http://www.reuters.com/…

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has informed U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the most populous U.S. state may need to turn to the federal government for short-term financing because of a lack of liquidity in credit markets.

California needs $7 billion to cover short-term expenses and has planned to issue revenue anticipation notes for it.

“Absent a clear resolution to this financial crisis that restores confidence and liquidity to the credit markets, California and other states may be unable to obtain the necessary level of financing to maintain government operations and may be forced to turn to the Federal Treasury for short-term financing,” Schwarzenegger said in a letter to Paulson dated Oct. 2 and provided to Reuters on Friday.

“The economic fallout from this national credit crisis continues to drain state tax coffers, making it even more difficult to weather the continuation of frozen credit markets for any length of time,” Schwarzenegger said, adding he supports a $700 billion emergency financial rescue plan due to be voted on Friday by the U.S. House of Representatives.

It’s not like we’ve had states go bankrupt before. Perhaps California will be the first in modern times. One can only hope.

http://www.reuters.com/…

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is seeking temporary unlimited borrowing authority from the Treasury Department, according to a copy of the final Senate bailout legislation on Wednesday.

In the bill, which is expected to be voted on by the Senate later Wednesday, the FDIC is seeking the borrowing authority through the end of 2009.

The FDIC currently insures up to $100,000 per depositor and up to $250,000 per individual retirement account at insured banks.

Really just accounting tricks. The FDIC doesn’t have their own separate fund to draw from anyway so instead of the Congress borrowing they are trying to delegate the borrowing through the FDIC.

By the guy that brought you Wordplay.

Looks good. I enjoy that some people are calling it ‘The Inconvenient Truth.’ Looks like Ron Paul supporters are generally in agreement that it’s worth seeing. From what I can gather it’s a bit on the simplistic side. Not in that it fails to go into economic theory but that it fails to show the whole picture and connect all the dots. Do they explain the Federal Reserve? Why it truly exists? How its used? How it led to what the movie’s about? I suppose it’s a start.

Update:

Looks like I was right. From Stephen Fairfax over at the LewRockwell.com blog:

I.O.U.S.A., I Want a Refund

The film was billed as inspired by Empire of Debt, but it is an extraordinarily poor and biased rendering of a very good book. While Bonner and Wiggins provided a thoughtful and entertaining exposition of the entire problem of excessive debt and credit, the movie focussed entirely on government debt.

…

The notion that government is the source of this problem and unlikely to be the solution was never raised. The book made this point clear, the movie carefully ignored it. The movie focussed exclusively on the problems of paying this government debt; the book explored other, more realistic options, such as repudiation and inflation. The book explored the enormous malinvestments, misallocation of resources, folly, and harm caused by the same policies that allow such a monstrous pyramid of debt and credit to be created in the first place. The movie studiously ignored any mention of the harm these policies have caused to civil society.

Economist Joe Stiglitz comments in the Financial Times, criticizing Fannie’s and Freddie’s free lunch, but ultimately takes a middle of the road approach.

The NYTimes claims that the Housing Bill Has Something for Nearly Everyone. (What, the check to pay for this thing? How about renters? If we miss a rent payment, we are liable to be EVICTED. Where is our bailout?)

Bloomberg reports that mortgage writedowns will total $1 trillion. (Article quotes a hair brained scheme where the gov’t buys millions of houses and then blows them up to help brace housing prices. At this point, I’m not sure who’s being sarcastic and who’s not. But seriously, if you wanna to see something really blowup, watch that gross national debt ticker, over on the right, after this bill passes.)

Former Republican House Majority Leader, Dick Armey blasts the Republican party in the Wall Street Journal. He advocates a five year phase out of either GSE should they access credit lines from the Federal Reserve or Treasury.

More to come…

Garet Garrett, author of A Bubble that Broke the World, 1931.

The other day I stumbled across the Generational Dynamics website. (Disclaimer, link will transport your web browser back to 1997 technology.) Author John J. Xenakis explains Generational Dynamics as “a historical methodology that analyzes historical events through the flow of generations, and uses the analysis to forecast future events by comparing today’s generational attitudes to those of the past.

To be precise, my google travels brought me to Xenakis’s website through his review of Garet Garrett’s 1931 book, “A Bubble that Broke the World [pdf].” Mises.org notes that Garrett “ascribes the [1929 stock market] crash to the pile of up debt, which in turn was made possible by the Fed printing machine. This created distortions in the production structure that cried out for correction. So what is the answer? Let the correction happen and learn from our mistakes.”

I’m not completely sold on Xenakis’s theory, but considering the rhythm of history, it may help explain a few things. He notes the timing of past financial crises: the 1637 Tulipomania bubble, the South Sea bubble of the 1710s-20s, the bankruptcy of the French monarchy in the 1789, the Panic of 1857, and the 1929 Wall Street crash. All roughly 70-90 years apart. The explanation for this regular timing?

Read More…

http://www.bloomberg.com/…

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rose in Frankfurt after U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he will seek approval from Congress to shore up the mortgage finance companies by buying equity stakes and increasing lines of credit.

Fannie Mae gained 31 percent in German trading and Freddie Mac advanced 33 percent after Paulson said he would seek authority to buy unlimited amounts of equity. The Federal Reserve also agreed to lend directly to the two companies to help provide interim financing.

Paulson’s plan may put a floor under the shares, which dropped by about 50 percent last week on concern that shareholders would be wiped out if the companies collapsed or were taken over by the government. Concern that Washington-based Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of McLean, Virginia, may collapse escalated last week, prompting Treasury, Federal Reserve and White House officials to forge a plan to rescue the companies should they be unable to fund themselves.

“Paulson said he would seek authority to buy unlimited amounts of equity.”

Hyperinflation, here we come?!

No wonder the stocks are up. Paulson is talking about turning all the cotton on the planet into FRNs.