ugh!

So much to say and so little time to say it!!!! The wife headed to her family this week so I figured I would have tons of time to make lots of posts -- as it turns out -- this is it!

Fascinating stuff in the market with FRE and FNM plunging yesterday. Glad to see MDT's not as bad as thought -- still debating sellng that one -- at least some of it.

People still saying silly things about the dollar -- smart guy this week said that our future demographics issues with social security and medicare will cause the budget deficit to get big and hurt the dollar? Hello? Are you kidding me? Have you looked at the budget situations of our competitors in Europe and Japan? whatever. If the dollar continues to fall, it will be against non euro/yen currencies for reasons other than social security.

that wells fargo ceo? he said a few things noteworthy -- first, that we are having a severity problem in mortgages meaning its the high loan to value mortgages that are failing so the bank takes a big loss on each one. The other option is frequency, which is driven by employment -- meaning people lose their incomes and that causes them to miss payments and foreclose. Most of these loans are going to have good asset security -- meaning lower loan to value ratios so the banks don't lose as much on each loan. Since its a severity issue, we will reset home values and wipe out a bunch of homeowners and bank capital but then because employment is good, rates are low and there is liquidity in the markets, we will rebound quickly.

let's hope we keep the employment up then!

interesting company I have been reading about lately? BOOM. great business during upcycle in energy -- not so great otherwise. valuation high. looks like great management team. still thinking -- trouble is I have no idea what advantage I bring to predicting future explosion welding demand?