Category: News and Opinion

DATELINE: Lewes, Delaware

DATELINE: Lewes, Delaware. 

While New York’s pension funds continue to assume that they will achieve an 8.0% rate of return from peak values, there is realism elsewhere. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has released a paper that predicts two more decades of weak stock market returns as the relatively large Baby Boom generation cashes in its retirement savings — leaving the smaller generations coming after as buyers. The paper doesn’t even consider the relative wealth of different generations, with the second half of the Baby Boom worse off on average than the first half, Gen X worse off than the second half of the Baby Boom, etc. And one of the ways those born after 1956 are worse off than those coming before is they are less likely to have pensions, or increasingly even employer contributions to their 401Ks. Therefore, they will have less money to invest in stocks – unless the Republicans can force them to use their Social Security money to buy stocks from older generations at inflated prices. (Government policy is already to try to get young adults to impoverish themselves buy buying houses at inflated prices relative to their smaller incomes).

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Board in Washington has voted to keep short term interest rates are zero for two additional years. But according to today’s Wall Street Journal, that zero return on cash looks pretty good to most investment professionals when deciding what to do with their own money, even as they urge their customers to invest in riskier assets for the long run. And you can’t really choose not to, because the politicians overseeing public employee pension funds are doing it for you, and will come after you and your children for any losses even as any temporary gains are cashed in with retroactive pension enhancements described as costing nothing.  The Wall Streeters, according to the article, have shifted to cash, and are scared with their own savings. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking written comments on its regulation of bond rating agencies, and one of the submissions was from a former Moody’s senior analyst with something to get off his chest. As noted by one reporter who read the testimony, “the comment is a scathing indictment of Moody's processes, conflicts of interests, and management” and will make the former employee “a star witness at any future litigation or hearings on this topic.”

The analyst rated mortgage backed securities during the housing bubble, with those issuing the securities paying the rating agencies to provide ratings. That is the way bond ratings now work. The conflict of interest is that those issuing the securities might not hire agencies willing to warn investors by issuing low ratings. “Moody's analysts whose conclusions prevent Moody's clients from getting what they want,” according to the former analyst’s comment, “are viewed as ‘impeding deals’ and, thus, harming Moody's business. These analysts are often transferred, disciplined, ‘harassed,’ or fired.” The submission confirms what many if not most people suspected.

From the beginning,   I’ve been an outspoken supporter of the right of the Islamic community, or any elements thereof, to build their Young Men’s Islamic Association at the site of the former Holy Mother Coat Factory, and an even more outspoken critic of those trying to use the heavy hand of government to interfere with those rights, and of politicians trying to make polit

Espinal is not anti-choice; he's multiple choice.

Texas Governor Rick Perry spastically gesticulates with his hair perfectly feathered like the fur on Davy Crockett’s raccoon skin cap pointing his finger wildly at every major Washington figure from President Obama to the head of the Fed accusing all of treason as if he is the last man standing at the Alamo when it is in fact Perry that is in need of heightened scrutiny for treason because of his crazy eyed rants threatening to take Texas out of the United States of America.

The tea baggers are as self absorbed as the compulsive masturbator in the film Boogie Nights.  In their ego’s search for importance first they attempt to grab the mantle of the founding fathers a group that was the very kernel of Liberal Western Thought having hardly much in common with your typical tea bagger.