Blame it on the New York Times!

Since last adding to this blog and while wading through the swamp of bad financial news on the web, the following bit of wisdom jumped out from amongst all the angst, rending of clothes and general flagellation taking place in the inner sanctums of Citigroup, Wachovia, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, BofA, Morgan Stanley and numerous of other big time money changers. The CEO of Toll Brothers, possibly the largest of the high end home builders in the US, has come to the conclusion that the problems of the housing market could all be ended immediately if the news media would just stop reporting all the bad news.(Floyd Norris, NYTimes, Nov.9)

Robert I. Toll , the chief executive of Toll Brothers apparently is of the mind that his business model would best be served by the reporting of only good news, particularly as it involves the luxury home building industry. The audacity of this remark is matched only by its relevance to the general mind set that seems to be the norm among our financial industry titans, namely, reality should exist only as how they define it. Down is up, bad is good, poor is rich, less is more...is it just this blogger or does this not sound suspiciously like the same operating principles guiding the current administration?

But we digress. What is truly astounding is this fool no doubt received a round of applause from his peers in the industry. At last count, and this is far from accurate, the nine largest investment banks in this country have written down around 50 billion dollars in bad bets in the mortgage market. Keep in mind this is only what they have owned up to. It could well be twice this amount since they all have a well documented history of lying about the true extent of their recent poor risk management.

So what is one to do when Gisele Bundchen, the super model demands payment in euros rather than dollars while working in this country? Thankfully she didn't demand loonies, at least not yet. With the dollar in free fall and the head of the Fed, Bernanke suggesting that the economy will "slow noticeably" into next year it just might be time to dig a hole in the back yard, convert to gold, drop it in and hope for the best.