There seems to be some perverse advice going around that if you stop making payments on your mortgage you’ll get your lenders attention and they’ll be more willing to offer you a better deal on a refinance or restructure of your loan. This is terrible advice for many reasons, not the least of which is the […]

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Commenting on New England’s weather, Mark Twain once wrote: “In the spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather. And that was just inside of 24 hours.” During this spring, the world of banking has been very much the same way.
Nevermind the alphabet soup of term auction facilities initiated by the Fed, the loan […]

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Recently, a reader named Glen Summers made the following comment to one of my blogs:
I appreciate your insight, but feel a little more pessimistic about the future. I am not sure which basket I have decided on, but I have elected to transfer most of my funds into hard assets and cash and will continue […]

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I’m hearing from bankers that we might see a different phenomenon in the second half of the year: writeups.
Bankers have aggressively been writing down the value of their investment portfolios tied to residential mortgages — in many cases writing down the value of the asset by up to 70 percent. This write-down of asset values […]

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Interesting comments today from Citigroup analyst Prashant Bhatia today about Lehman Brothers, a large Wall Street investment house like Bear Stearns. According to Bhatia, Lehman has “ample liquidity to run its business.”
The next comments were more to the point of our current economic condition:
“In our view it’s tough to have a liquidity-driven meltdown when you’re […]

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(See previous entries in this series, Walk with me, and Our walk, continued.)
Are we entering Level 3?
Remember, that’s the point where the pessimism (fear) begins to lift and some optimism (greed) returns to Wall Street. Is it beginning?
Consider this:
A few weeks ago the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets released its 21-page comprehensive study, which […]

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OK, let’s resume our walk into the closet. (We got started two weeks ago. You may review here.)
But first, a a disclaimer: Nothing on this site should be construed as investment advice or guidance. It is not intended as investment advice or guidance, nor is it offered as such. It is solely the opinion of […]

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I’ll return to the “Walk with me” theme in a day or so, but it occurred to me that there are a few economic basics that must be understood to comprehend where we are, how we got here and where we’re going. If you really want to go several layers deep, you’ve got to know […]

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Just thought I’d point out something for all the Public Employee Retirement system (PERS) members out there who number about 30,000 in Butte County. Today, the rate for a 15-year fixed-rate loan through PERS is an astoundingly low 4.50 percent.* You read that right. It’s as low a fixed rate as I’ve seen in my […]

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If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

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