Reinforcing stereotypes

The bus was pretty light again passenger wise. Although there was one cute guy in a suit though reading the WSJ.

I have to make a correction to my comment about Julian Rifat from yesterday. The picture with the article discussing his arrest was actually accompanied by the owner of the firm he worked for and that would be Louis Bacon- he is the handsome guy.

There was an internal audit team in the office today. I didn't have to deal with them at all as they were there for the tech and ops teams. I noticed three people (apparently corporate feels an audit takes three people) and one of the was this hot blond. I of course checked to see if he was wearing a wedding band- nope.

In the markets today the whole talk was about Portugal getting downgraded. It seems to be starting again- not that it ever really stopped. Combine that with an official from the ECB stating that if the IMF has to get involved that pretty much spells the end of the Eurozone and the euro. the comment I loved was that will pretty much prove the euro is a currency without a country.

The other big thing in the market was the 5 year auction went poorly. The reason was ostensibly because of the 10 year Treasury-swaps spread going negative yesterday. All the "experts" say it was no big deal when it happened yesterday and it was all technically driven. I think when all the experts tell you it is not a big deal it is a big deal. The problem with swaps yielding more than 10 years is it indicates huge fiscal problems- as in we are issuing huge amounts of debt and demand (i.e Chinese buying) is disappearing. We may have a problem rolling the debt we have in the medium term. The only thing that is saving our ass is we have the current reserve currency.

So BAC is now going to consider principal forgiveness for mortgages that are 120% or more than the value of the house. That means someone- equity holders or bond holders- are going to have to eat it. I read today that according to some analysts banks have to either raise another $210 billion in capital or shrink their balance sheets by $3 trillion; if not they are going to be insolvent.

So apparently the state legislators in Mississippi are on a weight loss plan. It was a good story until the end of it when one legislator got quoted as follows: "My daughter says I'm getting sexier every day." Did he really say that?