How much longer until we get RTC2? Because you know that will happen, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow. So when do we get it?

Eventually, the taxpayers will own all the distressed houses. We'll own all the strip malls. We'll own all the empty big box marts. We'll own all the REIC's fraud.

We'll buy it up and pennies on the dollar from the failed banks, the failed flippers and the failed developers. We'll spend trillions to do it.

And maybe one day, after cleaning up the mess, we'll sell it and only lose a trillion or two.

So, when will it be? When will Americans finally get to that day of reckoning, and understand that they have NO choice? When will that day be that Angelo Mozilo's fraud becomes my responsibility and your responsibility, and your kids' kids' kids' responsibility?

SOOT AND ASHES URGENT SURVEY: GO OUT AND ASK TAXI DRIVERS, STRIPPERS, BARTENDERS AND SHOE-SHINE GUYS WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT STOCKS, GOLD AND HOUSES

Report back soldiers.

I want to know what the real world thinks.

I truly don't care what you think.

I care about taxi drivers, strippers, bartenders and shoe-shine guys.

Yes, this is a serious post.

Do this by this weekend and report back.

Have fun. Remember to tip your bartenders. And never, ever order the champagne.

Cramer attacks Obama. Obama attacks Cramer. Cramer attacks Obama...

Where is this video on this curve?

Smells like Despondency to me.

There's something in our monkey brains that makes us panic when we think something is in limited supply, and if we don't act now we may never get it

Few thousand years ago it was probably food and water running low.

Now it's condos and plush toys. It was oil, and then it wasn't. And maybe now it's gold.

Silly monkeys.

Just a few thousand years removed from hunting and gathering to stay alive. Unwilling to admit their monkeyness.

But more than willing to stand in line for investment condos in Miami.

I had to. And you know you wanted it. You sickos.

They'll play this commercial to kids in school 500 years from now.

Seriously.

They will play this commercial to kids in school 500 years from now.

Imagine if we had commercials from the tulip craze.

Don't doubt me.

It hath been foretold.

"Did you see the size of that garage?"

"Great, now let me get to work!"

Let me recap the AIG scam for you

1) AIG execs get their guy in the White House (Greenberg was a Bush "Pioneer" you do know), and bribe Congress to look the other way while they get on with their crime

2) AIG knowingly writes insurance without adequate reserves so that their executives could suck billions in bogus short-term gains out of the company

3) AIG of course collapses

4) The taxpayer picks up the losses, while AIG executives keep their ill-gotten gains

5) Nobody gets prosecuted, since people like AIG executives are above the law

What to do?

Well, we could track down all the AIG executives and kill them.

But hey, that would be medieval, or Chinese-like, and uncivil. So scratch that.

So instead they should be investigated for the fraud they committed, and then we should clawback all their ill-gotten gains, throw the guilty in jail, and set up a system to ensure we have adequate regulation and auditing in the future to make sure this type of obvious and disgusting ponzi scheme can't happen again. At least for a generation or two.

But of course, doing this would require Eric Holder, a coward, to do his f*cking job. And for Congress, the most corrupt institution in the land, to bite the hand of their masters.

I'm not holding my breath.

Revolution anyone?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done." OK, That's cool. We get that. But what does 2014 look like?

Road Warrior? Did someone on TV just let freaking Road Warrior out of the bag? I thought only blogs did that.

We went from lining up outside Best Buy to Road Warrior in just a few years?

Man, we humans, with our monkey brains, I've gotta give it to us. We're a funny sort. The madness of crowds, the competition for scarce resources, real or imagined, it gets us every time.

So, enjoy the show, and then give us your 2014 predictions. What does the world look like?

Barack Obama, elected on "hope", is crashing the stock market, and causing massive fear and wealth destruction. And he can make it stop.

You wonder if anyone in the Obama White House, when they're not at private parties or basketball games, watches CNBC. Or reads the blogs. Or even this tiny blog. I hope so. Because they need a wake-up call.

If the stock market goes to zero, and it's well on its way, after school programs for kids really won't matter. Solar and wind energy really won't matter. What we do in Iraq or Iran really won't matter.

Because if the stock market goes to zero, and the money goes away, America, and the world, will be on fire.

When people lose their retirement portfolios, when all the companies go out of business, when the tax base dries up, when all the jobs (and taxpayers) go away, when consumers can no longer consume and savers can no longer save, when Wall Street is destroyed, then universal health care dreams and abortion policy really don't matter.

What Obama needs to quickly comes to understand, and within hours, it that now, it's all about stocks. You do not want to see a Dow 3,000 world. You do not want to see a 300 S&P world.

Because it will be on fire.

Folks, I've held out as long as I could, but now it's time to call it: The New Great Depression is here.

The world will not be going back to normal folks.
Not after the magnitude of what they have done.

Some are still going to Best Buy, still going about their daily routines.
But I'm not sure how much longer that can keep up.

It's not a question of if.

Unless there is significant and
dramatic action within days,
it'll be a question of how long,
how deep, and how dangerous.

It's all falling apart now.
All of it.
The center could not hold.
Things fall apart.
And the monkeys run free.

You're on your own.

And now, faster and faster,
the jobs will disappear.
And when the wealth is gone,
and the jobs are gone,
what will be left?

Rage.

Pure rage.


Get ready.

The New Great Depression is Here.

Has anyone seen Tim Geithner? Anyone? Anyone?

Why do I have that post-Katrina feeling?

I do wish he'd wake the f*ck up. But then again, maybe he's into daytrading the SKF too.

I think it's safe to say that not only is there blood in the streets, but it's all over the walls too.

Thank you Angelo Mozilo.

Hope it was worth it.

Dow industrials fall

below 7,000;

lowest since '97

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged below 7,000 Monday for the first time in more than 11 years as investors grow even more pessimistic about the health of banks, and in turn the economy.

A staggering $61.7 billion in quarterly losses at insurer American International Group Inc. touched off fresh fears about the health of the nation's financial system.

The worries pushed the blue chips below 7,000 for the first time since Oct. 28, 1997. The credit crisis and recession have now slashed half the average's value since it hit a record high over 14,000 in October 2007.

We're into AIG for $150 billion now. $500 from each and every American. And yet nobody cares.

$150,000,000,000 into this gaping sinkhole.

For ONE COMPANY

That's $500 from each and every American.

With no end in sight.

Amazing.

But no congressional oversight. No hearings. No media malestorm. Pretty much nothing.

So, where were the regulators? Where were the auditors? Where were the risk analysts? Where was the MSM? Where was congress? Where was the SEC? How did one company put the US taxpayer on the hook for $150 billion (and counting)?

And nobody goes to jail. Nobody has their bonus clawed-back.

This is sick.

Makes you pretty much lose any confidence you may have had that we can get out of this mess.

It's just too big.

All wealth may be lost.

All currencies may be destroyed.

There may be no safe haven.

Federal officials tossed American International Group another financial lifeline today, providing up to $30 billion more to help the staggered insurance giant deal with a record $61.7 billion loss in the final three months of last year.

The money was made available in a complex series of transactions by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that involves restructuring of the company and could boost the federal government's stake to 77.9%. It would add significantly to the $150 billion U.S. officials already have extended to AIG since last fall in the largest of all the government bailouts to date.

Something's out of whack with the price of oil to gold. Something doesn't feel right. Help me figure it out.

Oil is priced in dollars, and has collapsed.

Gold is priced in dollars, and has gone up and up.

Dollars, they're soaring like they'll be the only currency left.

Worldwide oil demand had dropped 1.2%. That's it. But oil prices are down 73%. Non-investment gold demand is cratering - down 10% for industrial and dental, down 6% for jewelry. While investment gold demand is surging - up 182% in Q4 '08. And on the dollar side, the US will be borrowing $2.5 trillion this year. $2.5 trillion. While the Fed expands its balance sheet another trillion, floods the world with dollars, and is about to start buying up US bonds.

Do some research here folks, and report back. I don't know where oil and gold go from here, but something doesn't feel right. It's the ratios. And also the dissonance of looking at the oil chart in dollars vs. the gold chart in dollars and then of course the dollar chart in yen or euros or for that matter zloty.

Reading the MSM, and going with the trends, you'd be long gold and short oil. All I see are bull stories now on "here's how to buy gold" and all I see are "the end of oil" stories on the black stuff.

But my gut is now saying something different, even though I can't make a case. Something just doesn't feel right. I can't put my thumb on it, but something doesn't feel right.

But hey, "doesn't feel right" is the new normal, wouldn't you say?

Soot and Ashes Accidently Too Honest Quote of the Day from a Failing Bank's Soon-to-be-Former CEO

"In the end, our business is about confidence. As a matter of fact, the entire financial system depends on confidence"

- Failed Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, pretty much announcing the end of his company, the stock market, the world financial system and capitalism itself, February, 2009

I think some of you know what happens next.

The frustrating thing is, we all saw the wave, years in advance.

And they wouldn't turn the ship.

They wouldn't even try.

Soot and Ashes Serious Question of the Day

In strictly financial terms, did the meteor just hit, and we're the dinosaurs?

Have you considered that perhaps the impact of this debacle won't be measured in months, but in years?

Maybe for the rest of your lifetime?

That things will never get back to 'normal'?

And what would "not normal" look like?

"The World is Not Going Back to Normal
After the Magnitude of What They Have Done"

So in the "newspapers are dying" thread, I singled out the Seattle PI as one to die. Here's why. The PI's Aubrey Cohen gets had by Yun & the NAR

It is truly sad to see what's happened to the journalism profession. I'm not sure if I blame the journalism schools, or the newspapers. But when America needed real reporters, we got incompetence. We got corruption. We got laziness. We got stupidity. And we got reporters in bed with corporate interests, and we got lies printed as truth.

Bad reporters got tens of thousands killed in Iraq. Bad reporting cost America trillions in economic damage. Bad reporters have helped destroy communities, and have laid waste to the land.

Reporters like Reagor and Cohen all around America gave David Lereah and Lawrence Yun and the National Association of Lying Realtors on Commission a free pass these past eight years. They quoted them as if they were true "experts", as if their data was real, and as if they had no agenda. And this problem continues, as you'll see in a second.

So I'll call out this reporter by name, as we did with "Rolodex of Realtors" Catherine Reagor at the Arizona Republic before him.

SPECIAL NOTE TO AUBREY COHEN AT THE SEATTLE POST "INTELLIGENCER":

LAWRENCE YUN AT THE NAR IS A PAID SHILL. HE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED, QUOTED OR RESPECTED. IT IS YOUR JOB TO MOCK HIM, TO TROUNCE HIM, TO FACT CHECK HIS STATEMENTS, OPINIONS AND DATA. IT IS NOT YOUR F*CKING JOB TO TAKE WHAT HE SAYS, ADD NO INDEPENDENT DATA OR CONTRARY OPINION, AND REPORT IT AS TRUTH UNDER A HEADLINE THAT HE WOULD HAVE WRITTEN HIMSELF.

YOU HAVE FAILED YOUR PROFESSION, YOUR READERS, YOUR COMMUNITY AND YOUR NATION. AGAIN.

But hey, what's a real-estate-ad-supported newspaper reporter supposed to do? Do some independent investigation? Nah. It's just sooooo much easier to take what the paid shill from the totally discredited NAR says and print it as truth.

Please join me in contacting the PI's real estate "reporter" Aubrey Cohen at 206-448-8362 or aubreycohen@seattlepi.com, and remind him how a real reporter is supposed to do his job. How someone with a Masters of Journalism is supposed to report.

What the hell did they teach Aubrey at Northwestern? Did he ever go to a class? Is he trying to protect the Seattle PI's real estate advertisers? Is he trying to protect his own home's value from falling even further?

Here's his disaster of an "article". Not one fact. Not one alternate viewpoint. Not one hard-hitting question. Not one statement that the NAR is a discredited lobbyist organization responsible for the greatest financial crash in world history. And not one sign that Aubrey Cohen should remain employed as a 'reporter', or that the Seattle PI deserves to stay in business.

Man, I feel sorry for the people of Seattle today. They're suffering an epic housing collapse, at the same time their local rag prints this spin from the NAR as truth. In all my years of doing this, I think this is the low point for local media. Nice work Aubrey!

House prices put mortgages in reach - Payments line up with wages again

By AUBREY COHEN
P-I REPORTER

Nationwide home prices have fallen far enough, when combined with current low mortgage interest rates, to get payments back in line with wages, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors said Friday in Bellevue.

"We believe that the home prices have already fallen to what could be justifiable," economist Lawrence Yun said, noting that mortgage payments for a typical household buying a typical house last year were back to 1998 levels, as a percentage of income.

"One may even argue that home prices are underpriced," he said, because that calculation was based on higher interest rates than current rates.

The re-emergence of multiple offers on some California homes "suggests to me that prices may be bottoming or have bottomed out in the California market," Yun said.

Something to think about. Picture what this would look like.

Berkshire’s equity derivatives were sold to undisclosed buyers for $4.85 billion as of Sept. 30.

The derivatives are tied to four indexes -- the S&P, the U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index, the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 Index and Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average.

The indexes would all have to fall to zero for Berkshire to be liable for the entire amount at risk, which was $37.1 billion as of Dec. 31 and can fluctuate with currency valuations.

For eight years you were treated like children. And you gladly went along with it.

Hide the truth.

Until you can't hide it any more.

And now we're f*cked.

What's on Idol?