August 27, 2008, I    predicted success for True Blood, HBO's series about vampires coming out of the closet. Sure enough it is avearging 6.8M viewers sunday nights. I observed this was a predictable socinomic trend, people turning to the dark side. While some of you have wondered on the blog  if this was true, well click to read about the success of the series.

Meanwhile, the LIBOR lending rates are down but so are bank stock prices. CITI dropped below $9 today. the Treasury is not having much luck improving things. Expect that the markets will get worse, which is a reflection of attitudes.

Laura Pantrano, Student AffairsDirector and Tracy Hurley, Director College of Businss wer among many from the campus at the Fair held on campus. Take a look at the Photo Album we posted on the left hand side of the blog!

Britain tried the same bailout with British Leyland in the 1970s and 1980s that Congress is considering with GM. Leyland  folded after losing that money. Ford did buy surviving Jaguar and lost half its investment and sold to Tata. Land Rover went to someone else and is still an iffy company.

But the French and Italian experience wtih Renault and Fiat has been much better. No one is calling all the tax breaks and free infrastructure extended to foreign automakers in the southern US  a bailout or even an inducement. I think the Dems will extend help to GM, the UAW has just sent too much money to the Dems as they lost presidential elections, now that they have won one, I cannot imagine the UAW not insisting on calling in their marker so to speak.

And we have so many social safety nets, the cost of unemployment payments, etc to all those losing their jobs now right down to Mr. Goodwrench in Anywhere Texas is such that i actually favor a loan at this time.

Okay don't take my word for it, try the Roger Ebert review.

Transsiberian is the story of four people on a train. But this is an unusual train, the longest ride in the world for eight days from Beijing to Moscow. It is what Hitchcock would be making were he still alive and that is high praise indeed. which is to say no car chases or things that go boom, the suspense is mental and induced, not obvious and external.  For me a big part of the movie is literally the experience of being on this train. The Lithuanian Film Group is credited with the work on the movie and it is clear they know their subject. Russia is a land of harsh climate and hard on its people, everyone looks old and tired, the victims of a hard life. The scenes of the train winding through miles of frozen Siberia indeed take us to another place.  And when her husband does not get back on the train, we feel the utter isolation of an ordinary person lost in a very strange land.

At the Chinese Russia border the undercarriages (wheels) of the trains have to be switched. The Russian and Chinese track gauges are three inches different, gee what a difference three inches makes. This lack of coordination required an entire sequence of changing the wheels on the train, and enigines of course, every time the border is crossed.

so for something completely different, try Transsiberain, and be glad we live in San Antonio.

7:10 AM Sunday Nov 16 Television Ad

If your anti depressant just isn't enough, consider adding ABILIFY!  In cases of suicide thoughts….

Well there you have it, things are already so bad, one anti depressant just won't do!   Worried Americans already on their first anti deprewssant,  are urged to add a second drug to their system!  I used the actual name  of the drug but of course am not suggesting or recommending drugging one self as a solution.

But it says volumes about the mental state of a lot of people that such an ad could be considered much less air, and at 7 AM Sunday morning!  We would suggest a better diet, exercise to relieve stress and a positive mental attitude along with being grateful for good health and a wonderful country to live in. 

Loading your system up with drugs is never a good idea, and the suggestion that additional drugs should be added is well, just nuts to us.

We will be studying advanced auditing next  semester. We need go no further than the Dallas Indpenedent School District to see example after example of the failure of good internal control, and the result.

Now we find that DISD has issued fake social security numbers.

DISD did this to put foreign workers on the payroll sort of an instant I 9 I guess. This is after a credit card scandal in which thousands of cards were issued with no subsequent oversight. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were misspent.  Then the district came up short $84 Million this fall, and laid 1200 workers off including over 600 teachers. Texas Education Agency is investigating, they might as well set up a permanent office there.

Amazingly the Superintendent is still on the job.

Looks like 15,000 moer unemplolyed since April, the slow down is starting to hit San Antonio.

However that is up from 3.6 to 5.0%, so we are in much better shape than the national stats.

Okay gripes about the bailout aside, the injection of money has brought LIBOR rates down and calmed the commercial paper market. The stock market is going down simply because people are selling too late. 

This morning Larry Fink CEO of Blackrock made a constructive suggestion, but first let's talk accounting. When a bank making a house loan repossess the house, that becomes a negative against their equity, OE in the A = L  + OE goes down as the loan moves out of A.  the trick to to arrange things so that does not happen. Fink suggests we have a post WW II like VA program and vigorously lower the interest rates on mortgages like we did for Vets, that makes sense since empty houses help no one. i would further suggest we eliminate

mark to market rules for firms that force marking down financial instruments in the absence of a certain market

letting banks re classify home mortgages as rent property. Frankly if one makes a 30 year loan, there is little to no equity build any time soon anyway. And with the housing market near gone, who are we kidding, the bank will have to rent the house anyway. so why not just reclassify it as a rent property, ie, the bank now owns stand along apartments not houses. that is a better idea than booting people out and classifying the house as a bad loan.

DLE

John Stossel takes issue with the idea that government can 'fix'

 whatever is wrong with the economy.  On CNBC this morning the owner of a California bank took issue with the idea that the bailout was working. I did not catch the name of the bank but the principal asked

How come Warren Buffet is getting 10% and 100% warrant coverage on Goldman but the govt is still allowing CITI to pay a common dividend ?  good question, the bailout is not working and it is throwing money from planes to apparently those folks that are Goldman's friends. 

Rick Santelli who covers interest rate markets and futures for CNBC from the Chicago Mercantile made a great point this morning, 'I would rather have a bad oneyear than a bad ten years like we had in the depression.'  His point is, let the markets sort it out, let the CME trade the Credit Default Swaps and put real transparencfy in them, and the market will quickly determine who is worth what.  

Paulson is changing tactics. First Treasury was going to buy shaky paper, then they were going to purchase bank preferred stock, now they are going to help shaky non financial lenders help shaky creditors stay in houses that should never have been buit, okay so I editorialized a bit on that last one, stay tuend  for more changes.

Folks are e mailing cable tv shows suggesting they started a bank in their garage, where do they go for a bailout, good question.  Now of course American Express expects one and no doubt they have lots of toxic (read worthless) credit card paper.

Ford's CEO says he will consider granting stock options to the Fed Govt for, well some money. I would think Alan Mullaly would consider granting stock options to anyone pruchasing a Ford quite frankly. I mean it is not like he has any wiggle room, it would be a funny remark if it were not so serious.

Folks from southern states where foreign auto makers are doing fine, often thanks to generous incentives, read toyota in San Antoinio, oppose hleping GM and Ford. Ths is really all about bailing out the UAW who has contributed heavily to Democrats for decades. the auto industry is fin in right to work states as i have noted and a basket case in union shop states. But

right to work states have heavily subsidized newer automakers without legacy costs, now they oppose essentially the same thing for GM and Ford

there whould be some requirements that the UAW take the same contracts workers have in right to work states, but i don't think there is a chance Obama will suggest that

this is a hallmark of govt failing to head things off at the pass as well as GM Ford UAW ignoring reality and now amidst this financial mess there is a last minute solution, like the bank bailout, and the airline bailout where airlines still went bankrupt later, this too won't work, do I like it?

There would be a huge mess, forget Michigan, with all the dealers in hundreds of towns facing a bankrupt GM Ford, and given the social safety net we have, promising food stamps, unemployment extension payments, etc, ie, paying people not to work at this point makes no sense,  I say we might as well give them a measly $25B, GM and Ford helped win WW II after all

I don't thnk we will get rich by washing one another's hair or cooking hamburgers for one another.

Ann Richards

I believe Anne will eventually be proved to be correct as the current financial crisis is suggesting.

Pat Buchanan takes a look at the export import situation vis a vis Chna and the US. I suggest we go back to makig our own stuff.