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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

DOW Closes Lower

The DOW closed at 15,967.03 dropping 8.99 points.

CNN: JPMorgan agrees to $13 billion mortgage settlement

4 comments:

Glynn Kalara said...

They will right off 90+% of this so called settlement. Which translate out to the taxpayers basically paying for it. The TBTFB's got a pass go do not go to jail card for wrecking the country's economy and ruining the lives of millions. FDR must be rolling over in his grave at what Obama did here. Justice is dead in this country.

Jim Sande said...

These mortgage guys who were directed to give people huge loans based on a never ending housing bubble in my opinion - that's the culprit. Somewhere in the food chain they realized they had this unbelievable cash cow in residential mortgage backed securities and decided to milk it. On the notion of using a mortgage backed security and then stripping off risk and such and selling it as an asset, that whole business has it's roots over 50 years ago. Not new at all. The culprit was in the decision to advance unbelievable credit to anybody that could breathe, it was the mortgage writers and the boards that okayed that decision, they are the greedy SOBs that should be in prison. All the brokers that new this to be the case, knew the the assets were flawed, those brokers should be stripped of being able to do business and that won't happen. Part of the problem is that a lot of this shadow banking stuff is unregulated and was supposed to be unsecured, no backstopping. But the Fed had to get into it otherwise where would we be. We ended up backing the deal, the taxpayer. That's obviously wrong and a abuse. But I'm not really sure that the whole malevolence was undertaken knowing that the Fed would step in. That's just how it had to evolve because initially the Fed did the littlest things to try to arouse the economy. This whole q.e stuff was a little later and it resembles war time economy and basically that is what is occurring.

Glynn Kalara said...

You obviously know more about this then me Jim. I just think it's kind of weird that the system only seems to acknowledge that the concept of "moral hazard" relates to the actions and deeds of the 99% not the actions and DEEDS of the 1%. I think this is an example of the real owners of society taking off their velvet gloves and basically in so doing showing us how raw power really operates. That this was done in the manner it was carried out has IMO also destroyed the legitimacy of everyone that was involved with those actions. I include Obama and the Dems. in that call. If the LAW is not to be applied equally at that level then we essentially now live in a lawless society of men, like most of the rest of the planet. Imperial rule by the Corp. elite is firmly in the saddle now and the law is merely a fig leaf cover for THEIR power.

Jim Sande said...

These online coursera courses on finance and banking have helped me to learn a little bit. I'm hoping to get into it more, because I enjoy it. My understanding is that derivatives is a huge trillions of dollars industry and you are correct in that regular people the 99% can't get near it. These are used by the huge accounts like pensions funds and the extraordinarily rich people. Steps are out there to make sure this type of thing doesn't happen again. A bank is secured, your deposits are secure, they are backed up ultimately by the Fed. The shadow banking world of things like interest rate swaps and credit default swaps which is where all this stuff took place, is not secured by an institution like the Fed. The Fed had to step in otherwise we would be in an unimaginable economic mess. The time of the mom and pop bank and banking system of the 50s and before is completely gone and it's not coming back. Corporations don't even go through banks at this point for financing and credit.