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The race to the bottom in financial responsibility reached a new milestone today. The Reserve Bank of Australia - their equivalent to the Fed agreed to take asset-backed debt paper as collateral for repo loans to commercial banks. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning: Banks that may be forced to assume assets from the conduits that have financing coming due could themselves face shortages of capital. To head off such a problem, Australia's central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia, has relaxed rules on collateral it will accept for short-term funding. This would enable banks to take more time to evaluate which portions of the asset-backed commercial-paper market are most affected by ailing subprime mortgages. In doing so the Australians went beyond the Federal Reserve, which doesn't accept such paper as collateral in repo operations but did recently clarify it was willing to accept a wide variety of such paper for its lesser-used, and costlier, "discount wind...

Today we hear that 4,000 fewer people had jobs in the USA in August than in July. Don't believe that - the losses are much worse than just 4k. The numbers of losses have just gotten too big for the statistical "adjustments" to hide. The actual employer survey data showed job losses throughout the second quarter and minimal gains in the first quarter. The Birth/Death Model added 120k jobs in August. That is the assumed net addition from startup businesses, less the losses from existing firms folding. Does anybody actually believe that number should be positive instead of negative given the number of small business failures? The actual employer survey showed 124k losses. The reality is likely to be worse than that once the actual net jobs from business startups and failures is measured. The household survey has been flashing danger even longer. No jobs created since November of last year. August household survey shows 316k jobs lost. The unemployment number stay...