Ready or Not, Here Comes Round-Two

I've been screaming for many months about the coming second wave of the mortgage meltdown, but to hear Scott Pelley tell it, the pending Alt-A bombs and Pay Option Arm resets crept up on us just last night. It's a shame our leadership (if you can call them that) can only aim their fire extinguisher at the expanding nuclear fireball rather than proactively clearing the flammables before a known approaching conflagration consumes us.

What they're trying to do is like putting out a wildfire with a grass whip and an indian pump. Fire-1, Firemen-0.

In light of the paralyzing 'news' in Pelley's 60 Minutes report, many financiers and real estate pundits are calling for market bottoms as early as spring 2009. Sadly, happy nonsense only loads the opium into the pipe so we can continue to inhale deeply until the bank repos the den. Then we can, with a clear conscience, stare glassy-eyed at the evicting Sheriff and swear we never saw it coming.