Don Coxe on Oct 30

Don Coxe weekly commentary and look at Canadian versus US banks.

OHHHH Wilburr!

Wilbur Ross Sees ‘Huge’ Commercial Real Estate Crash

Bloomberg: Billionaire investor Wilbur L. Ross Jr. said today that the U.S. is at the beginning of a “huge crash in commercial real estate.”

“All of the components of real estate value are going in the wrong direction simultaneously,” said Ross, one of nine money managers participating in a government program to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. “Occupancy rates are going down. Rent rates are going down and the capitalization rate -- the return that investors are demanding to buy a property -- are going up.”

This is a very smart man and what he is saying is bad news for all of us butespecially for Obama and democratic congress persons.

It's Obama's Economy Now

Today the government statisticians released the 3rd Quarter GDP estimate. The gross domestic product was up 3.5% higher than expected and the first up quarter since 2008 2nd qtr. There is as always a good bit of debate about accuracy and most of the talk this time is that the number was inflated 1.1% by the artificial stimulus of cash for clunkers and the first time home buyer taxcredit programs both of which have expired. The argument centered on the chances for the next few quarters to have lesser or falling numbers without those inputs from stimulus. I believe the chance of those next numbers being worse has some very interesting implications.
If the 4th quarter number turns out to be down from the third qtr then the recession becomes Obama"s recession. The administration is claiming the credit for the rebound from Bush's recession that Obama inherited. But once he claims credit for this good number he also owns any future numbers and things could get very hot for him in the new congressional election year.
Obama and the democrats know this so we can expect extensive giveaways and gimmickry in multiple pieces of legislation from here forward. Starting with health care. The new driving force for health care reform is not the reform but the ability to say they passed a reform bill in Obama's first year as promised. The quality or viability of the reforms is a much lower priority than just passage of any old bill named Obamacare..
Be prepared to be buried in lies and bullshit.


related: Mark Steyn : Obama makes Bush his Blame Czar
Steyn being entertaining and right on at the same time as usual.

But we give 22 billion to give the autoworkers GM

World's First Luxury Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle

Jeff Saut good this week

Jeff Saut in his weekly commentary for Raymond James is right on. Read it all here but this is just a taste:

A “permanent investment,” what an intriguing concept! When I first entered this business one of my mentors, namely Lucien Hooper (securities analyst extraordinary), often spoke of permanent investments. In fact he once stated, “You should put one quarter of your investment portfolio in stocks, one quarter in bonds, one quarter in precious metals, and one quarter in farmland. His reasoning was that such a non-correlated asset allocation would grow, and preserve, capital through any multi-generational economic cycle. This morning, we focus on precious metals and farmland.

Last week a “tree fell in the forest and nobody heard it.” The headline read, “CME To Allow Gold As Collateral For All Exchange Products.” The lead paragraph was:

“U.S.-based clearing house CME Group Inc. (CME/$319.96/Market Perform) will allow physical gold to be used as collateral for margin requirements on all exchange products, a spokesman said Monday. The new global policy is effective Oct. 19 in accordance with a member's notice issued late Friday, said spokesman Jeremy Hughes in London. Clearing member firms will be allowed to post up to a maximum of $200 million worth of gold as collateral to cover performance bond, or margin, requirements, Hughes said.”

Then on Friday there was this gold-quip on the Broad Tape:

“If you’ve invested in gold, you’re about to gain a powerful ally: pension funds. ‘I think the largest institutions like our own are realizing that we barely own any [gold],’ Shayne McGuire, Director of Global Research of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas said in an interview in Hong Kong very early this morning. ‘The same thing applies to most of the pension funds which manage trillions of dollars in world wealth.’ TRS oversees $95 billion, and just opened an internally managed gold fund for the 1.3 million public education employees, and suggests other pension funds follow suit. Owning gold is ‘financial insurance,’ he said, sounding a lot like David Einhorn at the Value Investing Congress earlier this week. ‘Consider the tremendous fiscal excess that major governments have made to prevent the world economy from collapsing ... I don’t think the question really is what is gold worth but what are currencies not worth’.”

Donald Coxe audio for Oct 23

Donald Coxe link for the oct 23 commentary.

Bank Credit Analyst Conference

i have just returned from a few days in New York attending the annual Bank Credit Analyst Conference. Second one i have had a chance to attend and it was outstanding. Martin Barnes and the many Analysts and Editors have a really strong group of speakers and panelists and the discussion is terrific.
i am dead tired now but will try to convey some of the discussions ater I get some sleep and have digested the information.

Updated to fix typos. i would fire my typist, if I had one.

krauthammer: Decline is a cChoice

the weekly Standard;
Charles Krauthammer excellent on the unilateral retreat and national self abasement of the Obama foreign policy.

Breitbart: Democrats defeat GOP attempt to remove Rangel

Breitbart:
House Republicans have failed for a third time to oust Rep. Charles Rangel as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

One can cheat on taxes (apparently it is now a requirement in the Democrat party) cheat on rent control laws and that is perfectly acceptable behavior in the congress. They are thieves and liars and should all be thrown out of office and many of them into jail.
Throw all the bums out!!

Tax Prof says 47% will pay No Income Tax in 2009

From TAX PROF blog:

Victor Davis Hanson: On What We (The U.S.) Should Be Doing

Excellent suggestions on what the country should be doing and on the policies that should be looked for in candidates for office. I believe he is right on point. In fact, let's get Victor to run for office!
Only 2 pages give it a read.

Moe Lane explains why Obama didn't win the Olympics

Olympics 2016: an inconvenient truth for the President.

A good read and not long. ( hat tip; Instapundit)

donald Coxe for Oct 2 2009

Mr. Coxe comments for today. Also a chart of the dax similar to what Mr. Coxe mentions.


chart from Bloomberg