qqqbear

Syria and Lebanon stare into the abyss
By Victor Kotsev
AsiaTimes

The Syrian infection is spreading. Whether Lebanon will be fully set aflame by the violence in its northern neighbor is as difficult to answer as who precisely started the clashes which engulfed at least two Lebanese cities over the past week.

Regardless, the chaos in both countries is growing, and the United Nations peace plan for Syria (dubbed the "Kofi Annan plan" after the former UN secretary general who spearheads the initiative) has practically collapsed.

Indeed, the current UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said on Monday that Syria had reached a "pivotal" moment and was teetering on the brink of a full-blown civil war. Even the chief of the unarmed UN peacekeeping mission in Syria - numbering a little over 200 - has acknowledged that his team alone could not stop

the violence. On Sunday, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded not far from him, in the latest of several incidents when peacekeepers were caught in crossfire.

The past few days saw a new spike in the violence in Syria as well as Lebanon, with heavy fighting in the capital Damascus and throughout the country. Dozens were reportedly killed, and an unknown number wounded. Though it is hard to verify the reports, casualties included also regime officials and troops.

The attacks in the capital, in particular, seem to have come straight out of a manual on guerrilla operations, and reportedly relied heavily on guerrilla-style hit-and-run tactics, rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices. At the same time, the regime conducted deadly raids and attacks of its own.

http://www.atimes.co...t/NE24Ak02.html

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

by CalculatedRisk on 5/23/2012 11:22:00 AM


http://ads.investing...61382526469676? http://ads.investing...udience=natenv;

Clearly new home sales have bottomed. Although sales are still historically very weak, sales are up 25% from the low, and up about 15% from the May 2010 through September 2011 average.

Update: Some people think housing will recover rapidly to the 1.2+ million rate we saw in 2004 and 2005. I think that is incorrect for two reasons. First, I think the recovery will be sluggish - 2012 will probably be the third worst year ever. Second, the 1.2 million in annual sales was due to an increasing homeownership rate and speculative buying. With a stable homeownerhip rate, and little speculative buying, sales will probably only rise to around 800 thousand at full recovery.

http://www.calculate...s-comments.html

http://finance.yahoo...l=^TYX;range=5d

JPM Whale-Watching Tour] Oh, so now it’s a $5bn loss?

Posted by Lisa Pollack on May 21 13:29.


Morgan Stanley’s research team came out with a note on Friday, guesstimating that JPMorgan’s losses on the synthetic credit portfolio held by its Chief Investment Office will come to $5bn by the end of the year, which is $2bn more than CEO Jamie Dimon seemed to think they’d come to when the announcement of the losses was first made on May 10.

Here are the analysts on why they don’t believe Dimon’s estimate (emphasis ours):

The question is, how does Jamie Dimon expect only a $1B+ future loss over 2-3 quarters if a 6-week move drove a $2B+ mark-to-market loss. Either JPM has already started to reduce the size of this position materially, or management’s outlook for volatility is lower, which seems odd given rising risks in Europe and US growth stabilizing after recent acceleration. As a result, we have a slightly higher mark-to-market loss estimate of $5b vs. Dimon’s $3b.

So, an additional $2bn is “slightly” higher?
Anyway, no one knows for sure what’s in the portfolio, making $5bn an easy number to get attention with the broad side of a very large barn.

JPM isn’t sharing all the components of the hedge. While the press has been speculating on the hedge components, JPM indicates that no one in the market can see the hedge in its entirety.
This information void means we can’t assess how realistic this incremental $1b loss estimate is and gives us the daily guessing game of the current mark-to-market losses on the hedge and an underperforming stock. We are currently estimating a total hedge loss of $5b through 4q12 ($2b higher than JPM’s current guidance). The stock is now, more than ever, a bet that management will get this right.

http://ftalphaville....its-a-5bn-loss/

CBO warns of US falling off 'fiscal cliff'
[img]http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/oXh_6AJBHy_uEbdrklkymA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9Mjg-/http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/04/21/image001-png_162613.png[/img]By ANDREW TAYLOR | Associated Press – 40 mins ago






WASHINGTON (AP) — A new government study released Tuesday says that allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire and a scheduled round of automatic spending cuts to take effect would probably throw the economy into a recession.
The Congressional Budget Office report says that the economy would shrink by 1.3 percent in the first half of next year if the government is allowed to fall off this so-called "fiscal cliff" on Jan. 1 — and that the higher tax rates and more than $100 billion in automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies are kept in place.
There's common agreement that lawmakers will act either late this year or early next year to head off the dramatic shift in the government's financial situation. But if they were left in place, CBO says it would wring hundreds of billions of dollars from the budget deficit that would "represent an additional drag on the weak economic expansion."
CBO projected that the economy would contract by 1.3 percent in the first half of 2013, which would meet the traditional definition of a recession, which is when the economy shrinks for two consecutive quarters.
"Such a contraction in output in the first half of 2013 would probably be judged to be a recession," CBO said.

http://news.yahoo.co...7--finance.html