For now until the conversion gets all the points from my UD days counted at last.

Actually, there are two versions of you. The propercase version has WCG, QMC and PS3Grid. The lowercase version is you at Poem. I think if you fix your username/email at Poem to match the rest, it will get combined.

Wow -- way more than I ever expected to see in here for myself
in a day! Some of it is due to flushing out my PV Jail, I know, but
this new quad is really performing a lot better than I had expected!
When this all started four years ago, it took nearly a month to get
that many points on a P3 and P4!

Good Morning MOT!

Good numbers yesterday with all those new crunchng machines.

Beautiful day here. Last day in the low 90's then into the 80's.

Cheers!

Pretty quiet in here today. Must be all te financial news from yesterday. A lot to digest. I am wondering why lawmakers have spent so much time in the past writing bankruptcy laws if they won't allow the marketplace to use them. Probably because they pushed the banks so hard to get into the sub-prime lending. Well, one way or another, we're all gonna be the ones to pay for it.

Well, political discussions tend to be riskier than wrestling in a minefield. Still, the whole mess - bailout and all is just one fiasco after another. The initial presentation of the bill was totally screwed up. Get something labelled as a Wall Street Bailout and you're just begging for a revolt. It was really about liquidity in the credit markets. By buying the "junk" mortgage securities and such from businesses, that would get them off their balance sheets and help improve their financial position to where they weren't viewed as too risky to loan money to. Seems lots of companies borrow funds overnight or for just a few days as part of managing their cash flow and liquidity. In the current mess, it's gotten bad enough that folks are not leanding that money to each other. That's the "credit markets are drying up" sort of thing we're hearing. The House website was getting hit by so many folks looking at the bill when it was released and e-mailing their Reps that it was on the verge of crashing. They've put "traffic limits" on it now to prevent that. The load on their system is greater than even after 9/11. Past records have been blown out of the water.

I'm reading stories about how the tightening credit market is starting to impact "Main Street". Funny, now sub-prime loans are virtually non-existent. Jumbo mortgages come with a much heftier rate premium. In other words, you have to have decent credit to get loans. WOW! How radical!

I can understand political officials referring to the bailout bill as a necessary evil. I'm not so sure at this point. Every time business get too loose with credit, they end up getting burnt. They got extra loose with it for a while and now they are getting their greedy heinies fried extra well done. It's been interesting to see the "polls" on the bailout bill. They started out overwhelming against it and are only NOW starting to approach anything near a semi-even split. The Washington "leaders" thought they had a done deal lined up but being so out of touch with reality, they ignored the botched presentation of the bill to the public and the huge backlash that flooded Congress. Yes, McCain mismanaged his role in it and he's paying for it now. Obama gave a speech in which he claimed responsibility for every change to the original three page proposal to protect us "ordinary folks". Real estate is a dicey investment these days, bridges even more so. I ain't buying. Pelosi's speech at the vote was definitely not a help. I found it insulting, highly partisan, and very stupid timing. They all earned an equal share of blame in my book.

I've said it before. I'm sick of Democrats AND Republicans in Washington. It's long past time for AMERICANS in Washingtion. I fully believe if Diogenes had to conduct his search in Washington, he'd commit suicide. I'd love to choose a candidate for ANY national level office based on the issues. Frankly, I can't remember far enough back when that was still possible. I'm tired of having to hold my nose and vote based on damage control. When one party controls Congress, we have to have the other party in the White House. In today's Washington, gridlock is a GOOD thing.

It's interesting to read about all the economists that are saying the bailout bill is a mistake. I have to admit that I found one proposed version of the bailout idea from outside Washington appealling if we have to go with such a necessary evil. Rate/value the debt/securities/investments on a five tier scale and pay 30 to 70 cents on the dollar for them based on that scale. That sets a bottom and that in turn provides the opportunies for the "big money folks" to buy them at maybe just above that on the bet that they'd actually get more that the valuation in the end and make money on their "investment" and saving us money since the government wouldn't have to buy all of it.

The only "consensus" on this comes from Washington and the firms that would benefit from it. Us ordinary folks hate it. I'm not sold on buying this bridge yet.

EDIT: Oops, forgot to mention that the markets recovered about half of yesterdays losses today. What an interesting reaction!