Its Quiet, Too Quiet!

Today was easily the most boring day for financial news and gossip ever. Everyone is waiting for the FED move tomorrow, and I guess that is when things will start moving again. Tonight I just have a few notes and quips, then I guess I will wait until tomorrow as well. Honestly, almost all my thoughts are on the upcoming football game Sunday, so what can you do.

I love this picture from "Revenge of the Sith":

The picture is of course Lord Darth Vader, The Emperor (Darth Sidious), and Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin as they oversee the construction of the first Death Star. I had a funny thought about this picture. Imagine the characters in the picture are instead Alan Greenspan (The Emperor), Wall Street Banks and Brokerages (Grand Moff Tarkin), and the National Realtors Association (Darth Vader). They are watching the construction of the Housing Bubble. The Emperor has provided basically unlimited cheap liquidity with low interest rates and money creation. Grand Moff Tarkin is tasked with building a financial superweapon of prosperity using the liquidity. Darth Vader makes sure nobody complains about anything and uses the force to do mind tricks on people so they want to buy homes they cannot afford. The construction goes extremely well, and eventually the weapon is finished. The Death Star is then used to destroy the planet of Alderaan which is the home planet of nasty lending guidelines. All seems well and the galaxy is convinced of the new paradigm of housing perpetual prosperity. Then along comes Bear Stearns Skywalker and he drops a proton sub prime torpedo down an open CDO shaft and the whole thing goes up:

As you know already, the Emperor built a second Death Star that was even bigger than the first. Keep that in mind when the FED (now Bernanke) cuts rates again tomorrow. The second Death Star ended with a bigger boom, a parallel the FED may want to keep in mind.

Football commentary coming, bail out (not you federal reserve!) now if not interested!

All the talk of the Patriots running up the score is already old. I am not sure where the pure animosity towards the Pats comes from this year, but it is quite annoying. The commentary I have read states the Colts have played tougher teams than the Patriots this year. First off, that dumb. The Chargers and the Cowboys are both many levels above any opponent the Colts have played. Second, if the teams the Patriots have played are so bad, should they not score big? You cannot have it both ways. Intellectual honesty and consistency are two things you must have if you want to be taken seriously.

I have a new poll question up tonight, so have at it!

Have a good night.