Daily Archives: 17 March 2010

Policing in the U.S.S.A.

I have friends who are cops. I don’t hate cops, but I’m wary of the government monopoly on violence. It’s important to remain vigilant for excesses.

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I can imagine some expert saying about this animated gif: “to the untrained eye, this may look like police brutality, but . . .” (Large file may load slowly.)

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Brave NYPD Officer Exposes Corruption – Cops Ordered to Make Arrests to Meet Quota

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Police beat man to death at DUI checkpoint

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Driving 70 in a 65. Woman tased for getting out license too slowly

Is The Federal Reserve Insolvent?

The ongoing troubles at the GSEs are no secret: it is public knowledge that Fannie had a 5.38% delinquency rate at December, while Freddie just passed the 4% threshold in January; both continue to rise rapidly each month. The fact that the mortgage-bond spread has just hit a record tight is merely an ongoing artifact of the Fed’s endless meddling in the mortgage market, with the sole purpose of keeping rates artificially low, and preventing banks from being forced to take massive writedowns on their entire loan book. This is all well known. What, however, seems to have escaped public attention is what the impact of these delinquencies is on the one largest holder of Mortgage Backed Securities, the Federal Reserve. What also seems to have escaped the public is that the Fed is now the world’s largest bank, with total assets near $2.3 trillion.

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A 5% realized haircut on MBS alone would result in a complete elimination of the Fed’s capital balance. Applying a 10% or even 15% haircut, results in a capital deficiency of $50 billion and $100 billion respectively. (Read more from zerohedge.com)