HARD 2 EXPLAIN

"Jim Ellis Chevrolet in Atlanta has about 120 leftover 2008 model trucks and SUVs to sell. Normally by Halloween, it would have almost none of last year's models lurking on the lot.

That's the bad news. The good news is that buyers are starting to come out of their fallout shelters and take a look at the deals, now that gas is back below $3 a gallon and desperate manufacturers are piling on discounts.

'The last two weeks, our truck activity has picked up,' says Mark Frost, the dealership's general manager. The dealership is promoting big discounts – as much $12,000 off a Chevy Tahoe sport-utility vehicle – and telling business owners that thanks to the economic-stimulus bill Congress passed earlier this year, they may qualify for big tax breaks on vehicles purchased for commercial use.
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Even if you bought a regular Tahoe, the huge discounts on offer would offset the difference in refueling costs for about 9 years, at current gas prices."

"...At this point, Japan has become a kind of dead star. It’s industrial economy has collapsed. Virtually no one is employed. The country continues to take in goods, but, produces nothing. The JPY is the strongest currency in the world. It’s become a kind of uber-claim on world goods and services. However, it’s also a claim on the dead star of Japan. Which is to say it’s a claim that no one really wants, or can use. It’s likely that during this period, most of the world has panicked into the Yen, thus reversing the multi-decade short position. Up to this point that trade has been the best trade in the world. And then, it reverses...."

"Why? Because the underlying problem isn't a liquidity problem. As I've noted elsewhere, the problem is that lenders and investors don't trust they'll get their money back because no one trusts that the numbers that purport to value securities are anything but wishful thinking. The trouble, in a nutshell, is that the financial entrepreneurship of recent years -- the derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralized debt instruments, and so on -- has undermined all notion of true value."

"Injecting capital alone isn't enough. The government also needs to force banks to recognize losses they have so far ignored, require banks to provide fuller disclosure of holdings, push banks to lend to one another again, euthanize weaker banks while helping strong banks get stronger, guarantee deposits and backstop a portion of bank credit.

Above all, the government needs to tell banks that they have to take part in a systemic solution. The time for negotiation by banks is over.

Yet such a draconian approach should also include market-based solutions. The strong should be encouraged to use markets to get stronger, in some cases in conjunction with government support."

"Investors warned against further falls. “Sadly it is now impossible to call the bottom of this market rout,” said Howard Wheeldon, strategist at the BGC Partners brokerage in London. “Irrational fear has gripped and it seems markets will now trash almost anything that walks. For now it is unstoppable.”"