The day after: beware what you react to....

F&F sounds like a discount drug store. Perhaps that is fitting. It’s the sort of place you go to purchase snake oil for a particularly nettlesome problem.

F&F have been dispensing the snake oil.

How many months are we into the financial sector crises oops! It’s over 12-months, so I guess the metric should be in terms of YEARS… and yet we are only now discovering that some odd-ball accounting at the GSE’s had dressed up their value? So they have been seized?

How could this have gone on in this environment for over one year? It’s not question anyone seems to be asking. Rather it is pitched a REASON for the conservatorship (seizure).

ONLY IN WASHINGTON CAN A QUESTION BE AN ANSWER

Schumer is reported to have said that foreign investors were losing confidence and might sell their agency holdings. Why is HE the source for that info? What foreign investors is he plugged into? Or is he just one who would talk ON RECORD? One wonders what foreign central banks were saying to the Fed and treasury directly. China and Japan praised the move. Guess which two countries have the world biggest fx reserves and hold oodles and boodles of agency securities?

Sorry time’s up.

Why is PAULSON a hero? He delayed this. He thought that announcement he made weeks ago would be enough to stabilize things. And now there are these accounting irregularities??? They have been there for how long??? And these former GSE heads are being thanked and their pockets stuffed with money on the way out? My goodness but Wall Street loves Hank. He’s beyond Teflon; makes Ronald Reagan look sticky.

In the markets today we see the ‘voting’ as the home improvement stocks up a bit. Toll Brothers is not far from the top of its 52 week range as optimism creeps in. Hovanian prices are up too. Bond insurer stocks are rising.

Well let’s hope no one decides to LOOK BACK. Satchel Paige one of the all-time great pitchers famously said don’t look back, something might be gaining on you. He was right!

And in this case it’s the economy only it’s not gaining but falling on you. But for this week-end seizure of F&F housing stocks would be falling. The economy looks to be getting weaker. Unemployment spurted to 6.1%!!!

YOO HOO that’s 6.1% from 5.7% and a 4.7% cycle low.

Does this sound like improvement? As unemployment spurts do you really want toe be BUYING housing stocks??? Just a question.

Do you think Fannie and Freddie and the US gov’t are big enough sponges to soak up the mess that’s on the way from a further weakening in the economy?

Well this F&F deal will help housing in some sense but things CLEARLY are going to get worse before they get better.

SO be careful how excited you get when you bet on housing-related stocks.

How about double or nothing?

Do you think it’s an investment or a gamble?