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Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

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Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

mookie1995 said:
mookie should be everywhere :D

should be national id cards too. homeland security should fund for domestic travel. can be coded for citizen, resident, visitor, etc. visitors (students) pay, citizen get free. resident aliens pay less than visitors.

besides security issues, they can (should) be used for voting id. no need to register. citizen...show your national id and vote. get a ink dunk on your thumb too :D

good idea there 5min. thanks!
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Beyond the thought of why do we have to force the country to go through such monumental hoops just to vote...can anybody help me with the point above?
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

It’s been over since the day they allowed craftsman to be sold outside of Sears.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

dxmnkd316 said:
It’s been over since the day they allowed craftsman to be sold outside of Sears.
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Sears has been over since long before then. They started selling Craftsman products outside of Sears as a way to keep at least one line of positive cash flow when people stopped visiting their stores.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

The company has had its issues since the internet turned into a sales channel.

But its real end came from two words: Eddie Lampert.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

St. Clown said:
Sears has been over since long before then. They started selling Craftsman products outside of Sears as a way to keep at least one line of positive cash flow when people stopped visiting their stores.
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Yeah, Craftsman was really just the seventh seal.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination
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RUIRU, Kenya — Before last year, Richard Ochieng’, 26, could not recall experiencing racism firsthand.

Not while growing up as an orphan in his village near Lake Victoria where everybody was, like him, black. Not while studying at a university in another part of Kenya. Not until his job search led him to Ruiru, a fast-growing settlement at the edge of the capital, Nairobi, where Mr. Ochieng’ found work at a Chinese motorcycle company that had just expanded to Kenya.

But then his new boss, a Chinese man his own age, started calling him a monkey.

It happened when the two were on a sales trip and spotted a troop of baboons on the roadside, he said.

“‘Your brothers,’” he said his boss exclaimed, urging Mr. Ochieng’ to share some bananas with the primates.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/world/africa/kenya-china-racism.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

5mn_Major said:
The company has had its issues since the internet turned into a sales channel.

But its real end came from two words: Eddie Lampert.
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They had a huge catalog, the logistics to handle nationwide distribution/delivery from said catalog, their own credit card line, and were one of the first stores with a website when the Internet was a new thing.

They had every tool to be Amazon before Amazon was a twinkle in Jeff Bezos' eye...and they said "nah, we're good."
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

They'll still be teaching Harvard Business Cases about Sears in 30 years. And almost all of them will be of the "Why this idea flopped" variety.

I remember doing one in grad school about how they tried to offer custom tailoring through the Lands' End clothing line.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

St. Clown said:
Feel free to make your own conclusions on what's to come from ideas like this.

http://www.fanniemae.com/resources/file/single-security/pdf/market-adoption-playbook.pdf

http://www.freddiemac.com/mbs/single-security/
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I'm not entirely sure what the pros and cons were, so naturally I started googling. I couldn't find much in terms of pros and cons that I could understand, save for this article.

I think this a bit over my head, but this passage caught my eye:
Walter Schmidt, senior vice president of FTN Financial’s MBS strategist team, says the FHFA still has “much more work to do” to convince investors that UMBS will be an improvement. His concern is that with Fannie and Freddie still independently sourcing the mortgages that go into the single security, price differentials that take into account different prepayment performance of the underlying loans will evaporate.

Investors may see a “race to the bottom” in loan quality because of their inability to price in prepayment speed differentials in the so-called to-be-announced market. Consequently, the UMBS TBA will favor the worst performing loans, as they are the “cheapest to deliver,” according to Schmidt. That could hurt lenders, investors and borrowers.
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I don't understand the technical details on the hows or whys, but I don't like that investors think this will be a race to the bottom. That's scary for a few reasons. THe first is that this might be sending us for a repeat of 2008. The second is that if investors are spooked, there won't be as much money to invest. Obviously that snowballs because then people will want better returns, so risk goes up, etc.

This article explains things a little better.

While investors at Pimco probably have something to lose with a UMBS, they raise some interesting concerns:

Q: The FHFA believes improved liquidity may be attained as "UMBS issued by the Enterprises are designed to be fungible – that is, mutually interchangeable – trading without regard to which Enterprise is the issuer." Do you believe that is the proper route to improved liquidity?

A: We fear that without an explicit incentive to do so, investors will not convert their existing stock of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS into the new UMBS, thereby leading to a trifurcated market with overall diminished liquidity (old Fannie, old Freddie and new UMBS).

Decreased liquidity is actually something that Fannie Mae identifies as a possible risk associated with the UMBS initiative on page 97 of its 10-Q -- “the Single Security Initiative could contribute to declines in the liquidity or market value of our Fannie Mae MBS.” This is exactly the opposite outcome desired by policymakers.
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Among others...

Edit 2: Also, I don't understand why we need to have a common UMBS... It would be like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs deciding to offer only a single publicly-traded stock instead of GS and MS. (Sort of, but not exactly analogous.) Right?
 
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Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

dxmnkd316 said:
I'm not entirely sure what the pros and cons were, so naturally I started googling. I couldn't find much in terms of pros and cons that I could understand, save for this article.

I think this a bit over my head, but this passage caught my eye:


I don't understand the technical details on the hows or whys, but I don't like that investors think this will be a race to the bottom. That's scary for a few reasons. THe first is that this might be sending us for a repeat of 2008. The second is that if investors are spooked, there won't be as much money to invest. Obviously that snowballs because then people will want better returns, so risk goes up, etc.

This article explains things a little better.

While investors at Pimco probably have something to lose with a UMBS, they raise some interesting concerns:



Among others...

Edit 2: Also, I don't understand why we need to have a common UMBS... It would be like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs deciding to offer only a single publicly-traded stock instead of GS and MS. (Sort of, but not exactly analogous.) Right?
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Here's the part they're not saying: They're creating "super mortgage backed securities," which is what the investment banks and mortgage companies were creating during the early 00's. With more questionable home buyers once again being approved, often the sort being approved through FHMA programs, doesn't this look like a federal version of what we saw happen back then? It certainly does to me.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

So, looks to me like we're doing 2008 all over again. Good ****ing plan.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

St. Clown said:
Here's the part they're not saying: They're creating "super mortgage backed securities," which is what the investment banks and mortgage companies were creating during the early 00's. With more questionable home buyers once again being approved, often the sort being approved through FHMA programs, doesn't this look like a federal version of what we saw happen back then? It certainly does to me.
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Three questions:
1. You say this is a "federal version" of the 2000s. Weren't these national programs at the time? Or are you saying this is far worse because they are now under the US Government's conservatorship?
2. So how were mortgages funded before MBSs? Did the bank just have to have a certain percent of the loan in their coffers?
3. The follow-up to that is, would lack of MBSs create an increased cost to the borrower because there are fewer mortgages to go around?

Because I don't think MBSs are inherently bad. In fact, I think that under the right conditions they are good for the market.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

ScoobyDoo said:
So, looks to me like we're doing 2008 all over again. Good ****ing plan.
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Pretty much. Same sh*t, slightly different rules designed to fool the rubes and favor the banksters.

I picked the wrong career, that's for d@mned sure.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

dxmnkd316 said:
Three questions:
1. You say this is a "federal version" of the 2000s. Weren't these national programs at the time? Or are you saying this is far worse because they are now under the US Government's conservatorship?
2. So how were mortgages funded before MBSs? Did the bank just have to have a certain percent of the loan in their coffers?
3. The follow-up to that is, would lack of MBSs create an increased cost to the borrower because there are fewer mortgages to go around?

Because I don't think MBSs are inherently bad. In fact, I think that under the right conditions they are good for the market.
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MBSs are not inherently bad and can provide greater liquidity to the market - all very true. The problem is that they lost their transparency to the market. Now that FNMA and FDMC are condensing multiple pools into a single pool, they lose even more transparency to the markets. This will allow them to once again over-inflate. HUD technically has oversight on them, but do you really expect them to do their jobs for the next couple years?

One of the major problems with the mortgage crisis was that people were taking MBSs and creating derivatives of them. That's essentially what FNMA and FDMC are now trying to do once again, only they're not waiting for third party entities to do it for them. Unless their investments have regulations placed upon them stating that they cannot be added into future derivative tranches, we're going to see series of two-layered underlying securities form the first layer of new tranches being written. And we'll be right back where we started.

From 1968 to 2008, FNMA and FDMC were private entities. They both began as GSEs, but then were taken private, but given special consideration on financing, receiving around 30-35 basis point discount on their funding from other private financing firms.

As to the history, here's a very accurate but brief synopsis of not only Fannie and Freddie, but the mortgage market itself. And I do mean brief.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

Since the high water mark of the blue wave and the start of new found enthusiasm for the GOP, the dow has lost 2,000 points.
 
Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 7: Workers of the world unite!

Market took another hit and has wiped out the gains for this year.
 
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