Moishe: Get Out Your Piggy Bank!

How many pennies can you come up with? From Bloomberg.

May 11 (Bloomberg) -- A package of Los Angeles real estate on sale for 35 cents on the dollar is attracting investors to the depressed shares of Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc., the biggest private landowner in the city's four-square-mile downtown.

The stock has plummeted 85 percent since an initial public offering 15 months ago as the global credit crisis threatens to disrupt refinancing of $200 million in mortgage debt coming due in the next 12 months, as well as completion of the city's tallest downtown residential tower.

Meruelo Maddux owns or controls 80 acres including the Little Tokyo Shopping Center, home of the country's largest Japanese supermarket, as well as warehouses and buildings used in Tom Cruise's action film ``Mission Impossible III.''

``It sure looks like a cheap way to play the downtown L.A. market,'' said Mike McGarr, a portfolio manager at $2.4 billion Becker Capital Management in Portland, Oregon, which has added shares this year and owns 1.55 million. ``You're not hanging your hat on a few properties. You've got about 50 properties in various states of development or redevelopment.''

Meruelo Maddux's market capitalization of $142 million is about a third of the book value of its properties minus debts. Loan payments and maintenance consume $500,000 a month more than the company takes in, eroding the developer's $13.5 million in cash...

Money Talks Louder Than Happy Talk

Good indications here. From Bloomberg.

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. led $43.3 billion of U.S. corporate bond sales, the busiest week on record, as financial companies sold debt at the highest yields since May 2001.

Sales compare with $31.2 billion last week and an average this year of $18 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Citigroup, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, sold $6 billion of hybrid bonds in the company's largest public debt offering, while New York-based securities firm Merrill Lynch raised $9.55 billion by issuing debt and preferred securities.

Bond offerings soared as investors grew more optimistic financial companies can recover from $309 billion of writedowns and credit losses tied to the collapse of subprime-mortgage securities. Banks and securities firms sold 88 percent of investment-grade debt this week, Bloomberg data show. High-yield bond sales swelled to the most since November.

``Investors are feeling better about banks being proactive about raising capital,'' said Mike Difley, who helps oversee $21 billion in fixed-income assets as a portfolio manager at American Century Investment Management in Kansas City. ``They're trying to get their house in order.''

The extra yield investors demand to own investment-grade debt fell 9 basis points this week to 268 basis points, the lowest since March 5, according to Merrill Lynch index data. Yet yields rose to 6.13 percent, the highest since August. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point...

A Good Sign for the Real Estate Market

A bottom needs to be found, and this should help. From Bloomberg

Blackstone Raises Record $10.9 Billion Property Fund (Update1)

By Hui-yong Yu and Jason Kelly

April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Blackstone Group LP, manager of the world's biggest leveraged buyout fund, raised a record $10.9 billion to invest in property as the U.S. housing slump pushes global real-estate prices lower.

The fund, the New York-based firm's ninth property pool, brings to $25.7 billion the capital it has raised to buy real estate since 1992, New York-based Blackstone said in a statement today. The company is raising a separate fund of more than $1 billion for Western Europe.

``There should be attractive investment opportunities for this capital, given the market dislocation that exists today,'' Jonathan Gray, senior managing director and co-head of Blackstone's real-estate group, said in the statement.

Blackstone is expanding real estate investing as the market for corporate buyouts remains all but frozen. Its real-estate funds have delivered an average annual return of 31 percent after fees since 1992, higher than private equity or hedge funds, the firm said in government filings prepared for its initial public offering last year.

The firm, led by Stephen Schwarzman, last year completed the biggest-ever buyouts in the real estate and hotel industries. It acquired Sam Zell's Equity Office Properties Trust for $39 billion including debt in February 2007 and quickly resold more than $28 billion of the buildings to pay down debt. Blackstone bought Hilton Hotels Corp. for $26 billion with assumed debt last October...

Warren Buffet Doesn't Always Win?

From Bloomberg.

March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Warren Buffett's new bond insurer may not get any business from California, the largest U.S. municipal debt issuer.

California Treasurer Bill Lockyer is leading more than a dozen state and local governments that say bond ratings exaggerate the risk of default, pushing up interest costs and forcing issuers to buy unneeded insurance. Lockyer said in a March 26 interview his state will shun Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s venture because Buffett's company supports the current ratings.

``It's unfair to taxpayers,'' said Lockyer, who estimates the present system may cost his state an extra $5 billion over the next three decades. ``I hope Mr. Buffett will rethink that viewpoint. I don't intend to do any business with his firm.''

Berkshire Hathaway Assurance was created in December after state regulators sought to help governments get coverage when losses jeopardized bond insurers MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc. The turmoil spread to auction-rate markets, where average debt costs almost doubled from January to more than 6.5 percent as of March 19. Instead of embracing Buffett's company, some bond issuers began asking why they need insurance at all...

Good News

Ambac Has $15 Billion in Claims-Paying Resources, Callen Says

By Romaine Bostick

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Ambac Financial Group Inc., the world's second-largest bond insurer, said it has more than $15 billion in claims paying resources and will be able to retain its AAA ratings and meet its immediate objectives.

``Ambac never considered a `bailout,''' Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael A. Callen said in a letter to policyholders released today. ``Many parties offered us capital alternatives, but, as I have said publicly, their terms were at an unacceptably high price.''

Al Gore has also been making moves, not movies

Link.

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore left the White House seven years ago with less than $2 million in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee. Now he's making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships.

Gore invested the money with Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, California, firm that selects the private funds for clients and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products, according to a Feb. 1 securities filing. Capricorn was founded by billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, former president of EBay Inc. and an executive producer of Gore's Oscar-winning documentary film on global warming.

Since losing the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, Gore, 59, is best known for focusing attention on climate change through his book and movie, ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' which helped him win a Nobel Peace Prize. Gore's newfound wealth resulted, in part, from speaking engagements and ties to Silicon Valley firms with soaring stock market values, such as Google Inc. and Apple Inc.

``Gore got a lot of support from Silicon Valley when he ran for president because they knew the Internet was one of his primary concerns,'' said Tony Coelho, a former congressman and investment banker who served as chairman of Gore's 2000 campaign.

``It's very legit that these people would pursue him'' after he left office, Coelho said, adding that Gore received Google and Apple stock options before their shares ``went into the stratosphere.''

Moishe: Let's make an offer

From Bloomberg.

March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Nothing has done more to disturb financial markets in recent months than the huge writedowns in the value of bank assets related to subprime mortgages. Some of them may have gone too far.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in congressional testimony on Feb. 28 that accounting rules may be forcing banks to put artificially low values on little-traded assets when they mark them to market.

The inability to value such assets on the basis of actual trades, Bernanke said, is ``one of the major problems that we have in the current environment. I don't know how to fix it. I don't know what to do about it.''

Writedowns in the tens of billions of dollars have forced some large institutions, including Citigroup Inc., to raise new capital to offset losses and perhaps made them less willing to extend credit, hurting economic activity.

Some analysts, such as Richard Bove of Punk Ziegel & Co., say the tools banks are using to value their assets ``don't reflect the real world.''

``This mark-to-market accounting forces banks to mark their portfolios against indexes that aren't representative of what's going on in the markets at all,'' Bove said in a Feb. 28 interview.

One index banks use ``shows something like an 8 percent potential loss in commercial real estate in the United States,'' he said. ``Do you know what the actual loss is right now? One quarter of 1 percent.''

`Fallacious Indexes'

In other words, banks are marking their securities against an index that suggests the losses will be 32 times worse than the actual loss experience, Bove said.

``We're marking against fallacious indexes,'' he said, ``and that's creating more problems than necessary.''

A key issue is that with many investors shunning risk, an asset that in the future might have substantial value may have few if any buyers now.

Funny, but True

I know this is ruining Moishe's chances of appearing on Kudlow and Co., but c'mon! From The Big Picture.

The Modern Kudlow To Standard English Translation Guide
Kudlowism : Modern Translation
“The Greatest Story Never Told”:
Early stages of a normal economic expansion.
"Goldilocks Economy":
Latter stages of expansion; cracks
in the façade are beginning to show.
“A possibility of Recession exists”:
The recession has already begun.
“A Mild Recession”: We are in a broad and deep recession.
“We are in a serious recession”: Stock up on canned food, bottled water and handgun ammo.
“I don’t see how this can get any worse”: BUY!

Grain of Salt

From Bloomberg.

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Barton Biggs, co-founder of hedge fund Traxis Partners LLC, said he's ``gradually increasing'' his holdings of U.S. equities because he doesn't expect a recession and shares are ``very, very cheap.''

Biggs, the former global investment strategist for Morgan Stanley, said in a Bloomberg Television interview that the market is ``at or very close to an important bottom'' and may be led higher by banks and brokerages when a rally occurs. Some financial companies may advance 20 percent to 25 percent over periods of two to three weeks, said Biggs, who helps manage $1.5 billion in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 6.1 percent in January, its biggest monthly decline since September 2002 and its worst start to a year since 1990. During the month the index fell as much as 16 percent from its Oct. 9 record.

Financial companies in the index fell almost 21 percent in 2007, the worst performance among 10 industry groups and their biggest drop since 1990. They trade for 14.8 times profits, compared with an average price-earnings ratio of 15.5 this decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The S&P 500 trades for 18.1 times earnings, 31 percent below its monthly average this decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Biggs correctly forecast U.S. equities would rebound from declines in March and August last year. On March 16, following a 5 percent decline by the S&P 500 from its Feb. 20 peak, he said stocks were approaching a bottom and predicted a gain of as much as 15 percent for the index in 2007.

The S&P 500 rose as much as 12 percent from that level before retreating to end the year with a 3.5 percent gain.

On Aug. 16, after a 9 percent decline by the index, Biggs said it was bottoming and predicted a rebound. The benchmark rose almost 11 percent over the next seven weeks.

Smart Thinking

From the NY Times.

In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and a cookbook by the Food Network star Robert Irvine.

The idea is to give readers the opportunity to sample the books online in the same way that prospective buyers can flip through books in a bookstore.

“It’s like taking the shrink wrap off a book,” said Jane Friedman, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide. “The best way to sell books is to have the consumer be able to read some of that content.”
Starting Monday, readers who log on to www.harpercollins.com will be able to see the entire contents of “The Witch of Portobello” by Mr. Coelho; “Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes and Making the Impossible Easy” by Mr. Irvine; “I Dream in Blue: Life, Death and the New York Giants” by Roger Director; “The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from and How You Can Choose” by Mark Halperin; and “Warriors: Into the Wild” the first volume in a children’s series by Erin Hunter...

Dear Record Companies, It's Not Rocket Science

From 60 Second Science. And here is another great music biz post that Morty and Moishe Recommend...

Blog Chatter Can Triple Future Sales of Music Albums According to New Study from NYU Stern
Thursday February 7, 9:42 am ET

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In his new research paper entitled, “Does Chatter Matter,” co-authored with former student Elaine Chang, NYU Stern Professor Vasant Dhar, an expert in the strategic implications of information technology, finds that the volume of blog posts featured on the Internet before an album’s release can significantly affect future album sales, and in turn predict sales for record labels. This is the first study to quantify the economic impact of user-generated content for the music industry.

Based on a sample of 108 albums released during the first two months of 2007, Professor Dhar found:

* When legitimate blog posts exceeded a threshold of 40 before an album’s release, sales were three times the average
* If the albums blogged about were associated with a major record label, sales increased five-fold
* When blog activity reached more than 250 posts, sales were six times the average regardless of an association with a major or independent label
* The number of an artist’s MySpace friends also contributed to higher future sales, but had a weaker correlation as compared to blog chatter

Professor Dhar tracked changes in the volume of online chatter—blog posts and the number of friends an artist has on MySpace—four weeks before and after an album’s release date.

The full working paper is available at: https://archive.nyu.edu/handle/2451/23783

Quote of the Day

Brought to my attention by The Big Picture. Click here for other subprime related posts that Morty and Moishe Recommend...

"I wouldn't quite call it a credit crunch. Money is available, and it's really quite cheap because of the lowering of rates that has taken place.”
...he said what had taken place was "a re-pricing of risk," leading to an "unavailability of what I might call 'dumb money', of which there was plenty around a year ago."

-Warren Buffett

More Background on the Microsoft/ Yahoo Deal

From the great financial blog, The Big Picture. Click here for other deal related content on Morty and Moishe Recommend...

Was a Private Equity Bid for Yahoo Thwarted by Microsoft ?
Monday, February 11, 2008 | 06:00 AM
in Corporate Management | M&A | Valuation | Web/Tech

Last week, before the Microsoft (MSFT) deal was rejected by Yahoo's Board, some interesting chatter was bouncing around NYC.

The latest rumor to make the rounds was that Yahoo (YHOO) was just about to announce a negotiated transaction for the sale of the company to an East Coast private equity firm. Then Microsoft stepped in the way. We first heard this story sometime between Mister Softee's $31/share, $44 billion hostile bid, and this weekend's rejection of that offer by Yahoo as an insufficient valuation for all of Yahoo's properties.

The rumors of this now pre-empted private bid include the following:

-to be announced as early as February 5th;
-negotiated price was in the $23-25 range;
-some Yahoo! properties to be spun out to shareholders;
...
While this remains unconfirmed by anyone willing to make an on-the-record statement, it is well sourced enough that I suspect there is sat least some degree of truth to it.
...

Corporate chess game - MSFT YAHOO

From Alley Insider - great site!

It's no secret Moishe likes deals and even more then deals he likes angles - here is a story covering the MSFT YHOO deal that talks about all the angles.

How Will MSFT Respond To YHOO's Counter?

Henry Blodget | February 9, 2008 5:54 PM

Yahoo's "rejection" of Microsoft's $31 bid isn't a rejection but a counter-offer of $40 a share. It remains to be seen whether the company will state this explicitly in its letter to Microsoft (unlikely), but it has already sent the message through theWall Street Journal. So the next question is...how will Microsoft respond?

The answer likely depends on how impatient Steve Ballmer is. Microsoft is in a strong position. No other bidders for Yahoo have emerged, and none are likely to. Yahoo has now indicated that it won't refuse to sell the company--thus forcing Microsoft to decide whether to pursue a hostile takeover--and many Yahoo shareholders have gone on record saying that they like the $31 deal (although they'd no doubt like a $40 one better).

Microsoft might therefore choose to take another page out of Rupert Murdoch's playbook by saying, politely, that it's not going to raise its offer and that it hopes to persuade Yahoo's shareholders to take it. And then, as Yahoo's stock drops back to the mid-20s and shareholders begin to grumble that Yahoo should have just accepted the bid, Microsoft will slowly ramp up its charm offensive.

After the Bancrofts rejected Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones, Murdoch quietly launched a full-court schmooze. Specifically, he met with the Bancrofts and reassured them that he wasn't going to destroy their baby. In Yahoo's case, there are no controlling shareholders to win over, but there are plenty of big ones. And Steve Ballmer has already met with the largest--Capital Research and Management--last week.

Cap Group Meeting in NY Post: A Message to Yahoo

The stated reason for the Ballmer-Cap Group meeting, as leaked to the New York Post, was Cap Group's desire to see if Ballmer was considering raising his Yahoo bid. Cap Group also owns 6% of Microsoft, and it was reportedly concerned that if Ballmer raised his bid, Cap Group would lose more on its Microsoft position than it made on its Yahoo one.

This may have been one reason for the Ballmer-Cap Group meeting, but there were undoubtedly others (Ballmer wanting to take Cap Group's temperature). News of the meeting was also obviously leaked for a reason (Microsoft and Capital Group are perfectly capable of keeping their mouths shut unless they have some ulterior motive). Our guess? Team Microsoft wanted to tell Team Yahoo that Yahoo's largest shareholder was already pressuring Steve Ballmer NOT to raise his bid.

Risks to Waiting? Some, But Slim

There are some risks to Microsoft's biding its time, of course. No other bidders have emerged, but given enough time, Yahoo might be able to put some kind of alternative deal together. Yahoo has already used the Journal and NYT to suggest that it has an alternative--outsourcing search to Google*--but this isn't really an alternative and Microsoft probably won't be fooled by it. One other issue that makes time a factor: Yahoo may deteriorate as an asset if a prolonged period of purgatory causes its best people to leave. Microsoft can't start locking up executives until it gets a commitment, and in the meantime, many executives may exit.

Microsoft may well be willing to raise its offer by a couple of dollars, especially, if, as the NYT reports, it was ready to offer $35 until Yahoo blew Q4. But if Microsoft's "final offer" is, say, $35, there's no reason to make an explicit counter-offer now. Instead, it can wait until the parties are at the table and throw in a concession to make Yahoo feel like it has won something. It's also worth noting that, based on Microsoft's current share price, the offer isn't $31 but $29. So Microsoft's last- minute concession could merely be to hike the offer back to the original bid.

Our current guess, therefore, is that Microsoft will respond to Yahoo's counter-offer by trying to win over Yahoo's big shareholders and biding its time.

The Industry Standard is back, some of you may remember them from internet bubble days - now with a prediction betting component to their website

The Industry Standard is back, was a great reporter and barometer on the internet boom in the late 1990s, some may remember issues jam packed with so many ads it could have been a womens fashion magazine. Anyway they are now back as an internet only magazine and they have added an online prediction betting component to their site where you can place wagers on events related to the tech world, for instance, will yahoo be bought by Microsoft? (fake money only, sorry Morty). check it out www.thestandard.com.

In honor of this weeks American Securitization Forum - we present John Devaney - thanks Wall Street Folly

keep one thing in mind, this guy was buying securitized pools of airplane leases post 9/11 and made an absolute fortune, he understands risk and is willing to bet big. I wouldn't count him out just yet.

From: wallstfolly.typepad.com

John Devaney, skipper of United Capital Markets Holdings Inc., and former skipper of "Positive Carry", one of the two yachts he was forced to sell last year after he was nearly sunk by bad sub-prime bets, thinks it's time to test the waters again.

The chief executive officer of United Capital Markets Holdings Inc., who lost more than 35 percent for at least one client last year and prevented investors from withdrawing their cash, says bonds derived from subprime mortgages are a bargain after falling as low as 10 cents on the dollar. TCW Group Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Co. are also betting that prices will recover.

``Just because I lost money doesn't mean I will quit, no way,'' Devaney, who sold his boat ``Positive Carry'' and Gulfstream IV, said in a telephone interview from Key Biscayne, Florida. ``Prices have collapsed and this is the best opportunity I've seen in my career.''

Losses, mainly from mortgage bonds and CDOs, forced Devaney to sell his 142-foot (43 meter) yacht, the jet and real estate. ``We took a bad loss,'' Devaney said. ``Selling the boats and planes helped reduce overhead and raised money to put back into the business.''

Devaney's call to buy coincides with the American Securitization Forum, a big annual conference being held in Las Vegas beginning tomorrow at the Venetian. 5,700 attendees are scheduled to be there, including speakers from Countrywide Financial and Bear Stearns that have had their own well publicized problems with sub-prime.

Devaney, 38, paid for comedians Jay Leno and David Spade to perform in previous years. This time, he's sponsoring dinner and a show by the Blue Man Group, a theatrical troupe that sprays paint on the audience and vomits fake food.

SRM Global Fund is Not as Big a Fan of Bottom Feeding as You and I Are, Moishe

We call it resolution to a financial crisis, they call it less than half book value.

Countrywide Holder Calls Bank of America Bid Too Low (Update2)

By David Mildenberg

Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp.'s offer of about $4 billion for Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest U.S. home lender, is too low, according to one of the mortgage company's biggest stakeholders.

``The merger agreement does not provide sufficient value'' to shareholders of Calabasas, California-based Countrywide, according to a regulatory filing today by SRM Global Fund, a private investment firm based in the Cayman Islands. SRM, which controls a 5.2 percent stake, plans to vote against the merger and wants to contact the company and other shareholders.

SRM's filing may revive doubt that the takeover will be completed on the original terms. Investors have speculated Bank of America might demand an even lower price or walk away because of continued losses at Countrywide. The bank affirmed earlier this week that it will proceed with the purchase.

``The board of Countrywide and its advisers should fully explain to shareholders the reasons why they have agreed to recommend the transaction to shareholders at less than half of the company's book value,'' SRM said in a statement. ``The company is strong and will rapidly return to profit on a stand- alone basis.''

Another interesting think piece (a real Morty term to use) - Moishe subscribes to this theory

Research shows that your brain function is both broadened and improved by “interdisciplinary exercise.” What does this mean? Be eccentric. Use your brain to think about lots of different things, even things that have nothing to do with one another. This builds new synapses, exercises existing ones, and simply makes you smarter.

OK, you’re thinking, but I’m founding a company. I don’t have time to think about anything other than cash flow and customer acquisition, much less take up new hobbies. But here’s one quick way to do become interdisciplinary: When you read, read stuff that has nothing to do with what your company does. (You can make time to read.)

Life Optimizer had a great post last week that explained three reasons why diversifying your reading is a shortcut to brains-building.

1. Avoid boredom
I don’t know about you, but reading the same topics again and again makes me bored. Even for topics I’m passionate about, I will be more refreshed if I also read other topics once in a while.

2. Arbitrage knowledge
The art of arbitrage is important for living smart, and diversifying your reading allows you to do knowledge arbitrage. Knowledge arbitrage means taking ideas from one field to be applied to another field. If you read only one or two topics, it’s difficult to do that.
3. Cross-pollinate ideas
Continuing the idea of arbitrage, not only can you borrow ideas from other fields, you can also combine ideas from different fields. Often it will give you “original” ideas since nobody has seen such combination before. Of course, you can only cross-pollinate idea if you have different kinds of idea to begin with, and that’s why you should diversify your reading.

It turns out this is a tried and true method, used by some of your business icons — like VC Michael Moritz and Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Last July,
the New York Times revealed what several hyper-successful business leaders read — and it ain’t business books.

For example, Moritz, the Sequoia VC who funded Google, Yahoo!, PayPal, Kayak.com and others, said:

“I try to vary my reading diet and ensure that I read more fiction than nonfiction,” Mr. Moritz said. “I rarely read business books, except for Andy Grove’s ‘Swimming Across,’ which has nothing to do with business but describes the emotional foundation of a remarkable man. I re-read from time to time T. E. Lawrence’s ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom,’ an exquisite lyric of derring-do, the navigation of strange places and the imaginative ruses of a peculiar character. It has to be the best book ever written about leading people from atop a camel.”

The Times also reports that Apple founder Steve Jobs once had “an ‘inexhaustible interest’ in the books of William Blake — the mad visionary 18th-century mystic poet and artist.”

And Now to Cheer Moishe After My Kudlow Put Down - Some Optimistic Economic Posting

From Floyd Norris, the chief financial correspondent of The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune.

Is the housing recession nearing an end?

You wouldn’t know it from the new home sales numbers that came out today, which are unsurprisingly dreadful. But investors seem to believe that things are looking up, thanks to the combinantion of Fed rate cuts and an increase in the size of loans that can be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The economic stimulus package being considered in Congress would raise that limit to $730,000 from $417,000.

The S.&P. 1500 homebuilder index is up an astonishing 40 percent since it hit bottom Jan. 8, with all of the 15 stocks in the index up at least 11 percent. (The index is still 67 percent below its peak in 2005.)
...
1. Regionally, the northeast is the least important part of the country for new home sales, but it is also the strongest. There were 65,000 new homes sold in that region last year, up 3 percent from 2006. But the other three regions were all down at least 26 percent, with the west (California, there you go) off the most at 32%.
...
Stock prices are supposed to anticipate the economy. Let’s hope this forecast is accurate.

A Good Idea, as Heard on a Bloomberg News Podcast While Noshing on Some Choclate Chip Cookies

From the Bloomberg on the Economy with Tom Keene Podcast, economist John Markin with the American Enterprise Institute called for a 100bps point cut on January 30th, and, most importantly, an auction of all troubled assets to ascertain true market prices, a process similar to what occurred to the S&L related bankruptcies. People will get some deals, but the banks will adjust to the new market value of their assets with out further delay. The only reason this has not been done yet, is people don't want to hear the number.