ZeroBonus Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > FNM - out at 0.85 ($20 loss on commissions) > FRE - out at 0.92 ($1400 profit) > > Done with the Fannie/Freddie trade for the day and > hopefully forever charming…
wash sale…
virginCFAhooker Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Joey, when will you learn? You’re not supposed to > look at the balance sheet. Look at the long term > earnings power. When it recovers you’ll be rich. I really wonder what the long-term is on this whole concept. 1) Gov’t is handing a huge bill to taxpayers who aren’t going to want to pay this one to say nothing of future ones. Renting taxpayers shouldn’t have any responsibility to subsidize homeownership. 2) It’s not the proper role of gov’t to run such an enterprise with the goal of creating profits and, if they did create profits, someone would grab the money for some weapons project or something leaving nothing when the next collapse happened (except maybe some cool weapons). 3) Breaking them up and selling them doesn’t work because there is nobody to buy them and the credit guarantees of GS aren’t worth what the credit guarantees of the US Treasury are. 4) Selling stuff that you are doing everything possible to avoid marking to market is problematic. 5) Congress is responsible for reformulating this and they have been very ineffective at doing anything. Add in an election year and it’s tough to see them doing much about it. 6) A Keating Five member is running for neck-and-neck for President. Who trusts him with reforms like this? 7) A guy from Illinois is the other guy and he’s from the same state as Continental Illinois and the Chicago Cubs (ok this one was irrelevant).
Statistics say home ownership is a positive for society & neighborhoods. So I guess that’s why renters should help pay for this mess. Didn’t the gov’t make a ton of $ bailing out chrysler with some warrants similar to these? Really, the gov’t was already on the hook for all these bonds. They can’t lose the same dollar twice so why not boot out the management (who also had an eye on shareholder return and clinged to a faulty business plan)? I’m amazed that this large cap stock that was a staple, blue-chip feelgood portfolio element is now 99.9999% worthless. It takes a lot of gains to overcome a 99.9% loss!
I’m still holding on to my US Leather stock, one of the original Dow Jones Industrials (actually that’s a lie).
Indeed this whole “living in homes” thing is a fad. In time it will pass and we will go back to living in tent-like structures. Portability gets no respect.
I liked the comment on FT Alphaville today, calling them “Fecked and Fooked”.