CNN To Air I.O.U.S.A. This Weekend  -   Accompanying clips of the film will be a panel of experts discussing the movie in greater detail as well as its relevance to the current economic crisis.  …  The panel guests will include Concord Coalition President Peter Peterson, former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, former Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin, and former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley.  The program will be shown twice over the weekend: Saturday, January 10, 2009 at 2:00 PM EST and Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 3:00 PM EST. I.O.U.S.A. was tells the real story of our national debt and why we need to reverse the flow of red ink before our nation faces a fiscal disaster.  hat tip to Dennis Dionisiou
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check out the calculator – Walk Away From Your Mortgage Calculator – IS IT IN MY ECONOMIC INTEREST TO WALK AWAY? -  You decide.  This calculator is just a tool to help. -  PayOrGo.com 

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The Things We Don’t Talk About: National Debt and $2 Trillion Deficits – It has been around for decades, and has been ignored by many for just as long. However, the US national debt stands to be finally thrown into the forefront of political discussion as the record for a single-year deficit looks to be beaten – by threefold. -   Emerginvest Blog 

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Obama Must Tackle Fannie, Freddie’s Ambiguous Federal Backing – By Dawn Kopecki – President-elect Barack Obama has little time to decide the fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as bank regulators warn of the drag the government-seized mortgage- finance companies are having on the U.S. economy. – Bloomberg

US Banks Offer Mortgage Rates Below 5% as Fed Buys Securities – Dan Levy -  Bloomberg

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Paulson Sees Four Options For Fannie Mae In The Future – Dow Jones – CNNMoney.com 

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good reading – Byron Wien’s ten surprises for 2009 – Posted by Prieur du Plessis – Investment Postcards from Capetown 
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Chattanooga – Most locally-owned banks not applying for TARP money – Amy O. Williams, -  The Chattanooga Times Free Press  – MSNBC 

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cool: Blackhawk OTC Market from John Lothian -  The CBOE has added great transparency and fairness to a formerly OTC market that operated on the curb.  John Lothian has an incredible exchange and futures related blog – BC

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Like tulips, wealth can wither and bloom again – Whether it is 17th-century flowerbulbs or 21st-century property, there is nothing new about irrational speculation … To understand where we are now, we must go back to 17th-century Holland and the peculiar story of tulipmania, the expansion and explosion of a flower bubble, an enduring, myth-coloured saga of bloom and bust. – Timesonline.co.uk 
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Bankers: Fair-Value Didn’t Cause Credit Crisis – By PAUL JACKSON – An interesting little survey released Thursday morning suggests that banking executives see lax underwriting and politics as the chief reasons behind the nation’s housing and credit crises. A survey conducted by Grant Thornton LLP and Bank Director magazine found that underwriting and a “political emphasis on increasing home ownership,” as well as a “lack of oversight of the mortgage industry” were cited as the top three causes for the current credit crisis. -   housingwire 

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Weekly Nouriel Downer:  2009 Will Be Very, Very Bleak – Nouriel Roubini – A detailed look at the current recession. – Forbes

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   IRA ARTMAN SECTION – thanks Ira: 

What investors can learn from Wall Street’s failures – By Charles J. Farrell – … Here are three important portfolio survival lessons retired investors and their advisers can learn from Wall Street’s failures. …  Debt kills – Complexity kills  – Alpha is meaningless …  – Investment News

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St. Louis Mortgage Crisis 

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3 links about VAR:

1.  Risk Management for Beginners – James Kwak – RGE Monitor 
2.  Woefully Misleading Piece on Value at Risk in New York Times – The New York Times Sunday Magazine has a long piece by Joe Nocera on value at risk models, which tries to assess how much they can be held accountable for risk management failures on Wall Street.  The piece so badly misses the basics about VaR that it is hard to take it seriously, although many no doubt will. -  Naked Capitalism
3. Financial Crisis for Beginners – from The BaseLine Scenario