LOLFED

Looks like Guv Mishkin is a’resignin from the Fed. Don’t think we’ve made a lol out of him yet, so we can’t let him go out without one. This leaves three, count em, THREE vacancies. Which seems like a lot for Dubya to get filled.

A little bonus political content because the oil markets have been more exciting than the credit markets as of late… Dubya begging the Saudis to increase oil production:

“Oh hai… ur oil… I can haz moar? Presidenshul SUV’s, let me show you them…”

Srsly can we PLEASE stop filling the SPR now?? And, this regulation where CFTC wants to start counting contracts across exchanges - while I do think a nontrivial part of the oil price right now is speculation-driven and not demand-driven, seriously, what are you going to do other than force the speculators to overseas exchanges? If anyone thinks this will work, pls splain to me thx.

So Bernanke speaks tomorrow, and we might get an idea as to whether the most recent Fed rate cut really is the last. Retail numbers come out too, so we’ll see how those look pre-stimulus payment. How’s that glass looking, Benny?

I’m surprised Ceiling Cat didn’t drop in to check out this map of fail hotspots.

Bernanke spoke yesterday at Columbia b-school on the relative levels of mortgage fail in different areas of the US, differing causes, and what can be done to stop it. He pointed out that epic mortgage fail in areas such as the Midwest is more job-related, while in the South and West it’s more likely in cases where someone is suddenly $100K+ underwater on some no-doc ARM that readjusted or something. And, of course, he wants the FHA to help distressed borrowers, Congress to give more latitude to Fannie and Freddie, and those lenders to raise capital.

“Doing what we can to avoid preventable foreclosures is not just in the interest of lenders and borrowers. It’s in everybody’s interest,” he said.

My local Barnes and Noble prefers to leave the economics to the men (click for full size):

Reuters reports one of the items in an auction to benefit the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial is a tea with Alan Greenspan and his wife Andrea Mitchell. It isn’t final til May 7, but the current bid is $11,000.

VIP tickets to Mad Money and a phone chat with Suze Orman are among the other items up for auction. To see what’s available, visit CharityBuzz.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States has fallen into an “awfully pale recession” and may remain stagnant for the rest of the year, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was quoted on Monday saying.
“We’re in a recession,” Bloomberg news agency reported Greenspan had said in a television interview. “But this is an awfully pale recession at the moment. The declines in employment have not been as big as you’d expect to see.”

Not the first time Greeny has said we’re in a recession; however, it is the first time he’s used such interesting adjectives. He expects a stagnant ‘08, with growth not returning until the housing markets stabilize.

…and to make it KIND OF LOLFed related, I’ll tell you it’s not the credit crunch - this one did not fall through because of the financing! Despite a 10% runup on Friday from investors who thought it was really gonna happen at a sky-high price, Microsoft walked away from Yahoo this weekend.

As an investor, I now think MSFT is an okay buy (couple reasons: they will either get YHOO at a bargain bin price and thus finally have some presence in search, or, at the very least, they are better off for NOT overpaying on this one). I think YHOO will open close to where it was before MSFT made the offer, but not AS low, since the Google deal they’ve put in place since has to be worth something. Yang should be lambasted by investors, and I bet a lot of little guys playing along at home got burned playing arbitrage on this one, too.