Daily Office: Tuesday
Morning
¶ Deck Chairs?: Something in Joshua Rosner’s tone, in “Goodbye capitalism,” his piece in the Financial Times,  makes me think of a cranky gent on one of the Titanic‘s lifeboats, complaining that passengers are no longer dressing for dinner.
Noon
¶ CrocEatDog: Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand giggles. All right, ten giggles. Okay, a chuckle.
Night
¶ Lawn: This internal-exile/vacation thing is working so well that, after I dealt with the Book Review, I sat outside on the balcony and read. And read. And read. And then I decided to watch a movie…. But you know that prayer that Jewish men are said to begin the day with? My version goes like this: “Thank God I don’t own a car.” If I’m being really thoughtful, I add, “or a lawn.”
Oremus…
Morning, cont’d
§ Deck Chairs? Mr Rosner, proposing an orthodox (not government-guaranteed) scheme for keeping Freddie and Fannie afloat, rings changes on the phrase “orderly transfer of assets.” Have I got water in my ears?
The core of the GSEs’ mission is to purchase mortgages from mortgage originators, charge a guarantee fee to issuers to protect their ability to stand behind these loans, and securitise these mortgage-backed securities with assurances to MBS holders they would receive 100 per cent of their anticipated returns. To this end the GSEs have guaranteed $3,500bn in mortgage-backed securities These securities are backed by real housing assets and there is little question that, assuming they are well serviced, there will be relatively little loss over a longer period.
Does Mr Rosner’s confidence in “real housing assets” make you shiver, too?
Noon, cont’d
§ CrocEatDog. The poor beagle. What animals must endure to entertain us folks! (When they don’t feed us instead.)
I came across this photo via a discussion of the philosophical merits of Leona Helmsley’s bequest to Trouble, her Maltese, at Marginal Revolution. Just for the record, Kathleen and I declined to read this. With all the real problems in the world today…
Night, cont’d
§ Lawn. Curiously, environmental specialist Elizabeth Kolbert doesn’t mention the fact that lawns are big consumers of petrochemicals, and may become simply too expensive to maintain.