levin70

Total Rating:
0 / -3

15 Comments

    • Thu Nov 20th 16:11 PM | Rating: 0 -3
      Commented on:
      Berkshire Hathaway Credit Risk, Index Puts Are Overblown Worries
      The only problem with your analysis is you don't know what happends to the collateral requirements if BRK looses its AAA rating. If that happends, my guess is just like AIG it must put up collateral. If that happends anytime over the next year, that collateral requirement could cause the liquidity crunch you don't think will happen.

      Kind Regards
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    • Sat Oct 4th 17:40 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Citi Examines Its Carrots and Sticks
      Felix. I would tend to agree about enforcement, except just last week, the DE courts found specific enforcement the only remedy available in the Hexion case. Its not impossible for the SDNY or the Fed NY courts to find likewise
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    • Fri Oct 3rd 13:45 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Wells-Wachovia: Good for Everybody but Citi
      Felix. Might be best to let the lawyers of Citi have their say first, as it appears that they have a signed exclusivity agreement. Specific performance is clearly the best option for the courts. Second, if the TARP program passes, the same exact losses will be offloaded to the taxpayers, so, no actually, the taxpayers are no better off.
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    • Wed Oct 1st 16:51 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Paulson and Bernanke: A Conspiracy of Dunces
      Michael. If you really think you can do better, please put your hat into the ring when the next administration comes looking for its next fed chairman. Lets see how well you do on the hotseat
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    • Mon Sep 29th 14:13 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Mark to Market Accounting: Kill It Before It Eats Us Alive
      Mark

      Let me take your post down 1 at a time.

      Point 1) FAS 157 would not make the airplane parts wholesaler mark his nose cone down to $1,000. The scrap metal market is not the "market" for the parts wholesaler. In this case, if no bid/ask for sales of nose cones existed outside of scrap metal dealers, than these assets clearly would move to L3 status and the parts wholesaler would be more than welcome to use whatever models were available to him to value his inventory. Also - an airplane parts wholesaler is not dealing in financial assets and liabiltiies and thus FAS 157 has not yet required implementation for non-financial assets and liabilities, so your airplane wholesale part example is plain stupid

      Part 2) For assets that don't trade, L3 status, which may use any myriad of valuation techniques are available. But remember, we are talking about financial assets and liabililities here - you mark your stocks everyday, so banks have to mark their loan portfolios. You seem to have this idea that everything out there is hold to maturity - when in fact almost nothing is held to maturity. If the stuff was held to maturity - why was everything funded with short-term, even so far as repo funing? Hmm?? more to come later
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    • Tue Sep 16th 22:11 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Why Bail Out AIG's Bondholders?
      felix, what is it about being the senior secured lender don't you understand? From the text of the fed announcement, the gov't is receiving a senior secured pledge of all the parent assets and the stock in the underlying insurance subs. The loan gets repaid first over the next 24 months and the bondholders will get what's left after that. Not only that but the gov't is getting libor plus 850 - not too shabby

      Regards
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    • Tue Sep 16th 16:56 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Fed Stands Firm
      as the markets seem to have no memmory from one moment to the next, your call on the dow is possible, but the markets ended 1,000 points higher than estimated (approx 10% higher). Tomorrow will tell.
      View article »
    • Tue Sep 9th 13:04 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Great Shorting Opportunities Ahead in Home Builders, Banks
      "Despite rising mortgage rates"

      Excuse me?

      Care to correct that
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    • Wed Aug 27th 11:41 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      California Home Sales: 43% Year Over Year Increase!
      I think you need to go back to school and do more research. The case schiller index comprises 20 MSA, not 20 cities. Those 20 metropolitan statistical areas comprise over 70% of the total US population. In addition, the case schiller index tracks resales of all homes within those MSA's, not just sales that meet the conforming loan limits. The real story is in-between the number from the case schiller index and the ofheo numbers.

      Regards
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    • Fri Aug 15th 19:04 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Inflation or Deflation?
      The only comment I would add to what JasonC said above is that while he believes that the FED will wait a year if not more to begin raising rates, I am less inclined to this view and believe the FED will feel obliged to being raisng rates sooner, beginning as early as the last meeting this year, as the markets will interpret the length of low rates in the last period as the root of all that is currently evil and lead the FED higher
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    • Fri Aug 15th 15:05 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Forget $100 a Barrel - Oil Will Plummet to $30
      Source for my comment above on 1.6% of power generation

      www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/...

      Regards
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    • Fri Aug 15th 15:05 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Forget $100 a Barrel - Oil Will Plummet to $30
      Oh yes, one more item to debunk from your article. You claim that oil demand will be hit by the US swtiching to alt energy power plants.

      Obviously, you did absolutely no research on this as you would know that petroleum fuels produce less than 1.6% of all power from power plants in the US. This will have absolutely no effect on the world oil price.
      View article »
    • Fri Aug 15th 14:58 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Forget $100 a Barrel - Oil Will Plummet to $30
      I have to say that the conclusions you draw are so unsupported by the evidence you give, its made me laugh quite hard. Please go put on the dunce cap and sit in the corner. Your analysis failed.

      The evidence you give is (1) reduced driving demand by us consumers as evidenced by moving towards hybrid vehicles (2) easy recent oil finds outside the US and (3) some rinky dink 150 million bbl find in Utah

      Lets tackle these one at a time (1) I agree US driving demand is decreasing. However, you have yet to indicate what's happening with US industrial demand? If we have an economic pickup in activity in a year or so, will that increased demand overcome the recent declines in consumer consumption? No evidence I have seen says that the consumer decline is enough to offset future higher industrial prod (2) You do realize that the marginal cost of production for all these new discoveries you are touting range between $65 to $80 per bbl right? Its incredibly expensive to drill in these areas and on top of that, the production facilities needed are ghastly expensive. That alone will keep prices higher as any price declines cause shut-ins that then lead to price increases (3) 150 mm barrels, pls - when you start talking about US onshore finds of 150 BILLION bbls, I will take notice, but until then, that's just a drop in the bucket (or approx 7 days of US imported oil)

      Regards
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    • Thu Aug 7th 19:38 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Sears Faces Risk If Economy Doesn't Improve
      Some points of interest missed by everyone in the discussion above me.

      Credit line availability is currently 2.5 billion and does not include a pledging of real estate assets. Credit line expires in Mid 2010.

      Authorization on buyback is down to $143mm so even if lampert wanted to do something stupid, I doubt he could make it fly.

      So, even if sears continues to burn cash at $1 billion per year, it has availability under its credit lines to meet that cash burn rate. In addition, any time additional cash is needed, they can shut down non-performing stores and sell off the real estate. Or they could enter into a large sale-leaseback with any number of REITS that specialize in this. This could generate significant amounts of upfront cash for SLHD.

      Could things get worse than an annual $1 billion burn rate, sure could, but they have time to make changes to correct things as it stands now - whether they can or will is yet to be seen

      Kind Regards
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    • Mon Jun 23rd 12:15 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Valuing GE (It's Cheap)
      Actually, the best measure of leverage is Debt/Tangible Book. If you look at it this way, GE is currently approaching bear stearns territory at approx 36:1. If you break out GECS and look at GECS its a whopping 70:1. GECS as of Dec 31, 2007 had only 8.4 billion in tangible book value. Only a 2% decrease in its investment/fin rec portfolio would wipe out its tangible bv.

      Not that I am saying that GE will meet BSC's fate - its asset quality underlying its loans is far better than BSC's, but it is still highly levered on the GECS side.
      View article »
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