t+1 - Latest Comments in Don’t spend your termite poison money on insurance against Martian invasions.

Re: Don’t spend your termite poison money on insurance against Martian invasions.

Quotes — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:02:24 -0000

For me Fannie indeed is the funniest name ever! I don't think what was going through the owner's mind while naming the company LOL!

Re: Don’t spend your termite poison money on insurance against Martian invasions.

Matt Wilson — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:13:03 -0000

Hi DomesticMouse,

Yeah, I agree, the lenders could lend to anyone that could scratch an X on the application, and they knew they could hand off the risk to somebody else down the chain.

I think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac grew like tumors on lab rats during the go-go 90s. Now they're so highly leveraged that even moderate tremors causes the whole house of cards to crash down.

Re: Don’t spend your termite poison money on insurance against Martian invasions.

DomesticMouse — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:45:57 -0000

The biggest problem in the markets is that the economic incentive for the lenders to "look the other way" was such that they did. In fact, most of the financial modelling assumes that markets follow random walks, when in fact they don't. The tails are too fat.

In short, the markets are under provisioned for risk. And thus they keep wiping out. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to be in serious trouble when the Alt-As start resetting...