doughishere

http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/11/whitney-tilsons-valeant-vrx/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/opinion/drugs-greed-and-a-dead-boy.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fnicholas-kristof&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0

http://edge.org/conversation/the-argumentative-theory

Which lodged supplement are they referring to? Corker bought or sold 45 times. I'm actually a little surprised he did so well according to that chart in the WSJ. He "watched the trading range on his hometown stock" and "found that especially during times of market volatility it trades within ranges." "I've bought it heavily when it is at the low end of that range and then i hold it unitl there is upwad movement, when I sell." ...wow...just wow. How does he have time to govern? Hah.. U.S. Senator, or Day Trader? http://investorsunite.org/u-s-senator-or-day-trader/

Govt files it's opening brief in the Deleware case by the 13th.

Naw. but now my amazon reading list got longer. The problem is I saw it as an image, I think it was on twitter. It might have been Munger who said it. I think it also said in the same blurb, and im paraphrasing, that reading is a trade off and thats just economics 101.

I dont get what you mean? this kraven? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraven_the_Hunter

I read somewhere about why he reads so much. Something along the lines that you have to read eveything you can to be able to sort though all the bullshit. Anyone have an idea what Im talking about.

cv-00109 is Robinson v. FHFA,et al. This is a relatively new case, 10/23. Claims FHFA’s conduct exceeded its statutory authority as conservator. Treasury’s conduct exceeded its statutory authority. Treasury’s conduct was arbitrary and capricious. Blah blah blah..... Just do a search for 00109. This seems to get updated fairly regularly and is a pretty good resource to keep track(because you know...there are so many lawsuits out there that it needs to be tracked). /http://bankrupt.com/gselitigationsummary201510.pdf

Heh.

Here's a wild thought. Someone should dial up Al Sharpton, NAACP and other minority groups. Start up a civil rights case. Ship that on over to the FHFA. Wouldn't that be rich? Why not? We have a Constitutional case, a Securities law case and whatever else. Why not add a civil rights case of by keeping F&F in conservatorship you are disenfranchising minorities their rights? I want to be clear, I'm not saying that Obama(I cast my first ever presidential ballot for him) and crew are racist but when you have the disenfranchisement of minorities being caused by poor governmental policies then those policies should be looked at and corrected. I think anyone who is a human being can empathize with that. http://www.housingwire.com/articles/35487-major-civil-rights-groups-join-push-to-recapitalize-fannie-mae-freddie-mac

Obama can decide to expand his authority. I feel like just because he doesn't have it doesn't mean he doesn't think he can have it. I kinda lump theses things into the "tragedy of the commons" argument. Really the only bearish argument that i think exists out there. That congress and "those in power" could decide to deny property rights to individuals acting independently and rationally according to each's self-interest behave in a way thats contrary to the best interests of the whole group. I'd have more respect for some of the proponents against F&F if they at least admitted to this is why they want to see an end to F&F. The sad thing is that theres plans out there to make everyone mutually better and all the propents aginst F&F really want is their pound of flesh.

malonigse Was pretty good today one part of this paranoid Admin calls for “mortgage reform which Congress must pass,” while another office fines the heck out of the banks, who would be the ultimate untrustworthy beneficiaries of the Obama/congressional mortgage market reforms. Another day another lawsuit huh? Soon the court systems are gonna be bogged down with shareholder lawsuits

Never married, don't run a fund. I would imagine it has to be like picking a spouse.....you really gatta share the same vision....especially on days like today when if your an investor with PSH. Am i crazy in thinking this is something Buffett has said?

This is also making the rounds today. http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000150-8337-d8e3-addc-b77feac70000 How Not to have a Real Discussion about Fixing Fannie and Freddie: October 19, 2015 Joshua Rosner

Man I wish I had a big army so I could change the deals I made. Very King like..... Anyone have the link to Jacob Lews interview today?

Naw. I had nothing to do so I watched it. Nothing we don't already know. No new insights. Bethany did make a comment at the end saying something that I've posted about a bit; she commented on the secrecy an how she wants to read these redacted statements and document. Other than that, She caried on her same mo; not entirely happy the hedge funds( and she made distinction about fairlome and what not) coming in after but non the less she thinks it's the lesser of two evils. The rest of it was just the disfunctionality of the govt and the two gses.

Bethany on CSpan2. Right now. With Joe Light.

Little Econ read that came across my desk today. Some of you may have seen this already....... ;) Whats the worst hand in poker? Ask any competent no-limit hold'em player and the response is automatic: "two-seven off." Examples of this hand include two-of-hearts and seven-spades or two-of-clubs and seven-of-diamonds. This is the hand with the lowest high-card -the seven- that also (i.) minimizes the odds of a flush (as the cards are "off" - i.e. of two different suits) and (ii) minimizes the odds of a straight (as the cards are five numbers apart). Through this answers is technically correct, it is not actually the worst hand in poker. The worst hand in poker is the second-best hand. This is the hand that incentivizes the player to bet heavily with out the odds in his or her favor. It is the poker hand that offers the player the greatest risk of loss. Competent players know to fold a two-seven off. Gifted players know to fold the second-best hand. A similar framework applies when thinking about industry structured in cyclical, commodity business. The most profitable industry structure is a "rational" structure that has been consolidated to one or a few participants who together control pricing either explicitly(monopoly or cartel) or implicitly (by widely broadcasting pricing decisions such that the small number of industry participants can act in concert without directly coordinating their decisions). A consolidated, rational industry allows up-cycles to last longer and down-cycles to be shortened. Through-the-cycle profitability for each participant is meaningfully enhanced. The next-best industry structure is a fragmented industry. A fragmented structure is characterized by its smaller, marginal participants. In up-cycles, these marginal players often lack the capital to rapidly invest in additional capacity. In down-cycles, these same marginal players lack the balance sheet strength to endure protracted downturns and so are relatively quick to shut capacity. A fragmented industry is therefor marked by slightly longer up-cycles and demonstrably shorter (and shallower) down-cycles. The worst industry structure is the second-best structure - and industry that is "almost-consolidated" fewer participants, but not so few that pricing has become rational. This structure leads to more violent cycles with (i) protracted downturns characterized by many-well-funded large players each battling to outlast one another, followed by (ii) shorter, more-powerful upswings that are rapidly cut off as survivors rebuild financial strength and add capacity. Through-the-cycle profitability is diminished as the industry consolidates toward rationality.

Just came across my desk......back to studying. Dear Shareholder, In a Washington Post Op-Ed published online this afternoon, Bethany McLean argues that “we still need Fannie and Freddie, even more now than before.” She emphasizes that “since 2008, while Fannie and Freddie have sat in limbo, homeownership has plunged” and that it is time to “use Fannie and Freddie for what they were designed to do: support homeownership for those who can afford it, and support the financing of multi-family housing that working people can afford.” We encourage you to read the Op-Ed in its entirety below or by clicking on the following link: “Government-backed mortgage lenders are the definition of too big to fail. Too bad we need them more than ever.” Kind regards, Investor Relations Fairholme Funds, Inc. 4400 Biscayne Blvd. 9th Floor Miami, FL 33137 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Government-backed mortgage lenders are the definition of too big to fail. Too bad we need them more than ever. Washington Post – Opinion By Bethany McLean 15 October 2015 If there’s one thing with which most of Washington has long agreed, it’s this: Fannie and Freddie must die. That’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants that prop up much of the American housing market and have been operating under government control since the financial crisis seven years ago. “There’s a majority of people here that believe that they should be wound down and replaced so that the taxpayers are not backing them up as they are today,” is how Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) put it last week. In one of his few mentions of the topic, President Obama described Fannie and Freddie’s business model as “heads [they] win, tails taxpayers lose,” meaning that although their executives and shareholders profited in the good times, the implicit belief that the government stood behind them — which was the core of their business model — would force taxpayers to cover the losses in a crisis. Which we did. The critics are right about the flaws of both institutions: Fannie and Freddie agglomerated too much political power before they went bust, and their drive for market share during the housing boom early in the past decade left taxpayers on the hook to bail them out. But we still need Fannie and Freddie, even more now than before. They own or guarantee the payments on more than $5 trillion in American mortgages, or about 60 percent of the total. In the years since the financial collapse, they have been the major source of credit for most people who got mortgages, and the only source of credit for less-than-pristine borrowers. Washington is paralyzed. Even Corker, when pressed, backed away from his call to eliminate them, because despite the hatred of the housing giants, collectively known as “government-supported entities,” or GSEs, no one wants to see what would happen without them, and no one can agree on how to replace them. As a result, there’s no plan for how the United States will finance housing in the future. Without a housing finance policy, there is no housing policy. And that’s a huge problem, because another crisis — about how people will afford a place to live — is brewing. Since 2008, while Fannie and Freddie have sat in limbo, homeownership has plunged. This summer, the Census Bureau reported that the homeownership rate had fallen to 63.4 percent, the lowest level in 48 years. (It had peaked at 69 percent, in 2004.) “Renter nation,” one blog called the United States. The decline is particularly pronounced in minority communities. At the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference this year, housing advocates pointed out that the homeownership rate for the black population has decreased from nearly 50 percent in 2004 to about 43 percent, its lowest level in 20 years. It’s projected to continue to drop. Pundits have argued that the homeownership rate was, and maybe still is, too high, because too many people were getting mortgages they couldn’t afford. But if people don’t own (and don’t sleep on the street), they rent — and rents have been steadily rising since 2000, while incomes have not kept pace. In the third quarter of this year, rents increased by 5.7 percent year over year, according to Morningstar, and they rose at a double-digit clip in some large cities such as San Francisco and Denver. (Rents in Washington were up just 1.44 percent year over year, according to the online real estate database Zillow, in part because of rent-control laws.) The Wall Street Journal recently noted that a pending merger of two companies that own single-family rental homes is predicated on rents continuing their rise. Stan Humphries, the chief analytics officer at Zillow, has called what’s coming a “rental crisis.” According to Zillow’s data, while homeowners with a mortgage can expect to spend about 15.3 percent of their income on monthly housing bills, renters must plan to set aside almost double that share. As rents rise, it gets harder to save for the down payment required to buy a home. Add in the burden of student loans, and financial challenges increase. According to an analysis by Enterprise Community Partners and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, since the start of the 2000s, the number of severely cost-burdened renters in the United States — meaning those who pay more than half their income in rent — has risen substantially, from 7 million in 2000 to 11.3 million in 2013. The number is expected to keep increasing. There’s a logical response to this, which is to use Fannie and Freddie for what they were designed to do: support homeownership for those who can afford it, and support the financing of multi-family housing that working people can afford. In Washington policy circles, reviving the GSEs is considered something that shouldn’t be discussed in polite company. The complaints about their pre-crisis business model are accurate — but some of the other criticisms are wrong, and even contradictory. One argument is that in their previous incarnation, Fannie and Freddie caused the financial crisis by helping unqualified people buy homes, in the name of following mandates from Congress to meet housing affordability goals. But the financial crisis wasn’t caused by putting people in homes. It was caused by people of all income levels speculating on homes as investment properties, and using their homes as credit cards, extracting money from them via cash-out refinancing. According to Jason Thomas, the director of research at the Carlyle Group, only about a third of subprime mortgages that were turned into mortgage-backed securities between 2000 and 2007 were used to buy homes. And a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in early 2014 found that the wealthiest 40 percent of borrowers obtained 55 percent of the new loans in 2006 — the peak year of the bubble — and that over the next three years, they were responsible for nearly 60 percent of delinquencies. Another old criticism contradicts that one: In the 1990s, critics — from activists on the left, to American Enterprise Institute scholar Peter Wallison on the right, to the Congressional Budget Office — argued that Fannie and Freddie never did much to foster homeownership or lower mortgage rates. Maybe this was true in the golden years of the 1990s, when there was no shortage of private capital to be lent for real estate. But we certainly needed Fannie and Freddie in the wake of the crisis. And although there is a lot of analysis about what a market without government support would look like, the simple truth is that Fannie has been around for almost 80 years. Anyone projecting how the housing market would appear without it is just guessing. Still, there is fairly widespread agreement that some things we take for granted, such as a 30-year, fixed-rate, pre-payable mortgage, wouldn’t exist without a government backstop. Investors simply don’t want that risk. That’s part of the reason Congress has done nothing with the institutions since the government took them over. Without the government support, not much would change for the very wealthy. But most analysts agree that a great swath of the middle and lower class probably would get five- to 15-year mortgages with floating rates, rates that would vary significantly depending on income and geography. Mortgage capital might be hard to come by in times of stress. Home prices probably would decrease. With an affordable-housing crisis in the works, and when even the Wall Street Journal is publishing essays about the squeeze on the middle class, it is probably not politically feasible or wise to experiment if you care about the social fabric of the country. Most supposedly “free market” solutions assume that the big banks would take greater control of the mortgage market without Fannie and Freddie. But the big banks were bailed out in 2008, too. The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation may have fixed the “too big to fail” issue. (That’s debatable, but give it the benefit of the doubt.) If banks control the nation’s mortgage market, does anyone think they’ll be allowed to fail in the next crisis? In which case, how are they not government-supported entities, as well? One legitimate complaint about the old Fannie and Freddie was the way they garnered political clout through their promotion of homeownership. In their heyday, it was immense and ugly. (“Fannie has this grandmotherly image, but they will castrate you, decapitate you, tie you up, and throw you in the Potomac,” a congressional source told the International Economy in the late 1990s. “They are absolutely ruthless.” That would pale next to the political clout of a big bank that also controlled the mortgage market, and whatever evils grew out of the GSEs’ need to please politicians, there could be worse. Imagine the conversation in a back room between the politicians and the bank executives, where they agree that if the bank will loosen up credit in their states, the politicians will go easy on, say, derivatives regulation. It almost makes the old Fannie and Freddie look pure. Fannie and Freddie have legitimate problems. As Obama said, theirs was a flawed business model in which the drive for profits ultimately led to their failure. Many economists also argue that any subsidy eventually leads to corruption. But there are ways to mitigate these issues. Regulate Fannie and Freddie like utilities, with limits on the returns they can make. Create incentives that encourage them to pull back from the market when it’s overheating, instead of chasing market share. Give them as competent a regulator as possible. Encourage Fannie and Freddie to get private capital to bear risk ahead of them, which they are trying to do, and which is how their existing multi-family businesses operate. None of this would satisfy the Fannie and Freddie bloodlust. Nor would it be perfect. But if perfect is out there somewhere, it’s time to propose it. We need a housing policy. Bethany McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the U.S. Mortgage Giants." Fairholme Funds, Inc. 4400 Biscayne Blvd. 9th Floor Miami, FL 33137

Sullivan on Corker this morning. http://www.valueplays.net/2015/10/13/sen-corkers-about-face-on-gses/?utm_content=buffer96a83&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Sorry....i was just trying to be a little a little amusing. I get what you are saying.

Yeah.....the tide is starting to shift....things are definitely more positive.......dont tell luke but im starting to board the hype train.

What a moron. Does he stop and listen to himself? Let me paraphrase what he says....."I hope they become utilities.....at some point I want them to come back out to the markets" In other words Id rather transfer the entities to the "group im meeting with later today."

I knew I couldn't let the thread get to the second page. Mario Ugoletti, a senior official at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, retired in September, an agency spokesman told The Post. And the plot thickens.....