own demise, some of us will continue to listen to the blame shifting by those who can afford a publicist onto those who cannot. No one forced Wall Street to invent CDOs. No one forced JPMorganChase to invent Credit Default Swaps. And, NO ONE forced wealthy investors and hedge funds to buy them!

Lay off the poor people. The greedy rich dug this grave.

Red you know we've talked about this before, I just misworded, what I meant to say it's not all the buyers fault. You can go back through here a many times where we've both talk about bogus documentation being presented, but still, it's the lenders responsibility to check that paperwork out too. Everyone signs a 4506-T Form, but these lenders aren't following up with it. They just let these people produce whatever paperwork they can and call it good. Everything has to be followed up on. The borrower that falsified documentation, and the lenders that used in-house appraisers to inflate home values, and accepted false documents, in too much of a hurry to get at that commission, are just as guilty as Barney Frank and the others that pushed all this from the top. There are a lot of players in this scam, all as guilty as the other. I really don't feel much compassion for people that claim to be victimized, when they knew damn good and well that they could afford that home, and lied their way in to get it.

Well folks if you have the liquid to get in long, this time next week will be the time to do it. Couple of my guys are predicting bottom in the low 7's, then we'll have some stagnant time, before it starts easing back up next year. I'm sure these full blown short players are loving this volatility, but it's tough on the weak hearted. I just suck it up and keep my eye on that total gain column, but it will make you want to take a drink. Folks we are just going to have to tighten up the belts and dig in, we'll come out of this, I guess the weeks without power were just a boot camp for this fiasco. Just remember those days with nothing, no power, a/c, no access to your money in the bank, it can be worse.

If you have a variable interest loan that you can lock down at anytime, take advantage of it, it's going to be down. Pay down some debt if you can. Just don't go out and add to it, no matter how temping it may be. Hang in there, no bread lines forming yet.

Getting my ass handed to me again today, and it's only Thursday. The ride felt good, but it ain't helping this.

The Fertitta and Salvato families were huge in the gambling rackets on the island. Franco "Frank" Salvato was at one time a kingpin for Joe Bonanno. I have a lot of direct info on a lot of this. My father was a lead investigator for the Texas Rangers Task Force on Organized Crime, for years. My father kept copies of files on every case he ever worked on. After he passed away, I inherited boxes of files, store rooms full. All sorts of stuff, even stuff on Jack Kennedy's assasination. You have some cool stuff on your hands, somewhere I have a photo of Frank Salvato and Joe Bonanno togther at Joe Campisi's place in Dallas. I'll try to dig it up.

DOW is flirting with the 9000 mark, man I think I am going get on my Hog and go for a ride.......

Mem get yourself another coffee and watch it again.....

Left-Handed U.S. Presidents

James A. Garfield (1831-1881) 20th

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) 31st

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) 33rd

Gerald Ford (1913- ) 38th

Ronald Reagan (1911 - ) 40th

George H.W. Bush (1924- ) 41st

Bill Clinton (1946- ) 42nd

Left-Handed U.S. Politicos

Senator Bill Bradley, Rhodes scholar, basketball star

McGeorge Bundy, presidential advisor

Benjamin Franklin, statesman/publisher/scientist

Steve Forbes, businessman/publisher

Jean-Marc Froidevaux ?, Suiss politician

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Supreme Court Justice

Senator Daniel Inouye

Anthony Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice

Brigadier Gen. Lee Hsien Loon, Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore

Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense

Col. Oliver North, White House aid

H. Ross Perot, businessman

William Perry, Secretary of Defense

Nelson Rockefeller, Vice President

Senator Hugh Scott

Robert Wagner, New York mayor

Henry Wallace, Vice President

[senator Bob Dole - switched to left due to injury]

You got to admit this is Funny......I'm sure that poor bastard wanted to crawl in a hole and pull it in on himself..........

Well, Mark, John McCain and his campaign staff just showed how little they understand of the gravity and scale of this crisis when they thought that they could just stop talking about it and Americans would forget about it. If one needed just one more reason why John McCain is NOT the person to lead this country during the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression, this is it.

McCain just doesn't get it. He admitted as much back in the spring, and now that this has ballooned into the most serious crisis of our time, he wishes we would forget that he is incompetent on the economy. There are plenty of people willing to forget his incompetence, people who think abortions and terrorists in caves, and lower taxes are more important than the entire financial system imploding...that is why Obama only has an 8 point lead...but for those of us that have even a limited grasp of the severity of the problem, and the recognition that it will take a person of intelligence AND good advice to get us out of it, McCain is simply the wrong guy. No one can make the claim that Obama will get us out of this mess. But, he at least has the intelligence to understand the problem, and he appears to have the demeanor to listen to his experts, two qualities that McCain lacks.

And I can go along with a lot of that, actually most of it. Team McCain has let the GOP down in the strategy area of this campaign. I have a hard time fully siding with either of these politicians, because neither have addressed this crisis in a way that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. And the more I read the worse it gets. I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop, because I really have a feeling it's going to. Don't know why, it's just a gut feeling. I've sat and watched my money take a beating in the market, but I'm in the long for it, so I know eventually it will recover. And besides I have more than one backup plan, I use to have a great big plan, before the First Cayman Bank went south, but there's always plan "B". Oh well I can hold my breath for four years, we'll see what the future holds for us all.

No matter who is in there TJ, taxes are going to be raised, they have to be after all this hot check writing that's been going on in the last two weeks. It's inevitable.

I kinda view this last debate as an Ali/Quarry fight. It's really not that Obama has done such an outstanding job of debating, but McCain has done so poorly. Whoever his head handler is in these debate needs to return the check he took. He constantly let's McCain wander back to that same old boring rhetoric about how he set his campaign aside, suspended his campaign, Jesus somebody shoot the idiot in the leg. The GOP has no one to blame but themselves, because McCain, whose lack of clarity, conviction, and understanding on the economy has handed the Democrats a win on this issue, where a more economically savvy Republican could have won the day. McCain just really sucks as a debater I don't care how they slice it. Obama is poised to win with a clear mandate for his broad message of regulating the economy. McCain has not forced Obama to give specifics - either on which regulations were "shredded" by Republicans and caused this downturn, or on what sort of new regulations Obama wants to create. All is not completely lost for the GOP, though it looks pretty friggin dim. The election less than four weeks away, and anything can happen in that time. Just what could happen to save McCain and stem the GOP losses, though, is hard to imagine right now. It's actually going to take a huge blunder by Obama, or some bombshell of a skeleton to come dancing out of the closet. I think the skirt has peaked her points, and McCain is beginning to flail about, like a fish out of water. I can understand the road the GOP took in trying to strategize this campaign. McCain's campaign was foolishly honest, and correct, in admitting that they need to change the subject away from the economy. But today, with the implosion of the economy, that looks like a long shot.

The more I look at the fine print. and follow the trail of paper on this entire fallout in our current economy, the more I realize how much I unconsciously had my head in the sand at times. While everyone is point the finger of guilt at Fannie and Freddie, there is a lot more to this story the more I read. I am beginning to believe the fetus of today's financial meltdown lies in part, in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. This fine piece of work was a law passed in 1977 and signed in to law by a Naive President Jimmy Carter. The sole purpose of the CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods, and help try and get them into a better residential situation. However it gave an opening for abusers to take advantage of deregulation. That in turn has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "sub-prime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers. A lot of this has been attributed to very high profile and connected Community Organizers like Madeline Talbott, they nice plush private offices, they make scenes inside bank lobbies, staged in-your-face protests in the bank or on the working floors and from articles I've read, even often mobs confronting executives at their homes and influenced financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers. I can't really say they forced anybody into doing anything, force is a strong word, however any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN. This is an ugly business. In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from all these banks and lenders.

Now this is where Fannie and Freddie come in later. All these banks are already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when "government sponsored" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets. They claim that now that these bad loans were packaged in these black boxes of deceit, but the more I look at it, the more I think Fannie and Freddie knew exactly what they were doing, because the had the politicians in their pockets. Fannie and Freddie acted in response to administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However good the real motive was, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards and the financial disaster we see today is upon us.

Let me back track a little. Now this grand ACORN sub-prime loan shakedown racket was not the brain child of Madeline Talbott, but she was one of the main shysters involved. She was also, IMHO is in on the ground floor of this catastrophic down-turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies. She's been the director of Chicago ACORN for many many years, Talbott is a specialist in "direct action", which is an organizers' term for militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a "living wage" law, shouting like a frigging banshee as she was arrested for inciting a mob and disorderly conduct. The papers reported that six people were arrested as 200 Acorn protesters tried to storm the Chicago City Council session. Here's a tid bit to ponder on, guess who her legal council was during this legal issue and arrest. Barack Obama, he was the legal council for ACORN Chicago for eight years. But I guess her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making all the shaky and risky mortgage loans. Now I know you are all thinking ole Mark has lost his mind, how can this CO from Chicago, be held responsible for all this mess, well I am not saying she was solely responsible for it, but her and ACORN cut a wide swath, and as you melt it down the layers or should I say players start to appear. There is no one person that can be blamed for this financial meltdown we are currently experiencing. The list of guilty parties is long and distinguished. But there were a lot of people that also tried to cover all this up, and should be held just as accountable. There is no party lines when comes to those involved in this, because they are on both sides of the fence. However there was a line involved in this deal and it was the line of right and wrong, and that line was crossed. Not only was it crossed it was obliterated. And greedy people took advantage of loopholes in the system to line their pockets and inevitably fleece ours. They took full advantage of strategically placed politicians that they bought off, knowing full well they had markers to pull in when they needed them. And they have done so, and we are stuck with the tab. I know I have had to contribute my share, as I've watched stocks go to hell.

Fair or not, the GOP and McCain are bearing the blame for the economy, which right now is more terrifying than horrible for most people. That is, fear about the future is far deeper and more widespread than actual economic suffering. Not knowing or being unsure is really torture on some people. And they sit back and worry, and wonder, not knowing which way to turn. And the people we would normally turn to for guidance and advice, just look at us and shrug. It's touchy business folks, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Here's an article on the McCain "plan".

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27076838/

Obama actually pushed for a similar plan on October 24. The provision for such a buyout is included in the $700 Billion Bailout legislation. Still, there is no statement by McCain or anyone else that the buyout would be at firesale prices. In fact, if the Treasury is only offering a firesale price, there is no incentive for the banks to sell. It would do nothing to help.

As for Mark's comments, indeed, the devil is in the details. If the buyouts are contingent on buyers having been honest in their applications, I can see buying the mortgage and renegotiating. Remember, we're trying to save a cratering economy here. We're going to have to hold our nose on a lot of this stuff. Poor financial decisions by buyers and lenders alike are what got us into this. Buyers who bought into the financial experts' opinions that prices would continue to rise may qualify. But, outright lying need not be rewarded.

As for punishing the self-reliant, we are already being punished. We will be punished further by a collapsing financial system. It does us no good to punish ourselves further by allowing it to fail. We must be pragmatic about it. And, we must be fairly certain that whatever bailout we allow will actually help.

That's the hard part.

We agree on this 100%

I have had my ass kicked enough in the past two weeks for a lifetime, and Red is dead on, we can't allow the economy to completely collapse, but we may have to shoot a hostage or two.