Updates: Bernie Sanders I-VT seeks to put hold on Bens renomination; Black Swan says he will shun public life if Ben reconfirmed; Mark Zandi agrees double dip for housing ahead; Flashback: Bernanke in Denial 2005-2007
Update 2: Breaking on CNBC via Politico Bernie Sanders I-VT trying to put hold on Bens renomination hearing tomorrow. But they seem to have the 60 votes they need. Also today Taleb, of the Black Swan said if Ben is reconfirmed he will leave public life, seriously:
Nassim Taleb, the author of “The Black Swan”, said he would retreat from public life if Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gains a second term at the helm of the central bank.”What I am seeing and hearing on the news — the reappointment of Bernanke — is too hard for me to bear,” Taleb wrote on his blog on The Huffington Post.
“I am not blaming Bernanke (he doesn’t even know he doesn’t understand how things work or that the tools he uses are not empirical); it is the Senators appointing him who are totally irresponsible — as if we promoted every doctor who committed malpractice,” he wrote.Taleb wrote he will not take part in interviews in the press and will not go to the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.
“I need to withdraw as immediately as possible into the Platonic tranquility of my library, work on my next book, find solace in science and philosophy, and mull the next step,” he wrote, adding that “I will only (briefly) emerge from my hiatus when the publishers force me to do so upon the publication of the paperback edition of The Black Swan.”…
Update: Boy it is exhausting having these fancy pants academics and/or advisers to MAC and Obama come along and agree with MiM months after we take a position, like being Cassandra, it sucketh big time. Now I just heard Marty Feldstein agreeing on Kudlow too, lol. To be fair Feldstein came out on this in October...sure now that it’s COOL to say there is a double dip ALL the kids wanna do it!
Soon Orszag and Krugman will be the cheese, and we all know the cheese stands alone.
Mark Zandi of Moodys (who will be at the big job summit this week, and who is at every Nancy Pelosi jobs bill panel as well), the man who advised MAC and later the Congress on the stimulus, is now forecasting a second leg down in housing, a big one, the one we and others have been yammering on about for months.
Maybe now that one of the chosen few who get listened to (despite often being quite wrong) and whose ideas are often quite unsuccessful (see WSJ on Orszag and Stiglitz’ EPIC FAIL on the risk posed by FAN FRED that somehow gets them promoted and invited to all the summits and now they help design all our economic policy and even our healthcare system!!) is on board with the fact that housing is in imminent danger of collapsing under the continuing deterioration of employment and the failure of the mo mods. Well maybe now they will do the damned HOLC and get it done.
FDR did it, in out boom,. Buy the home loans from the banks,w e already own them in FAN FRED anyway, write down 20% everyone underwater, boom, done. Let homeowners pay it off via their taxes to the government. Give a payroll tax holiday. Stop the uber spending in areas that don’t help the underlying economy. The entire 78 billion directed to housing is still sitting there waiting to be paid out on permanent mods that aren’t happening.
The meltdown of the U.S. housing market is not over yet, and home prices will soon start trekking downward again as a flood of foreclosures looms, a well-known economist said Wednesday.
Home prices, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, will trough in the third quarter of 2010 after declining 38 percent, Zandi said. The index peaked in the second quarter of 2006 and hit a trough in the first quarter of 2009, a drop of about 32 percent. Home prices in many regions have been rising.That is because foreclosure sales fell over the summer and fall as mortgage servicers have tried to put stressed homeowners into the Home Affordable Modification Program and other modification plans, he said. “This lull in foreclosures sales has resulted in the price gains in the past few months,” he said.
“Foreclosure sales will increase, and home prices will resume their decline by early 2010 as mortgage servicers figure out who will not qualify for a modification,” he said.
Zandi said 7.5 million foreclosure sales will have taken place between 2006 and 2011. The majority of these sales, however, have not emerged yet, with 4.8 million foreclosure sales expected between 2009 and 2011….
WOW! Must See TV: Congressional JEC panel ripping Geithner apart: Rep Brady (R-TX) first to ask him to resign: MiM starts Obama economic team “shake-up” watch…
Vodpod videos no longer available.
If you look at UE Tim, the US is substantially WORSE off than it was when Obama took office to answer Timmehs whine….In fact someone should tell Tim, taking him at his word that he believes all measures, any measure of economic activity shows things are better since January, the measure of foreclosures and delinquencies has also more than doubled since Obama ‘took charge’:
Update: 12:10pm EST: uh oh. Kudlow says and Steve Liesman confirms, that Geithner is the most fiscally conservative member of Obamas economic advisers. No wonder we are in a world of hurt! CNBC just ran the Brady Timmeh back n forth so it should come up in a video post shortly. will get it up right away.
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Update: 11:!5am OMG OMG Geithner just threw Seniors unda da bus!! He acknowledges to Brownback that yes the CBO score only works if Congress actually DOES the Medicare cuts and he insists they must and should and will DO THE CUTS. He says the costs have to be reduced, Brownback is saying but why cant we save Medicare? Good grief Geithner is a disaster, you aren’t supposed to tell Seniors they are getting thrown under there Timmeh, Obama will be displeased. Good ad for the GOP though!
WOW!! Excellent!!!! Live feed from CNBC here
I am starting Geithner Fired/Resigns Watch now, there will fer shure be some sort of ‘ Obama economic team shake-up’ to placate the rumblings as they get ready to ask for MORE STIMULUS…They can’t get away with it under Geithner IMO, looks like he is marked as sacrificial lamb, but the Progressives will be no happier with Larry Summers, lol….
By dequalss
Typos abound, getting ready while I do this- TImmeh is red and ranting and blaming Bush and Rep Brady made him acknowledge yes he was head of NY Fed when this collapse happened, and they are cross talking, Brady says the public has lost all confidence in Geithner and he reflects badly on his President, he says at some point Geithner has to take responsibility…ohhh excellent!!
Update: 11:04am EST: Rep. Burgess (R-TX) just said “I don;t think you should quit, you shouldn’t have been hired”. Is that a bus engine I hear idling??? This the Joint Economic Committee and is made up of both Senators and House members, double the fun!! Now Sen Brownback is going off about the health care plan and the Yuan peg…
(FD-MiM is a former AIG employee and shareholder and we have followed Geithner’s handling of the crisis as NY Fed-head closely for two years now, our posts on Geithner, Hank Paulson and AIG are legion. Our previous posts on Geithner and the troubled CITI bailout here and here and here and here and here and even here ….)
Recall Sens DeMint and Isakson called on Geithner to resign last March. As did several members of the House.
This is in keeping with the report in TheHill this morning:
A Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) member said there’s “growing consensus” among liberals that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner should step down.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said Wednesday that he and other liberal House members are becoming increasingly tired of Obama administration economic policies that they say are too focused on maintaining the stability of Wall Street firms and largely ignore “Main Street.”“A growing consensus in the caucus [believe that Geithner should be removed],” DeFazio said on MSNBC this evening, adding that some lawmakers are “considering questions regarding him and other economic advisers.”
DeFazio said that lawmakers have not yet drafted a plan to remove Geithner. The lawmaker also took aim at top Obama economic adviser Larry Summers for furthering many of the same policies favored by Geithner.
“We need a new economic team,” said DeFazio…..
Hey man, live by the populist pitchforks, die by the populist pitchforks. Hard to put that class war genie back into the bottle and it was a HUGE mistake to embolden the populist rhetoric flame throwers in the House…
This drum beat is getting louder. Dodd thinks Geithner is a drag on his polling, lol, and Simmons, Dodd’s GOP opponent called for Geithner’s resignation already:
A former House Republican running for the Senate in Connecticut is calling for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to be replaced over his handling of AIG’s bailout.
GOP candidate Rob Simmons reacted to a report by Neil Barofsky, the inspector general of the $700 billion bailout program, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Barofsky’s report criticized the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which Geithner led during the bailout, for a series of missteps that Barofsky said ended up requiring the government to provide additional support to AIG.
“The report issued yesterday by the inspector general for the TARP program is a deeply troubling account of Secretary Geithner’s failed management of the AIG bailout in which he cost taxpayers $13 billion in unnecessary new debt,” said Simmons, who appears to be the only candidate or office-holder to call for Geithner’s replacement in response to the report.The federal government committed more than $180 billion to AIG, which was crippled by poor investments and trades in credit default swaps, a financial derivative.
Simmons also attacked his opponent, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), in the statement calling on Geithner to be replaced.
“The cozy relationships between the bailed-out financial companies and powerful politicians like Tim Geithner and Chris Dodd are exactly why Americans have lost trust in Washington, D.C., and why we need new leadership with the skills and integrity to clean up their mess and get our economy back on track.”…
More great housing news:
US mortgage delinquency rates and the percentage of loans that entered the foreclosure process jumped in the third quarter, with both reaching record highs, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Thursday.
The percentage of loans on which foreclosure actions were started rose to 1.42 percent in the third quarter, an all-time high, up from 1.36 percent in the second quarter and 1.07 percent in the third quarter of 2008.
…The delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one-to-four-unit residential properties rose to a seasonally adjusted rate of 9.64 percent of all loans outstanding as of the end of the third quarter of 2009, up 40 basis points from 9.24 percent in the second quarter and up 265 basis points from 6.99 percent one year ago, the MBA said in its National Delinquency Survey. The delinquency rate broke the record set last quarter. The records are based on MBA data dating back to 1972.
…The percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the third quarter was 4.47 percent, an increase of 17 basis points from 4.30 percent the second quarter of 2009 and 150 basis points from 2.97 percent one year ago.
The combined percentage of loans in foreclosure and at least one payment past due was 14.41 percent on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the highest ever recorded in the MBA delinquency survey….
Moderate in the Middle 