Random links and the elections

Creepy Scientology videos talking about their plans to blow up psychiatry.

Bankers and traders responsible for credit crisis have a big party or something.

Superdelegates will be deciding which democrat will lose the next presidential election. I've said it before and I will say it again - this race was the Democrat's to lose and I am pretty confident that between McCain and either Hillary or Barack, McCain will win. McCain can get some of the moderate democrats to switch over. Neither Hillary nor Barack has any appeal to moderate Republicans. Hell, I might even vote for McCain over these two. Obama has no real experience and no platform - just a wishy washy message about change - oh and he quit smoking to run! Clinton would do a decent job, but I just don't like her personally. After the worst Republican presidency ever, it looks like the Dems will lose yet again.

A WSJ article on the Democratic candidates.

Credit Crunch

If I knew enough about exotic derivates to have been able to go short mortgage backed assets I would be a very rich man right now. I've been telling everyone who will listen that exactly what is happening now was going to happen for about 3 or 4 years now. I had arguments with people on welfare who were putting all of their welfare checks towards real estate in the hopes of making a quick buck. When people on welfare are speculating on real estate you KNOW there is a bubble.

I knew that this whole mortgage thing was going to happen. I did not know how it would affect the hedge funds and investment banks, but all of the retail stuff happened pretty much exactly as I thought it was going to.

My parents bought a new condo a little over a year ago. They took out an interest only mortgage because they expected to be able to pay the mortgage off in full as soon as they sold the house they have been in for the last 30 years. Of course they are not able to sell that house so have been renting out the new one and losing money on it, I might add.

The only problem was I was expecting this meltdown to happen a bit sooner than it did. The real estate bubble popped pretty much right on schedule but I thought this mortgage meltdown would happen much sooner after the bubble popped.

It seems like the Fed is trying to shake out the bad mortgages, which is theoretically a good idea, but if you think about the poor people who are going to lose their houses it doesn't seem like such a good plan anymore.

I also did not expect the crash to have this effect on the stock market. I thought that money would go into the stock market as real estate became a less good investment. But the MBS crisis went a lot further than I thought it would.

Thanks hedge fund idiots who have been investing way more money than they have in MBS's. Due to your ridiculous overuse of leverage and investments in MBS's that any idiot could see were going to default you've turned a downturn in real estate into a crisis that is effecting the whole world.