![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(Scroll to the bottom for the banking system stuff. I saw that as I was typing this up and didn't want to rewrite the whole thing.)
I finally have a new music icon. The dumb thing is that it's from a quiz graphic that's been sitting on my desktop for months. HELLO! I also thought about using my old Gojira-plays-the-jaw-harp drawing and that's kinda funny and jokey and stuff, but I don't feel really very jokey about this, so I didn't.
I guess that's enough talk about music that this gets a music tag, too. Okay. Yay, new icon. ^_^ Also, hum, a couple of new bits of song yesterday, one not well attached to anything, one clearly part of another song I'd already partly gotten started, so that's good. I have some hard problems I've been trying to solve with some songs so I haven't been doing much new work; I think I need to make time for both, and hopefully the new material will in spire me on how to solve the difficult problems in these other songs.
I'm wholly in support of eastside rail on the existing tracks that the Port of Seattle is buying. The sooner, the better. Here's a story in the Woodinville paper about it; over here is the website of the main citizen group trying to get it going. (Anybody know if there's anything bad I should know about this group?) Don't get me wrong; I want a paved bike trail in that right-of-way, too. It can and should be done. But I want the rail line first; I don't want those rails pulled up.
Bisexuality in women is not a "phase" on the way to lesbianism. I mean, I have some large degree of no shit sherlock, but, well, it's one of those things that keeps coming up.
Here are three articles dealing with oil supplies. 1: Indonesia can't be considered an oil exporter anymore, which is no shock to anyone who follows this. It also pretty much lays to rest the idea that if they got back up to, say, 1.3Mbpd, they'd be an exporter again. First, that's real unlikely; second, they wouldn't be without big changes in domestic consumption. 2: The head of French oil company Total says that oil production is at or near peak. Conventional oil, it's worth pointing out, has not yet regained May 2005 production levels. And 3: I am not fond of the Financial Sense website and do not endorse their content in general - stupid gold bugs, I don't care what Bill Fleckstein is going on about, the idea of a new gold standard is still dumb - but this interview with Matthew Simmons (Twilight in the Desert, which I've referenced elsewhere) is somewhat informative to those who have not been following this situation. As a side note, I was not particularly aware he was aware of some of the (underfunded, as he notes) water projects such as cool-water hydrothermal, but apparently he is.
Mr. Bush seems to want to make sure somebody bombs Iran before he leaves office, telling the Israeli government that he doesn't believe the National Intelligence Estimate report on Iran. Slate's Fred Kaplan says, "In decades past, the CIA has often lost credibility as a result of its own failures and scandals. Now President Bush is splashing doubt not just on the CIA, but on all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, simply because their judgments are out of synch with his policies." Well, what else is new? It follows the Chief Executive's personal Jesus or it's worthless. Is this news?
The stock markets are, by any normal measure, oversold - in the short-term sense, not in the this-bear-market-is-over sense, 'cause it's not - and this decline is due for a significant snapback upwards. But people - even the biggest bears I know - are getting worried, partly because today was kind of a lot, partly because we're overdue for a bounce (or "snapback rally"), but also because of a tradable volatility index future (VIX), which has over the last few months built something called a bearish triangle, and just broke sharply out of it - up, which is to say more volatility, which is bearish. Accordingly, damn near everyone is expecting some sort of "surprise" action tomorrow. I worry that the expectations are so tightly built in that if people get an action beyond what they expect - something that doesn't surprise them positively even with expectations things could get really nasty going into the long weekend.
The last time the market was disappointed with a rate cut, we had a day like today. That was the quarter-point back in December.
Or, you know, everything could be fine and the market could close even or start the snapback rally. Who knows? I got my 401(K) funds the hell out of this market in December, and moved into treasuries, because a 3.6% (...or less...) return, while crappy, beats the hell out of the -30% to -50% you can expect in a serious bear market. And since then I've just been watching the economy keep sending more trains to the site of the train wreck - honestly, I didn't think the CDO markets could set new lows, but oh look, some of them are! And the CMBXes - commercial equivalents - are too. (On those charts, up is bad.)
...or... oh crap. oh crap. I saw this just as I was typing out this entry. Remember how I posted a few weeks ago about how banks, in aggregate, were only meeting reserves requirements because of loans from the Feds? To the tune of $30B in loans? They just updated the numbers with preliminarys for 16 January (that's what the (p) means):
Um. That's not real good. Um. Banks are now meeting reserves requirements entirely via loans from the Fed. Not with help; entirely. Without those loans the entire banking system, net, is in reserves default. Not just failing to meet reserves requirements; reserves negative. Wow. That's neat. ETA: Historical data shows previous occurrences of anything like this have happened never in the range of data available online, which goes back to 1959.
I finally have a new music icon. The dumb thing is that it's from a quiz graphic that's been sitting on my desktop for months. HELLO! I also thought about using my old Gojira-plays-the-jaw-harp drawing and that's kinda funny and jokey and stuff, but I don't feel really very jokey about this, so I didn't.
I guess that's enough talk about music that this gets a music tag, too. Okay. Yay, new icon. ^_^ Also, hum, a couple of new bits of song yesterday, one not well attached to anything, one clearly part of another song I'd already partly gotten started, so that's good. I have some hard problems I've been trying to solve with some songs so I haven't been doing much new work; I think I need to make time for both, and hopefully the new material will in spire me on how to solve the difficult problems in these other songs.
I'm wholly in support of eastside rail on the existing tracks that the Port of Seattle is buying. The sooner, the better. Here's a story in the Woodinville paper about it; over here is the website of the main citizen group trying to get it going. (Anybody know if there's anything bad I should know about this group?) Don't get me wrong; I want a paved bike trail in that right-of-way, too. It can and should be done. But I want the rail line first; I don't want those rails pulled up.
Bisexuality in women is not a "phase" on the way to lesbianism. I mean, I have some large degree of no shit sherlock, but, well, it's one of those things that keeps coming up.
Here are three articles dealing with oil supplies. 1: Indonesia can't be considered an oil exporter anymore, which is no shock to anyone who follows this. It also pretty much lays to rest the idea that if they got back up to, say, 1.3Mbpd, they'd be an exporter again. First, that's real unlikely; second, they wouldn't be without big changes in domestic consumption. 2: The head of French oil company Total says that oil production is at or near peak. Conventional oil, it's worth pointing out, has not yet regained May 2005 production levels. And 3: I am not fond of the Financial Sense website and do not endorse their content in general - stupid gold bugs, I don't care what Bill Fleckstein is going on about, the idea of a new gold standard is still dumb - but this interview with Matthew Simmons (Twilight in the Desert, which I've referenced elsewhere) is somewhat informative to those who have not been following this situation. As a side note, I was not particularly aware he was aware of some of the (underfunded, as he notes) water projects such as cool-water hydrothermal, but apparently he is.
Mr. Bush seems to want to make sure somebody bombs Iran before he leaves office, telling the Israeli government that he doesn't believe the National Intelligence Estimate report on Iran. Slate's Fred Kaplan says, "In decades past, the CIA has often lost credibility as a result of its own failures and scandals. Now President Bush is splashing doubt not just on the CIA, but on all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, simply because their judgments are out of synch with his policies." Well, what else is new? It follows the Chief Executive's personal Jesus or it's worthless. Is this news?
The stock markets are, by any normal measure, oversold - in the short-term sense, not in the this-bear-market-is-over sense, 'cause it's not - and this decline is due for a significant snapback upwards. But people - even the biggest bears I know - are getting worried, partly because today was kind of a lot, partly because we're overdue for a bounce (or "snapback rally"), but also because of a tradable volatility index future (VIX), which has over the last few months built something called a bearish triangle, and just broke sharply out of it - up, which is to say more volatility, which is bearish. Accordingly, damn near everyone is expecting some sort of "surprise" action tomorrow. I worry that the expectations are so tightly built in that if people get an action beyond what they expect - something that doesn't surprise them positively even with expectations things could get really nasty going into the long weekend.
The last time the market was disappointed with a rate cut, we had a day like today. That was the quarter-point back in December.
Or, you know, everything could be fine and the market could close even or start the snapback rally. Who knows? I got my 401(K) funds the hell out of this market in December, and moved into treasuries, because a 3.6% (...or less...) return, while crappy, beats the hell out of the -30% to -50% you can expect in a serious bear market. And since then I've just been watching the economy keep sending more trains to the site of the train wreck - honestly, I didn't think the CDO markets could set new lows, but oh look, some of them are! And the CMBXes - commercial equivalents - are too. (On those charts, up is bad.)
...or... oh crap. oh crap. I saw this just as I was typing out this entry. Remember how I posted a few weeks ago about how banks, in aggregate, were only meeting reserves requirements because of loans from the Feds? To the tune of $30B in loans? They just updated the numbers with preliminarys for 16 January (that's what the (p) means):
AGGREGATE RESERVES OF DEPOSITORY INSTITUTIONS AND THE MONETARY BASE
Not adjusted for changes in reserve requirements(1)
Not seasonally adjusted
Millions of dollars
[...]
Date total nonborrowed required 2008-Jan. 16(p) 39989 -1387 38278
Um. That's not real good. Um. Banks are now meeting reserves requirements entirely via loans from the Fed. Not with help; entirely. Without those loans the entire banking system, net, is in reserves default. Not just failing to meet reserves requirements; reserves negative. Wow. That's neat. ETA: Historical data shows previous occurrences of anything like this have happened never in the range of data available online, which goes back to 1959.
