Magazine Cover Indicator and more - Market Sentiment Overview: Week of March 21st, 2008 - many examples of the bearish sentiment - Babak - TradersNarrative

————
1.  JPMorgan Woos Bear Stearns Insiders as Lewis Dissents - … “He’s basically bribing them for their votes,” said Richard Bove, an analyst at Punk Ziegel & Co., referring to Dimon’s presentation. “In this environment, there are no jobs on Wall Street, so he can bribe them by letting them keep their jobs and they’ll vote for him.” … - Bloomberg
2.  Lewis ready to fight cut-price Bear Stearns sale - Telegraph UK 

————
Ex-Countrywide COO starts new mortgage company - Former Countrywide Financial Corp  Chief Operating Officer Stanford Kurland has created a mortgage company that will focus on buying loans from financial companies trying to reduce their mortgage exposure. At least nine other former Countrywide officials are joining Kurland in the creation of the Private National Mortgage Acceptance Co. … - Reuters

————
Former Fed Chair Volcker: Financial Crisis Not Over - Reuters 

————

Global stock markets: Index movements since highs - Prieur du Plessis -   Investment Postcards from Cape Town   
————
Muni Auction-Rate Market Shrinks By $21 Billion as Borrowers Escape -  Bloomberg

————
Fed Up - Liz Moyer -  Investment banks may regret asking Ben Bernanke for help. - Forbes

————
Cook County foreclosures on pace to smash last year’s record  - — After the number of failed home loans hit a record in 2007, foreclosure filings in Cook County are on pace to top last year’s total by another 35%, based on the first two …  Crain’s 

————

2 charts and good commentary - The Liquidity Trap Cometh… - Brad DeLong
And Paul Krugman sends us to the TED spread-the risk and liqudiity premium big banks are demanding over Treasuries for the loans they make to each other. Think of the TED spread as an indicator of financial fever-with something like 0.3% per year being normal.
————
The Fed’s Revolution - To head off a catastrophe, Bernanke has reinvented the central bank while injecting a huge dose of money into the system - …The current financial crisis—perhaps the biggest since the Great Depression—has turned Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke into a reluctant revolutionary. … -  BusinessWeek

————
Happy Easter! -  Here’s Your Pink Slip… - With Good Friday upon us, news today is centering on more i-bank layoffs amid a troubled market for MBS and related securities; which means this won’t be the… -  housingwire

————
Ailing U.S. Mortgage and Housing Markets Potentially to Get a Lift -  GlobalInsight 
————
Thoughts on the Continuing Crisis - John Mauldin’s Weekly E-Letter 

————

Across US, mortgage insurers tighten screws - … Amid the turmoil, the mortgage industry is playing hardball. Wells Fargo now requires a 25 percent down payment in the most distressed markets … - Fort Worth Star Telegram

————
Investment Firms Tap Fed for Billions - On Monday I wrote about the Achilles heel of the Fed’s new loan facilities. Every dollar they lend to troubled banks through the new facilities sucks one dollar of existing reserves out of healthy banks through offsetting open market operations. Total reserves do not go up at all. Reserves in the hands of healthy institutions actually decline. - Dr. John Rutledge Blog 

————
In Washington, a Split Over Regulation of Wall Street - By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and STEPHEN LABATON - NY Times

————
Fed: No Talks on Joint MBS Buying - The U.S. Federal Reserve, responding to press reports, said it is not discussing coordinated purchases of mortgage-backed securities with other central banks. - Greg Ip - WSJ

posted by Bill Coppedge