Good interview with James Grant in The Washington Post

The unblinkable fact is that Americans own too much house. We overpaid and overborrowed, and many of us are "upside down," as the car dealers say. What to do? Recognize the losses and write them off. What not to do? Inflate the currency and debase accounting standards.

It is not particularly comforting when the advisers to the politicians charged with Saving the Financial System and the World are not familiar with LIBOR.

A friend of mine in Asia offered this perspective of the US housing crisis and the government's attempt to deal with the fall-out.  With his kind permission, he agreed that I could post it.

From IPE

Much better than the States but surely to worsen as the economy heads into recession.

From Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

What, is Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke running Zimbabwe too?

Haha, just kidding.

From the CATO Insitutute.

Mosaic and the other fertilizer stocks got whacked.

From Bloomberg

From The Financial Times

US investors pulled record amounts of money from mutual funds last month - nearly trebling the previous mark set during September 2001 - as they rushed to cash amid market turmoil.

After experiencing the worst one day loss on Monday since the market crash on October 19, 1987, markets rallied hard, with the Dow closing up nearly 500 points.  There were several reasons for the gain.

1.  The market was oversold
When only one stock in the S&P 500 goes up and the downside volume to upside volume is 26.5:1, as it was on Monday, a snapback rally is no surprise.