Sunday, March 11, 2007

Suprise, surprise, surprise!

Have you heard about the great new game from the Lottery? The odds are fantastic, 4 out of every 5 tickets are winners. Every winning ticket pays out $1.07. Losing tickets pay nothing. [Winings are taxable State and Federal.] Price is 5 for $5 and are sold in bundles of 5 only. It's called "Sub-Prime Surprise." [Odds subject to change, mostly for the worse.]

43 comments:

Anonymous said...

First AGAIN loosers!

Go Heavy!

Anonymous said...

According to casey, something like that is a win win investment.

Anonymous said...

Lotteries are a tax on people who don't understand probability theory.

Anonymous said...

oh, the expected winnings in this lottery is only -$.72 (i.e, you lose 72 cents).

I challenge casey or the future fed chair nigel.

Anonymous said...

Lotteries are a great cheap thrill!

I'm runnin' ahead of the game, dood. In each the last two years, I have purchased $7 worth of POWERBALL tickets. One year, I won $10 and the next I won $14. At this rate, I'll be into the millions in no time!

Anonymous said...

I bought a ticket for $1 and got $2 back. Sweet cash back.

R-Boy said...

I love the lottery.

Georgia's paid for mine, and many others, middle-class butts to go to college at the expense of poorer folks who don't know odds.

I *will* play the lottery, but only when its about 200 million, where the expected value to my input/odds is at least as good as a vegas casino.

Anonymous said...

Suprise, surprise, surprise!

How is this for odd? I got all logged here at work this AM and was running through my morning blog roll...Mish talking about HAL...Barry on NY flooding...EN on the latest urban development & our FFF rants...then IAFF itself.

BUT MY WORK HAS BLOCKED IAFF.

Now I may be surfing at work however we have a VERY liberal filtering system. The only thing they have ever, I mean EVER blocked is outside e-mail accounts.

Porn, poker, youtube...name it we can look at it. But not IAFF.com

What is Casey up to over there? Why would a corporate IT department decide to block his site? Any thoughts?

R-Boy said...

IT folks mess around alot and sometimes block sites they shouldn't.

For example, the very popular economics blog (marginalrevolution) got blocked by our IT department last week, being tagged for porn.

idiots. I called em and let them know they were idiots. Being an economist, they cant really say anything about me umm, wanting to visit economics related sites.

Anonymous said...

This is the error I get:

Reason:
The Websense category "Proxy Avoidance" is filtered.

Rob Dawg said...

Likely young dandelion is now hosted in an IP with a shady reputation.

GameOver if you are catching up, make sure you see the Yosemite webcam, it changes through the day.

Anonymous said...

IT departments. Who's blocking the crap they look at?

I could see them blocking Nigel's award winning site but Casey?

Anonymous said...

Game over. This is your IT department. We thought we were doing you a favor.

We have also blocked Gloryholes.com so please don't attempt to use that anymore.

Anonymous said...

Rob, good call. Makes me wonder why I live in the midwest. Flat, flat and more flat.

Anonymous said...

Good morning. Anybody else feel like they've been cheated out of an hour of good, snuggly sleep? Ugh.

It looks like another week of Serinactivity and poor Nigel scrabbling to escape his mediocrity.

:sighs::yawn:

Anonymous said...

@Stephanie J.

Yep feeling pain this morning. Wife got to sleep in - I was extremely jealous.

Unknown said...

just back from a weekend getaway out in the shenandoah. probably powerwashed close to a 150 lbs. of mud off the undercarriage of my outback. road up was a good 10% plus grade and pure mud as it is thawing out now. love non-flat land.

Anonymous said...

Stephanie J. said...
Good morning. Anybody else feel like they've been cheated out of an hour of good, snuggly sleep? Ugh.



Morning, Steph. Indeed... we were robbed and I'm sporting a huge resentment about it this morning.

ratlab said...

Shares of NEW have been suspended. Financing from major lenders have ceased. Ever closer to bankruptcy.

Anonymous said...

Is Burdett bye bye today?

Nicole said...

There's a reason I took today off work - damn DST.

And this business about having it start 3 weeks earlier? Garbage.

Its the charcoal and briquet manufacturing companies who want people to be able to bbq longer (or so says dad).

Which is why I have a natural gas bbq.

Rob Dawg said...

Yesterday the reporterette for ABC7 lamented the fact that the wildfires in OrangeCounty yesterday couldn't have come at a worse trime as DST meant an extra hour of sun and heat contributing to the blazes.

Anonymous said...

Interesting what his hosting info is:

http://whois.domaintools.com/iamfacingforeclosure.com

Anonymous said...

Yesterday the reporterette for ABC7 lamented the fact that the wildfires in OrangeCounty yesterday couldn't have come at a worse trime as DST meant an extra hour of sun and heat contributing to the blazes.

Dohhh...
Quality news.
How about the one about the congressman protesting what we spend on NOAA... after all, if people need to know the weather, all they have to do is turn on the weather station..!! (need to check if this is an urban legend)

ratlab said...

"Extra hour of sun"

You've got to be kidding. Which doofus on ABC7 said that?

ratlab said...

I'd like to thank BofA for taking 4 business days and counting to approve my margin account. Asshats. And in the meantime, I've watched NEW drift from 8 to 3 to soon-to-be-delisted-from-the-NYSE. Same pricing trend for LEND, though they'll survive.

Serves me right to try and consolidate my accounts and not wire money into my existing trading account at another brokerage firm which is margin & options approved.

Rob Dawg said...

ratlab,
I know I'm starting a fight here but what makes you think LEND or even CFC will survive?

I'm also seeing some resistance to allowing we little people to move our money in days what the big boys do in milliseconds.

Anonymous said...


I'm also seeing some resistance to allowing we little people to move our money in days what the big boys do in milliseconds.


Move money in which direction..??

So far, I have not had any problem.. but then again, my accounts are larger than average but not huge.

Anonymous said...

@ Stephanie:

It's a wash for me. On the one hand I have to go to work an hour early relative to what time my body thinks it is. On the other hand the cat let me sleep in an hour late relative to the clock.

ratlab said...

@Rob Dawg
In the long run, I believe CFC will survive based on the fact that only what, 9% (can remember the exact numbers here) of CFC's loans are sub-prime accounting for about 5% of profits. They're already seeing an increase in delinquents (19% total) on their sub-p loans and the number will rise...

BUT, they're a starting to take steps to decrease their exposure. Their cashflow is relatively stable.

As for increasing their business from other lenders shuttering their operations, I don't take much stock in that statement. If there are moving away from the sub-p, 100% financing market, they're not going to want the business coming from those lenders.

Cash flow, reducing sub-p and 100% financing exposure, and deep pockets will ultimately save CFC. I'm not going against the big boys when they have their money in CFC.

I see LEND as a smaller version of CFC, but they face the risk of absorbing the Aames acquisition, and are more tied to sub-p as their bread and butter and thus cannot reduce their exposure.

Between the two, I would be on CFC surviving and LEND at least getting beat down severely.

Rob Dawg said...

ratlab,
I see much the same but both depend upon the kindness of wolves. They keep only a fraction, 20% I think for CFC, of their generation. I'm expecting 1yr and even 2yr crambacks from their secondary markets to squeeze them at the same time the entities pushing the crambacks are also their go-to guys for credit extensions. See my concern?

Anonymous said...

Servicing is a huge part of CFC's business, my mortgage is owned by Citi but serviced by CFC. Servicing $$$ and their A paper business will keep them afloat.

Schnapps said...

Um. I have a question I'm hoping my good neighbours to the south can answer.

So Dandelion submitted a shortsale for $240K on Burdett, which was refused, ostensibly because of closing fees, listing fees, etc. etc. Whatever.

So why is it listed on the foreclosure site as being in foreclosure and available for $239K? Or is that just a starting bid?

Here: http://www.foreclosure.com/listingdetails.html?ps=50&o=s&tab=&cno=067&pi=&bhi=&pg=4&z=95823&pa=&st=CA&tl=foreclosure&tl=preforeclosure&tl=bankruptcy&tl=fsbo&tl=tax%20lien&tl=deal&bdi=&ci=&listingid=6008451

Rob Dawg said...

Nicole,
rounding error.

Anonymous said...

Do you know what's better than winning the lotto? Buying real estate in Utah. It's a sure thing.

And now with the extra hour of daylight, the buyers are really out in full force. Not only will the real estate market in Utah not decline, my extensive analysis projects it up another 50% in two years. Buy now folks.

Nigel

Anonymous said...

No word from snowflake today, I guess he will be skipping the auction, that way he can avoid yet another "intense discussion" with G.

I wonder what will happen to our delicate flower when he can't pay his loan shark 22k? (oops, I meant to say promissory note lending guy not loan shark)

That should prove to be much more interesting than all these boring auctions.

Anonymous said...

If NEW is able to fall victim to human stupidity, certainly CFC can as well. No one thought NEW could go down and right now it looks like they may. No one is invincible, no one.

Anonymous said...

Maybe boy-wonder is going to attend the auction--it's an opportunity to don the murse, and swing by JJ for a morning wheatgrass shot.

I should open a place in his town that liquefies various forms of garden debris, and claim it's good for your health; I'll guarantee Casey would be amongst my first customers, and would happily espouse the benefits of lawn-clippings. As long as I have a good logo, a decent sign, nice presentation plates, and a gift-card program, I'd be a great success living off Casey's non-income (and those many gullible fools just like him).

ratlab said...

@Mozatta

I agree that no company is invincible. But, CFC has other revenue streams besides sub-p and sub-p like loans. CFC just has a larger margin of error they can withstand. But anything is possible in this industry nowadays.

Anonymous said...

Stephanie J. said...
Maybe boy-wonder is going to attend the auction


But of course! His fans might be there afterall and he can't let his fans down.

Peripheral Visionary said...

CFC could run into problem if it faces a classic "run on the bank" situation that has killed so many others. Ironically, it's the big investment banks that trigger the run, pushing their mortgages back and demanding big margin calls on lines of credit based on trigger clauses.

But I'm not sure why you're debating the fate of CFC (which I agree will probably survive, even though it'll get whalloped) when the vultures are circling over NFI. CFC's in critical but stable condition, NFI is being measured for a coffin.

The other group to watch are the big investment banks. I'm not as interested in HSBC, which has been disclosing (big) losses up front, or Morgan Stanley, which reportedly has been the first of the big banks to put the credit crunch on the sub-primes in an effort to get its money back. Rather, my interest is in the likes of Bear Stearns who have remained strangely mute through this whole episode, quite possibly hoping that no one will bother to ask just how large their sub-prime exposure is. And then there's the hedge funds . . .

Anonymous said...

@ ratlab

Very true and I hope that other business does well for them. They just laid a bunch of staff off today, so they're planning something. Hopefully the other ventures will support them.

FlyingMonkeyWarrior said...

CFC, Fed Bank, Casey Serin, all cut of the same cloth, no cash on hand to cover their exposures....