Student loan bribes...I mean "stimulus."

Just in time for the campaign season: the administration wants to bypass Congress and allow different repayment terms for student loans under the mantra that "We Can't Wait."

Looks to me like we're allocating on the basis of need, since repayment will be based on what someone earns.

How about this: let's base repayment on what someone borrows, and that should keep people from borrowing too much. Alternatively, let's base repayment on the time value of money. How's that for a plan?

Sorry, but this looks too much like buying votes. I hate to get all political, but that's what it looks like.

I guess we knew this was coming. Stand by for more...

What can you do to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse?

Well, Glenn Beck has some ideas on what to do to get ready for the Zombie Apocalypse (or any other economic catastrophe). Some of the comments are just as informative, in my opinion.

Remember the rules from ZombieLand too. They're good to keep on hand, even in the event of a financial securitization meltdown.

UTMB fights to send a patient home...to Mexico

CBSHouston reports that UTMB is having problems sending a paralyzed man back to Mexico, even going so far as to offer a plane ticket.

The gentleman in question, Francisco Martinez, was hurt in a work accident, but he is in this country illegally. While he remains in the hospital his family is staying in a homeless shelter in Galveston.

It's unclear whether his current treatment at UTMB can be considered "emergency" treatment, which the hospital is obligated to provide.

I'd say that Step One would be for someone to figure out who he was working for and figure out how to prosecute the employer. Perhaps even find some hotshot lawyer to figure out how to sue the employer for the guy's medical bills and family expenses.

After all, he wouldn't need to be here if someone hadn't given him a job.

Until we as a society start finding the employers liable for the actions of the illegal immigrants that they are supporting here we won't see a change in behavior on anyone's part. The situation now seems to be a close cousin to slavery, with people living in fear of deportation or living on the margins.

Living a marginalized life isn't fair to this man, or his family, and this is just another example of how our current border policy (or lack thereof) is hurting people on both sides of the border. Just as slavery was the defining issue of the 1800s, it looks like illegal immigration will be the defining issue of this century.

Maybe the Occupy Wall Street bunch could occupy the border.

Catchphrase: We Can't Wait

The Obama administration is expected to move on housing and student loan bailouts this week, according to Reuters and AP. Evidently the Prez plans to use this to show how little Congress has been able to get done, with the catchphrase "We Can't Wait."

No doubt bailing out all those homeowners will help fix the housing market yet again. It's done so much already.

Investor are running from cash

The Globe reports that money market balances are down a third from Jan. 2009. More here.

BofA saddles retail side with Merrill losses

I guess it was a matter of time until the brain trust at Bank of America figured out how to laugh in the face of federal regulators and make them dance to their own tune.

The holding co. has figured out how to transfer trillions of dollars of obligations using just ink to the depositor side of the retail bank. Read about it here.

Update: looks like they woke up the parents (not that the parents will DO anything aboot it). See BidnessWeek here.

I guess these qualify as derivatives, but given the recent judgements against them, these are likely to end up being obligations that the bank will have to cover.

What does Sheila Bair think over at FDIC? She's not running the show anymore, it turns out.

Sprint Throws ClearWire under the bus

Looks like Spring and ClearWire are having a falling out. Interesting, considering that Sprint owns ClearWire.

Next Wave of MBS Disaster is about to hit

The largest settlement in the history of Wall Street? Chump change!

Read it in Forbes. $20B this time, not $8.5B.

More on the Volcker Rule: Regulation vs. Implementation

Seems that the OCC is struggling with Dodd-Frank's armchair vision of regulation. Read it here.

Govt spending has gone down this year, right? Wrong.

Thanks to a correspondent for sending this piece from Investors' Business Daily. It turns out that government spending, both state and federal, has actually gone UP this year. The media buzz blaming the recession's continuance on newfound austerity in DC is fallacious.

Shows what appealing to "everybody knows" can do to confuse people, as in "everybody knows that government spending is down after the 2010 elections." Fail.

Are You A 53%er?

Do you pay taxes? Then you are one of the 53% in the nation who pays while 47% does not.

I'm the 53%

You should check to see if any of these stories sound like yours.

Details of the Washington Mutual Collapse

I just dug this up about our favorite zombie bank.

Enjoy.

It's back to Mom's basement for the OWS crowd.

Looks like Mayor Bloomberg is finally getting a sane head and asking for actual rules on the OWS commune in NYC.

Good for him, except that it didn't happen.

For more on the source of the "spontaneous" street protests, check here.

From 10/1, some of their "demands" from businessinsider.com (thanks to Brent G. for this one). Looks critically at what the OWS losers have been told to say in case someone in the media actually asks for what they stand for.

I guess Mark Cuban is hoping that OWS will chop off his head last. Read his missive (er, pandering) to them here.

Update 10/26/11:

Turns out that some resources of the former ACORN organization are being used to support OWS. Hard to believe!

Occupy Wall Street is funded by Soros - Reuters

In what we should label is a very brave and risky move, Reuters today is telling people how it really is. Turns out George Soros may be helping to back the Occupy Wall Street movement via umbrella groups.

Now, I already figured that, deep in my heart, but it's sobering to see a prime once-legit media outlet come up with it. I also knew that the planning for this stuff had been in the works for months or even years, but it's nice to confirm.

Mr. Soros' political leanings are hard to describe, really, since he funds progressive (read that as Marxist) efforts to thwart capitalism while at the same time makes money placing bets on economic instability. I think he's tired of America dominance and would like to see us go down the tubes so other cultures could emerge that he could exploit. Or something. Maybe that makes sense after all. Tired of just betting against and collapsing monetary systems, Mr. Soros might be going after whole economies or even ways of life now. Hmmmm...

I hope that when all is said and done Mr. Soros' charities will step in to help clean up the mess left behind, both literally and figuratively.

On another note, my class last night was discussing, by themselves, how OWS=Losers. I ruled in ONLY after letting them talk about it for a few minutes (at the end of our break). So it seems that some of "today's yoot" actually get it. Thank goodness.

Is rising income inequality a myth? Ask The Economist

I apologize to my readers for just spotting this article in The Economist from last month. There are a couple of beefy links there to recent studies that question the recently popular obviousness of growing income inequality. Enjoy.

Might there be an increasing political agenda behind the popularity of class warfare these days? Cynical, huh? Do we think that political groups might want to make hay with the whole class warfare thing and the idea that the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer (with cellphones, cable and big-screen TVs)".

Frankly, I can see BOTH sides of the aisle turning this kind of stuff into commercials.

News you can use: Angel investing climbed 4.7% in the first two quarters. YAY!

As reported here (with linky) a study by the University of New Hampshire Center for Venture Research documents an increase in angel financing for the first six months of the year.

My quick hypothesis: they had to put their money SOMEPLACE, and so private equity is starting to see the effects of flight to quality (or, in this case, keeping things close to the vest and directable, perhaps).

Interesting read; enjoy.

Senators Durbin, Schumer remain free

Note that Senator Dick Durbin (D - Illinois) is still walking around with the rest of us. Given his language inciting a bank run a couple of weeks ago you'd think the Feds would have picked him up by now.

There seem to be two standards in this country.

Of COURSE there are: as a correspondent points out, senators and House members are immune from prosecution for what they say on the floor of the chambers. What was I thinking?

For more on Senators collapsing banks, we have the Schumer/IndyMac incident from 2008, documented ex post here. Even MORE interesting is that George Soros and some other folks ended up buying it to "save" it later. [Weird, but there are lots of busted links on the last page. No telling how THAT happened.]

The Ghouls are out in time for Halloween

Dr. Roubini is at it again, talking about collapse and recession and doom and gloom. The problem that I have with this is that talk of doom and gloom is one of the causal factors in recessions - if people THINK things are getting worse (or, if they're uncertain) then things will in fact get worse. Different from the Greenspan Effect (where people believe what they want to believe if Greenspan says it).

Professor Roubini gets richer the more he talks about collapse, so maybe this is his way of contrarian investing. After all, if you say the sky is falling enough it will eventually be true.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and even paranoid people have enemies. True dat.

Fannie and Freddie Debt In the News again

"Concern Grows Over Fannie and Freddie Debt". Well, to tell the truth, concern has never waivered. Just look at the job numbers.

Energy Independence: Two Paths

Check out this cartoon.

Senator Durbin Breaks the Law on the Senate Floor, on camera, no kidding

NOTE: This seems to be a video-link with text. Sorry about that, I couldn't find a better one.

ABC News is reporting that Senator Richard Durbin (D - imwit) is calling for folks to get their money the heck out of Bank of America (B of A).

Funny thing is: He's the main guy behind the legislation that caused them to lose their network fees in the first place, and so now B of A is charging for using a debit card. Before, they charged that to retailers; now they cannot. See Forbes article here. The Fed's final ruling on the matter was put out in June.

One more thing: inciting a bank run is against the law in the US.

Chuck Boozer, the afternoon drive guy on a radio station in Charlotte, spent time in federal custody following the 1987 crash by cracking a joke about folks "lining up around BB&T down there" as he watched from his booth. Dumb.

So I hope bank regulators and federal law enforcement officials are going to be consistent about this one. You don't tell people to pull their money out of a bank, any bank, for any reason. That's just a bad idea.

Edit: I keep getting the idea that some of these politicians act like a systemic collapse would "wake people up" or get more people to march on Wall Street and vote for World Socialism or something. I think they should realize that the next REAL social upheaval is likely to end up taking them out of office with a vote.

As mentioned above, Dr. Steve Cotten (AKA "correspondent") has pointed out that Article I of the Constitution forbids prosecution for crimes permitted on the floor of Congress. Good thing, too, huh?

Spanish Proverbs for Teaching Finance

If you click the title of this post it will take you to a working paper that lists English and Spanish proverbs that apply to various financial concepts. Pretty neat - I've seen the English ones discussed before.

My concern would be the pronunciation across dialects and the relevance to people from different Spanish-speaking regions.

Enjoy.

Again with Wall Street protests? Actual pics this time.

Don't these folks have jobs? Wait, from the looks of them probably not.

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that there's a political organization or twelve behind this. After all, what are the chances that these losers actually pulled it off without help? Boston, too? Not likely.

Maybe SEIU and others are really running the show. Lennon (the Walrus) said 'Follow the money.' maybe he was on to something.

Alabama is losing people due to fear over new state immigration law

Evidently, a recent Federal court ruling upholding Alabama's recent law requiring identification is causing fear among the undocumented persons who are living there.

Given the state's record on race relations, I can understand. But I can also understand that the state's residents TODAY are trying to push back against the wave of immigration TODAY, and it has nothing to do with the past.

An article on the ruling is here, posted by an immigration attorney. There must be big bucks in this immigration stuff, huh?