Items of Interest

When I checked my traffic details this afternoon I was amazed that I was looking at a 6 times increase in views just over the last 24 hours! Naturally I thought some tale of mine had gong huge and made its way across the Internet in what would surely bring me widespread fame and fortune. So what post garnered all the attention? What top notch writing example had resulted in such a page view tsunami?

Here it is:
Sunday Images
This post from Sunday March 15th included an LOL Cat picture that as far as I can put together (the one with the horse in the car) has been a hot searched for item on Google. What a let down. I am experiencing personal deflation great depression style. Oh well.

Items of Interest
It took me a little while to figure the traffic spike out, so I am short on time. Some items that I found interesting:

The downfall of Washington Mutual
While we have heard the standard line "this is not like the Depression, there are no bank runs!" this is of course untrue. There were many bank runs and many folded banks were "taken over" instead of closing. Washington Mutuals' fall is covered here.

The readers know that I am not a huge fan of Technical Analysis trading, but do appreciate the work that goes into it. Imagine my surprise when one of the biggest and the best of the chart sites, Slope of Hope, featured an item by a more macro thinker, with charts thrown in of course:
Solvency and Sovereignty
Key line: "This bull market to me is cash. Gold is the highest form of cash and it fit perfectly in my still ongoing 10 year bearish thesis." The author covers plenty of bases about downside risks to metals as well.

In a matching vomit inducing report for home buyer tax credit wrangling, it seems GMAC is looking to the Treasury for yet another handout:
GMAC Asks for Fresh Lifeline
Lender in Advanced Talks for Third Slug of Taxpayer Cash -- at Least $2.8 Billion More
When you are in for over 15 Billion already, what's another 3 Billion right?

I am unclear as to if the handout of about 3 Billion is in addition to a TLGP issue just made by GMAC, or if this was the deal they wanted:
Cash Sink Hole GMAC Catches Last TLGP Train Out Of The Station With $2.9 Billion Free Issue
Anybody know? Does it matter? Can anything be done to stop the government from doing these things non stop?

The GDP number is out tomorrow, and estimates ranged from 3%-3.2% annualized. That was before Goldman Sachs came out with a lower number, 2.7%, which if correct will be the second time that GS has nailed a heavily watched data point the day before the number was released:
Goldman's Extended GDP Analysis

I threw in the towel on a post last night after reading about an extension and expansion of the home buyer tax credit. Today things seem a bit more muddled, but by Friday this will get done. THIS WILL GET DONE. Calculated Risk has the latest, so check in often.

First revision, maybe not going to happen:
Another Home Buyer Tax Credit Update

The latest, looks like a go, though how they came to certain numbers I have no idea:
Home Buyer Tax Credit Revision
Sick. Just sick.

I wonder how the government will square extremely low tax collections with all the tax credits they are offering. Of course this would only matter if the US bond market had limits, which of course it does not. It may be time for THE grand experiment where the US floats enough debt to give every US citizen 1 Million dollars and see if bond purchases go down at all. If not, we are golden!

Final thought on today is that I said the markets would take a whipping and the dollar would rally in order to support the bond sales this week. So far this has played out exactly. Friday will be a huge reversal day to the upside, and next week will see this weeks losses in the rear view mirror. What about the bad data that came out? What about the bad data for 7 months now? You think it matters? It has not, and it will not, this is just natural market action as practised by our rigged gamers.

Have a good night.