Loading ...I have not yet listened to this week’s radio program; just noting the following article, and the time frame rang a bell.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22934464/wid/11915773?GT1=10914
Snip:
‘People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research.
‘A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, so before then, there were no blue eyes.’
As a pure business model, ethics put aside, and efficient strategy as the only consideration, this concept appears quite efficient imo. As I do not sleep under anyone’s bed [so I do not hear the private dreams of anyone above me - old joke from Central Europe] I do not know what the actual model would be. I suggest such a model as it appears to be a fit with the little that I have learned from JS and reading annual reports from such companies as Placer Dome some years ago. I leave it to others to determine whether or not a company such as ABX employs such strategies as off-loading hedges to newly acquired juniors. It may have been 2004 and something like page 46 of the PDome annual report when I first noted the strategem.
In any case, whether or not the hedges are off-loaded to newly acquired juniors, or simply kept on the books, the larger concept is possible if one imagines what one might do to acquire control of the gold mining industry if one had the means to do so.
PMfever… JS is a data mine, as are many other writers, and provide ideas that I have fun with.
Cheers, TQ
Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) — Just when it seemed as if the mortgage mess had hit a new low, now comes this: The Securities and Exchange Commission’s staff has granted the subprime-lending industry a huge exemption from the normal rules for off-balance- sheet accounting.
In effect, the move will let home lenders keep their balance sheets looking much smaller and less leveraged, even while the off-the-books loans they made get a makeover.
For months, banking regulators and politicians have been pressing lenders to freeze the interest rates on many adjustable-rate subprime mortgages that are scheduled to reset soon at higher interest rates. The idea is to minimize defaults and foreclosures.
While that’s a noble objective, all good deeds must be accounted for, and that’s been a sticking point for many banks. Through September, just 3.5 percent of subprime mortgages that reset in the first eight months of 2007 had been modified, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Even lenders inclined to help don’t want to hurt their financial results. And now they might not have to, thanks to a Jan. 8 letter from the SEC’s chief accountant, Conrad Hewitt.
Here’s the background: Many lenders recorded upfront profits by selling loans in bulk to off-balance-sheet trusts — known as qualified special purpose entities, or QSPEs — which then repackaged the loan pools into mortgage-backed securities. The trusts are supposed to be beyond the lenders’ control. And if the companies servicing the loans tinker with them in ways that aren’t spelled out in the trusts’ charters, the sales must be reversed, and the trusts must come onto the lenders’ books, under the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s rules.
Financial Constraints
That would mean much more assets and debt, possibly limiting banks’ ability to make new loans. Not surprisingly, some of the biggest mortgage lenders, including Washington Mutual Inc., Countrywide Financial Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., had been pushing regulators for a break.
By following new guidelines issued last month by a banking- industry group called the American Securitization Forum, Hewitt said servicers will be allowed to modify subprime mortgages where defaults are “reasonably foreseeable,” without jeopardizing the trusts’ off-balance-sheet treatment.
Hewitt’s letter came in response to requests by the ASF, as well as the Treasury Department and others. On Dec. 6, the ASF published a “streamlined” framework for evaluating subprime mortgages issued from January 2005 to July 2007, where the initial rates are scheduled to reset before August 2010.
Loans that meet certain criteria — based on things such as low credit scores, the number of days delinquent, and high loan- to-value ratios — are eligible for “fast-track” modifications, on the basis that it’s foreseeable they’ll default, the ASF said.
Losing Status
The wholesale approach includes lots of room for discretion. For instance, if a borrower’s credit score is too high, mortgage servicers can use an “alternate analysis” and consider a “tailored modification for a borrower.”
Hewitt said such modifications wouldn’t cause the QSPEs to lose their off-the-books status, though he did call for more disclosures by lenders about QSPEs’ activities.
Hewitt said he realized there’s no way to know how accurate the ASF criteria might be at predicting actual defaults, because there “is a lack of relevant, observable market data that can be used to perform an objective statistical analysis of the correlation.” Still, he said the group’s criteria looked reasonable, “based upon a qualitative consideration of the expectation of defaults.”
Hewitt declined to be interviewed, as did FASB officials.
Little Discretion
The accounting standard at issue is FASB Statement No. 140. Its rules had envisioned QSPEs as brain-dead vehicles, akin to wind-up toys. Their actions are supposed to be automatic responses that “were entirely specified in the legal documents that established” the trusts. When servicers do exercise discretion, it must be “significantly limited.”
“I do not believe mortgage modification in such a wholesale and proactive fashion can be reasonably viewed as significantly limited,” says Stephen Ryan, an accounting professor at New York University, who specializes in financial instruments and institutions.
According to the ASF, many QSPEs’ legal documents say loan modifications are permitted where default is “reasonably foreseeable.” However, the ASF framework wasn’t published until last month. So there’s no way the activities it describes could be fully specified in the charters at any of the affected QSPEs.
While it may be a good thing under current circumstances to give servicers incentives to modify lots of subprime mortgages, Ryan says, “I think the chief accountant should have indicated he was providing an exemption to, rather than interpreting a vague area in, FAS 140.”
Changed Rules
The ASF’s executive director, George Miller, says that “the framework itself cannot be specified in trust documents that existed before the framework was issued.” However, he says “it does not need to be” and that Hewitt’s letter is “not an exemption, just an interpretation” of whether applying the group’s criteria would comply with Statement 140.
This might be a slippery slope. Perhaps the auto industry could be saved, for example, if only we devise new accounting “interpretations” of the rules governing their massive pension liabilities.
Hewitt couldn’t call his Jan. 8 letter an outright exemption, of course. Unlike the SEC itself, he doesn’t have the authority to overturn the FASB’s rules. Practically speaking, however, that’s what he did.
The SEC and the FASB at least should acknowledge this subterfuge for what it is. Don’t count on it, though.
I do hope that you can get outside tomorrow in a field of fresh unmarked snow, preferably a wooded ravine or rolling hills, as what I saw was a wonderland, and its beauty unrivalled.
I think Yogi’s dictum about the future applies especially to the USD. Good luck with it.
For this to be a good healthy wave four, I think that a couple more weeks of a ‘c’ wave down would be a good finale. It can be shorter in terms of time if it is fast and deep. This reminds me of trying to let the air out of an overblown balloon slowly, with The Three Stooges, Benny, Paulie, and Moeron each trying to manage the valve.
About a Golden Guy
arch0708.goldtent.net/2008/01/10/…
Dr Jekyll Ron Paul Links
arch0708.goldtent.net/2007/12/21/…
Freedom Train
youtube.com/watch?v=5-xwd6ysn3g
PM Trader on Ron Paul
axiomhouse.com/RonPaulCNBC.htm
Ron Paul HQ
ronpaulhq.com/paulmart.php
Ron Paul Campagne
ronpaul2008.com
Ron Paul Forums
ronpaulforums.com
Liberty Dollar
libertydollar.org/ld/ronpauldollar
Ron Paul on Bill Moyers
pbs.org/moyers/journal/01042008/…
Ron Paul on Glen Beck
arch0708.goldtent.net/2007/12/18/…
Ron Paul /Gold manipulation
arch0708.goldtent.net/2007/09/13/…
Ron Paul/ Mad Money
youtube.com/watch?v=Nq7Li1MOF2Y
Ron Paul Reams Bernanke
youtube.com/watch?v=yAwvlDJgJbM
Ron Paul/ JayLeno
youtube.com/watch?v=B0KwY9Uzqtk
Carol Paul / American Dream
arch0708.goldtent.net/2007/12/05/…
Why Ron Paul Scares the GOP
arch0708.goldtent.net/2008/03/27/if-already-posted-days-ago-sorry/
Comming Financial Collapse of the USA
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuFWd-ldnuw&feature=PlayList&p=69EA958EE4EF256C&index=0
Ron Paul Blimp
arch0708.goldtent.net/2007/11/24/please-help-if-you-can-with-the-ron-paul-blimp/
I updated my Nama Cobalt project analysis on the IMDB CALVF page. I posted an updated New Cobalt project list with metal prices as of 2/1/2008. And I also updated my economic model with the 1.20 strip ratio announced yesterday by Mr. Hayden for their pit model at Anomaly A. I think you will find it an interesting read.
As the great Yogi Berra once said, ‘It’s hard to make predictions…. especially about the future.’
Cheers, TQ
….thanks pal….saved at Humour Paradise……still laughing
I hadn’t been thinking of an ETF, but it might be one very good way to invest in water. Thanks for the reply and the thought; I’ll be keeping it in mind.
SIX of global gold producer Gold Fields’ 21 mine shafts in SA were at risk of closure if it was only permitted 90% of its normal power usage, head of South African operations Terence Goodlace said yesterday.
allafrica.com/stories/200802010107.html
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Ex-Federal Reserve chief Alan 
Greenspan told a Stockholm audience on Friday he did not believe he had caused the U.S. subprime crisis and had warned of the risk in 2004, a person attending the event said.
If you see this person (alias Scruffy) 
please have him contact GoldTent immediately!
I wrote a rant today……but it was nothing like one of your originals….I can’t hold a candle!!
Nope, it is still under the control of our illusterious state government. One can only guess what the toll will be once it is sold. As governments gorge themselves at the people’s expences they will be selling any and everything they can to continue their domination over the minnions I have no doubt. I don’t have the exact stat, but something like 40% of the US population now works in some sort of guvernment job. That is horrendous!! As the Mogambo would say…”We’r frickin doomed!!!!!”
Best
Dusty
Are you OK. Where are you. You are missed.