Economics Update

I think that the first story is a real biggie, the Insurance Bureau at the Financial Supervisory Commission of Taiwan has forbidden Insurance companies in that nation^* from buying mortgage backed securities from the GSEs, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae.

The scare quote of the article is, The FSC has not only limited insurance company exposure to Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie bonds and mortgage-backed securities, but has decided that existing credit ratings are meaningless."

Taiwan is not huge in relation to world GDP, but it's a lot bigger than Iceland....We may be seeing the first furtive steps toward an exit that will likely end in a stampede.

If I'm wrong about a stampede away from US securities, it's clear that there
is a stampede away from hedge funds...Makes sense, why pay these guys something like 20% when they are losing money.

In the real world or ordinary people and work, the weekly US jobless claims were worse than forecast, 478,000. The standard caveat about this being a noisy metric applies.

I would be remiss in not noting that the 4 week moving average fell, to 480,250 from 484,750.

BTW, it looks like the credit crunch is not near over, because very little let up on interest rate spreads. (H/T Calculated Risk.)

For what it's worth, Oil prices were up a bit, because there are indications that OPEC might actually make a small supply reduction stick amongst its members.

The thing that really scares me is the fact that Washington Mutual's Credit Default Swaps will be sold at 57¢ on the dollar, and this is considered a relief to investors.

Even scarier is the little note at the bottom that losses in the Lehman debacle, when investors got 8¢ on the dollar ended up losing less money than expected, because it was a small group who all sold in a big circle to each other.

What happens when one of the members of this circle jerk goes down in flames?

^*Or whatever the frack the Taiwan's status is right now.