Oh no! the "R" word again

Oh no... the "R" word is being spoken again. The last recession i saw... no one saw it come and go.. but it did hurt big. And then we read it in books and papers months after it left.

The one thing i remember well is that every friend of mine was laid off... and at our first jobs at that. I heard of people losing their shirts on stocks... well, can't blame it considering that most of those guys were getting their stock picks at water cooler conversations.

I guess this time it's going to be nice and slow. Well... houses don't sell out like equities do.

There's speak of 150 billion dollars of ARM's (Adjustable rate mortgages) resetting this year, and another 400 billion resetting next year. With stats out there that a majority of loans after 2004 were mostly ARMs, I can only imagine what it's going to do the finances of all those people. Even a percentage point recent would sting bad.

Well... if that ever shows up in less retail spending this christmas, i think we'll see a repeat of 2001 with companies tightening their belts and holding off on hiring... which'll kind of start an ugly cycle feeding on itself.

As i say this, the Fed has chopped the fed funds rate twice already. There's speak of a super fund, which seems like a last ditch effort by some of the big banks to prevent a massive sell off.
The last quarter was pretty bad on the big players, atleast those who reported.

Last week it was Stan O'Neal's head at Merrill, and this week it's gonna be chuck prince's at Citi.
Star CEO's dont' just fall off unless something big and dirty in the making.

I hear it's not just the security buyers, but also the insurers. They say that the big guessing game on wall street is who owns how much and no one's telling.

Well... Let's hope the dollar stays low, keeps those exports good, and the big international market, which doesn't give the damn anymore about what the US does anymore, grows in a big way and save us all from seeing another recession.

All the home builders seem to be bleeding with most of the big ones showing falling profits. Well, if it hadn't been for their Alt-A loans, those home appraisers who got wooed a little too much, and those lenders who forced fancy loans up the throats of ignorant home buyers, we would not have been here.

But what can we say? A free Market corrects it's excesses over time and punishes the stupid, and even the very wise look stupid sometimes.