hardincap

otting preannounced communication from white house and treasury, and today we see communication from just the white house. so apparently, treasury's approach has lost favor. this is not good imo. tim howard again:

tim howard: this has been my concern since otting's 2-4 wk timeline failed to materialize.

@cherzeca there were numerous squishy positive signals with lamberth and perry as well (ginsberg and millet's connection with olsen, lamberth's history of being tough on govnt, etc). imo, squishy signals lead to squishy thought process--best not to go there. agreed that TA can absolutely work for many stocks (and people on this board are blindly and foolishly dismissing it), but not so much with GSEs which trade very lightly until there is major news. if volume spiked with NO news and stocks are down heavily, however, that would be a strong sell signal to me. remember when hank paulson tipped off his buddies before taking over f&f?

The white house also said it will release a plan soon, and that was over a month ago? To me it suggests dysfunction. Gasparino reported there is internal disagreement on GSE strategy within white house--I think this is entirely plausible. We have to remember GSEs are little upside and huge downside in the perspective of politicians. The path of least resistance is to do nothing until they need to be bailed out again. In regards to Collins, I simply dont share everyone's optimism on the prospects of a positive outcome in this case. I had the same belief and feeling on Perry appeals--its better for shareholders to use it as a threat rather than rely on a positive ruling. Also I dont find it a coincidence that Berkowitz, who has much more visibility and insight on the legal cases than we do, has been significantly paring down his position.

Otting making a big deal of changes coming within 2-4 weeks and then utterly failing to deliver is quite something..

@cherzeca if dividends are paid, how would that change your expectations/interpretation of the current state of play? also, im not up to date in recent news, when is calabria's full senate confirmation decision expected?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DzTgayUXQAAz0pM.png admin bypassed congress in allowing 3bn capital buffer. i dont think its controversial to allow them to build more given clear signs global economy is slowing and a real possibility of a downturn next year or two. also, its FHFA's job to ensure sound and solvent

I don’t think recap is that controversial? Especially given no one seemed to object in calabrias confirmation hearing. Also Calabria said multiple times as soon as 2015 that receivership is legally required, so I hope otting prevents the possibility of Calabria going rogue by moving to recap before Calabria is confirmed. Releasing f&f after they’ve been recapped however is certainly going to be controversial and here a court opinion would help greatly

Yep looks like fake account to me

Uhh this is bizarre

wow 13/16 enbanc hearings in 5th circuit resulted in reversed decisions, according to thompson on the call

the last sentence indicates otting is backpedaling a bit. btw - investorsunite conf call now now https://investorsunite.org/investorsunite-teleconference/

you would think so. as for admin staff, unless otting is way wrong, it seems a lot of work has already been done on that without a lot of leaking...may be a small group. as for collins, try this: on 1/24 the All American case (arguing the CFPB is unconstitutionally structured) was calendared by 5th circuit for oral argument en banc (to be argued 3/12). All American had requested an original hearing en banc, which is highly unusual, and the 5th circuit just granted it the day after the Collin en banc oral argument. did the 5th circuit collins en banc hold a conference after the oral argument on 1/23 and decide to rule only on the collins APA claim and not the constitutional claim (if so, necessarily in favor of Ps on APA claim if not deciding the collins constitutional claim)? and decide to defer any constitutional adjudication to an en banc hearing of All American? in certain ways, all American is a "cleaner" case to rule on. why hear all American const. claim en banc in an original hearing if you just heard collins const. claim en banc and anticipated ruling on it? if collins en banc ruling on const. claim comes out, then an all American merits panel would have been bound by it...no need for it to be en banc. or is all this a coincidence? this would be a good q to ask david thompson on thursday: https://investorsunite.org/investorsunite-teleconference/

@investorG, otting is a wall st guy, not a politician. i dont think he has the political disposition to have premeditated this whole thing.

seems otting may have spoken too bluntly and white house is now trying to control the narrative still, nothing in that article seems to disconfirm the crux of the long position, that f&f are here to stay and cannot be replaced. this itself is bullish for the prefs, though time horizon may be longer than we all hoped

@wiggins @midas receivership would also mean forfeiting 100bn profit for taxpayers and creating serious disruptions in the mortgage market. i just dont see that happening, esp due to latter

"no final decisions have been made on what will be contained in the proposal" ::)

woudnt you have to assume all judges come to agreement on APA within hours of oral hearing? seems far fetched to me, and more likely that judges want to hear the oral arg on constitutional claim to inform them on how to proceed with collins re admin staff: yes alot of work already done, but id imagine they need to pull in more staff members to finalize. perhaps give heads up to their friends (pull a hank paulson)

@cherzeca hard for me to believe treasury & en banc judges + staff can keep things a secret until release date. if there is high volume persistent selling id have to think there was a leak of an adverse ruling/development...(just like pre-lamberth)

@cherzeca after losing so many court cases, the thesis shifted from legal resolution to political. The former is generally simpler and easier to handicap, so in that regard it makes sense to me that it is trading less than pre perry ruling. Politicians are fickle and the political landscape can change disorientingly quickly

Buffett cares about economics of the business. It looks like capital ratios on the high side will be the cost of releasing f&f, in which case economics may not be attractive to Buffett. I expect it to be rather high if released

This is fun to think about but far too speculative to bank on

Agreed but there is a very limited window of time to get f&f released. i was very pleased to see that otting emphasized that Mnuchin is commited which tells me he won’t back down bc of political blowback but one can’t be sure

cold calculus of wall st fails hard in the logorrhea driven circus that is washington

doesnt have to be about GSEs--99% of americans have no idea what they do anyway (facepalm). pushing the enriching greedy hedge fund pals narrative will surely rile up warren's support base, and as any opportunistic politician would she'll play that card hard as she campaigns for '20 could this give trump pause?