Ever feel like the only survivor after a rainstorm?
This is what this little guy might say.
1. Where is everybody?
2. I love the crisp, clean air.
3. Crap. I should have turned off my sprinklers.
4. I better go inside before my legs get wet and crumple up.
Enjoy!
If you are feeling lonely, please call someone, anyone.
The National Lifeline number is (800) 273-8255.
Peace. Tranquility. Crisp cold air.
This is what this young girl might be thinking.
1. Thanks for the snow.
2. This will produce a lot of water which we need.
3. Thanks for the incredible view.
4. How did this bench get way up here?
Enjoy!
If you are feeling #lonely, please call someone, anyone.
The National Lifeline number is (800) 273-8255.
Ever feel lonely like the tree below?
This is what the tree might say if it could talk.
1. Hello? Anybody there?
2. I really do not need to be tied down. I am not going any where.
3. Seriously? You put me here for what reason?
4. I would rather be in a warm shopping mall with noisy people.
Enjoy!
If you are feeling lonely, please call someone, anyone.
Like Poltergeist II, prepare for CDOs II.
(Here is Poltergeist II trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH-B6A04iK0 )
Remember those financial instruments known as Collateralized Debt Obligations that caused the 2008 Great Recession? Well they never went away. In fact they are baaack.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded that CDOs were one of the major causes of the 2008 Great Recession as shown at this website.
http://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-reports/fcic_final_report_conclusions.pdf
For 2014, global CDO Issuance is back to 2004 levels valued at about $135 billion.
Collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) are CDOs based on bank loans. Many of the subprime loans have been packaged and sold as CLOs.
The following chart shows that Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) in 2014 have reached the same level as 2007 or $35 billion. Total outstanding CLOs in the US amount to $300 billion.
Though the large financial institutions have backed away from collateralizing mortgages, they are now doing it for commodities such as gold, silver and oil. Here is one example.
https://www.google.com/search?q=jpmorgan+precious+metals+as+collateral&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Another problem is not the collateral but the reselling of the same assets. In 2007 one financial firm sold 610 out of 3,400 CDOs more than once. That is nearly 18%. Let me repeat. More than once.
Because buyers are dealing with paper not physical assets, how do they know they are trading real, actual commodities? If the markets started to go down and everyone wanted their physical commodities such as gold, what if there was not enough gold to meet all the obligations? Would there be an international panic?
Update
Evidently CDOs were not selling as well as desired. So the banks have renamed them “bespoke tranche opportunities.”
BTOs are slightly different, as explained in this website.
Thanks
The Bank for International Settlements, BIS, warns that silence is NOT golden.
The BIS has been warning for years of the dangers of very low interest rates.
“A common mistake is to take unusually low volatility and risk spreads [aka silence] as a sign of low risk when, in fact, they are a sign of high risk-taking,” said Claudio Borio, head of the monetary and economic department at the BIS.
Borio added that the last time uncertainty was this low was in 2007 — just before one of the largest forecast errors the economics profession has ever made [aka Great Recession].
Now the BIS has warned the world again. This time with specifics.
The BIS said 55% of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) now being issued are based on leveraged loans, an “unprecedented level”. This raises eyebrows because CDOs were pivotal in the 2008 crash. “Activity in the leveraged loan markets even surpassed the levels recorded before the crisis: average quarterly announcements during the year to end-September 2014 were $250bn,” it said.
See the following link for more information.
Does the BIS have to get out its big guns to make its point?
Michael E Kelley 