Here’s some dark Monday humor as we head into a week that’s likely to confirm dropping home prices and rising job losses. Andy Samberg’s cocaine-addled character sings about how it’s going to be a great dayyyyyyy … as long as he gets plenty of stimulus. If the U.S. economy was a person, it might very well be this man.

Turns out this ‘grassroots’ Elizabeth Warren rap video that made the rounds last week was produced by Hollywood bigwig composer Hans Zimmer, the music man behind many of the biggest movies of the past 25 years … from Rain Man to Gladiator to Pirates of the Caribbean to the latest Batman movies and Inception. NYT reports that the rapper in the video is a TV salesman at Best Buy. The video was passable as a grassroots effort, but if it’s being graded in the we’re-pros-but-it’s-supposed-to-suck Andy Samberg sense, then it fails. Warren is Obama’s top pick to head the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, a new office created by the massive Dodd/Frank financial reform bill. Thanks to Sugarleg who sent us video in first place.

As financial markets froze this very week in 2007, the real-time media market was catching fire. So instead of summarizing it all with a 140 character Tweet, below we offer some broader perspective by bringing everyone’s favorite obsessions together: mortgage rates, Twitter, and iPhones. Stat-filled timeline and rate chart are included.

Home prices started falling in 2006 but it wasn’t until 2007 that the full impact of loose credit was felt. Loans made to unqualified (mostly U.S.) borrowers underpinned bond funds around the globe and countless derivatives were created from those bonds. Because of this, Nouriel Roubini was one of the first economists to note that “we have a subprime financial system, not a subprime mortgage market.”

Below are key rate milestones of the financial crisis along with key milestones in real-time media development—the correlations are coincidental but show that, as the crisis escalated, so did the chatter. Also below is a chart to show rates along this timeline (click chart for full size).

April 2, 2007: Credit crunch apparent when New Century, one of the largest U.S. subprime mortgage lenders, failed. Twitter’s tipping point was two weeks prior, March 14-18, when Twitter went from 20,000 to 60,000 tweets per day at the South By Southwest music festival. Average 30yr fixed conforming rates were 6.18%.

June 22, 2007: Two Bear Stearns subprime hedge funds collapsed. Apple’s iPhone, widely considered the catalyst of real-time media, released seven days later on June 29. 30yr fixed rates were 6.66%.

August 6, 2007: American Home Mortgage, the 10th largest U.S. mortgage lender, failed, triggering a global credit market freeze and a series of overnight Fed rate cuts from 5.25% in September 2007 to 1% in November 2008. 30yr fixed rates were 6.57%.

November 24, 2008: Realizing that drastic overnight rate cuts throughout 2008 weren’t helping long-term mortgage rates, Fed announced $500b mortgage bond buying program. 30yr fixed rates were 6.09%.

January 1, 2009: Fed’s mortgage bond buying program began. Twitter stats reported 100 million tweets per quarter in 2008. 30yr fixed rates were 5.05%.

March 18, 2009: Fed increased mortgage bond buying program to $1.25t. Two weeks later (and again in November 2009), 30yr fixed rates hit 4.78%, the lowest since official records started in 1971.

March 31, 2010: Fed mortgage bond buying program ended. Rates moved up .25% in two days. Varying reports showed 25-35 million iPhones sold in 2009. Twitter stats showed 4 billion tweets in the first quarter of 2010. 30yr fixed rates were 5.125%.

June 7, 2010: iPhone mania reached new peak when Apple (fresh off surpassing Microsoft in market cap on May 26 to become the world’s most valuable tech company) announced iPhone 4 with two cameras, video calling, and multitasking to run several apps simultaneously. After May 6 Greece bailout triggered European debt crisis, global investors flocked to U.S. mortgage and Treasury bonds four straight weeks. The rally again drove 30yr fixed rates down to record lows of 4.78%.

August 12, 2010: Up to this day, U.S. economy posted two months of weaker jobs, GDP, home prices, and consumer sentiment. Mortgage and Treasury bond rally continued full steam. Twitter said it has 65 million tweets per day (which is 23.7 billion annualized). 30yr fixed rates set a new all-time record low of 4.44%.

Which brings us to today: Some say the U.S. is bankrupt. But for now U.S. Treasury and mortgage bonds remain the safe haven of choice for global investors. As such, consumers who qualify for home loans are enjoying the low rates that result from this unprecedented mortgage bond rally.

Rates will rise from here, it’s just a matter of when. And the volume of chatter is certain to rise as technology continues to improve. So as you scroll headlines on your iPhone while sitting at a stoplight, remember to actually stop at some point to make sure you understand rate and property markets before making important decisions. Following TheBasisPoint on Twitter can help … now look up … green light!

About 15 months ago actor Kal Penn joined the White House Office of Public Engagement, and 2 months ago he returned to Hollywood to make a third installment of the “Harold & Kumar” cult-favorite stoner movie series. In the last installment of the movie, Penn’s character Kumar smoked a joint with George W. Bush. And below is the last installment of Penn’s White House duties: a financial reform consumer ‘education’ video voiced by Penn … which raises the question: Is the Obama administration high? Politicians brag about how smart our country is, but this is what they really think about The American People’s ability to understand market basics.

For those who don’t truly know what’s going on with financial reform, we offer this simple analogy using beloved movie The Hangover. While the market has been shaking off its post credit boom hangover with a new credit boom (hair of the dog is the best cure, right?), Senator Chris Dodd drafted financial reform legislation to make sure markets don’t forget what caused the hangover. His bill, after being fudged up with hundreds of amendments, passed the Senate today and now it’s onto Obama to become many new laws. Plenty more to come as the unintended consequences of the bill play out in the coming months and years. But for now this is our Hangover tribute to Chris Dodd who, like Alan (played by Zach Galifianakis), is simply trying to bring structure to the chaotic rituals of crazed men.

Below is the ‘One Man Wolf Pack’ speech Alan gives on Caesar’s Palace rooftop before the forgotten period. All you have to do is change “Sin City” to Washington DC, “Doug” to Barney Frank, “you guys” to the rest of the Democrats, “Las Vegas” to America, and “strippers and cocaine” to greedy bankers and fed-up voters. Then darkness falls on Dodd’s day. Cue the cash-soaked angst of Kanye’s Can’t Tell Me Nothing (aka When I Get My Money Right). Media gums flap about toothless reform in mornings to come, yet haggard consumers and lobby-less banks get attacked by the proverbial naked crowbar swinging psychos hidden in the trunks (aka amendments) of this bill. Cheers. Now let the mayhem begin.

“Hello… how bout that ride in? I guess thats why they call it Sin City… ha ha. You guys might not know this but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one man wolf pack. But when my sister brought Doug home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack, it grew by one. So there… there was two of us in the wolf pack. I was alone first in the pack and Doug joined in later. And six months ago, when Doug introduced me to you guys I thought “wait a second, could it be?” And now I know for sure, I just added two more guys to my wolf pack. Four of us wolves, running around the desert together in Las Vegas, looking for strippers and cocaine.”

TheBasisPoint’s posting has been light this week, and we only wish it was because we were watching World Cup games back to back. Alas we’re just bogged down in market activity and appointments. But that didn’t stop us from using this Brazil jersey name generator. Find out your name in seconds. But we’ve got dibs on jersey number 01 (of course because a basis point is .01%).

Another massive $100m+ art heist was just pulled off clean in Paris. The prize: a Picasso, a Matisse and three other masterpieces. Can people who do this move art in the circles they run in? Probably. Or maybe they just do it for the thrill. Either way, everyone loves a good caper, so we’re just letting you know. Here’s more Great Recession era caper stories.

This week has been quite gut wrenching in the markets, so it’s time for a bit of fun. This awesome diagram originated on San Francisco blog TheBoldItalic along with a good piece on the demise of Hippie Hill—which is the meadow and accompanying hill as you enter Golden Gate Park off Haight Street. It’s a hilarious statement on the identity crisis of young adults.

As for me, I’ve had my more hipster days but now if I self-apply any label, it’s working dad. Even if there are days when I still feel cool, I would never want to be known as a hipster because like Dr. Evil said to Austin Powers: “There’s nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster.” And so on the weekends I prefer to take my kid to Golden Gate Park to watch him run around and join in the drum circle at the base of hippie hill. I’ve even bought him a few drums. Only now that I’m seeing this picture, I fear for what I may be doing to him. But I’ll roll with it because it’s either the drum circle or subjecting him to the market carnage. And I think we’re all a bit better off knowing that there are people out there keeping the beat for us working dads … and moms, to whom I wish you all the happiest of Mother’s Days.

Displayed below are three pictures of the same velvet painting entitled Ride The Storm.

The first photo of the painting was taken on August 11, 2007 when massive market storms took root. The second photo was taken August 3, 2008. The third photo was taken last weekend: April 17, 2010. The obvious physical change in the painting’s appearance over these years serves as a proper metaphor for what has become of institutions and individuals participating in the markets during this period.

The painting was done by a bond trader from the legendary 1980s Salomon Brothers team that created the first mortgage backed securities. Not willing to be artistically recognized at the time, the bond trader signed Ride The Storm with the pseudonym Eddie Rincon in 1986 when Salomon Brothers began its downward spiral.

Not long before, ‘Rincon’ had moved to SoHo since the neighborhood had established its reputation as a hot bed for artists. There Rincon thought he would quietly build his artistic resume and eventually escape the market tumult. His trader buddies didn’t hesitate to point out the irony: his $450-per-square-foot purchase price began the trend of pricing the “real artists” out of the market.

As Salomon imploded and Rincon’s SoHo loft was sold at a loss, he went West with some fleeing Salomon and Drexel Burnham colleagues to check out a recently established offshoot from Pacific Life Insurance Company that was doing some responsible work managing mortgage bond funds.

Some friends landed at the new firm but Rincon left the industry, and his painting was thought lost like him until it was salvaged in late-2006 from a La Jolla gallery by a retired PIMCO exec. Seeing a market storm brewing at the time, the new owner of Ride the Storm placed the velvet painting on a fence in the back of his Laguna home.

There, he said, nature would help the painting “do what it was created to do.”

In April 2007, three months after the painting took its place on the fence, subprime mortgage king New Century failed. High profile Bear Stearns and UBS hedge funds followed suit, failing in June and July 2007. The storm hit critical mass when American Home Mortgage failed in August 2007, tipping off a global financial market storm that some would argue is still raging today, despite some improving signs.

The current owner of the painting says that someone at the time called the work a prophecy when it debuted at an NYC emerging artists exhibition (sponsored by Salomon, of course). Others said the velvet statement was merely a joke.

Those of us lucky enough to see Ride the Storm with our own eyes today know that it perfectly commemorates the unprecedented global financial events of the past 3 years.

Hundreds of financial firms have failed, millions of jobs have been lost, and governments have re-written all their own rules and committed trillions trying to help, yet we’re all still riding the storm. Our velvet exteriors roughened and perhaps torn, but our true colors no less bold.

Since the painting was created as the mortgage securitization era took off and re-emerged as mortgage backed securities helped ignite what might be the biggest market storm in history, we’ve tried to convince the owner that this one-time kitschy market joke is indeed a masterpiece in the making and should be inside, protected from the elements. But so far, he won’t have it.

“Not until this market cycle plays out,” says this oracle of Laguna, “and let us all hope the painting is true to its name.”

And that’s all that we’ve been permitted to say … until the next photo session.

Ride The Storm, By Eddie Rincon, Picture 1: Taken August 11, 2007

Ride The Storm, By Eddie Rincon, Picture 2: Taken August 3, 2008

Ride The Storm, By Eddie Rincon, Picture 3: Taken April 17, 2010

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To The Makers of ‘Kick Ass’: Saw your movie Kick Ass topped Friday box office. That’s great for you. The movie’s title does indeed do what it says, but not as much as the title from this mock Beavis & Butthead movie poster we unearthed.

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