Those of you who know me from my political blogging elsewhere, know that I have immersed myself in politics this past couple years, and you hear a lot of things. (Deniro Voice: I heard things.) If you check my blogging, you will see that these contacts allowed my to blog about the subprime mortgage crisis on May 5, 2007 -- predicting a bubble burst that would trigger a year long recession starting in November of '07.
Well basically, it happened to the day of the prediction if you check the headlines. And in October, sources recommended pulling out of the stock market entirely (mutual funds and all), because the market was going to start sinking first thing January '08. And we all know what happened.
We also learned that this would cause a big problem in the credit derivatives and bond insurance market. This next shoe, ready to drop, is scheduled to drop in February of '08 (like, next week), when all these derivative options come due, and if you think we had some down 200-300 this past month...
Well, that was just the little wave warning you that the Tsunami is coming. And it ain't gonna be a one week -- or one month sell off. We have already seen things that haven't happened in 70 years, or so. Some things have NEVER happened. You see people who have traded for 20-50 years saying they have never seen a week like last week.
So Bush can try to keep things propped up by visiting the oil sheiks and asking for a break, fiscal stimulus packages, bond insurance bail out talk (even though there wasn't any real talk) -- and the Fed can cut half a point: BUT THEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO KEEP THE MARKET ARTIFICIALLY PROPPED UP WHEN THE SUBPRIME AND DERIVATIVE MARKETS END UP BEING MUCH WORSE THAN ANYONE WAS LEADING ON TO.
When people start walking away from their homes (since they now owe more than they are worth, once those teaser subprime rates jump to market rate), banks will not only be stuck with all these homes -- they won't be able to sell them, either. (And they won't be taking in all this money, while the homes sink in value.)
People will be later and later on their credit card payments -- and many will simply walk away from those payments, too.
And when these derivative futures come due, it will be like what happened when everyone options were due last week, and everyone was caught short, and we saw a huge sell-off including all the good and profitable stocks to cover the losses on the others.
Bond insurers will be out of business, and we are already starting to see the leaks in the dam start to sprout water this past week.
With the market down big this year, and bond insurers about to lose their AAA rating and will end up bankrupt in no time (more on that later) --
I wonder if any of this is having an effect on the City's LACER pension retirement fund. I know they like to play riskier investments than ZD would ever be taking for a pension fund.
Could be a real disaster. I have NO idea, I was just wondering as I thought about the bond insurer/subprime/etc mess, knowing how LACER invests.
Thank you, Thank you!
But here's why I am blogging this post tonight:
Zuma Dogg has received a string of what I consider to be shocking memos regarding this whole CalPERS pension scandal. The content is shocking NO DOUBT...it's just a matter of how exclusive these memos are to Zuma's LA Daily Blog, or if the whole world has already seen them. (The reason I think this content WILL end up to be shocking, is because I do not think people would be sending them to me if they were no big deal.)
These are some pretty big fish swimming around in this story, so I don't wanna just go and post everything on a blog, which hits search engines, and then I find out the puddle was WAY deeper than I thought and it's too late to swim away.
So, here's a fun little excerpt to get the party started. (Or FEDERAL INVESTIGATION, hopefully, if this doesn't make you wanna party.)
[Names have been changed.]
From: GSG
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 2:53 PM
To: lohmann@vegasbaby.com
Subject:
Dear Mr. Lohmann,
I was also interested to know though whether you picked up any further connection between the victim/s and Mr. Stiffler other than what was referenced in your article The defense never rests. Earlier this year Mark Stiffler was apparently forced out of office by his backers, the Apollo group out of New York butt not before, however, pulling off quite a real estate coup in Los Angeles, billboard rights up the kazoo grandfathered into never never land. Who thinks about the children these days and what their minds are subjected to?
Today Ms. Sticky has a new business partner who also has some strong real estate connections, i.e. California’s Coastal Commission and politicians to boot. Earlier this year Dan who is co-managing partner of Wetherly Capital along with Ms. Sticky was appointed
…as the alternate for David Potter… Wetherly Capital Group, which specializes in raising capital from public pension funds and jointly managed trusts. He [Beerstein] has served as a senior advisor for former State Treasurer Kathleen Brown and as a regional Political Director for the United Food and Commercial Workers.”
Dan Beerstein has a lot to be thankful for and no doubt credit is due elsewhere other than to luck. For starters there are the folks who buy and sell the produce we all eat as in Ron Shmurkle.
I know Dan Beerstein rather well and although he is connected I doubt he could “serf “ [sic] even as well as Mr. David Potter who I know nothing about but certainly he can blow lots of smoke. AND remember now we are talking about the California Coastal Commission not “sum poor hoarse” [sic] pension fund like “CALiPERS” [sic] where the folks are encouraged by powerful PACS to play pong in between trotting off to the banks to deposit their ill-gotten gains which then get recycled to make little mention of the leverage that will make the Modigliani Miller painting one of the few remaining "safe heavens" [sic]
MUCH more to come on this blog. I'm not sure how public this document is. And that's just the warm and fuzzy part I was comfortable posting before I check this out further. But I'm sure a lot of folks out there already KNOW about this. I just don't know if they have seen the actual memos from Gary Steve G., or not.
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