Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Monday, April 6, 2009

Snow Day

Megan McArdle has one lone post up, something about mark to market that doesn't make much sense. I read hilzoy instead and feel like I've recovered a few brain cells.
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3 comments:

clever pseudonym said...

I can't believe she actually typed a sentence IN ALL CAPS as if she were some twelve-year-old getting in a shouting match on a Hannah Montana message board.

April 6, 2009 at 3:17 PM
ChicagoEd said...

A Megan post that doesn't make "much sense"? this one makes no sense at all. It's got some of McArdle's typical lazy-ass presumptions that all her readers know what FASB is and what mark-to-mark accounting is, without adding any explanation to get a poor "novices" up to speed. After all that will take up her valuable time, and the ignorant deserve their lot. But more outrageous, she never even attempts to inform her readers what, exactly, these FASB changes are. She just says--on her word only--that it's not "a particularly good decision" without ever explaining why. Megan, if you're going to write about some changes that some one made, at least tell us what the changes are. Don't just assume that all your readers know it.

Then her whole point seems to be that this accounting change was done to protect people who are buying bank stocks--like this is the fucking SEC or the NYSE who's changing the rule. No, Megan. The reason is--if you could do just maybe three minutes of research--if you go to Google Finance and pull up any major bank stock ("C" for instance for CitiGroup) you'll see that on their official balance sheet they are claiming that they have about $150 billion of net assets, i.e., assets (loans the bank made) less liabilities (deposits, bondholders). But with their stock trading at two bucks, the Street only values the whole company with a market capitalization of $10 billion. So some one's wrong. Either Citi is overestimating the value of its assets (something a change in accounting might resolve) or the Street is dead-on and Citi is insolvent. I firmly believe the latter is true. Megan, meanwhile, is posting from Planet Fringus, that's how out of touch she is. She really does not understand this at all. Idiot.

April 6, 2009 at 6:58 PM
Susan of Texas said...

CP, maybe she's regressing. She does seem a little goofier then normal.

ChicagoEd, it's incredible, isn't it? I still can't believe she's that stupid--it must be dishonesty. After all, she did graduate from college, twice.

April 7, 2009 at 10:55 AM

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