An interesting analysis of when the fed may inject cocaine into ailing markets…

Charles Hugh Smith publishes Foreclosure Crisis Weekly, dedicated to documenting the often-amazing foreclosure crisis.

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All attempts to reform the Status Quo of advanced finance-based Capitalism will fail, as its historically inevitable crisis is finally at hand. It is self-evident that conventional economics has failed, completely, utterly and totally. The two competing cargo cults of tax cuts/trickle-down and borrow-and-spend stimulus coupled with monetary manipulation have failed to restore advanced Capitalism’s vigor, not just in America, but everywhere.

Conventional econometrics is clueless about the root causes of advanced finance-based Capitalism’s ills. To really understand what’s going on beneath the surface, we must return to “discredited” non-quant models of economics: for example, Marx’s critique of monopoly/cartel, finance-dominated advanced Capitalism. (“Capitalism” is capitalized here to distinguish it from “primitive capitalism.”)

All those fancy equation-based econometrics that supposedly model human behavior have failed because they are fundamentally and purposefully superficial: they are incapable of understanding deeper dynamics that don’t fit the ruling political-economy conventions.

Marx predicted a crisis of advanced Capitalism based on the rising imbalance of capital and labor in finance-dominated Capitalism. The basic Marxist context is history, not morality, and so the Marxist critique is light on blaming the rich for Capitalism’s core ills and heavy on the inevitability of larger historic forces.

In other words, what’s wrong with advanced Capitalism cannot be fixed by taxing the super-wealthy at the same rate we self-employed pay (40% basic Federal rate), though that would certainly be a fair and just step in the right direction. Advanced Capitalism’s ills run much deeper than superficial “class warfare” models in which the “solution” is to redistribute wealth from the top down the pyramid.

This redistributive “socialist” flavor of advanced Capitalism has bought time–the crisis of the 1930s was staved off for 70 years–but now redistribution as a saving strategy has reached its limits.

To read the rest and see some nice chart porn, go here.

Wednesday September 7th, is an important day for equity markets and bank stocks specifically. The German high court has a chance to rule on continued bailouts for the Euro zone. It is expected that they will rule in favor of the German government to continue bailing out bankrupt countries in the zone.

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Really…thanks for the heads up

Can this guy just retire. We need a can do person in charge of the ECB.

The hits keep coming.

No. Ticker Institutional Holder % Change
1 FCH PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -8.15
2 SPMD PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -8.11
3 BAC PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -7.46
4 BZH PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -6.40
5 MGM PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -6.38
6 FHN PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -6.06
7 STI PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -5.58
8 BYD PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -5.53
9 COF PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -5.34
10 BEE PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -5.25
11 CNO PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -5.03
12 AHT PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.97
13 HIG PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.86
14 SHO PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.79
15 MTN PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.74
16 C PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.40
17 CBG PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.36
18 RKT PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.30
19 RF PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.29
20 XL PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.12
21 GGP PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -4.05
22 BLK PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.92
23 WHR PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.92
24 MNI PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.85
25 THC PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.83
26 LEA PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.76
27 RIG PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.67
28 BSX PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.50
29 VECO PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.40
30 WY PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.28
31 SNI PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.24
32 ACAS PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.17
33 SLXP PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.17
34 HHC PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.11
35 LIFE PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.08
36 ANR PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -3.06
37 APC PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.99
38 BPOP PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.94
39 BZ PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.86
40 AON PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.86
41 MYL PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.72
42 IP PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.66
43 ARG PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.25
44 LNG PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.19
45 RLJ PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.03
46 BAX PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -2.00
47 GEN PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -1.92
48 NVS PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -1.66
49 FDO PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -1.52
50 NG PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -0.78

This makes no sense, whatsoever. It’s as if they want to bankrupt BAC.

$41 billion claim.

Full article