Showing posts with label Bill Black. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Black. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

All You Really Need to Know About Credit Based Expansion

The following lines from Bill Black's prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee really are all you need to know. Lifted from Tim Iacono's site:
Lehman’s principal source of (fictional) income and real losses was making (and selling) what the trade accurately called “liar’s loans” through its subsidiary, Aurora … The FBI began warning publicly about the epidemic of mortgage fraud in 2004 (CNN).

That loss, however, may not be recognized for many years – particularly if the liar’s loans become so large that they help hyper-inflate a financial bubble. In the near-term, making massive amounts of liar’s losses loans creates a mathematical guarantee of producing record (albeit fictional) accounting income. As long as the bubble inflates, the liar’s loans can be refinanced – creating additional fictional income and delaying (but increasing) the eventual loss. The industry saying for this during the S&L debacle was: “a rolling loan gathers no loss.”


"Young fool, only now, at the end, do you understand!" - Darth Sidious to Luke Skywalker

Extend and Pretend is option one, and it still is.

Jesse has the video embedded here.

Have a good night.