Cerulean Sanctum

Feed Croaked, Sorry!

2008-10-11T20:03:06Z

Readers,

I spent most of last night repairing the feed for Cerulean Sanctum. I have no idea what happened. The feed simply got corrupted on some level. Took me hours to fix.

Problem was that everything looked fine on my end. Then I noticed that the number of readers through Feedburner was down by 60 percent. That’s not unusual as glitches occur on their end from time to time, but I checked it anyway and found it was on my end, not theirs. And it’s never on my end.

If your feed is not working for this blog, please let me know. For some reason, Bloglines still has not refreshed, but everyone else seems okay. Not sure why the numbers are still hugely down on Feedburner, but everything is working fine from their end, so who knows.

Thanks!

Feed Croaked, Sorry!

Tags: Atom, Blogging, Error, Feed, RSS, Technical

Are the Pulpits Silent Now?

2008-10-10T12:34:19Z

In late July of this year, I asked the following economic questions, and this is how you answered:

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I would be interested in knowing if those figures still hold true.

The even greater question is whether or not your church has discussed the economy. I’m suspecting now that they have.

Rather than open up a new set of polls, I’d simply like to ask you all to leave a comment on the following questions:

Has your church leadership addressed the financial meltdown? If so, what did they say or do?

Has your church leadership taken any steps to initiate a new program/benevolence to address financial issues among the congregants within the church? Outside the church?

Do people in your church think this meltdown is The Beginning of the End?

Thank you for being a reader and for contributing your comments.

Are the Pulpits Silent Now?

Tags: Banks, Benevolence, Church Finances, Church Issues, Church Issues, Economics, Economy, Eschatology, Financial Crisis, Financial Meltdown

Only One True Kingdom

2008-10-07T14:38:26Z

I hadn’t intended to post on today’s topic, but a friend sent this and told me it was essential viewing:

The Bible says this:

Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.
—1 Thessalonians 5:20-21

I do not despise prophecy by any means, but I do test prophecies against Scripture and by the Holy Spirit of God.

So that is what I will do.

God’s chosen people called for an earthly government in 1 Samuel 8:

When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba.

Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD.

And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey their voice and make them a king.” Samuel then said to the men of Israel, “Go every man to his city.”
—1 Samuel 8:1-22

The chosen people of God were hard-hearted toward Him. They were not satisfied with His Kingdom; they desired instead an earthly, geopolitical kingdom. One that would be like their pagan neighbors. How they longed to be just like those who did not know God! And so this is what God gave them.

Do we remember that this led, in part, to God’s chosen nation going into exile? To the destruction of their way of life? To untold suffering?

When it comes to commentary on people’s dealings with geopolitical systems, this is about all I could recall of direct commentary by the Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry:

[The scribes and the chief priests asked Jesus,] “Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” They said, “Caesar’s.” He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
—Luke 20:22-25

When asked of his political intentions, Jesus gave this answer:

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
—John 18:36

He also said this:

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. “
—Matthew 13:45-46

When you sell all that you have to gain the Heavenly Kingdom, there is not much left over for earthly pretenders.

Paul didn’t say much about geopolitical systems, either:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
—Romans 13:1-8

Paul didn’t say that Christians should live in fear of whatever party may come into office, but should instead fear God, who takes out His holy vengeance against those who fail to live a life that is pure and holy.

We see this in ancient Rome. What earthly kingdom could have had a more anti-Christ bent than Rome? Yet without one vote, Christians led to the toppling of the Caesars. They did this through the sacrifice of their own martyred blood in the Colosseum, the ministry of the Gospel among the disadvantaged of the city, their care for the sick, the hungry, the naked, the widow, and the orphan. Indeed, in their allegiance to one Kingdom above all others, the only lasting Kingdom, they brought down one of the most powerful earthly kingdoms in history.

And this leads me to the invoking in the video above of an Old Testament passage that many Christians love to pull out and dust off every four years. In case many of us don’t remember, some Christians have been invoking this passage for at least 30 years, and probably more. Like the boy who cried wolf, every four years Christians pull out this passage to ensure that the faithful understand that “This Election Is the Most Critical One Our Nation Has Ever Faced.™”

The passage in question:

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

—2 Chronicles 7:14

God speaks this to Solomon after the completion of the temple in which He would dwell.

Consider then that today God does not live in a temple constructed of human hands by flawed kings. Instead, He made us and filled us with Himself. We are His temples.

Consider also that we live under a New Covenant that is better than the Old Covenant.

Consider that the Kingdom of God that is better than any earthly Kingdom is now among us because the One True King has come.

Do you know how God heals the land now that the True King has come? That King told us how. He showed us, the temples of His Holy Spirit, the people of a better covenant, the ones who are a part of an unearthly Kingdom, how God heals lands:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:18-20

When Christians repent of their sins and distractions (including political distractions), when they humble themselves and cast off their mistaken notions of power, when they pray to stay true to the focus of the only genuine Kingdom, then God will heal their land through their sharing of the Good News with the lost and the making of disciples. When Christians live out the high calling of the Gospel before earthly kingdoms and shame those unworthy imitations with their service to the only True Kingdom, then God will heal their land.

But when Christians look to earthly kingdoms, when Christians take their focus off the Lord and put their faith in power systems rooted in sin and compromise, they will wind up off course, off message, off purpose, and ultimately disappointed. God does not heal the land through man’s elections but through Christians living out their allegiance to Christ’s unearthly Kingdom by concentrating on making disciples and serving the least of these no matter what government is in power.

The Christians in Rome understood this, but for all our supposed modern enlightenment, we do not. Nor do our “prophets.”

I want to end with that statement. I have some additional thoughts I’ll add in the comments. Please feel free to add your own.

Only One True Kingdom

Tags: Authority, Elections, Faith, Government, Governments, Heal Their Land, Humility, Kingdom, Kingdoms, Kings, Power, Prayer, Repentance, Vote

The Just Shall Live by Faith

2008-10-06T00:33:30Z

Saturday a bit more than a week ago, I was out driving on the highway near my home when the Lord spoke this to my spirit:

The just shall live by faith.

It’s a sure word, so sure in fact that it’s said four times in the Scriptures: Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38. I believe God would have us remember this point!

The just are those who have placed their faith in Christ and have been made right with God. I think the phrase is less a command and more a statement of fact. People who have been given the power to become the children of God are the ones who live by faith.

Some believe that the financial meltdown now afflicting our country is the start of a great tribulation. I don’t know; it may be.

What I do know is this: The just shall live by faith.

The one who trusts money will see that money fail.

The one who trusts in cunning will see that cunning fail.

The one who trusts in elaborate disaster plans will see those plans fail.

The one who trusts in friends will see those friends fail.

The one who trusts in the ability to control life will see that control fail.

The one who trusts in self will see self fail.

Who will survive when all the foundations are rocked? The one who trusts God and God alone for all provision, all wisdom, and all security.

The just shall live by faith.

The world will scream at genuine Christians, claiming they are fools. The worldly will say, “Look, you have lost everything.” And we will respond, “We have Christ, therefore we have all that matters.”

Many Christians will be overtaken by fear in the days ahead. They will fear because their confidence is in their own resources, not in the Lord. The one who knows Christ cannot be shaken.

The idols we have made of our jobs, our homes, our material goods, and our investments have been assaulted. If we do not recognize this time of shaking for what it is, we will not be found ready.

But the just, who live by faith, will find a most unusual word spoken to them: “Peace.” I can hear God speaking it even now. “Peace.”

The world cannot hear that word, nor will they accept it. Their rejection comes because they are not just and they have no faith except in what moth and rust destroy.

God will raise up those Christians who are at rest. Some may even have felt an otherwordly peace descend upon their hearts in recent days. I think those will be the people who will be able to stand as lighthouses for Christ in the midst of the storm.

Though the world around us may go to pieces, God will preserve those who trust Him no matter what is going on outside the four walls of the local church.

The just shall live by faith.

The Just Shall Live by Faith

Tags: Confidence, Economics, Economy, Faith, Financial Crisis, Financial Meltdown, Hope, Peace, Rest, Trust

Flunked Econ 101? Read This…

2008-10-04T06:09:29Z

Okay, so my recent attempt at explaining retail economics has been riddled full of holes by would-be Warren Buffetts. To get someone more knowledgable to explain to me why my reasoning was off, I emailed a friend of mine, Tom, who is an attorney. He provided what must be considered the Unified Field Theory of Economics as he not only discussed how credit works in the business world but also included an explanation of the current Wall Street meltdown. So in a way, I tie in two of my previous posts (”The Truth About Christian Bookstores” and “Jefty Economics and the Least of These“).

What follows is a fascinating overview. (As to some of the political commentary in the response below, it’s integral to the piece. Cerulean Sanctum toes no party line and never will, so I offer the following with that caveat.)

The world runs on credit. Merchants don’t purchase their inventory, they borrow it for sale. In some cases they use a business credit line from a conventional bank to get the money to buy inventory for sale. Certainly, a very small business has to do that because they can’t get credit from suppliers. The smallest businesses use credit card financing—they buy with a credit card and use proceeds to pay the credit card bill. If you pay the balance at the end of each month you never have interest charge—and you get 30-60 days of money for free.

In more established businesses, the manufacturer supplies inventory on a net-30 or net-60 term which means in essence that the manufacturer is loaning the inventory. Auto dealers work through a financing arm of their manufacturer to get inventory on the shelves without paying for it, or at least paying very low interest on its value.

Wal-Mart’s model is to pay quickly but sell more quickly. They typically get cash terms from suppliers, i.e., no finance charge, pay 30-60 days after delivery. But they sell merchandise before the payment for that merchandise is due to the manufacturer. Wal-Mart will roll prices down to cost, just to make sure that they get the inventory sold before it is paid for. If you make this scheme large enough you have billions of merchandise sold and later paid for , and millions if not billions of dollars continuously in Wal-Mart’s pocket. Money earned from sales and not yet paid to suppliers, money that is constantly flowing in and out but which has a steady positive value—which Wal-Mart is free to invest in stores or put in the money markets to make interest. Without even profiting on the product sales (!), Wal-Mart can make money on “float”. It is brilliant.

If you contemplate this, you can see why the big box, Wal-Mart style stores rule retail. They can survive on very tight margins because they can roll inventory through their store that they never effectively pay for. Consumers love the selection and the store has a volume of transactions that can generate a sufficient profit even as the actual margin per transaction is very low. The old mom and pop store that actually owns its inventory is dead and will never come back (outside of highly niched businesses).

This explanation says a lot for why a credit crunch is extremely hazardous to our economic system. Our economy uses credit so systematically and it is so much at the core of our economic effectiveness, that to constrain it just the littlest bit sends shock waves throughout the whole system. The businesses that are right on the edge—the ones that need to borrow money even for a day or two to cover the cost of inventory and make payments to manufacturers before inventory is sold—are in a very precarious position. If they can’t get credit they’ll get caught between paying for inventory and paying for payroll, for example. That’s a tough spot…if you don’t pay for the inventory on time you get no more and you’re out of business. If you don’t pay the employees, they all quit and/or the news gets out and your suppliers dry up. Any way, you’re out of business.

Banks make short term loans mainly in the form of business lines of credit. The banks use their own money for such loans, or borrow money in short term credit markets. Banks make margin on the interest rate difference. (Obviously, a bank can borrow short term money at a lower rate than a business can borrow short term money.)

It is not just the odd business that runs on short term credit—essentially all of them do. And not just retail. Manufacturers operate on credit. Obviously, they want to get paid for what they make, but they don’t get paid as fast as they like (thanks to Wal-Mart and its friends). Manufacturers have costs to cover and need money to keep the plant rolling.

Businesses around the world thus play in the short term credit market, some directly, most indirectly. They give IOU’s to cover their costs while they wait for receivables to come in, and they pay back as they can. Most businesses do this through a bank but some large companies play in the markets directly.

Bank and large company IOUs are the cash of the macro economy. They are where mutual funds put their money, and where banks park every dime of excess cash that they have, to make sure they make money on their money, rather than have it sit around. (Banks have a minimum of cash on hand they have to maintain - every dime above that minimum is parked somewhere it can make money, and this is done on a daily basis.)

When the short term credit market dries up and short term lenders like banks and mutual funds don’t want your company’s short term IOU’s, you’re dead. Again—missed payrolls, crisis selloffs, etc. GE is a perfect example of a company that couldn’t get enough cash and wound up having to mortgage itself to Warren Buffet. The auto makers are moving toward the same spot and that is why everyone is now saying they’ll get a government loan too. There are many small business examples.

The recent meltdown is so problematic because it has impacted every one of these short term credit markets. I’ll explain how…

The start of the problem was Fannie and Freddie. They were Government-sponsored home loan clearinghouses that wrote low-income mortgage guarantees. They collapsed due to too many claims against mortgage loan guarantees they wrote. This happened primarily because Fannie and Freddie were undercapitalized and underregulated (not subject, for example, to the reforms put in place after the Enron failure). They were never properly regulated because they were an insider institution—Government created, Government coddled. They were also a PC institution— affordable “subprime” loans for the underqualified was a sacred cow of the Democrats. Not surprisingly, Fannie and Freddie were in the pocket of the Democrats and vice versa, and Fannie and Freddie became havens for Democrat politicos. Fannie and Freddie dumped fortunes of cash into the Democrats to get protection—and poured some into the Republicans as well, to get cover. And Fannie and Freddie also dumped fortunes of cash into the pockets of their own executives, who arranged their compensation to be linked directly to the number of loans underwritten, rather than, for example, profitability or safety and soundness. The Democrats blocked every kind of real reform for years, and that is why that condition continued as long as it did.

Of course, an underregulated, politically connected institution with a penchant for guaranteeing risky loans is easy prey for Wall Street. Investment banks took advantage, which is what they live to do. In fact, investment bankers came to DC and completely took over Fannie and Freddie. Together, Fannie/Freddie and Wall Street sharks revolutionized subprime mortgage financing. The key tool was converting subprime mortgages into a different kind of instrument entirely—mortgage pools held together by elaborate “swap” contracts that dynamically grouped the loans into tiers. The top tier loans were whichever ones are being paid on or paid off, and the bottom tiers were whichever ones are not paid on or paid off. Obviously, the higher tiers have the lowest risk and bottom tiers have the highest risk. The mortgage pool pays the owners of the top tier securities the lowest interest rates return and pays the bottom tier security holders the highest interest rate return.

The subprime-mortgage-backed derivative securities were guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie, because the mortgages themselves were so guaranteed. Wall Street also arranged for the top tier securities to be reinsured by commercial insurers such as AIG. Those top tiers now looked really safe—they looked at lot like the short term paper Banks deal in fluidly. When you consider that any pool of subprime loans will include plenty of “house flippers” and refinancers, you’ll see that buyers of top tier securities would, at least until recently, be quite sure to get their money back very soon after putting it in. Only bottom tier people bore a risk of waiting for money to come back like a conventional mortgage lender. Of course, you can see the assumptions there—houses will hold value, people will continue to be able to flip real estate and refinance, etc.

The bottom tier securities mostly went to investment banks and investors ready to take a risk. Things turned out badly for those people, hence Lehman Brothers is no more…but that is not the big problem.

The big problem is that top tier mortgage backed securities entered the market for short term paper, previously occupied only by very safe borrowers such as banks and manufacturers, and very safe lenders such as money market mutual funds. Indeed, I understand that top tier mortgage backed securities were traded as freely as short term paper until the bottom fell out. If you want to lend some money, you can lend it to a bank, or a money market mutual fund, and now you had a third option: buy some mortgage-backed top-tier securities. If you need some cash, you borrow from a bank, or a money-market mutual fund, or you sell some of your mortgage-backed top-tier securities. Basically, mortgage-backed top-tier securities traded just like cash in the world markets.

Of course, the world market for cash demands certainty. Banks will only give short term IOUs to people they are absolutely sure will pay them back. Otherwise, since the bank has put every extra penny into the money market, if it does not get paid back the bank immediately falls below its reserve requirements. It will then get regulatory warnings, the balance sheet will show losses, and the stock will plummet. If it gets bad enough depositors get spooked and start to pull assets, making the bank more unsound, and the death spiral is unleashed.

Banks and other investors across the country put short term cash into mortgage-backed securities, and a lot of it. The SEC and various state bank regulators should have blocked this or at least limited it, but they didn’t. I hope the cause of their failure was naivete or stupidity, rather than corruption. We’ll find out.

The bomb went off with the housing bust. Borrowers stopped flipping homes and refinancing, and instead started going bankrupt and into foreclosure. Fannie and Freddie started taking hits on their loan guarantees. Fannie/Freddie were undercapitalized and had been so for years. When they dried out, which didn’t take too long, Fannie and Freddie died, and so did their loan guarantees to backed up subprime mortgage debts, and the securitized versions of them. The holders of lower tier subprime-based securities saw them become nearly worthless. Lehman Brothers died.

It was only days for the rest of the dominos to fall. Only those in the top tier, who were reinsured, remained. But they didn’t last long, because the constriction of financing for home buying deepened the housing slump, and possible claims over top tier securities against AIG and other commercial insurers severely crippled the balance sheet of AIG due to its massive reinsurance exposure. AIG bankrupted, and was immediately loaned huge amounts of cash by the US Government, before we even heard the news. You can see why. AIG was the last guardian of a massive short term credit pool built on mortgage-backed securities.

Now controlled by the US Government, AIG will sell off all of its profitable businesses to cover its reinsurance obligations. Its shareholders, massively diluted by the obligations to the US Government, will be waiting for years for the next dividend, if one ever comes.

AIG was rescued, but the damage was done. Nobody knows if AIG really has enough money to pay off its reinsurance obligations, and in fact, nobody will know for a very long time. The US Government has not said it will guarantee AIG’s reinsurance of mortgage-backed securities, it has only injected cash, become the preferred stockholder, and replaced management. Confidence is lost. Nobody will trade in mortgage-backed securities any more, even the top tier ones. What was being treated as cash is now being treated as worthless. So, the whole system is undermined. The banks that hold the top tier securities, which they bought to park cash, are now stuck with something else entirely: not cash at all, but a long term security for which there is no buyer.

Think about it—nobody knows to what extent these assets are going to pay back. Nobody really analyzed what they were buying and selling in the top tiers before, because they relied on guarantees. That situation is antithetical to short term paper which is supposed to be safe. Short term paper should be only those obligations that are so safe you don’t have to think about whether they’ll get paid back. Top tier mortgage-backed subprime securities are probably OK investments, but clearly, they are not cash.

Banks are obliged by recent reforms to “mark to market”, meaning they must reflect current market price for everything on their balance sheet. When the market for short term mortgage-back securities froze, those rules required the banks to treat those securities as worthless, and write off a huge portion of what had been cash reserve. Suddenly banks across the country were at risk of being unsound for having too little cash. Some were particularly bad —Washington Mutual, Wachovia, etc.—those that were major players in subprime lending.

When these mainstream banks found out those banks were unsound, the collapse accelerated— uninsured depositors at those institutions, such as small businesses with more than $100k on deposit, retirees with their nest eggs in COD’s, etc.—heard about the precarious financial condition of those banks and pulled out. The rest of the cash drained, and the banks failed.

Also, you may have read about a money market mutual fund that failed—it was heavily into mortgage-backed securities. Massive cash withdrawals from that fund forced it to drop below a $1 share price. They were bailed out using a depression-era fund established for just that purpose.

So, a huge amount of short term money was sucked out of the world economy by the failure of mortgage-backed securities. Then the effect spread through failures at very large banks and money market mutual funds. Confidence was lost in each of the three traditional places to park cash: banks, mutual funds and short term securities. Much of the lubricant of the economy spontaneously turned to jell-o.

Treasury moved fast, making money available on short term, propping up AIG, ensuring no depositors lost money, propping up failed money market funds. But there is still the original toxin—mortgage-backed investments that should be cash but are now recognized to be long term, risk-bearing investments. They have to work out of the system, get treated as long-term risky obligations that they are, and get replaced with enough cash to keep things running. This would happen over time, and the market would punish those institutions that bought too much of those investments. But that could be very painful and perhaps not survivable by an economy like ours.

Hence the current answer: the Government buys up to 700 Billion dollars of top-tier, subprime-mortgage-backed securities from the market, replacing them with cash. How much they are worth is unknown—but they are worth something because the homes that secure them are worth something. Maybe 30 cents on the dollar is a fair price … who knows? Any price is better for the system than where we are now, which is them being treated as worthless.

The only entity in the world that can buy these securities out of the market and replace them with solid hard cash is the United States Government, the world’s last and only Warren Buffet. If this does not happen, we’re going down the rabbit hole with no clear idea where it leads.

I find this all morbidly fascinating. However, I remain optimistic that through all of this, we will recover. We will suffer a recession about as bad as that from the dot-com crash, and come back stronger. This is a cautionary tale, something I’m sure we’ll learn from in future generations and hopefully will not repeat. Maybe our addiction to credit will finally be quenched for a few generations. One can hope.

A fine, succinct explanation from a guy much smarter than I am. It pays to have informed friends.

Flunked Econ 101? Read This…

Tags: Banking, Banks, Credit, Economics, Economy, Financial Crisis, Financial Meltdown, Leverage, Loans, Markets, Retail, Retail Sales, Sub-Prime Mortgage, Wall Street

Cerulean Sanctum

Feed Croaked, Sorry!

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