Serenity1971 Forum Posts (3,815)

RE: How did you pick your username??

1971 is the year I was born, but Serenity came on Aug 1st 2002 when I chose to become sober. Sobriety has kept serenity in my life and the way I choose to live it today

RE: Who Would You vote for?

I was thinking Bugs Bunny myself

RE: Corrupt a wish.....

Granted: But your wish is used on a refrigerator that wasn't keeping the food cold and now it's freezing everything.

I wish all my kids were coming to visit not just my oldest

RE: Who Would You vote for?

What about none of the above. One's just as much of a farce as the other. Since watching all the debates and all the other b.s. they're all on their own agenda. None of them are looking out for us as a whole

RE: Is It Bettter To Have Loved And Lost Or Never Loved At All ???

I'm glad I have loved and lost. I think it's much better than never loved at all. The experience in and of itself is amazing.

RE: What is the first word that pops into your head....(part 2)

fathead

RE: Corrupt a wish.....

Granted: But everyone tries to eat the plates and they end up going to the hospital to get the glass picked out of their mouths and throats and you're sued for damages.

I wish that I could finish this article so it can be submitted

RE: Are there any Men ??

Yes until we started to lick off the whipped cream!

RE: HELLO everone

Welcome to the nut house Shane There's a lot of great people, and I'm sure you'll make a lot of friends here. Good luck in your search, but most of all have fun!

The implosion of the financial markets

Yes and then there's this...

March 29 (Bloomberg) -- The International Monetary Fund will pare its forecast for 2008 economic growth in the euro area to below 1.4 percent next month, De Tijd reported today, citing Luc Everaert, who heads the IMF's regional studies unit in Europe.

The new projection for economic growth in the 15 nations that share the euro currency will be ``slightly lower'' than the 1.4 percent the fund forecasts for economic growth in Belgium this year, the newspaper quoted Everaert as saying at a press conference in Brussels yesterday.

The IMF yesterday cut its forecast for economic growth in Belgium from an earlier prediction of 1.6 percent in January, citing a ``worsening'' international environment and ``less favorable'' financing conditions for businesses.

The fund, which on Jan. 29 projected euro-area growth of 1.6 percent this year, will publish its new growth forecast on April 9, according to a statement on its Web site.

RE: Are there any Men ??

I think it was much more fun when we used the balloons filled with whipped cream or paint

The implosion of the financial markets

hahaha

Unfortunately that's already happening. There are several people losing their homes due to the fact that when they got their original mortgages, they did an adjustable rate mortgage. The rate has sky rocketed and people that were paying $850 a month for their mortgage are now having to pay $2000 a month. It's heartbreaking to see many of these families lose their homes and that most of them put everything they had into them.

The implosion of the financial markets

The implosion of the residential market is only the beginning. They haven't even started looking at the commercial side.

With the recession that we’re not in, the inevitable meltdown of the lending market is taking place. The residential market is imploding, banks aren’t doing residential loans and the large residential developers are at a standstill, unless they go through hard money lenders.

The hard money lending companies are beginning to scramble for new investors to support the loans that they’ve already given. The hard money lenders offer short term loans with high interest rates. The investors that have bought into these loans were looking for high returns from their investments. With the market crashing the way it is, these investors are not only not getting the high returns, but it’s unlikely that they will even get the initial investments back.

So, the only thing that can be seen at this point is the inevitable crash of all the markets as a whole, which in return also becomes another problem because there will be a lot of "white collar" criminals that will be going to prison, which then leads to a need for more prisons because they have nowhere to house the criminals they've indicted.

Talk about one huge snowball effect leading to disaster.

The implosion of the financial markets

Joint Action

The Fed, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank are exploring the feasibility of using taxpayers' money to shore up the mortgage-backed securities market, the Financial Times reported on March 22, without saying where it obtained the information. A Fed official denied to Bloomberg News that day that it's in discussions to buy mortgage debt.

Smaller steps are already being taken. The Bush administration reduced the amount of capital Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are required to hold as a cushion against losses. The March 19 agreement allows the government-chartered companies, the largest sources of money for U.S. home loans, to expand their purchases of mortgages by as much as $200 billion.

The Fed has also lowered borrowing costs, opened the so- called discount window to investment banks and arranged the sale of Bear Stearns Cos. since March 16 to ease financial-market turmoil. The world's biggest financial companies have posted at least $195 billion in writedowns and credit losses tied to subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations as of March 20, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

`Done That Already'

JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay about $240 million for the fifth-largest securities firm in a transaction that includes as much as $30 billion of financing provided by the Fed for Bear Stearns's ``less-liquid'' assets.

``In a sense they've done that already with Bear Stearns,'' Michael Materasso, senior portfolio manager and co-chairman of the fixed-income policy committee at Franklin Templeton Investments, said of the government taking on the risk of owning mortgage securities. ``This was not just a temporary situation. The process has begun, the question is how far can it go?''

Franklin Templeton manages $110 billion of bonds. Materasso is based in New York.

A March 13 proposal by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank that the Federal Housing Administration insure refinanced mortgages after lenders reduce the loan principal to make payments more affordable to homeowners ``is the next step,'' Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a Bloomberg Television interview on March 19. It's a ``broader step, but not as broad as RTC,'' he said.

For Pimco's Gross that's not enough. ``If Washington gets off its high `moral hazard' horse and moves to support housing prices, investors will return in a rush,'' he wrote in a note to investors published Feb. 26. Gross, who runs the $122 billion Total Return Fund from Newport Beach, California, didn't return calls seeking additional comment.

An RTC-like entity may not be ``the best idea, but maybe it's the idea that gets us through this,'' said New York Life Investment Management's Girard. ``The likelihood of it happening has certainly increased.''

The implosion of the financial markets

March 24 (Bloomberg) -- Forget lower interest rates. For the Federal Reserve to keep the financial markets from imploding it needs to buy troubled mortgage bonds from banks and securities firms, say the world's biggest Treasury investors.

Even after cutting rates by 3 percentage points since September, expanding the range of securities it accepts as collateral for loans and giving dealers access to its discount window, the Fed has been unable to promote confidence. The difference between what the government and banks pay for three- month loans almost doubled in the past month to 1.69 percentage points.

The only tool left may be for the Fed to help facilitate a Resolution Trust Corp.-type agency that would buy bonds backed by home loans, said Bill Gross, manager of the world's biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. While purchasing some of the $6 trillion mortgage securities outstanding would take problem debt off the balance sheets of banks and alleviate the cause of the credit crunch, it would put taxpayers at risk.

``An RTC-type structure is interesting, and it may not be that much of a burden on taxpayers in the long run,'' said Barr Segal, a managing director at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc. who helps oversee $80 billion in fixed-income assets. The government should purchase the mortgages and reissue ``debt that's backed by the U.S. government and there you go, you've unclogged the drain,'' he said.

Bill Rates Plunge

New York Life Investment Management is considering buying ``high-quality mortgages,'' said Thomas Girard, a senior portfolio manager at the New York-based insurer. ``At some point here you've got to increase your allocation to non-Treasury securities.''

Mortgage bonds rallied last week. Yields on the securities fell to an average of 1.25 percentage points more than Treasuries from 1.57 percentage points on March 14, according to Merrill Lynch & Co.'s Mortgage Master Index. The so-called spread is still twice as wide as the average for all of 2007.

Investors, averse to holding most any debt except Treasuries, drove rates on three-month bills to 0.387 percent on March 20, the lowest since 1954. Rates on the securities, the safest assets next to cash, tumbled 0.59 percentage point last week to 0.57 percent. They were as high as 4.29 percent as recently as Oct. 15. The rate climbed to 0.91 percent as of 1:17 p.m. in New York.

`Very Helpful'

``Something like that would be very helpful, but the Fed was not designed to and shouldn't assume a huge amount of risk on behalf of taxpayers,'' said Alan Blinder, a Princeton University professor and former vice chairman of the central bank. ``That should come out of the elected parts of the government, which means the administration and Congress.''

President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have resisted calls urging the use of government funds or guarantees to stem a record amount of mortgage foreclosures, the root of the financial crisis, preferring that the markets resolve the trouble. Bush said March 15 he wanted to avoid ``bad policy decisions'' that would do more harm than good.

President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, signed the 1989 law which created the RTC to dispose of the assets of insolvent savings and loans banks. From 1986 through 1995, 1,043 savings banks with over $500 billion in assets failed, costing taxpayers $75.6 billion, according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. analysis.

RE: The Bar is Open II....................It is always Ladies Night................

Thank you. It was nice meeting you too

RE: The Bar is Open II....................It is always Ladies Night................

Thank you. I'll take you up on that drink tomorrow.

RE: The Bar is Open II....................It is always Ladies Night................

Well it's time for me to head off to lala land

Nighty night

RE: What is the first word that pops into your head....(part 2)

Caring

RE: Anyone got kids?

The best thing that I had for mine were the teething rings that you put in the freezer. They help numb the gums and they don't get as fussy with them as they do with others. Also she may start to have a slight temperature, so be prepared and have ibuprofen on hand at the first sign of it. Or you may have a very cranky little girl on your hands.

RE: What is the first word that pops into your head....(part 2)

Emotional

RE: The Bar is Open II....................It is always Ladies Night................

This is for all you girls about thirteen
High school can be so rough, can be so mean
Hold on to, on to your innocence
Stand your ground when everybody's givin' in
This one's for the girls

This is for all you girls about twenty-five
In little apartments, just tryin' to get by
Livin' on, on dreams and Spaghetti-O's
Wonderin' where your life is gonna go

This one's for the girls
Who've ever had a broken heart
Who've wished upon a shooting star
You're beautiful the way you are
This one's for the girls
Who love without holding back
Who dream with everything they have
All around the world
This one's for the girls

This is for all you girls about forty-two
Tossin' pennies into the fountain of youth
Every laugh, laugh line on your face
Made you who you are today

This one's for the girls
Who've ever had a broken heart
Who've wished upon a shooting star
You're beautiful the way you are
This one's for the girls
Who love without holding back
Who dream with everything they have
All around the world
This one's for the girls

Yeah, we're all the same inside (same inside)
From one to ninety-nine

This one's for the girls
Who've ever had a broken heart
Who've wished upon a shooting star
You're beautiful the way you are
This one's for the girls
Who love without holding back
Who dream with everything they have
All around the world
This one's for the girls
Yeah, this one's for the girls

RE: The Bar is Open II....................It is always Ladies Night................

Thank you Des



Ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh
On a star

And I'm wishing on a star
To find out where you are
I'm wishing on a dream
To find out what it means

And I wish on all the rainbows that I see
I wish on all the people who really dream
And I'm wishing on tomorrow pray never comes
And I'm wishing on our love, the things we never done

I never thought I'd see a time when you would be
So far away from home
So far away from me
Just think of all the moments that we spend
I just can't let you go from me, we were meant
I didn't mean to hurt you, but I know,
In the game of love, you reap what you sow (sow, wow)

I feel it's time we should make up baby
I feel it's time for us to get together
And make the best of things, oh baby
When we're together
Whether or never

I feel it's time we should make up baby
I feel it's time for us to get together
And make the best of things, oh baby
When we're together
(Let's get together, baby)
Whether or never

And I'm wishin' on a star
To find out where you are
And I'm wishing on a dream
To follow what it means

And I'm wishing on the rainbows that I see
I'm wishing on the people we've ever been
Hoping all the days to come and days to go
Hoping on the days of loving, loving you so

Baby, forgive me
Lets make up, I'm sorry
Lets be together, breakup?
Never
The love we have seems special so far
Til we get back, I'm wishing on a star
Til we get back, I'm wishing on a star
Let's be not together, breakup?

RE: What is the first word that pops into your head....(part 2)

Flaming

RE: The Bar is Open II....................It is always Ladies Night................

Children behave
That's what they say when we're together
And watch how you play
They don't understand
And so we're...

Running just as fast as we can
Holdin' on to one another's hand
Tryin' to get away into the night
And then you put your arms around me
And we tumble to the ground
And then you say

I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around
I think we're alone now
The beating of our hearts is the only sound

Look at the way
We gotta hide what we're doin'
Cuz what would they say
If they ever knew
And so we're

Running just as fast as we can
Holdin' on to one another's hand
Tryin' to get away into the night
And then you put your arms around me
And we tumble to the ground
And then you say

I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around
I think we're alone now
The beating of our hearts is the only sound

I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around
I think we're alone now
The beating of our hearts is the only sound

Running just as fast as we can
Holdin' on to one another's hand
Tryin' to get away into the night
And then you put your arms around me
And we tumble to the ground
And then you say

I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around
I think we're alone now
The beating of our hearts is the only sound

RE: What is the first word that pops into your head....(part 2)

Chocolate

RE: What is the first word that pops into your head....(part 2)

voluptuous

RE: What is the first word that pops into your head....(part 2)

Hideaways

RE: what is better

Coffeeism

RE: What is the first word that pops into your head....(part 2)

Nostradamus