Economics Update

Gee, Alan "bubbles" Greenspan is now saying that we are having an, "awfully pale recession." Well, I guess he can still afford to eat at the Four Seasons, so it's someone else's problem...Neh?

Actually, I'm surprised that he did not use the unexpected growth in the service sector, with the ISM numbers rising to 52 from 49.6 (50 indicates growth).

His goal has always been more to prevent government intervention than giving an accurate assessment anyway, because he believes that preventing government action is the only thing that he can do of value.

Of course, the fact that oil busted the $120 barrier, hitting $120.21/bbl doesn't bode well for the economy anyway.

Oil is up on supply fears from potential attacks in Nigeria and Kurdistan, along with the dollar weakening because of the Fed rate cuts.

Interest rates in the private sector, however, appear to be on the way up, with 30-year mortgages rates rising despite the Fed rate cuts. Additionally, the Fed is reporting that banks are tightening up on their lending at a historically high rate.

The fact that consumer bankruptcies are up almost 48% year over year in April might have something to do with this, or perhaps the other way around. It's a chicken egg thing to me.

However, the fact that S&P has decided to stop rating bonds backed up by second mortgages seems to indicate that this still has a way to go on the way down.

The fact that companies cannot refi right now may very well take down ResCap, the 8th largest mortgage lender wing of GMAC:

ResCap, the eighth-largest U.S. residential lender in 2007, today began offering as little as 80 cents on the dollar to exchange or buy back $14 billion of bonds to extend maturities and stave off bankruptcy. To finance the debt restructuring, ResCap is seeking a new $3.5 billion credit line from its parent GMAC, which is owned by General Motors Corp. and an investor group led by Cerberus Capital Management LP.

"There is a significant risk that we will not be able to meet our debt service obligations, be unable to meet certain financial covenants in our credit facilities, and be in a negative liquidity position in June 2008," Minneapolis-based ResCap said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission today.

With all this going on, it's not surprising that UBS is looking at cutting 8000 jobs.