And you think we're crazy? (You really can't make this stuff up.)

A Spanish bank needed a cash dole from the taxpayers of Europe the ECB, but the ever-prudent gnomes of Berlin said nein, not mitout collateral.

So  banker Don Pesos y Muggers y Acquisiones offered up the world's most expensive footballer to back his pipedream du jour.  

"The most expensive footballer in history may now be used to guarantee the solvency of a Spanish bank. “Ronaldo in the bailout fund,” headlines Süddeutsche Zeitung. The daily reports that the Bankia group of savings banks, which financed Real Madrid’s acquisition of the Portuguese player, is now seeking to borrow funds from the European Central Bank."


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Far as I know our feds still think they own Roger Clemens. He's getting a little long in the tooth but could still have some box-office entertainment value. Let's have Geithner list him as an asset and see what he'll hock for.   

Skizvesting

Handwringers.org, a  leftist unthink tank, is having fun reporting the collapse of the stock markets due to frustration at the Court of His Obamaness. The source of the frustration is, of course, "conservative" refusal to finance yet another mink-lined chamber pot for the Royals.

(1) -- Yes, "The market"  is an elephant in the parlor, a schizoid beast for whom dopamine injections do not work. Greenspan had it right, "irrational exuberance," but he neglected to add its frequent counterpart, "idiotic depression."  The price of a stock, any stock, is an opinion about what the security will sell for in the future. -- tomorrow or midway through the second Chelsea Clinton Administration.  Said opinion is a compound chemical composed primarily of guesswork, greed, and fear  with trace elements of actual information and adequate judgment.


(2) -- The national nervous breakdown as we approach our credit limit has dropped the Dow and its companion indices by 2 per cent or so this week.  Fooey. I once personally moved the markets more than that by floating a rumor that Yassar  Arafat was Dwight Eisenhower's love child. And I didn't even have a sputtering Lawrence O'Donnell  to help me along.

(3) -- The pre-opening numbers this morning show the markets heading up a little. This is vastly significant, perhaps as much so as the latest teevee bid for a Casey Alexander interview.

Regulation FD disclosure: My direct personal exposure to the stock markets represents a full 2.7 (two-decimal-seven)  per cent of my liquidity.  That's an all-time low for my adult life. It may be too little. Then again, it may be too much. It all depends on whether a Siamese kid working for Barclay's in Singapore overexposes the bank to pickle futures.

I would liquidate this tiny remaining holding but for one sticky point. The only convenient alternative is United States dollars. Talk about fear of getting whacked with Jumbo's nose...

Thought for the day

From Roberta. About upping the DeeCee credit limit. Condensed good sense on the current Washington goat rope:

"Why should I "eat my peas" when Feds have been swimming in ice cream?
.

Son of a Fitch but I'm Moody this morning

You may never have heard of Foxen, Henhouse, and Scroom. It's a credit rating agency without a PR department. Like its famous competitors  -- Moody's. S&P. Fitch -- its makes its money telling the world about the relative risk of  investments.

Now everyone is horrified that the agencies are about to say U.S. Treasury bonds, bills, and notes are marginally more risky just because President Obama can't borrow a pot to piss in.

I hope it is not insensitive of me to remark that these are the same credit experts who awarded an AAA rating to your crazy brother-in-law's McMansion mortgage  the day before he whipped out his MasterCard and bought one-way tickets (one for the stripper)  to Cancun. (cf. CDOS, CMOs etc.)

So, why in Hell are we so worried at the thought of these guys saying, "Uncle Sam is spending himself into bankruptcy?"

Isn't that the same thing you and I have have saying since -- I dunno -- maybe since before Doris Day got to be a virgin?

Foxen, Henhouse & Scroom operates just like the other agencies. The debt issuer pays their fees, and  of course no company would think of shopping around for a ratings agency which would, in return for its fee,  fudge its opinion.

That's where the agencies differ from you and me. We don't t charge a dime for telling Washington it's operating like a Three Stooges movie policed by the Keystone Kops.