STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday August 28

[ozymandius]

Source: du

STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday August 28, 2009

Bush Administration Officials Under Indictment = 2
Financial Sector Officials In Prison = 6

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON August 27, 2009

Dow... 9,580.63 +37.11 (+0.39%)
Nasdaq... 2,027.73 +3.30 (+0.16%)
S&P 500... 1,030.98 +2.86 (+0.28%)
Gold future... 947.30 +1.50 (+0.16%)
10-Yr Bond... 3.45 +0.02 (+0.50%)
30-Year Bond 4.22 +0.03 (+0.69%)

---

U.S. FUTURES & MARKETS INDICATORS
NASDAQ FUTURES..............................................S&P FUTURES

Market Conditions During Trading Hours

GOLD, EURO, YEN, Loonie, Silver and US$

---

Handy Links - Market Data and News:
Economic Calendar    Marketwatch Data    Bloomberg Economic News    Yahoo! Finance
    Google Finance    LayoffDaily    Bank Tracker    Credit Union Tracker

Handy Links - Economic Blogs:
The Big Picture    Financial Sense    Calculated Risk    Naked Capitalism    Credit Writedowns
    Brad DeLong    Bonddad    Atrios    goldmansachs666

Handy Links - Government Issues:
LegitGov    Open Government    Earmark Database    USA spending.gov

Handy Links - Videos:
The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class    Charlie Rose talks with Roubini    Charlie Rose talks with Krugman

---

This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.

Read more: du

[saigon68]

1. Good Morning!!! Have a super weekend

Interesting to see the "Big Banks" have gotten larger. Oh well

[ozymandius]

3. G'morning.

:donut: :donut: :donut:

Have a great weekend saigon68! Too Big to Fail is still "too big to exist". We know that now. The models have proven themselves to be incompetent in their operations. So it gets under my skin why others, those in power, have not quite figured that out. Either that, or just have done nothing to rectify their structure.

[ozymandius]

2. Market Observation

Speculating on Recovery
BY DANIELLE PARK

“"Better-than-expected" is Wall Street's euphemism these days for "we're happier than we thought we'd be." But Wall Street is in the business of cheer leading, even when there's really nothing to cheer about. It wants investors to think positively, on the assumption that positive thinking can be a self-fulfilling prophesy: If investors begin putting more money into the market, then the market will automatically rise, leading more investors to put in more money -- until, that is, the rally ends because nothing has fundamentally changed in the real economy. Keep your eye on the real economy, where unemployment and underemployment keep rising. It's not as much fun as cheering and investing right now, but it's far safer.”

--Robert Reich US Secretary of Labour, July 24, 2009

It is now widely speculated that the great recession of 2007-2009 will soon be ending. If the American recession does end this fall, it will mark the longest and deepest economic contraction since the 1930’s. To see the end of negative growth this cycle would be a great first step. But stock markets typically don’t begin sustainable bull expansions until an economic recovery is apparent. Recoveries require a pick up in demand in the real economy that can increase revenues and GDP. So far evidence of a growth recovery is the key missing link in our picture.

The recent spate of less-bad earnings data has been born of companies slashing overhead to produce net income at any cost. This is the rational response of management struggling to stay afloat when revenues have fallen off a cliff. One of the painful after-shocks of deep cost cutting of course is the wake of unemployment and under-employment that it leaves behind. Unemployed people buy little. People concerned that they may become unemployed also buy less. It is for this reason that unemployment serves to prolong downturns and undermine the recovery.

Historically, in a typical recession the US economy has lost about 2 million permanent jobs. In this recession so far, 9 million full time jobs have been lost and 3 million people have been forced into part-time work. Traditionally there have been about 4 million people who are under-employed, meaning they are working part-time hours because they cannot find more work. This recession so far has 9 million Americans who report that they are looking but unable to find full-time hours. Under-employment in Canada has also more than doubled during this recession.

http://www.financialsense.com/Market/wrapup.htm

[Demeter]

8. Why People Say It's Over: Hale "Bonddad" Stewart: The Myth of the Black Swan

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/the-myth-of-the-black-swa_b_270202.html

The most common argument made against people who see a recovery emerging is that we are in the middle of uncharted waters where the traditional rules of economic analysis don't apply. As I will demonstrate, nothing could be farther from the truth.

This is the third time that I have been through an economic event where there were groups of people who said the old methods of analysis didn't apply. The first situation occurred during the internet bubble. At that time, any company who's name ended in .com could get an IPO and make a million dollars. At this time I was still an institutional bond broker. I had numerous conversations with my clients regarding the events on Wall Street regarding what was happening in the markets. The general consensus was the market was heading for a fall because we lost sight of traditional valuation models. On the opposite side of the debate were people who came up with the most ridicules models to justify nonsensical market valuations. People such as myself were made fun of because we weren't part of the new, cool crowd. In the long run, we were right. Those that claimed the internet revolution would lead to a massive structural change in the methods of valuing stocks are out of the spotlight. In short, those who said we were in a new paradigm were wrong. Standard, run of the mill , boring economics won out.

Then there was the latest expansion. While some argued we were in the middle of the greatest story never told, there were others such as myself who highlighted the fact that job growth was weak and consumer spending was largely paid for with massive amounts of debt rather than equity. In short, this was an exact duplicate of the previous situation. A group of people said a new paradigm was emerging and those of us who were arguing against based on standard, run of the mill and boring economic concepts were pollyannas continually saying the sky was falling. But in the long run, we were right.

Now the US economy is at the end of the worst recession of the last 60 years and a group of economic writers (of which I am one) are saying the worst is over. We use standard, run of the mill, boring economic analysis to state out case. We note that,

1.) the Empire State and Philadelphia regional manufacturing index have been rising since the beginning of the year and are now in positive territory,

2.) Single family housing starts have been increasing for the last several months

3.) Existing home sales have clearly bottomed and are now rising

4.) New homes sales are rising

5.) The rate of GDP decline is dropping

6.) The pace of jobs losses is easing

7.) The rate of initial jobless claims are decreasing

8.) The index of leading indicators has been rising for fouir months at a strong pace

9.) The chicago PMI is increasing and has been since the beginning of the year

10.) The stock markets have rebounded

11.) Short term interest rates are back in line at a traditional risk profile

12.) The rate of decline in industrial production has diminished since the beginning of the year and the industrial production number printed a positive number last month further adding to the bottoming argument.

In other words, all of the things that should happen at the end of a recession are happening and signs are emerging that a recovery is starting. Now a new group of people are arguing that we are in a new paradigm and the old methods of analysis don't apply. In other words, despite the increasing statistical evidence against their argument, they continue to make it. The old methods of analysis are only practiced by old-fashioned people who don't recognize the new paradigm. As such, the previous analysis is moot.

The arguments they put forward to justify this position break down into the following categories:

1.) All other recessions were caused by interest rate policy established by the federal reserve while this is a credit based contraction. This is a very large over-simplification of previous recessions. For example, the S and L crisis was a clear contributor to the recession that began in July 1990 and the stock market crash was a clear contributor to the 2001 recession. Then there were the inflationary build-ups of the 1970s and the implications that had for economy wide behavior. Yet these contributory factors are overlooked. Simply put, each recession is caused by a group of contributing factors. Or put more simply recessions are complicated matters.

2.) Because we're looking at a high probability of a jobless recovery we won't really have a recovery. This argument assumes that those of us who are looking at the data have somehow implicitly said "the current unemployed can go to hell." Nothing could be further from the truth. I have argued several times for the extension of unemployment benefits. While I do not make emotional arguments in this area, I have made them.

3.) Damn it, I just know it. Congratulations. There's not much to argue against here.

4.) The government statistics are manipulated to put us sheep to sleep. Now we're getting into true strangeness. There is a lot of internet chatter about how the government statistics are rigged, how the numbers are controlled by corporate masters to keep the people down etc... First, this is a classic page from the Right Wing Noise Machine -- when the facts aren't on your side, say the facts are flawed. But more to the point, none of these people can point to a legitimate academic paper that specifically proves the government methods of estimating and analyzing government data are so seriously flawed as to be professional statistical malpractice. At this point someone will say, "What about Shadow Stats?" The Bureau of Labor Statistics responded to Shadow Stats claims in a paper last year which essentially debunked Shadow Stats inflation claims. You can read a summation at this link. The point is aside from internet chatter, there is no real raging debate among people who know (statisticians, economists etc...) as to the overall validity of government statistics.

To boil this down, there is no black swan. The black swan will sell a lot of books. The black swan will get you personal TV appearances. The black swan is not backed up by the facts.

[Demeter]

10. Why We Don't Believe Them

Because a momentary improvement in a statistical measure has nothing to do with our lives and fortunes, especially when we KNOW all those rosy numbers will be "corrected" in a month or two or even 6 to reflect the reality that we are all striving to overcome and survive. The government's books are cooked, just like Stanford's and Madoff's and California's. Fraud, backed by phony paper, is our only product.

Call me a whacko paranoid tinfoil hat: there are real people who know who DO debate the government's statistics, and they have been right for years now.

[DemReadingDU]

23. Exactly.

We here know it's very bad, the books are cooked, those toxic assets are still hidden. The government has to know this too, but they don't want to cause any panic. When the market drops like a lead ball, then they will say that 'NO ONE COULD SEE THIS COMING' or 'NO ONE KNEW IT WAS THIS BAD'. They are just waiting for something to happen that can be blamed for the crash. It could be another Katrina-type hurricane, or a BIG bank failing, or another war, but something will be blamed for 'causing' the stock market to crash.

[fasttense]

24. I would add to your list of why we don't believe them - NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

Nothing has Changed, aside from a huge dump of tax payer dollars into the market.

No regulations have passed to reign in bank/Wall Street/Insurance firms, not even a law to prevent CEOs from stealing their corporations blind in bonuses and pay, just as long as they get their hand picked buddies on their boards to approve. Toxic debt is still on the banks' and Wall Street books, just hidden with a few accounting tricks.

No pull back on shipping jobs to other countries has occurred, while corporations are still dumping their slave labor crap on American markets. American Manufacturing jobs are still few and far between and Union membership continues to decline in numbers. Banks are still going under at record numbers. American Families are still going into bankruptcy at record numbers and most those middle class families who aren't in bankruptcy, still carry more debt than equity. Bill Gates still keeps pushing for more HB-1 visas and Congress still tries to get them for him.

Health Insurance is still eating up almost a third of the average family's income. Gas prices are still high, despite a drop in demand. It still takes two incomes for a small family to survive. Minimum wage is still so anemic you can't cover living expenses working 40 hours a week.

Nothing has changed for the working men and women of America.

[Demeter]

25. Agreed.

(but please, it's REINED in, as in wild horses--a very common error these days that just drives me nuts...and you don't want Tansy Gold, who is even more of a grammar/usage Nazi than I, on your case, believe me!)

[Tansy_Gold]

30. Yeah. What she said. ;-)

I agree, too, that nothing has changed, except maybe to get worse for us because "they" can't break out of their oh so comfortable (for them, of course) status quo.


Tansy Gold, who is much less of a spelling/grammar/usage/syntax freak in SMW than elsewhere because she cuts those of us who are dealing with serious subjects some slack but still appreciates a fellow SMWer pointing out a reign/rein error because it DRIVES ME FREAKIN'NUTZ! :evilgrin:


(editing half an hour later for all those horrible "I'm up at 4:00 a.m. and I still can't see straight" typos. argh!)

[AnneD]

110. Morning Marketeers.....

:donut: and lurkers. I have a mild case of dyslexia and always try to edit. Because I am conscious of this, I am especially careful with numbers. I have to titrate/calculate drugs and medications. When I make an error, it is not just a mistake...IT CAN MEAN SOME ONES LIFE. Because of this, I refuse to work beyond 8 hours (hospitals insist that floor nurses work 12+ sometime with back to back shifts), refuse to work neonatal units (almost no room for error with tragic results), and loathe working rushed. I have learned that numbers and a mistake in numbers can mean lives and I am accountable.

So why is it that there is little if any accountability in the financial and economic world. These numbers are not random and they hold themselves out to be scientists? That 0.01 percent fee that they shave off someones fund as a fee EVERY YEAR will one day be food on the table or heat in the winter. Losing half a persons savings that you are entrusted with is or should be a criminal offense and destroying a company intentionally to enrich your self should get the death penalty.

Perhaps a more serious penalty would result in a more prudent path. I know it has me double checking my numbers and not going beyond my limits. But then, that's why Nurses have been rated as some of the most trusted workers every since someone thought to add us to the list when they poll Americans.

I think since we are use to dealing with numbers-we should be appointed to more economic posts and over site positions. We remain calm in a crisis, it's hard to bull shit us, and we understand the importance of taking our medicine in a timely fashion to insure a speedy recovery.

Oh, and buy the way, the patient is far from recovery and is doomed to relapse as the habits have not changed.

Happy hunting and look out for the bear.

[Demeter]

114. Fundamentally Succesful People Care. Thanks, Anne!

[Joe Chi Minh]

38. Shouldn't "than" be followed by an accusative? I'm not sure.

[Demeter]

41. Look at the Construction

She is more than I (am). The implication is that the subjects are being compared.

I should warn you: I'm probably the only electrical engineer alive who also aced a course on Transactional Grammar, based on Noam Chomsky's work. It's not that I can't make mistakes, but it's unlikely that they aren't either typos, due to exhaustion, or done for effect.

[tclambert]

48. Lambert's Law of Language:

Language is for communicatin' with. All other so-called "rules" are merely suggestions. If what you said conveyed the meaning you wanted, then it worked. If you followed all the "rules," and didn't nobody understand you, then UR DOIN' IT RONG!

[Tansy_Gold]

78. The language elitist in me politely disagrees ;-)

Most of the time, the "rules" of English grammar and usage and syntax are flexible enough to permit errors and still facilitate communication. That's why we can have Twitter.

One of my paying gigs is transcribing interviews, many of which involve very ordinary people describing their experiences in auto accidents. Not only to get to hear how people from literally all parts of the country -- I think the only states I haven't had reports from are Maine and New Hampshire -- but all walks of life. Lawyers. Doctors. Professors. Farm workers from what can only be called rural poverty pockets who literally are not sure what state they live in and don't know what a zip code is, but they have a driver's license and a cell phone.

When these people -- all of them -- are confronted with the necessity of explaining how an accident happened, they often can't do it, and it's to their detriment. A determination of fault in a parking lot fender bender that does $2000 in damage to your car hinges on whether or not you can adequately explain that the driver that hit you was pulling out the wrong way after driving straight through the parking space in front of him. The adjustor who's interviewing you is three states away and has no idea what this parking lot looks like or where in it you were.

Now, granted, whether you say "She was goin' a lot faster 'n me" or "She was goin' a lot faster 'n I" isn't going to matter. But the inability to use the language to its fullest capacity can be costly.

In my professional writing days, I loved to listen to the accounts of other writers who struggled with the language. They dreaded sending their manuscripts to their editors because they knew the red pen would come out and all their extra commas would be deleted, their verbs forced into agreement with their subjects, their dangling modifiers corrected. Those of us who knew the rules, who could bend or break them for effect, never had to worry about that. Three of my novels were published quite literally without a word being changed; the others had only minor alterations, and in several cases I pointed out that the editors' "corrections" were in fact incorrect and got my original reinstated.

English is a living language. It will change and expand, with new words added and old ones discarded into the attic of archaisms. But being lazy and relying on "Yeah, but you know what I MEANT" is no excuse for those who want to be in the business (even the unpaid business) of communicating complex ideas.

I really don't pick on too many of the errors I see here on DU because I know it's an informal forum. And maybe the day will come when there is no distinction between rein and reign. And maybe publishers won't mind disagreeing verbs and subjects, or misplaced modifiers, or all that other stuff that's perfectly acceptable and reasonably effective communication online. But I have to say -- and yes, I routinely start sentences with conjunctions and end them with prepositions -- that the books I've been reading, published in 2008 and 2009, all contain standard English grammar. The syntax is fine, the usage is fine. The writers -- and/or their editors -- know that standard English is the best tool for getting the message across.

And if the rules are perfect but no one understands you, then the problem is not likely in the rules but in the words you've chosen and the contortions you've put them to in order to make them fit the rules.


Tansy Gold, without apologies but not necessarily without errors

[Hugin]

84. Mark Twain started it!

:cry:

[bain_sidhe]

115. YAY!

I'd'a' said this, but you said it better! So many errors in usage and grammar drive me NUTZ (as you say), but I rarely comment on them. But I DO notice them, and it DOES affect my perception of the poster. My husband is an artist and a teacher, and he's always having to explain to students that you have to understand the rules before you can break them *effectively.* He's had to repeat this throughout his teaching career, because every time he mentions a rule, some student will point out some piece that breaks it, and use that to argue that the rules aren't important.

You don't have to write standard English to get your point across. Sometimes, it's better writing if you don't (see Mark Twain, for one example). But you have to *know* the rules to understand when breaking the rules works better to communicate what you want to communicate.

And, regardless of whether you do or don't break the rules, everybody should know *how* to write standard English when it's needed. The resume, the job application, the inquiry letter, the spec article... any time that you're not standing in front of the person to correct any mistaken impression, it's best to stick with the standards. Because, sometimes, the reader's "perception" about your ability (or lack of it) to communicate effectively is the only thing you have going for you. And sadly, these days, the ability to write standard English will make you stand out from the crowd.

[mrdmk]

117. He is another line for your Teacher Husband

To learn how to do something is one thing, learning when to use it is quite another!

mrdmk

[bain_sidhe]

120. Yeah! What he said!

To paraphrase my new idol, Tansy Gold. ;-)

[Demeter]

119. these days, the ability to write standard English will make you stand out from the crowd.

usually unfavorably, for most American crowds. Sigh.

[bain_sidhe]

121. Yup. That's why I said "sadly"

It breaks my heart to see how poorly young people communicate using the written word, and worse, look down on those who can do it correctly. I think that makes me a codger (can girls be "codgers"?). Well, 'tever the technical term is, I find myself more and more often wanting to start sentences with "back in MY day...."

[Hugin]

123. Well, if y'all want to coast around the DU sounding like Mattie Ross in "True Grit"...

that's your business.

:rofl:

[bain_sidhe]

125. Oh, man, I haven't thought of that movie in ages!

I could do worse, you know. Mattie Ross was a true lady, and she carried her lady-ness with her no matter how rough the circumstances in which she found herself.

[Hugin]

128. Yes, she was a person of principle and lived up to her creed.

Admirable qualities.

Anyway, I read somewhere, Mattie's speech patterns and actually the whole script were written to some sort of poetic rhythm that went beyond standard English. The lines were apparently very difficult for the Actors sometimes.

I can't find a reference to this fact right now.

[bain_sidhe]

122. IDEA! Maybe we should start a "language elitist" group

You know, a forum where we can edumacate folks on the proper usage of "rein" and "reign," "affect" and "effect," "moot" and "mute" (to name three of my biggest usage peeves) and so on.

...

...

...

Or not.

[Hugin]

124. Here's the first question for you to mull the number of which will fit on the head of a pin.

Is the proper spelling of multiple Treasury Notes... "Treasuries" or as I've seen it all over the Corporate Media, "Treasurys"?

(Note: Firefox votes "Treasuries".)

[bain_sidhe]

126. bringing it back to the topic at hand, I see...

I guess I'd better rein in my tendency to go off topic at the drop of a cowboy hat.

So... back to the SMW topic (sorta). I'd go with "Treasuries" too. But it's a moot point. Since I don't have any, it doesn't affect me either way.

[Hugin]

127. Not, exactly... It's relevance to the topic at hand is merely a coincidence.

It's my current pet peeve.

Oh, and I fight a constant never ending battle with punctuation.

[tclambert]

143. Yeah, those commas have a pretty good right hook.

,

[Demeter]

139. I read this at the public library

:rofl: Why is everyone staring at me?

[TalkingDog]

118. NLP: Communication is the response you get.

If you communicated with a person effectively they will respond appropriately.

If you communicated with a person ineffectively they will respond inappropriately (or confusingly).

It doesn't matter how perfect your prose if you are speaking to a deaf person.
To communicate with that particular person effectively requires you to alter your manner of communication.
If you refuse and they don't understand you, then the onus for the lack of communication is on you.

I like this way of thinking about communication, because it makes both parties responsible for ensuring success.

[fasttense]

101. Yes, I know, I know. I saw the error after the edit feature expired.

So, sorry.

[tclambert]

29. Well, that sounded an awful lot like #3 and #4.

You kinda fell into his trap there. "Disagree with me in the way I predict you will disagree with me, and you must therefore be wrong."

My son had a better argument. He asked, "What changed in the underlying conditions that led to this crisis? Are there new banking regulations? Is there anything to guarantee they won't return to business as usual and start another crash at any time? Or does recovery depend on TRUSTING the big banks who got us into this mess?"

I have to agree there is no guarantee. But he implies in his argument that he accepts the current statistics and signs that the recession is easing and recovery may have begun. He's only adding the huge caveat: "For now."

I would like to move on to a discussion of what we need to prevent this particular type of economic crisis from happening again. Okay, nothing is forever. Eventually, protons will decay and matter as we know it will cease to exist. My son pointed out that as part of the New Deal, FDR implemented a raft of regulations that probably protected us against just this sort of economic foolishness in the banking industry for about 70 years. Even if we put all of that back in place, there's no guarantee the next generation of Hooverish/Bushist Republicans will undo them.

Still, it seems like putting up some new fences around the banking industry makes sense. So, what kind of regulatory fence will protect us, if only for a few decades?

[Demeter]

32. FRSP is the Only Thing That Comes to Mind

because only after some heads start rolling will we get good regulations that are enforced and abided.

[tclambert]

42. Did the period following the French Revolution spawn a lot of good and abiding regulations?

I seem to recall something called "The Reign of Terror." Following the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederacy led to a near failure of the new United States. The Constitution didn't come along until 1787, and you can't call it perfect. We amended it 27 times. The founders had a flash of brilliance there. In building in a mechanism for change, they allowed the possibility of more closely approaching perfection through a process of stepwise refinement.

My point, if I ever had one, is I don't think Revolutions are well known for improving regulatory environments. I lean more toward The Who when it comes to revolution: "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." Here's a video of Townshend performing "Won't Get Fooled Again" with acoustic guitar, a little different feel from the version we all know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WYq3iON8KQ&feature=related And the classic version if you crave that great electric guitar riff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUbGLVvfB7Y&feature=related

[Demeter]

43. FRSP Refers Solely to "Madame la Guillotine"

I am advocating swift and severe punishment that prevents repetition of the crime--which is revolutionary in these lax and piratical times, but not a Revolution, per se.

It doesn't mean the malefactor must actually be beheaded--but it does mean that he must be put out of our misery.

Madoff's life sentence should be freely appplied to those who cause widespread economic death. Banning for life, as are certain traders who cross the line, is another possible fix. Blacklisting, as was done to hapless cinema artists during the McCarthy era, would more wisely be applied to those who aid and abet economic crimes: politicians, media moguls, and the like.

I really hope it doesn't come down to blood in the streets. That's what right-wing whackos want. That's why we call them whackos.

[tclambert]

54. OMG, I agree with Demeter on something!

Yeah, I'd like to see Ozy's malefactor scoreboard go into triple digits. But I don't expect to see it. The rich are above the law in America. If they can't buy a judge, they buy a legislature, and have a law passed legalizing their crimes. Health care reform, supported by 99 44/100ths percent of Americans may fail because insurance companies can afford more lobbyists than mere mortals can. And they are willing to budget hundreds of millions to fight reform. The only hope is they try to cheapskate out, spending as little as possible to win, and misunderestimate it by $1.53.

[ozymandius]

12. One cannot argue with faith.

I still subscribe to the notion that has been so craftily articulated by Barry Ritholtz and echoed, alternately, from Robert Reich and Duncan Black: "Less bad is the new good."

Sorry for the name-dropping exercise here. However - the notions concerning sustainable growth have not been addressed beyond increasing access to credit. Consumer credit is not the same thing as an economic recovery. It is, in my book, a component to economic recovery, rather than the mechanism.

As for unemployment: anything above 125,000 new unemployment claims is still "oh shit!" territory. I will have faith that we are on a new path when Thursday's numbers drop suddenly to about half the "new normal" of 500k to 600k newly unemployed.

[tclambert]

36. Unemployment went down last month.

That's not "less bad." That's just flat out GOOD. U3, the official rate, went from 9.5% to 9.4%. U6, the more inclusive rate, went from 16.5% to 16.3%. I've said since I first started posting here that jobs carry more weight than any other statistic.

Okay, one data point does not make a trend. Although I have pointed out that in three recent months the raw number of jobs increased, just not keeping up with population growth in 2 of those months. Still, the next round of employment and unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics will demand great attention.

[Hugin]

80. While we're throwing around monikered rules... Hugin's Unemployment Observation

Has this covered... And, well... It disagrees with your idea.

Basically, HUO mirrors the rationale governing when it's time to foreclose a mortgage or shutter a bank.

(In the following replace 'payments' with 'jobs created')

If two sequential payments are not made, then it is unlikely that whoever is responsible for making those payments has the resources to make up those two payments and also carry the current month's payment. The unemployment situation is much worse, because, the deficit payments have ballooned to many times the minimum payment each month and it has at this point been going on for far more than two months.

Unemployment is more dire... Because this is the livelihood of those affected in question. Will they eat? Will they be sheltered? Will they receive medical attention? (As a function of public health, if not just for the individual) ... etc. Now, unemployment insurance does buy some breathing space, but, it's really a debt. Those individuals receiving it are no longer adding value to the system as a whole... They are negative spending.

Unemployment insurance is exactly analogous to living on Credit Cards while not being able to make Mortgage Payments.

I think during the last Depression... HUO was realized and that's why the WPA and CCC were implemented. So, that at least some value was being added to the system by those idled and their skills weren't lost to disuse. It kept them in a working frame of mind, too. Those people wouldn't fall into a pattern of low esteem where they were focused on maintaining their stipends.

So, isn't it time we foreclose on the current employment plan? (if there is one) and go with something different?

[Demeter]

83. AMEN!

Preaching to the choir, but it's good for a warm-up and practice. Now, run for office!

[Tansy_Gold]

134. Ditto. eom

[tclambert]

145. I agree, we could and should do more to fight unemployment.

Hell, I'm pro building pyramids.

[Joe Chi Minh]

39. I refer the author to James Howard Kunstler latest bulletin, linked here yesterday:

http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/08/financial-crisis-called-off.html#more

The only question that remains is, which psychological designation/epithet or combination thereof in the opening paragraph fits the author?

[ozymandius]

4. Today's Reports

08:30 Personal Income Jul
Briefing.com -0.1%
Consensus 0.1%
Prior -1.3%

08:30 Personal Spending Jul
Briefing.com 0.3%
Consensus 0.2%
Prior 0.4%

08:30 PCE Core Jul
Briefing.com 0.1%
Consensus 0.1%
Prior 0.2%

09:55 Mich Sentiment-Rev Aug
Briefing.com 64.8
Consensus 64.0
Prior 63.2

http://www.briefing.com/Investor/Public/Calendars/EconomicCalendar.htm

[UpInArms]

70. U.S. July incomes flat vs. 0.2% gain expected - July inflation flat, core prices up 0.1%

U.S. July incomes flat vs. 0.2% gain expected
8:30am Today

U.S. July real consumer spending up 0.2%
8:30am Today

U.S. July inflation flat, core prices up 0.1%
8:30am Today

U.S. July savings rate falls to 4.2%
8:30am Today

U.S. July wages income up 0.1%, 1st gain in year
8:30am Today

U.S. consumer prices down 0.8% in past year
8:30am Today

[ozymandius]

5. Oil prices hover near $73 in Asia

BANGKOK – Oil prices rose moderately Friday in Asia, hovering near $73 as investors nurtured doubts about a sustainable recovery in the world's biggest economy.

Benchmark crude for October delivery was up 32 cents to $72.81 a barrel by late morning Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract Thursday added $1.06 to settle at $72.49 after tumbling from near $75 earlier in the week.

Reflecting the dire state of energy demand, natural gas prices slumped to their lowest level in seven years Thursday after the U.S. government reported that salt caverns, aquifers and other underground areas where it is stored are filling up. Levels of natural gas have been building because power-intense industries like manufacturing have cut back severely on production.

.....

In other Nymex trading, gasoline for September delivery was up 0.46 cent at $2.036 a gallon and heating oil rose 0.2 cent to $1.8612 a gallon.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/oil_prices

[ozymandius]

9. Awash in natural gas, prices hit new 7-year lows

NEW YORK – Natural gas prices slumped to their lowest level in seven years Thursday after the government reported that salt caverns, aquifers and other underground areas where it is stored are filling up.

Levels of natural gas have been building because power-intense industries like manufacturing have cut back severely on production.

Natural gas tumbled 6.7 cents to settle at $2.843 per 1,000 cubic feet. The price dropped as low as $2.692 per 1,000 cubic feet earlier in the day, a price not seen since Aug. 7, 2002. The contract is scheduled to end Thursday, however, and most of the trading already has switched to the October contract that gave up 4.6 cents to trade at $3.248.

.....

There is so much natural gas in storage, it has begun to test the country's storage capacity. But EIA economist Jose Villar told The Associated Press that storage facilities have added about 100 billion cubic feet of extra space, giving suppliers more places to put it. The EIA will include details of the added capacity in a report to be published in the next few weeks, Villar said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090827/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_prices

[Robbien]

44. Also interesting

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5f57b26a-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html

So, how much room is left in storage? That's the scary part:

"It's not like a crude oil storage tank where you have a fixed and knowable volume," said Tancred Lidderdale, an EIA senior economist. "For natural gas you know it's full when you can't push any more in."

Also unlike oil, natural gas markets don't have a cartel such as Opec to balance the market when demand slips or stockpiles become glutted. On top of this, many US gas producers have hedged output at prices far above current levels, weakening the economic incentive to shut valves.

Chesapeake Energy, a large gas producer, said in April that it would curtail production by 400m cubic feet per day, but instead cut back only 74m cubic feet a day in the second quarter. The company expects to be "full up on storage by the end of the year", Aubrey McClendon, chief executive, explained recently. "I think our view was that there was no reason for us to voluntarily curtail gas, when pretty soon, everybody is going to start involuntarily curtailing gas."

As storage facilities fill up, pipeline pressures will build, making it harder to push gas through.



-----

All this gas over-stuffed into underground salt mines and no one wants to stop because profits are too good.

[UpInArms]

73. Oil futures up 71 cents at $73.20/brl on Globex

Oil futures up 71 cents at $73.20/brl on Globex
7:53am Today

[ozymandius]

6. Dell sales drop Y-O-Y, share price leaps.

:eyes:

For its second quarter, which ended July 31, Dell reported a net profit of $472 million, or 24 cents a share, down from $616 million, or 31 cents a share, in the year-ago period.

Excluding items, the company earned 28 cents a share, beating analysts' average estimate of 23 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

Revenue fell 22 percent to $12.8 billion. Still, that was ahead of Wall Street's estimate of $12.6 billion.

.....

Dell has been shedding jobs and cutting billions in costs to realign its business, and is working to shift its product base to higher-margin offerings and recurring revenue streams through partnerships and acquisitions.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090827/bs_nm/us_dell

[ozymandius]

7. Evidence mounts recession's grip on economy easing

Analysts pin their hopes and forecasts on one time initiatives whose effects will dissipate. Cash for Clunkers is done and the TALF is almost done. Improvements will be marginal and not sustainable, IMO. - ozy

WASHINGTON – Evidence is mounting that the longest recession since World War II is losing its grip on the U.S. economy.

The latest hint is due Friday when the government releases data on consumer spending and income for July.

Personal spending is expected to have posted a modest gain last month, driven higher by the popular Cash for Clunkers program. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect personal spending rose 0.2 percent in July after a 0.4 percent gain in June.

Economists believe that personal incomes, the fuel for future spending increases, probably rose 0.2 percent as well, following a 1.3 percent decline in June.

.....

The Commerce Department estimated that the U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest gauge of economic health, shrank at an annual rate of 1 percent in the second quarter. The new estimate of the nation's output of goods and services was the same as an earlier estimate released last month.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090828/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_economy

[Demeter]

11. Wall Street Rules: The Bernanke Reappointment Robert L. Borosage

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/wall-street-rules-the-ber_b_269596.html


The reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve -- cleverly timed to defuse the news of burgeoning federal deficits -- was preordained. The "markets" demanded it, and as James Carville noted, when the markets speak, presidents listen. (Carville, shocked at how Bob Rubin's arguments about the markets trumped all Clinton campaign pledges, exclaimed: "I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.")

The conventional wisdom holds that Bernanke's reappointment is well-deserved. Officially, we are told the recovery is beginning. Bernanke is credited for the bold, inventive and unprecedented wielding of the power of the Federal Reserve to stave off a depression. And now, as the Fed faces the next perilous months, it is hard to imagine anyone else entrusted with the job. Or as the more cynical suggest, Bernanke helped create the mess, it is only right that he be charged with cleaning it up.

But before the Senate bestows upon Bernanke the reverence once reserved for Alan Greenspan, some basic questions should be posed. Senator Chris Dodd, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has a particular stake in challenging Bernanke about what he has learned from the past desperate months as well as what he intends for the next years. Consider.

1. What do you know now that you didn't know then?

Before the crisis, Bernanke served as Sancho Panza to Alan Greenspan's Don Quixote, extolling the virtues of deregulation, lauding the ability of markets to self-regulate, celebrating the strength of our banking system, seconding Greenspan as he jousted with imagined inflation while oblivious to the housing bubble, orgiastic greed and gambling, and predatory lending that constituted real and present dangers. Greenspan has now admitted that he was blinded by a "mistaken" set of beliefs. How has the crisis disabused Bernanke of his ideological predilections? How, in concrete ways, has it changed his views about how the economy works, and about the role of regulation and regulators in curbing Wall Street's excesses?

2. Why shovel trillions into the banks and finance houses and ask nothing of them for the American people?

Once the Federal Reserve belatedly awoke to the severity of the crisis, Bernanke joined with Treasury Secretary Paulson, and former New York Federal Reserve Bank president (now Treasury Secretary) Tim Geithner in cobbling together a series of ad hoc emergency measures to stave off financial collapse. Mistakes -- like letting Lehman go belly up -- were made, but that was to be expected since they had to make it up as they went along. For this, Bernanke deserves the thanks of a grateful nation and world.

But the Senate should press the Chairman on how he defends the terms of the deals, and what he would do now to change them.

Essentially, Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson flooded the financial system with dollars, about two trillion and still counting. They chose to resuscitate essentially bankrupt banks, not take them over and reorganize them. They asked little or nothing from the banks in return -- no requirements on lending, no marking of toxic paper to market, no change in business models or compensation schemes, no changes in management.

So now, the banks are officially said to be "healing." But they still are burdened with toxic paper; they still aren't doing much lending. People are still losing their jobs and their homes, credit card and commercial defaults remain at high levels. And the most aggressive of the investment houses seem to be headed back to the old ways. Goldman Sachs shamelessly announces that it is putting aside several billion for bonuses, based on profits largely from computerized gambling essentially with taxpayers' money.

Why not "resolve" the banks rather than just try to resuscitate them? Why not require changes in compensation schemes, limits on exotic trading and securities, mandates to return to the essential business of lending money to Main Street? Why not force changes in management to hold people accountable for their catastrophic actions?

3. If you are going to spend our money, why can't we see the books?

In the emergency, the Federal Reserve has revealed its power to put literally trillions into the economy without a vote of Congress. This untrammeled power was vital in the crisis, and is utterly corrosive in a democracy, particularly in an insulated institution that sees itself as Wall Street's protector. Bernanke has opposed a bi-partisan effort by the Congress to get an audit of the Fed's books, so that Congress could learn where the money went.

Senator Dodd should make himself the tribune of the American people here. Why should the Fed have this power? How can it be made more accountable to Main Street than Wall Street? Why should its books not be audited? Would Bernanke support the creation of a Congressional Finance Office to give Congress independent advice on the Fed and the financial community, as the Congressional Budget Office provides on the budget?

4. If you don't know where you are going, you are likely to end up in the wrong place. (from the existential philosopher, Yogi Berra)

Going forward, President Obama has stated that we can't go back to the old economy where finance captured 40% of the nation's profits. To achieve that, the banking sector should be smaller and strictly regulated. The casino should be shut down. Banking should return to the boring profession of taking deposits and distributing loans.

Yet thus far the emergency policies have consolidated the banking sector, subsidized the big guys, increased concentration, and done little to reform practices, protect consumers, curb dangerous compensation schemes, or outlaw exotic securities. The bankers have responded to even the meekest of reform proposals with full court lobbying, arguably using some of the money taxpayers provided to lobby against the protections that taxpayers desperately need.

How does Bernanke propose we get finance under control? Does he agree with Obama that the financial system must be smaller and more constrained? How would he propose to do that?

5. Why should we reward failure with more authority?

The Federal Reserve had significant powers to regulate the housing market, to crack down on predatory lending, to curb the speculative excesses of the banking sector. Yet under Greenspan and Bernanke, those powers went unused Bernanke argued forcefully that the Fed should not act to counter asset bubbles, echoing Greenspan that it was easier to clean up the messes after they burst. Clearly the last months have punctured that illusion. But Bernanke continues to argue that the Federal Reserve play the lead role in regulating the banks, assessing systemic risk, overseeing those institutions deemed "too big to fail."

Why? Why should the Fed, Wall Street's instrument from its inception, pretend to be an effective cop on the financial beat? Why not leave it to do monetary policy, and assign regulation to independent agencies more accountable to the Congress? Why would we reward failure by increasing the Fed's powers? Shouldn't Congress enforce anti-trust policies to insure that no institution is ever too big to fail, rather than trying to regulate such institutions? Why not have an independent agency tasked with protecting consumers from predatory financial practices?

6. What has the Fed learned from Japan's mistakes?

As Bill Greider and Paul Krugman have argued, the US looks more and more like Japan in its lost decade. Here, as in Japan, the major insolvent banks were subsidized, not reorganized. They remain weak, reluctant to lend, a heavy weight on the economy. As in Japan, the "green shoots" of recovery have been watered by heavy deficit spending, but political opposition is growing to taking on more debt. In Japan, when the economy would show signs of growth, worried politicians would cut spending, and the economy would sink again. The result was a decade of stagnation, until finally the Japanese garnered the gumption to restructure the banks -- and were able to export into America's bubble.

Bernanke should be pressed: Aren't the major banks in their present condition likely to remain a drag on any recovery? How will we avoid a decade of stagnation? What will provide the source of growth, since we can't relay on exports to the US?

Ben Bernanke has performed valiantly in an unprecedented crisis. But save the laurels for later; the Senate should grill him, not deify him. He was wrong about deregulation of financial markets, blind to the dangers of the housing bubble, wrong about its impact on the real economy once it burst, slow in seeing the recession coming. We need to know how his core beliefs have changed given that reality.

And his bold steps to stave off the crisis have reflected the many of the same ideological predispositions - reluctance to take over and reorganize the major banks, unwillingness to force heads to roll, opposition to mandates on the banks that were bailed out, insistence on preserving the powers and the prerogatives of the "Temple." A crisis, it is said, changes everything. We now know that the Fed has powers far beyond the mysteries of monetary policy. The Chairman can no longer hide behind opaque language, or argue that the mysteries of the Temple must be preserved. The Chairman has been revealed as the second most, if not the most powerful figure in Washington. So, before the Senate gives its consent to his reappointment, Senator Dodd, Chair of the Finance Committee, should insist that we learn learn how Mr. Bernanke's beliefs have changed, and how he would change his policies going forward.

[Demeter]

13. Stanford’s finance chief pleads guilty

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/01ddaaf6-9307-11de-b146-00144feabdc0.html


"James Davis, the chief financial officer at the Stanford Financial Group, on Thursday pleaded guilty to charges that he helped Sir Allen Stanford, the company’s billionaire founder, in an alleged $7bn Ponzi scheme.

Sir Allen, who set up the Stanford 20-20 cricket tournament, had been due to appear in court on a separate matter but was taken by ambulance to hospital earlier in the day with an irregular heart beat and an extremely high pulse. The businessman was placed under secure observation at the Conroe Regional Hospital Center, a spokesman for the US Marshalls said.

Mr Davis, 60, who appeared at the US district court in Houston as part of a plea agreement with the authorities, was subdued as he pleaded “guilty, your honour” to three felony counts, including fraud and obstruction of justice, for which he could face a maximum prison term of 30 years. He also agreed to forfeit $1bn..."

Evidently, Bernie Madoff's Ponzi is still the biggest on record and Stanford only comes in second. Perhaps that's only counting US losses, not world wide?

[tclambert]

63. Do you hear an update to Ozy's scoreboard coming?

"Ed, let's hear that timpani!"

(On edit: I thought there was a "y" in tympany.)

[tclambert]

64. BTW, Ozy, I've lost track of the malefactors you counted on the scoreboard.

Any chance of naming names?

[Demeter]

67. We should have a look-up list or link

[tclambert]

81. Maybe down in the body of the thread, something like Festivito's record of the national debt.

Stuff like that makes this thread a good source for historical research.

[1955doubledie]

94. "Timpani" and "tympani" are both correct

But I've never seen it spelled "tympany." Not the musical instrument, anyway. :shrug:

(Edit to add the last sentence.)

[tclambert]

132. When you get to rules of spelling, our language is truly insane.

The space aliens laugh at us all the time for having an alphabet with only 26 letters when we have a language with 40 different sounds. And then sometimes we use two letters to make the same sound. "What do you Earth Humans think you are doing with C, K, S, and X?"

And then there's French!

[ozymandius]

14. The end of the line for California automaking

Toyota will shut down the joint venture it operated with General Motors in Fremont in March, eliminating 4,700 jobs. Sagging sales and GM's bankruptcy are blamed.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Fremont, Calif. - Toyota Motor Corp.'s decision to abandon its assembly line in Fremont marks the end of large-scale auto manufacturing in California, which over the years boasted a dozen or more plants building vehicles ranging from Studebakers to Camaro muscle cars.

The Japanese automaker said Thursday that it would end production at the plant March 31, throwing 4,700 people out of work, and return some production to Japan.

.....

In addition to wiping out the jobs directly tied to the plant, closing the facility will send ripples through the web of suppliers that make components for the factory and through nearby stores, restaurants and bars that depend on its workers for business.

Overall, closing the plant could cost more than 40,000 jobs, according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has worked with other public officials to try to keep the plant open. But communications with Toyota eventually broke down, she said.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-toyota-plant28-2009aug28,0,4907237.story

[tclambert]

60. That plant made the Toyota Matrix and Pontiac Vibe.

Nice little compact hatchbacks. 26mpg city, 32 mpg highway. The plant was a joint venture for Toyota and GM. When GM killed Pontiac and went Chapter 11, they escaped from the contract, leaving Toyota on the hook for the whole operation.

[tclambert]

135. Mentioned this story to my wife, and she said, "Now they get a taste of what it's like in Michigan."

On the other hand, here's some good news for old auto plants:

Green energy industry eyes Wixom plant

BY CHRIS CHRISTOFF, TOM WALSH, KORIE WILKINS and KATHLEEN GRAY
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

LANSING -- With nearly 3,000 manufacturing jobs and the prospect of turning the former Ford assembly plant in Wixom into a world-class alternative energy park at stake, Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Tuesday called on the Legislature to authorize new tax credits.

The redevelopment of the Wixom plant, closed in 2007, would involve several companies. At least one would manufacture solar energy products.

"We want to create a national destination for renewable energy products and projects, and that particular facility would create, if the project goes through, 2,750 direct jobs and 10,000 supplier and indirect jobs, with a total investment of $725 million," she told reporters.

http://www.freep.com/article/20090819/NEWS06/908190421/1322/Green-energy-industry-eyes-Wixom-plant
_______________________

This enormous plant makes me sad every time I drive by it. Weeds poke up through the empty concrete plains of parking lots. It is vast. Takes about 2 minutes to drive by. It's about twice the size of a shopping mall. It used to be the cornerstone of the economy in this area.

We've heard other proposals like this, though. In fact, this is the third one this year. So we Wixomites won't believe it 'til it happens.

[ozymandius]

15. Banks on Sick List Top 400

The banking industry continues to deteriorate, with federal regulators adding 111 lenders to their list of endangered banks in the latest quarter, even as the economy shows signs of stabilizing.

Data released Thursday painted a gloomy picture of the state of banking.

The government fund that protects consumer deposits fell to its lowest level since 1993. The continuing woes, which come despite trillions of dollars in government rescue financing and a rebounding stock market, raised questions about how quickly the economy can revive.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it had 416 banks on its "problem list" at the end of June, equivalent to about 5% of the nation's banks, up from 305 at the end of March and 117 at the end of June 2008. Problem banks had a combined $299.8 billion of assets at the end of June, compared with $78.3 billion a year ago.

Landing on the FDIC's problem list means a bank is at a high risk of insolvency. State and federal regulators have already shut 81 banks this year.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125137695691263385.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular

[Demeter]

17. I Can't Wait to See the Bank Failures Tonight

It's rather like expecting to be violently ill at any moment.

[Demeter]

16. Toyota to halt production in California plant

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0ba3650c-9367-11de-b146-00144feabdc0.html

"Toyota said on Thursday that it would halt production next March at a California assembly plant that it has operated in partnership with General Motors for the past 25 years.

The decision marks the first time that the Japanese carmaker has reduced capacity in North America.

“We have determined that over the mid- to long-term, it just would not be economically viable to continue the production contract”, said Atsushi Niimi, executive vice-president of Toyota’s US subsidiary. “We deeply regret having to take this action...Toyota has learned much about automobile production in the US through Nummi, and these have been an invaluable 25 years”.”

The joint venture, known as New United Motor Manufacturing (Nummi), gave Toyota its first assembly facilities in North America and provided GM with an insight into the Japanese carmaker’s vaunted production methods.

The plant has built Toyota Tacoma light pick-ups on one line, and Corolla sedans and GM’s Pontiac Vibe hatchback on the other.

GM withdrew from the venture earlier this summer as part of its court-supervised restructuring which includes shutting down the Pontiac division next year. Vibe production came to an end earlier this month.

The plant is the only remaining car assembly line on the west coast, and the only unionised Toyota facility in North America. It employs about 4,600 workers...."

SO, CALIFORNIANS AND ALL THE WEST WILL HAVE TO TURN TO THE DOCKS OR TO MEXICO OR TO LONG-DISTANCE TRUCKERS TO FEED THEIR MOTORING HABITS...NOT MY DEFINITION OF PROGRESS OR EFFICIENCY. OR ANYTHING REALLY. IF CALIFORNIA BOUGHT THE BIG ONE TODAY AND FELL INTO THE OCEAN, WOULD ANYONE NOTICE? THE WORLD'S 6TH LARGEST ECONOMY---WHAT IS ITS RANKING IN TODAY'S NUMBERS?

THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING TAKEN DOWN A PEG AND BEING TOTALLY DESTROYED.

[Demeter]

18. In Related News: ‘Cash-for-clunkers’ sales disappoint Detroit

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/12066e64-9293-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html

"..GM models made up 17.6 per cent of the 690,100 vehicles sold under the scheme, while Chrysler accounted for 6.6 per cent of sales. By contrast, GM’s market share in the first seven months of 2009 was 19.6 per cent, and Chrysler’s 9.6 per cent, according to Autodata, a market-research company.

Toyota was the biggest beneficiary of the subsidies, with a 19.4 per cent market share. Chrysler ended in seventh place behind Nissan and South Korea’s Hyundai...GM and Chrysler offer relatively few of the small models that were most in demand among cash-for-clunkers buyers..."

[Demeter]

27. I Also Read or Heard that "Buyer's Remorse" is Setting In

for those eager to trade in, trade up, who now wonder if they can handle the payments....

[Po_d Mainiac]

37. let's call it "burrowing" forward.

:donut:
Good morning

[Festivito]

19. Debt: 08/25/2009 11,730,400,622,450.31 (UP 11,339,696,584.45) (Mostly the FICA side.)

(Debt up .287B$, it's the FICA side that rose a lot.)

= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 7,386,220,240,936.11 + 4,344,180,381,514.20
UP 287,748,587.67 + UP 11,051,947,996.78

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 307-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.25 each THAT'S 1B$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.76, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 10 seconds we net gain a another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 307,271,541 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 08/24/2009 13:24 -> 307,261,605
Currently, each of these Americans owe $38,176.01.
A family of three owes $114,528.02. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 23 reports in the last 30 to 32 days.
The average for the last 23 reports is 5,385,740,187.85.
The average for the last 30 days would be 4,129,067,477.35.
The average for the last 32 days would be 3,871,000,760.02.
There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 150 reports in 217 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.31B$ per report, 5.09B$/day so far.
There were 225 reports in 329 days of FY2009 averaging 7.58B$ per report, 5.18B$/day.

PROJECTION:
There are 1,244 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 13.4 and 18.2T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
08/25/2009 11,730,400,622,450.31 BHO (UP 1,103,523,573,537.23 so far since Obama took office.)

Fiscal Year ends: Sep 30
Borrowed in FY1993: (Maybe later.)
Borrowed in FY1994: 281,261,026,873.94
Borrowed in FY1995: 281,232,990,696.07
Borrowed in FY1996: 250,828,038,426.34
Borrowed in FY1997: 188,335,072,261.61
Borrowed in FY1998: 113,046,997,500.28
Borrowed in FY1999: 130,077,892,735.81
Borrowed in FY2000: _17,907,308,253.43 Bill alone
Borrowed in FY2001: 133,285,202,313.20 Bill and George
Borrowed in FY2002: 420,772,553,397.10 All George
Borrowed in FY2003: 554,995,097,146.46
Borrowed in FY2004: 595,821,633,586.70
Borrowed in FY2005: 553,656,965,393.18
Borrowed in FY2006: 574,264,237,491.73
Borrowed in FY2007: 500,679,473,047.25
Borrowed in FY2008: 1,017,071,524,650.01
Borrowed in FY2009: 1,705,675,725,537.90 so far this fiscal year, broken down below:
Borrowed in FY2009: 0,602,152,152,000.59 in part from time during Bush reign.
Borrowed in FY2009: 1,103,523,573,537.23 in part since Obama takes over.


LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
08/05/2009 +000,017,974,078.47 ------------*******
08/06/2009 -000,578,106,269.92 ---
08/07/2009 +000,290,467,707.81 ------------********
08/10/2009 +000,222,135,743.03 ------------******** Mon
08/11/2009 +000,246,752,500.45 ------------********
08/12/2009 +000,081,638,592.29 ------------*******
08/13/2009 +004,096,319,823.99 ------------*********
08/14/2009 +000,017,806,259.60 ------------*******
08/17/2009 +012,224,191,599.44 ------------********** Mon
08/18/2009 +036,282,270,009.21 ------------**********
08/19/2009 +000,703,521,737.77 ------------********
08/20/2009 +001,088,553,104.23 ------------*********
08/21/2009 +000,333,547,281.04 ------------********
08/24/2009 +000,472,040,908.69 ------------******** Mon
08/25/2009 +000,287,748,587.67 ------------********

55,786,861,663.77 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4033020&mesg_id=4033338

[Festivito]

130. Debt: 08/26/2009 11,716,563,436,531.39 (DOWN 13,837,185,918.92) (Both down.)

(Debt down under a billion, FICA side down thirteen and a third billion. I seem to have missed a day's report. Here's an extra report.)

= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 7,385,754,197,070.25 + 4,330,809,239,461.14
DOWN 466,043,865.86 + DOWN 13,371,142,053.06

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 307-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.25 each THAT'S 1B$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.76, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 10 seconds we net gain a another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 307,280,181 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 08/24/2009 13:24 -> 307,261,605
Currently, each of these Americans owe $38,129.9.
A family of three owes $114,389.71. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 24 reports in the last 30 to 33 days.
The average for the last 24 reports is 4,584,784,933.40.
The average for the last 30 days would be 3,667,827,946.72.
The average for the last 33 days would be 3,334,389,042.47.
There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 151 reports in 218 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.17B$ per report, 5.00B$/day so far.
There were 226 reports in 330 days of FY2009 averaging 7.49B$ per report, 5.13B$/day.

PROJECTION:
There are 1,243 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 13.4 and 18.1T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
08/26/2009 11,716,563,436,531.39 BHO (UP 1,089,686,387,618.31 so far since Obama took office.)

Fiscal Year ends: Sep 30
Borrowed in FY1993: (Maybe later.)
Borrowed in FY1994: 281,261,026,873.94
Borrowed in FY1995: 281,232,990,696.07
Borrowed in FY1996: 250,828,038,426.34
Borrowed in FY1997: 188,335,072,261.61
Borrowed in FY1998: 113,046,997,500.28
Borrowed in FY1999: 130,077,892,735.81
Borrowed in FY2000: _17,907,308,253.43 Bill alone
Borrowed in FY2001: 133,285,202,313.20 Bill and George
Borrowed in FY2002: 420,772,553,397.10 All George
Borrowed in FY2003: 554,995,097,146.46
Borrowed in FY2004: 595,821,633,586.70
Borrowed in FY2005: 553,656,965,393.18
Borrowed in FY2006: 574,264,237,491.73
Borrowed in FY2007: 500,679,473,047.25
Borrowed in FY2008: 1,017,071,524,650.01
Borrowed in FY2009: 1,691,838,539,618.90 so far this fiscal year, broken down below:
Borrowed in FY2009: 0,602,152,152,000.59 in part from time during Bush reign.
Borrowed in FY2009: 1,089,686,387,618.31 in part since Obama takes over.


LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
08/06/2009 -000,578,106,269.92 ---
08/07/2009 +000,290,467,707.81 ------------********
08/10/2009 +000,222,135,743.03 ------------******** Mon
08/11/2009 +000,246,752,500.45 ------------********
08/12/2009 +000,081,638,592.29 ------------*******
08/13/2009 +004,096,319,823.99 ------------*********
08/14/2009 +000,017,806,259.60 ------------*******
08/17/2009 +012,224,191,599.44 ------------********** Mon
08/18/2009 +036,282,270,009.21 ------------**********
08/19/2009 +000,703,521,737.77 ------------********
08/20/2009 +001,088,553,104.23 ------------*********
08/21/2009 +000,333,547,281.04 ------------********
08/24/2009 +000,472,040,908.69 ------------******** Mon
08/25/2009 +000,287,748,587.67 ------------********
08/26/2009 -000,466,043,865.86 ---

55,302,843,719.44 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4036155&mesg_id=4036188

[Festivito]

131. Debt: 08/27/2009 11,725,477,836,090.85 (UP 8,914,399,559.46) (Both up.)

(Debt up eight billion, FICA side up under a third billion.)

= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 7,393,885,646,934.29 + 4,331,592,189,156.56
UP 8,131,449,864.04 + UP 782,949,695.42

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 307-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.25 each THAT'S 1B$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.76, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 10 seconds we net gain a another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 307,288,821 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 08/24/2009 13:24 -> 307,261,605
Currently, each of these Americans owe $38,157.84.
A family of three owes $114,473.52. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 24 reports in the last 30 to 31 days.
The average for the last 24 reports is 4,903,770,467.13.
The average for the last 30 days would be 3,923,016,373.70.
The average for the last 31 days would be 3,796,467,458.42.
There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 152 reports in 219 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.18B$ per report, 5.02B$/day so far.
There were 227 reports in 331 days of FY2009 averaging 7.49B$ per report, 5.14B$/day.

PROJECTION:
There are 1,242 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 13.4 and 18.1T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
08/27/2009 11,725,477,836,090.85 BHO (UP 1,098,600,787,177.77 so far since Obama took office.)

Fiscal Year ends: Sep 30
Borrowed in FY1993: (Maybe later.)
Borrowed in FY1994: 281,261,026,873.94
Borrowed in FY1995: 281,232,990,696.07
Borrowed in FY1996: 250,828,038,426.34
Borrowed in FY1997: 188,335,072,261.61
Borrowed in FY1998: 113,046,997,500.28
Borrowed in FY1999: 130,077,892,735.81
Borrowed in FY2000: _17,907,308,253.43 Bill alone
Borrowed in FY2001: 133,285,202,313.20 Bill and George
Borrowed in FY2002: 420,772,553,397.10 All George
Borrowed in FY2003: 554,995,097,146.46
Borrowed in FY2004: 595,821,633,586.70
Borrowed in FY2005: 553,656,965,393.18
Borrowed in FY2006: 574,264,237,491.73
Borrowed in FY2007: 500,679,473,047.25
Borrowed in FY2008: 1,017,071,524,650.01
Borrowed in FY2009: 1,700,752,939,178.40 so far this fiscal year, broken down below:
Borrowed in FY2009: 0,602,152,152,000.59 in part from time during Bush reign.
Borrowed in FY2009: 1,098,600,787,177.77 in part since Obama takes over.


LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
08/07/2009 +000,290,467,707.81 ------------********
08/10/2009 +000,222,135,743.03 ------------******** Mon
08/11/2009 +000,246,752,500.45 ------------********
08/12/2009 +000,081,638,592.29 ------------*******
08/13/2009 +004,096,319,823.99 ------------*********
08/14/2009 +000,017,806,259.60 ------------*******
08/17/2009 +012,224,191,599.44 ------------********** Mon
08/18/2009 +036,282,270,009.21 ------------**********
08/19/2009 +000,703,521,737.77 ------------********
08/20/2009 +001,088,553,104.23 ------------*********
08/21/2009 +000,333,547,281.04 ------------********
08/24/2009 +000,472,040,908.69 ------------******** Mon
08/25/2009 +000,287,748,587.67 ------------********
08/26/2009 -000,466,043,865.86 ---
08/27/2009 +008,131,449,864.04 ------------*********

64,012,399,853.40 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4036155&mesg_id=4036958

[Demeter]

20. Spain's Toxic Waste Cleanup: Santander unveils €16bn bond buy-back

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2f24d60-9088-11de-bc99-00144feabdc0.html


"... Santander, Spain’s largest bank, launched a programme to buy back securitised bonds with a face value of €16.5bn ($23.6bn).

The deal, believed to be the biggest of its kind, is expected to help stabilise some debt markets by setting a floor for prices for securities that are often hard to value.

The bank said in a regulatory filing that the offer covered 27 different issues of bonds backed by mortgages, consumer credits and business loans.

The deal comes as Santander, in a separate deal, moves to replace more than 30 different debt securities with two new issues. In both cases, the aim is to profit from depressed pricing in the secondary markets.

“It could have a positive impact on securitisation markets by recycling cash back to investors, but also helps set a floor for prices for these products, which investors have struggled to establish during the financial crisis,” said Phil Adams, European securitisation strategist at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Although offering as little as 61 per cent of par value on some bonds in the latest proposal, Santander is likely to have pitched a few points above current trading values, making the offer attractive to institutional investors under pressure to mark their assets to market.

In June, Rabobank of the Netherlands bought back €986.5m worth of residential mortgage backed bonds at a discount...

The market is slowly reopening to banks to sell bonds to help fund their capital base.

Deutsche Bank yesterday launched a process to sell €300m-€500m of tier-one bonds targeted at retail investors, in a closely watched offering that could also help rebuild confidence in the debt markets.

Analysts said the Santander offer reflected the bank’s confidence that its clients would eventually pay back much of the underlying loans.

Santander expects to book profits from the deal, which it will set aside as provisions against non-performing credits."

WE WILL NEVER SEE SUCH PROGRESS HERE--UNCLE BEN WILL BAIL OUT BANKS FOREVER, WITH GEITHNER'S COLLUSION.

[ozymandius]

21. ATA Truck Tonnage Index Rose 2.1 Percent in July

ARLINGTON, VA — The American Trucking Associations’ advance seasonally adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index increased 2.1 percent in July. In June, SA tonnage fell 2.4 percent. July’s gain, which raised the SA index to 101.9 (2000=100), wasn’t large enough to completely offset the reduction in the previous month. The not seasonally adjusted (NSA) index, which represents the change in tonnage actually hauled by the fleets before any seasonal adjustment, equaled 106.3 in July, down 0.9 percent from June.

Compared with July 2008, SA tonnage fell 10.4 percent, which was the best year-over-year showing since February 2009. June’s 13.6 percent contraction was the largest year-over-year decrease of the current cycle.

.....

Trucking serves as a barometer of the U.S. economy, representing nearly 69 percent of tonnage carried by all modes of domestic freight transportation, including manufactured and retail goods. Trucks hauled 10.2 billion tons of freight in 2008. Motor carriers collected $660.3 billion, or 83.1 percent of total revenue earned by all transport modes.

http://www.truckline.com/pages/article.aspx?id=579%2F{8E1C7279-ED27-4C03-B189-CEEEE26BBB12}

[ozymandius]

22. Loans That Looked Easy Pose Threats to Recovery

When Harvey Clavon took out an exotic mortgage to refinance his home in Santa Clarita, Calif., three years ago, he thought he knew what he was doing.

Mr. Clavon, 63, was planning to sell the home in a few years and retire to Palm Springs. So he got a loan called an option adjustable rate mortgage, or option ARM, which allowed him to pay less than the interest for the first five years.

.....

Now Mr. Clavon is part of what many economists say is a looming threat to a housing recovery: more than a half-million option ARMs scheduled to reset in the next four years, at rates many homeowners cannot afford. His mortgage payments have risen to $2,700 a month because of a clause he did not notice on his contract, and are scheduled to rise above $4,000 in two years.

......

Option ARMs, which lenders stopped offering last year, gave borrowers four payment options: less than the interest, which increases the balance every month; just the interest; the equivalent of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage; and the equivalent of a 15-year fixed.

Three-quarters of borrowers take the minimum option, which usually expires after five years or when the balance reaches a cap, generally 110 percent to 125 percent of the original loan, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/us/27arms.html?_r=1

[ozymandius]

26. Have a nice day, folks.

I must get ready for work. Thank you all for your contributions of very thought-provoking reading.

:hi:

[Demeter]

28. See You Later Ozy! On the Weekend Economists Thread in Editorials Forum

I don't have a theme for this weekend yet--when I sleep, instead of schlepping papers all night, I don't have time for creative thinking...

It's been COLD and RAINY--like late October around here. They promise it will clear up Monday, but still be unseasonably cool (in the 60's and that's during the day in the sun!) How fair is that?

I've been in a "folk" mood. Thing is, folk tunes are seldom economically motivated. They are for the love-sick and romantically inclined...although there's a really old pirate tale I love...

[kickysnana]

31. Folk songs of the 30's did but not the 60's

Unsung verse of "This land is your land".."16 tons"... no sleep there must be more.

Here is a small list
http://folkmusic.about.com/od/toptens/tp/RecessionSongs.htm

[Demeter]

33. Okay! Then That's What We Will Do!

If my grandparents were alive--but they weren't into popular music, anyway, unless it was a polka....they were too busy trying to scratch out a living to sing about it.

[1955doubledie]

95. Songs of the Great Depression

http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Spare-Dime-Songs-Depression/dp/B000006KHU

Including:
6. I'm an Unemployed Sweetheart - Ted Wallace
11. Clouds Will Soon Roll By - Leo Reisman & His Orchestra
12. Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? - Charlie Palloy
14. If I Ever Get a Job Again - Dick Robertson
15. Remember My Forgotten Man
17. Are You Making Any Money? - Paul Whiteman Orchestra
20. Repeal the Blues - New Mayfair Orchestra, Ray Noble
23. Dusty Road - Nelson Eddy
24. Long as You've Got Your Health - Ray Noble & His Orchestra

[Hugin]

97. Don't forget the ultimate classic... "Happy Days Are Here Again"

"Happy days are here again" -- Annette Hanshaw


Happy days are here again,

the skies above are clear again

let us sing a song of cheer again

Happy days are here again,

Altogether shout it now

There's no one who can doubt it now

so let's tell the world about it now

Happy days are here again,

Your cares and troubles are gone

They're be no more from now on

Happy days are here again,

the skies above are clear again

let us sing a song of cheer again

Happy days are here again,



So long sad time, so long bad time

we are rid of you at last

Howdy gay times, cloudy gray times

you are now a thing of the past

Happy days are here again,

the skies above are clear again

let us sing a song of cheer again

Happy days are here again,



Altogether shout it now

There's no one who can doubt it now

so let's tell the world about it now

Happy days are here again,

Your cares and troubles are gone

They're be no more from now on

Happy days are here again,

the skies above are clear again

let us sing a song of cheer again

Happy days are here again,

Happy days are here again,

the skies above are clear again

let us sing a song of cheer again

Happy days are here again

- Happy Days Are Here Again Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ - (Many popups)

[Loge23]

74. May I suggest James McMurtry?

One of the best I ever heard!

http://www.jamesmcmurtry.com/we_cant_make_it_herelyrics.htm

[Demeter]

34. OH, CANADA (SIGH) Debt tripping up Canadians

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/660165

More than half a million Canadians have fallen behind on their various credit payments, fuelling a 19 per cent rise in the average national delinquency rate in the one-year period ending May 31, 2009, says a new report from Equifax Canada....

[Demeter]

35. Debt Burden Quickens Power Shift as G-8 Loses Clout (Update2)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=azyYcjXIyKQI

The world’s most affluent nations will take decades to work off the biggest buildup in debt since World War II. The political costs may be permanent, laid bare at this week’s Group of Eight summit of leading industrial powers.

Bank bailouts and recession-fighting measures will explode the debt of the advanced economies to at least 114 percent of gross domestic product in 2014, more than triple the 35 percent of the main emerging economies including China, the International Monetary Fund forecasts.

The run-up in debt has hastened a power shift that is sapping the industrial world’s authority to impose its economic doctrine, currency arrangements or greenhouse-gas reduction strategies. Even some G-8 officials acknowledge that the group has lost its grip amid the global recession they spawned...

[Demeter]

40. With Wounded Pride, Unemployed Koreans Quietly Turn to Manual Labor

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/world/asia/07pride.html?hp

With his clean white university sweatshirt and shiny cellphone, Lee Chang-shik looks the part of a manager at a condominium development company, the job that he held until last year’s financial panic — and the one he tells his friends and family he still holds.

But in fact, he leads a secret life. After his company went bankrupt late last year, he recently relocated to this remote fishing village to do the highest-paying work he could find in the current market: as a hand on a crab boat.

“I definitely don’t put crab fisherman on my résumé,” said Mr. Lee, 33, who makes the five-hour drive back to Seoul once a month to hunt for a desk job. “This work hurts my pride.”

Tales of the downwardly mobile have become common during the current financial crisis, and South Korea has had more than its share since the global downturn hammered this once fast-growing export economy. But they often have a distinctly Korean twist, with former white-collar workers going into more physically demanding work or traditional kinds of manual labor that are relatively well paid here — from farming and fishing to the professional back-scrubbers who clean patrons at the nation’s numerous public bathhouses.

Just as distinctly Korean may be the lengths to which some go to hide their newly humble status.

Mr. Lee says he carefully avoids the topic of work in phone conversations with friends and his parents, and dodges invitations to meet by claiming he is too busy. He gave his name with great reluctance, and only after being assured the article would not appear in Korean.

Another former white-collar worker who now works on a crab boat in the same village said he could not tell family and friends, and told his wife only via e-mail after arriving here. Yet another tells his parents that he is in Japan.

In a competitive, status-conscious society, these and other workers say they feel intense shame doing manual work. Some also say they feel guilty working such rough jobs after years of expensive cram schools and college. And many younger workers, having grown up in an increasingly affluent nation, consider physical labor a part of the bygone, impoverished eras of their parents and grandparents.

“These days, many South Koreans think they have the right to be white collar,” said Lee Byung-hee, senior economist at the Korea Labor Institute, a government-linked research organization based in Seoul. “But their expectations hit the dark reality of this economy, where people have no choice but to go into the blue-collar work force.”

Labor experts say the number of former office workers who are moving into blue-collar jobs has increased as South Korea has suffered its worst unemployment since the 1997 Asian currency crisis. According to the National Statistical Office, the unemployment rate has risen to 3.8 percent — low by American standards, but high for this Asian economic powerhouse.

Many of the unemployed can rely on traditional forms of economic support, like living with family. And despite the slowdown, jobs are still to be found in this prosperous society, where the neon-lit bustle of cities like Seoul has not missed a beat.

Still, Jeong Seung-beom, whose small Seoul-based firm helps recruit workers for South Korea’s fishing industry, says that this year is the busiest he has seen, even better than 1997, when white-collar workers also flooded his office.

He said his company, the Sea Job Placement Center, now places about 80 people a month, four times the number a year ago. Mr. Jeong said most of the new recruits were laid-off office workers or university students who could no longer afford tuition. Many of the newcomers are so woefully unprepared for the physical demands of fishing, he said, he tries to scare them during orientation sessions.

On a recent morning in his cramped office, six young men showed up with gym bags, ready to make the trip to Kunghang, near the nation’s southwest tip. Among them was Mr. Lee, the former condominium developer.

Mr. Jeong warned them that they might get seasick or homesick, or even be injured or killed on the crab boats, which can spend 14 hours a day at sea. When he paused for questions, one man in his 20s asked if he could go home during holidays.

“Crabs don’t take holidays,” Mr. Jeong scoffed.

Undaunted, all six went to Kunghang later that day.

Mr. Lee said he decided to fish because he could make about $1,700 a month, much more than he could earn in Seoul pouring lattes or busing tables. The high salaries stem from the chronic labor shortages in these occupations during the boom years when South Koreans shunned them as too dirty, leaving them to Asian migrant laborers.

Another allure is that many of these menial jobs seem to be recession-proof, workers and labor experts say.

Na Deuk-won, who owns a school in Seoul that trains back-scrubbers and bathhouse masseuses, says enrollment has jumped 50 percent this year, to 180 students, because of a sudden influx of university graduates and laid-off office workers.

“Even in a recession, people need their back scrubbed,” Mr. Na said.

At his Dongdaemun Bath Academy, students gathered in a tiled shower room to learn how to scrub naked customers with a pair of sponge mitts. One, Hyun Sung-chul, 48, said he had been supervising 50 workers as a manager at a construction company before losing his job in January.

At first, he said, he hid his enrollment in scrubbing school from family and friends, though he told his wife. When he finally confided about his career change to a friend, he was surprised when the friend confessed interest as well.

“He told me, ‘Teach me when I get fired, too!’ ” Mr. Hyun said. “I think people come into this field only when they are afraid that their livelihood is at risk.”

In Kunghang, many of the new crab fishermen recruited by Mr. Jeong expressed regrets about their choice.

“This is so smelly and dirty, it makes me want to vomit,” Kwak Jung-ho, 33, a branch manager of a cellphone store in Seoul before it closed this year, said as he cut tangled crabs out of a net.

“If my parents knew what I was doing now, they would pity me,” he said. “Now, I look at the ocean and think, I should have worked harder at the cellphone store, and be a better man for my family.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, time for some attitude adjustment. "Downwardly mobile" in my experience means someone sinking into the degradation of drug abuse, or uncontrolled physical or mental illness, or crime. That is true loss of social status which may never be recovered, even if one is "cured" or "rehabilitated". Those conditions produce true stains upon one's reputation and prospects. People will worry about the possibility of relapse.

To be without white-collar employment is not a crime or a social disease. To be without ANY employment, even under the counter, manual, or potentially shady, is much worse, but it is still not a crime, although it is the sign of a sick economy. So your degree isn't being economically exploited--you are not a worse person for it! You didn't suddenly become an uneducated lout with no redeeming features. You are just poor. That can change.

In the meanwhile, get on with life. Live, love, learn, grow, and organize, agitate, and volunteer to make change possible. Remember, there are still people much worse off: the drug addicted, the chronically ill, the morally unhinged. There is still work to do.

[tclambert]

68. Huh, Americans turn to sticking up 7-11s.

[1955doubledie]

99. Sure, why not?

"It's a great job. The hours are good. And you're your own boss. And you travel a lot. And you get to meet interesting people. I just think it's a good job in general." (Woody Allen, Take the Money and Run)

:spray:

[Demeter]

45. Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html

Published: April 7 2009 20:02 | Last updated: April 7 2009 20:02

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.

4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.

6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning . Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.

7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.

8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.

9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).

10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.

Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.

In other words, a place more resistant to black swans.

The writer is a veteran trader, a distinguished professor at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute and the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

[Epoon]

46. Barney shoots straight?

Video at the link.

http://market-ticker.org/
Please understand: I trust Barney Frank as far as I can throw him.

But if this really is what is going to happen - no BS, no games - we are really going to get an audit, we are really going to find out who's been lending to whom and on what collateral, we are really going to force The Fed to operate under a mandate of transparency - then I will have to have delivered to Mr. Frank some sort of token of appreciation (within House rules, of course.)

This is the first time I have heard him say straight-up, no-bs, no games: There will be an audit, The Fed will NOT keep the power they have abused (or refused to exercise) in a regulatory role and THE PEOPLE will finally get to know what sort of rigging of the market The Fed has employed and who they have empowered to lie when it comes to asset valuations and solvency.

I'm duly impressed.

Now let's see The Honorable Mr. Frank keep his promise.

[Epoon]

47. 1,000 Banks to Fail In Next Two Years: Bank CEO

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32581463
The US banking system will lose some 1,000 institutions over the next two years, said John Kanas, whose private equity firm bought BankUnited of Florida in May.

“We’ve already lost 81 this year,” Kanas told CNBC. “The numbers are climbing every day. Many of these institutions nobody’s ever heard of. They're smaller companies.” (See the accompanying video for the complete interview.)

Failed banks tend to be smaller and private, which exacerbates the problem for small business borrowers, said Kanas, who became CEO of BankUnited when his firm bought the bank and is the former chairman and CEO of North Fork bank.

“Government money has propped up the very large institutions as a result of the stimulus package,” he said. “There’s really very little lifeline available for the small institutions that are suffering.”

[Strong Atheist]

147. Welcome to DU!

:toast:

[Epoon]

49. Hummel: The US Will Default On Its Debt

http://www.businessinsider.com/hummel-the-us-will-default-on-its-debt-2009-8

The flood of debt that the US is taking on in its efforts rescue to economy will combine with huge social insurance obligations--Medicare, MedicaidSocial Security--to create an unsustainable level of public indebtedness, economist Jeffrey Rogers Hummel argues in at length here.

Faced with this mountain of debt, policy makers will have just two choices: repudiate the debt or engage in hyper inflation to monetize it, Hummel writes. And faced with that choice the Treasury will likely protect the currency and default on Treasuries.

Here's the scary conclusion:

It is not literally impossible that the Federal Reserve could unleash the Zimbabwe option and repudiate the national debt indirectly through hyperinflation, rather than have the Treasury repudiate it directly. But my guess is that, faced with the alternatives of seeing both the dollar and the debt become worthless or defaulting on the debt while saving the dollar, the U.S. government will choose the latter. Treasury securities are second-order claims to central-bank-issued dollars. Although both may be ultimately backed by the power of taxation, that in no way prevents government from discriminating between the priority of the claims. After the American Revolution, the United States repudiated its paper money and yet successfully honored its debt (in gold). It is true that fiat money, as opposed to a gold standard, makes it harder to separate the fate of a government's money from that of its debt. But Russia in 1998 is just one recent example of a government choosing partial debt repudiation over a complete collapse of its fiat currency.

A more likely outcome, it seems to us, is that the US will make good on Treasury debt but repudiate soft obligations like Social Security and Medicare. That way the US would continue to be able to borrow in the future. And all it would require would be a Congressional vote lowering the outlays for these programs.

[Demeter]

66. NO, That's the IMF Way

Defaulting on all the social contracts is what Wolfowitz and Co would have all nations do. It's a neoliberal, neocon CON!

The US will default on its tax cuts to the obscenely wealthy, its bloated Defense Dept and contractors, and Big Pharma and Medical. It will keep its commitment to the People, or else.

[DemReadingDU]

87. So how high will the national debt rise if gov keeps commitment to the People?

The national debt is almost $12 Trillion, and unfunded liabilities are almost $59 Trillion
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ (it's in my sig line)

How high can these amounts rise before everything collapses? Does the government default all of this? default some? hyperinflate like Zimbabwe? Start over with new currency?

I have no answers, but something will happen, but probably not in our lifetime. I worry for my little grandbabies.

[Demeter]

92. We Have to Take Out the GOP Tax Cuts and the GOP Wars

Then we can talk numbers. These two issues obscure and make irrelevant everything else. And they aren't valuable and worthy of keeping. Then take out the Zombie Banks. Same reasons.

Fix the fundamentals before killing off society.

[DemReadingDU]

93. Agree with you there

Except I don't think the lobbyists/banksters/politicians will do that. Our government is all about keeping their 'status quo'. For a long time, our government has not been 'of the people, by the people, for the people'.
:(

I think society has to rise up and revolt to get the fundamentals fixed. Which I believe will happen, but not for many many years, not in my lifetime (and I'm 60).

[Epoon]

98. I'm sorry but BOTH parties at fault.

Neither wars, tax cuts nor dead economy is limited to just the GOP.
Dems allowed the wars to happen, they voted for tax cuts and are just as culpable as Republicans on the dead economy.
Start by policing your own before blaming others.
I get so goddamned sick and tired of the party not assuming responsibility for anything. Of making the other guy the evil dog raping bastard while sneaking in their own guilty reach around.
What the fuck happened to lead by example? The Clinton years didn't bring about a land of milk and honey? As a matter of fact they made things worse or at least laid the foundation.
Tell me where the opposition was while Bush got everything his black heart wanted?
As much as Nader or Paul are belittled by Dems at least they would FIGHT for what they believe in not fall apart at the first bad poll numbers.
Until we start viewing politicians of BOTH parties as the enemy we the people will NEVER get what we continually state we want.
Here is a novel idea, why not individually send your elected rep a latter stating you will NEVER vote for his party nor donate money until you see your policy of choice enacted. Not a promise but actual passed legislation taking IMMEDIATE effect. You know like they do with banks and wars.
Further explain that all your money and effort will be dedicated to The Pirate Party, or the Pot Party anything OTHER than the duooply now in office. And you will continue following your own personal moral and ethical high road until you see REAL CHANGE!
Enough people do that and things will happen.

George Carlins words of wisdom.

"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.'"

"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain,' but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote -- who did not even leave the house on Election Day -- am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created."

[Epoon]

103. What Sibel says

http://123realchange.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The Poisoned Well

To Drink or Not to Drink


Once upon a time an evil witch visits a kingdom and poisons the central well with a potion that drives people mad. The next morning all who drink from that well go crazy. The king, however, knew about this in advance, and didn't drink from the communal well. The next day, those who drank the poisoned water came to the king and accused him of being the crazy one. The king, aware of what had transpired, was faced with a dilemma: drink from the well and lose his sanity like the rest of his subjects, but remain king; or don't drink, remain sane, but be swept from power by those who would view his very sanity as madness.


Today in our nation those who refrain from drinking from the well poisoned by the establishment witch are categorized, marginalized, and labeled mad, crazy, extremist, conspiracy theorists, and other adjectives along the same line:

Those driven by pure, agenda-free, and nonpartisan civil liberties motives are coined as die-hard unrealistic idealist liberals.

Those in government who dare to come forward, speak up, and tell the truth are labeled as disgruntled whistleblowers.

Those political candidates who choose to run as a ‘people’s candidate,’ not the establishment candidate representing this special interest or that foreign interest’s agenda, are referred to as nutcases, eccentrics, and crazies.

Those groups who fight for accountability and demand justice are dismissed as extremists.

Those activists who dare to ask for ‘real’ investigations in matters such as 9/11 are grouped and stuffed in a bucket as insane conspiracy theorists.

Those real investigative journalists and reporters who have defied the ‘dictation,’ refusing to become stenographers , have found themselves jobless and without paid outlets to publish.
...

Today in our nation, with the help of the mainstream media and the pseudo alternative-media alike, anyone who dares NOT to drink from the well poisoned by the establishment corruption, greed, abuses and lies, tainted foreign policy agenda, and cover-ups, is destined to find himself stuffed into the same bucket of crazies, loonies, the mad and insane.

Do you want me to be a bit more specific? My pleasure.

Since I recently posted excerpts from Representative Ron Paul’s speech titled ‘Is America a Police State?’ let’s start with him. During his Presidential candidacy he was consistently, and falsely, marginalized as Anti-Semite, racist, extremist, radical, and many other pejorative adjectives. Who did that? Not only the mainstream media, but also those pseudo alternatives who happen to be the extension of the same establishment media only with a different front/mask. These adjectives and intentional marginalization were used for other candidates as well. Whether it was Representative Kucinich being depicted as a wacky nutcase chasing UFOs, or others with similar non-establishment platforms.

I can write several volumes on how whistleblowers, especially those threatening ones from the Intelligence, defense, and law enforcement agencies were viciously attacked and falsely depicted by establishment operatives. Whether based on my own personal experience, or my 150+-member whistleblower organization, or the many friends and acquaintances I’ve listened to throughout the last 8 years, I’ve got plenty of examples.

Remember the burial of AIPAC Espionage Case and Trial? The FBI agents pursuing the involved treasonous criminals were painted as Anti-Semite witch-hunters. A very few investigative journalists, such as Stein of CQ, were portrayed as Right Wing Conspirators attempting to go after their darling filthy senior Democrat representatives. Please be my guest and go check the pseudo Israel-serving alternative media front-runners’ sites’ archive.

The recent sound and needed call by the groups who still seek ‘real’ answers via real investigations into the terrorists attack on September 11 is another specific and recent example. I am talking about the gigantic holes in the fable produced by a group of well-poisoners who had spent their entire career-life in the pockets of the conning establishment. I am talking about dozens of FBI, CIA and other relevant agency insiders such as Coleen Rowley who’ve been demanding an independent and real investigation. The mainstream media and their extension in the pseudo online media have made sure that these voices and calls are either buried, or spun as collective conspiracy theorists worthy of only ridicule.

Let me give you another specific example. People have been forwarding to me communications they have received via popular pseudo progressive online outlets who have been trying very hard to depict my recent sworn testimony as ‘mere allegations,’ and simply lies. I know some of these individuals’ past work and relations. For the last 8 years I have ignored them, and I will continue to do so. Some of these phoney cowards who have been posing as ‘alternative’ are fairly well-known in Washington DC circles and intelligence-related gatherings. One ex-state department operative, who is a regular face in DC cocktail circuits for the State Department and relevant think-tank well-poisoners, either intentionally or out of stupid naivety started this propaganda rumor that ‘I got a glimpse of a much bigger sting operation that I don’t understand, thus rightfully I’ve been gagged...’ This is what you get from Mr. Grossman’s personal buddy;-). Another one - who is now a favorite among Israel circle money pockets and who’s been receiving million dollar donations/investment - has recently been promoting me as a ‘crackpot.’ Coming from him, I consider it an honor. Honored to not be a poisoned-well-drinker. They may produce a good work here and there, but these people are by no means ‘non-establishment,’ and whether intentionally or not they try their darnest to get you to drink from the well.
...

Anyway. The reason I am writing this post while busy traveling is this:
I’ve been corresponding with several well-known and very-well-respected investigative journalists who are willing to cover some of these blacked-out stories, cases, and issues; do so as solid investigative work. However, they need to make a living. One way they can do this is to get paid per story/work as contract journalists, and cover exclusive and explosive stories for this site - which will have a new home soon.

Instead of sitting on our bu..s and pulling our hair when it comes to absent journalism in our country today we can go ahead and do something about it. Well, I am in a position where I believe I can do something about it. I can increase the frequency of my exclusive radio interviews to weekly or maybe even more frequently. I can hire several experienced and well-known journalists to cover some of the issues we’ve been discussing. I can do all this only with your support. I don’t want to, I have no desire, no intention, to chase funders and get inside their pockets to do this. Once you do that, you are done; you’ve drunk from the poisoned-well. That’s a fact. Whether those who do it accept it or not, it is what it is. Also, I am not interested in a strategy targeting advertisers for funding. That too defeats the purpose; at least my purpose. So we have only one option left: a site for the people (at least those who don’t want to drink from the well), by the people.


Okay. Now it is your turn. Please let me know if you are ready to support this. Also, let others know and get their take. After my return I will be in a position to decide which way to go, and the major part in this decision will come from you.

[1955doubledie]

104. Yup, Democrats and Republicans. Exactly the same.

:eyes:

[Epoon]

105. You are either on the bus

or off the bus
So you don't want health care? Civil rights? Clean environment?
You want to be a slave to big business and the rich?
Your choice.

I read something like your statement and see paid poster. I can't say for certain. I'll have to watch the pattern. Thankfully the paid guys always follow the party line and have little subtlety.
Really the bosses need to higher better quality plants.
Or you could just be politically naive.

[Hugin]

107. Speaking as one "under-the-bus"... I can say.

That's not entirely true.

[Epoon]

109. Close enough though.

There are minor differences but overall the same money grubbing attitudes apply.
Politicians live in a world with virtually no natural predators. They can grow fat and lazy because they have minimal threat.
Much like Blacks and the Democratic party, non right leaning people have no where else to go.
Really we do.
We can have a moral stand.
People once maintained those.
Sure I read the bluster and threat about if we don't get this or that we will not vote for him or her. In the end the vote becomes justified because we can't allow the other guy to win.
If you don't want to eat the shit sandwich don't take the first bite.
Every single time one compromises their integrity it makes the next time easier. We lose our virtue and end with nothing.
Where does it end?
It ends with the first person saying NO! And continually repeating it until others take up the chant.

[tclambert]

136. A third option? Love it.

You're either on the bus, off the bus, or under the bus.

[Wednesdays]

108. I'm with him

WTF are YOU doing here?

Now, I have to leave. I have a paycheck to cash. :rofl:

[Epoon]

111. Me?

Really is this how you win your argument?
I don't lose a damn thing NOT posting, but you do.
I don't lose a damn thing NOT voicing my opinions, but you do.
Obviously I'm not the only one here or other sites stating the obvious about what complete and utter losers Democrats have been.
Christ we are forced into defending a man getting blown in the oval office. A man who refuses to be clear on the word "is".
That isn't FDR or JFK or even Jimmy Carter.
You either play for the politicians or for the people. Simple as that.

[Wednesdays]

112. Keep on talking

You show your real colors with each post you type.

[Demeter]

113. If You Want to Pick a Fight With Someone, Could You Do It On Another Thread, Please?

This isn't the Lounge or even GD.

[Name removed]

116. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Tansy_Gold]

137. I think there's an old adage about a door that would apply here

Just so you folks know, newbies and oldies alike: The Alert button is one of my best friends on DU. I do NOT hesitate to use it.



Tansy Gold, who like many others finds SMW a peaceful refuge and will determinedly fight to keep it that, no matter how oxymoronic that may sound/read

[tclambert]

144. Oh, snap. A message deleted on SMW. That's rare.

Please, Tansy, don't push alert on me! I'll be good, I promise. I even agreed with Demeter once today.

[DemReadingDU]

91. Hummel: Why Default on U.S. Treasuries is Likely

John Carney's short article above, links to the full Hummel article...

8/3/09 Why Default on U.S. Treasuries is Likely
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel*

Almost everyone is aware that federal government spending in the United States is scheduled to skyrocket, primarily because of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Recent "stimulus" packages have accelerated the process. Only the naively optimistic actually believe that politicians will fully resolve this looming fiscal crisis with some judicious combination of tax hikes and program cuts. Many predict that, instead, the government will inflate its way out of this future bind, using Federal Reserve monetary expansion to fill the shortfall between outlays and receipts. But I believe, in contrast, that it is far more likely that the United States will be driven to an outright default on Treasury securities, openly reneging on the interest due on its formal debt and probably repudiating part of the principal.

To understand why, we must look at U.S. fiscal history. Economists refer to the revenue that government or its central bank generates through monetary expansion as seigniorage. Outside of America's two hyperinflations (during the Revolution and under the Confederacy during the Civil War), seigniorage in this country peaked during World War II, when it covered nearly a quarter of the war's cost and amounted to about 12 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By the Great Inflation of the 1970s, seigniorage was below two percent of federal expenditures or less than half a percent of GDP.1 This was partly a result of globalization, in which international competition disciplines central banks. And it also was the result of sophisticated financial systems, with fractional reserve banking, in which most of the money that people actually hold is created privately, by banks and other financial institutions, rather than by government. Consider how little of your own cash balances are in the form of government-issued Federal Reserve notes and Treasury coin, rather than in the form of privately created bank deposits and money market funds. Privately created money, even when its quantity expands, provides no income to government. Consequently, seigniorage has become a trivial source of revenue, not just in the United States, but also throughout the developed world. Only in poor countries, such as Zimbabwe, with their primitive financial sectors, does inflation remain lucrative for governments.

rest of long article...
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2009/Hummeltbills.html#


*Jeffrey Rogers Hummel is Associate Professor of economics at San Jose State University and the author of Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Some of his more recent writings can be found on the Liberty & Power group blog.

[Demeter]

141. Very Interesting

I must go home and read the rest of this carefully.

[Epoon]

50. Recession hitting Farms

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/
From the WSJ: Recession Finally Hits Down on the Farm (ht Bob_in_MA)

The Agriculture Department forecast Thursday that U.S. farm profits will fall 38% this year, indicating that the slump is taking hold in rural America. ... The Agriculture Department said it expects net farm income -- a widely followed measure of profitability -- to drop to $54 billion in 2009, down $33.2 billion from last year's estimated net farm income of $87.2 billion, which was nearly a record high.

And from the Chicago Fed August AgLetter:

Farmland values for the second quarter of 2009 were 3 percent lower than a year ago in the Seventh Federal Reserve District. ... Almost 30 percent of the responding bankers expected farmland values to fall in the third quarter of 2009, whereas 71 percent expected stable farmland values.

This will probably mean lower food prices, from the WSJ:

For most Americans, the chill in the farm belt is related to one of the few positives they see in this economy: slowing inflation. Prices farmers are receiving for everything from corn and wheat to hogs are down sharply from last year.

[Robbien]

59. Hay yields down, prices on rise

BRANDON – Hay yields are down across the province, and Manitoba cattle producers are feeling the pinch of low reserves and top dollar feed bales.

Extremes of excess moisture in the Interlake to notably dry weather in southwestern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta have decimated the Prairie hay crop.

And any hay that has been grown in Manitoba is of poor quality, says Jane Thornton, a forage and pasture specialist with Manitoba Agriculture.

"That is really driving hay prices up considerably," Thornton said.

. . .

Stoop himself has a self-sufficient dairy operation, and grows enough hay to feed both his dairy and beef cattle. But many of his neighbours are telling him they’ll cull their herds before buying their way into bankruptcy.

"It’s just not feasible to buy hay to feed the cattle," Stoop said.

"People are going to hang on to the better quality cows and cull out anything they don’t need."

Lower grade bales range between $50 and $60 per bale right now, and for producers watching the value of their beef stocks plunging in the marketplace, hay has become a luxury they can’t afford.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/breakingnews/Hay-yields-down-prices-on-rise-55703562.html


While this is Canada, the situation is pretty much the same here in the US.

[Epoon]

51. Racketeering 101: Bailed Out Banks Threaten Systemic Collapse If Fed Discloses Information

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/racketeering-101-bailed-out-banks-threaten-systemic-collapse-if-fed-discloses-information
Racketeering 101: Bailed Out Banks Threaten Systemic Collapse If Fed Discloses Information
And so the guns come out blazing. The Clearing House Association, another name for all the banks that were bailed out over the past year with the generous contributions from all of you, dear taxpayers, are now threatening with another instance of complete systemic collapse if Bloomberg's lawsuit is allowed to proceed unchallenged, let alone if any of the "Audit The Fed" measures are actually implemented.

As a reminder, The Clearing House Association consists of ABN Amro, Bank Of America, The Bank Of New York, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, US Bank and Wells Fargo.

In a declaration filed in the Bloomberg Case (08-CV-9595, Southern District of New York), the banks demonstrate no shame in attempting to perpetuate the status quo with regard to the Federal Reserve and demand that the wool over the eyes of the general population remain firmly planted in perpetuity.

The Clearing House submits this declaration because the Court's Order threatens to impair the ability of our members to access emergency funds through the New York Fed's Discount Window without suffering the severe competitive harm that public disclosure of their identity will cause.

[Epoon]

53. The Holdup - David Bromberg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QxqEALeoVU
The holdup - David Bromberg

STICK UP YOUR HANDS, YOU MUST STAND AND DELIVER,
MY STOMACH'S EMPTY, MY CLOTHES ARE ALL TORN.
OPEN YOUR HEARTS TO THE JOYS OF THE GIVER,
ALL OF YOUR POCKETS ARE TERRIBLY WORN.

THIS IS A HOLDUP, NO WAY TO MISTAKE IT,
WE'RE MEN OF VIOLENCE SO DON'T FOOL AROUND.
IF YOU HAVE MONEY, WE'RE GOING TO TAKE IT,
YOU'LL TRY AND STOP US, YOU'LL END UNDERGROUND.

WHEN WE HAVE YOUR MONEY, WE'LL RIDE TOWARDS THE SUNSET.
AT ROSA'S CANTEEN WE'LL STOP AT THE DOOR.
WE'LL SPEND ALL YOUR MONEY JUST GETTING THE NOSE WET,
TOMORROW EVENING WE'LL BE BACK FOR MORE.

SO HAND US THE MONEY, DON'T STAND THERE AND SHIVER,
TAX TIME IS COMING, GIVE ALMS TO THE POOR.
OR I´LL PUT A BULLET RIGHT THROUGH YOUR BEST LIVER,
WEALTH IS DISEASE AND I AM THE CURE.

WHEN WE HAVE YOUR MONEY, WE'LL RIDE TOWARDS THE SUNSET.
AT ROSA'S CANTEEN WE'LL STOP AT THE DOOR.
WE'LL SPEND ALL YOUR MONEY JUST GETTING THE NOSE WET,
TOMORROW EVENING WE'LL BE BACK FOR MORE.

SO HAND US THE MONEY, DON'T STAND THERE AND SHIVER,
TAX TIME IS COMING, GIVE ALMS TO THE POOR.
OR I´LL PUT A BULLET RIGHT THROUGH YOUR BEST LIVER,
WEALTH IS DISEASE AND I AM THE CURE,
I AM THE CURE,
I AM THE CURE,
I AM THE....

[Demeter]

72. I Call. Let Them All Go Under

They earned it.

[UpInArms]

52. dollar watch

http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?acs=NYBOT_DX&v=i

Last trade 78.005 Change -0.084 (-0.11%)

Currency Market Bull Trend Stalling as Growth Forecast and Financial Stability Loose Traction

http://www.dailyfx.com/story/topheadline/Currency_Market_Bull_Trend_Stalling_1251419522763.html



High volatility has carried over from last week owing largely to low levels of liquidity that amplify intraday market swings. However, despite the high level of activity in the market, direction is still a missing vital component of the long-term bull trend that investors have steadily funded since the reversal in risk appetite back in March. Once again, the question of whether the past six months have represented a genuine bull market or merely a bear market retracement is being posed. Eventually, genuine fundamentals and the sedate forecasts they project will have to be reconciled with the steady rise in investor sentiment; and at these levels it is increasingly clear which is growing overextended. Most capital markets have shown an unbroken, bullish bias that has retraced a significant portion of the unprecedented losses through the 2007-2008 financial crisis. For the popular equities market, the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average has advanced nearly 50 percent from its lows in the first quarter. What’s more, the index has risen for every one of the last eight sessions. Yet, thanks to easily compiled volume data, we can see that the conviction behind this move has become severely taxed. Not only has the general investment in this market cycle started to deteriorate since it began; but the weekly average has fallen to its lowest levels for the year. For the FX market, the progress of risk appetite is reflected in the performance of high potential currencies against those that are stationary or deteriorating (as measured by yield). Both the dollar and Japanese yen have developed relative levels of support over the past weeks against counterparts like the euro, Australian and New Zealand dollar.

While congestion has become a common sight across the markets, it is clear that the general bias is still positive. Speculative interests are well supported – especially with a considerable portion of the market’s investable capital still held in relatively ‘risk-free’ securities like Treasuries and money market accounts. Nonetheless, the influx of capital cannot be sustained on capital appreciation alone. Eventually, the profit potential in investing in an oversold market will dry up as demand for return quickly overwhelms the yield that the global markets can support. Just when will this shift happen is a matter of significant debate. Policy officials have carefully articulated their forecasts for growth by suggesting an initial recovery from the worst recession since WWII will be followed by a period of weak expansion. Naturally, this is not the type of markets that wealth and yields grow in. What we await now is a catalyst to align the markets to fundamentals. The most immediate threat is the recent ruling by a US court that the Federal Reserve must release the details it has on hand of its emergency lending programs (with names and amounts) by August 31st. While this ruling can be appealed and delayed; it could still unsettle confidence in the credit markets and fuel fears of another wave of runs on banks (the kind that led to the collapse of Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers). Even if this threat never materializes, there are still many other active hazards. Recently, the FDIC reported the number of troubled banks rose to a 15-year high 416. The market cannot support issues like this for very long.

...more...

Pound Remains Supported As U.K. GDP Revised Higher, But Downside Risks Remain

http://www.dailyfx.com/story/dailyfx_reports/daily_brief/Pound_Remains_Supported_As_U_K__1251456246633.html

The pound built upon its recent gains on the back of an improved second quarter GDP reading reaching as high as 1.6340. The second reading of growth was revised higher to -0.7 from -0.8% as private consumption and government spending were stronger than initially estimated. This was reflected in the improvement in the index of services to -0.6% from -1.0%. However, we saw consumer confidence hold steady at -25 according to the Gfk survey which missed estimates of -24. This could raise concerns as consumers may be reluctant to return to their normal spending habits if they remained concern over future growth.

The GDP figures also raised some concerns as we saw exports decline from -1.6% to -2.7% and gross fixed capital spending shrink to -4.5% from -3.8%. Although both components saw significant improvements from the first quarter the lack of demand from abroad and investment in new projects should continue to keep labor markets depressed and consumers retrenched. Therefore, we could see the improvement in consumption levels flattened going forward which could limit the scope of a U.K. economic recovery. Any upside potential for the pound may be limited by these concerns. We still see potential for the GBP/USD to test 1.600 and beyond as the head & shoulder’s formation unfolds. A break above resistance at 1.6459 the 50-Day SMA could change our bias.

The Euro spent the majority of the overnight session consolidating its gains from yesterday despite a jump in Euro-Zone economic confidence to 80.6 from 76.0. Growth in the second quarter from the region’s largest economies Germany and France has raised hopes that they could lift the region out of its current recession. A sharp improvement in the service sector from -18 to -11 made the biggest contribution to the incr4ased optimism. A slight rise in consumer confidence to -22 from -23 was a positive but it missed estimate s of -21which could fuel concerns that consumers remain shell shocked from the credit crisis and will continue to curb spending until they see stronger evidence of a recovery. The EURUSD’s failed test of 1.4400 could be a sign that the pair may remain range bound between 1.4000-1.4500 and a test of the lower bound may be ahead.

The U.S. dollar has firmed after yesterday’s sell off when we saw investors cast aside doubts that a recovery was unsustainable and continued to feed their appetite for risky assets. The consistent improvement in fundamental data globally has led investors to increase their bets, which continues to lead to dollar weakness as they exit the safe haven of U.S. Treasury bonds. Equity markets remain supported in Asian and European trading and with U.S. futures pointing toward a higher open we could see dollar weakness resume. Expected positive readings in personal income and spending of 0.1% and 0.2% respectively should continue to feed optimism. Indeed, rising stock markets have started to lift the hopes of the consumer which have been weighed by labor market concerns. The final University of Michigan consumer confidence reading for August is expected to be revised higher to 64.0 from 63.2.

...more...

[UpInArms]

55. Tiffany results beat estimates, shares up (the rich are still getting richer)

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE57R1XF20090828?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

BANGALORE (Reuters) - Upscale jeweler Tiffany & Co (TIF.N) posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit on Friday as it squeezed out costs and saw a modest improvement in demand for its pricey baubles.

The company, which reduced selling, general and administrative expenses by 14 percent in the quarter, said it is pursuing a more modest pace of store expansion this year, citing economic conditions.

Tiffany's net profit fell to $56.8 million, or 46 cents a share, for the second quarter ended July 31, from $80.8 million, or 63 cents a share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, the profit per share was 39 cents, beating analysts' average forecast of 33 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

...more...

[Epoon]

56. The World's 50 Safest Banks

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
http://www.gfmag.com/tools/bank-rankings/2341-words-50-safest-banks-2009.htm
New York, August 25, 2009 — With bank stability still high on corporate and investor agendas,Global Finance publishes its 18th annual list of the world’s safest banks. After two tumultuous years that saw many of the world’s most respected banks drop out of the top-50 safest banks list, the dust appears to be settling. Those banks that kept an iron grip on their risk exposure before the financial crisis blew up have consistently topped the table and maintain their standing among the top echelon in this year’s ranking. At the same time, the big name banks that lost their safest bank ranking during the credit crunch are still absent from the list as they struggle to rebuild their credit standing. The “World’s 50 Safest Banks” 2009 were selected through a comparison of the long-term credit ratings and total assets of the 500 largest banks around the world. Ratings from Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch were used. Global Finance has published its “World’s Safest Banks” listing for 18 years and this ranking has become a recognized and trusted standard of creditworthiness for the entire financial world. “It’s been a bumpy two years for the rating agencies and many of the banks they evaluate,”says Global Finance publisher Joseph D. Giarraputo. “More than ever customers all around the world are viewing long term creditworthiness as the key feature of the banks with which they do business.”

[Demeter]

75. Thanks! I Needed That!

How confident are you in the information?

[Epoon]

79. Not sure.

You can check the sites out.
Most of them are international so probably a little safer.
I see HSBC is listed. I assume they are the same doing business in the US.

[Epoon]

57. Demand Destruction Price Deflation

http://www.mybudget360.com/
Demand Destruction Price Deflation: Earnings up when you Fire Employees. California Lowering Tax Brackets. Social Security no Cost of Living Adjustments.
The Consumer Price Index has shown a year over year decline for the first time since the 1950s. This in itself has added fuel to the growing flame of the menace of deflation. Yet what we are seeing in the psychical world in the form of price declines is directly linked to demand destruction and the evaporation of old debts in the form of foreclosures and bankruptcies for example. In a fiat currency like the one we have, the Federal Reserve with the aid of the U.S. Treasury has no bounds in how much money it can print. But we have seen in this recession nearly $14 trillion in household wealth disappear and this wealth destruction has occurred at a faster pace than any money creation. The CPI going negative for the first time in half a century will look like full-fledged deflation by the public. After all, with housing prices bursting from the bubble and other items going down in price, what else is the consumer to expect?

[Epoon]

58. From dust to bust, America's poor take on a new type of monster

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/27/grapes-of-wrath-1-tulsa
From dust to bust, America's poor take on a new type of monster
Seventy years after The Grapes of Wrath, Chris McGreal recreates John Steinbeck's famous fictional journey to reveal life in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression

"We find a lot of people who come to us with a medical need but wouldn't set foot in the door of a church," said the mobile clinic's nurse, Lynn Hersey. "They want to check and see if someone who is a Christian can be trusted with one little thing, if they're going to shove Jesus down their throat because they ate the bait and came in through the door."

But there's another kind of evangelising at work too, involving a web of interests more focussed on Mammon than the Almighty. Much of Good Samaritan's work is funded by hospitals trying to keep patients who cannot pay out of emergency rooms, where they must be treated for any immediate health crisis by law whether they can pay or not. Those same hospitals have an interest in promoting charity as an alternative to President Obama's plans for government to take the lead in getting healthcare to the poor and the middle classes likely to be bankrupted by catastrophic illness.

Good Samaritan makes no secret of where it stands on the issue; the government has no business involving itself in healthcare.

"Governments treat you like a number," said the organisation's director, Dr John Crouch. "I really believe that there has to be a way to cover the folks who can't get care at all, and I think one of the ways is what we're doing. Maybe there's a different way of funding us, besides just funding us through our donations. We're emphasising that the more all the time."

[Epoon]

61. At least it isn't this bad yet.

[Epoon]

62. New monster in town

[tclambert]

77. Love the 'toon.

Jesustan!

[Epoon]

85. Jesusland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesusland_map

Richard Morgan's book Thirteen has a nifty little outline on the breakup of the US. The main character spends some time in a Jesusland prison.
Good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Richard-K-Morgan/dp/0345480899/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251465433&sr=1-2

[Epoon]

65. Change we can believe in

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082704065.html
The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.
...
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday framed the new policy as an enhancement of oversight. "Keeping Americans safe in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen materials entering the United States," she said in a statement. "The new directives announced today strike the balance between respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders."

For instance, searches conducted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers should now generally take no more than 5 days, and no more than 30 days for searches by Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents. The directives also require for the first time that automated tools be developed to ensure the reliable tracking of statistics relating to searches, and that audits be conducted periodically to ensure the guidelines are being followed, officials said.

Such measures drew praise from House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who called the new policy "a major step forward," and from Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), who introduced legislation this year to strengthen protections for travelers whose devices are searched.

[Epoon]

69. Source: Richardson Probe "Was Killed In Washington"

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/source_richardson_probe_was_killed_in_washington.php
Source: Richardson Probe "Was Killed In Washington"
Remember that federal investigation into an alleged pay-to-play deal that derailed New Mexico governor Bill Richardson's bid to be commerce secretary? Well, it's looking like the governor and his top aides will avoid charges.

But the way things shook out may only raise more questions.

A "person familiar with the investigation" told the AP that top Justice Department officials had made the decision not to bring charges, adding that the probe "was killed in Washington."

Investigators were looking into New Mexico's 2004 decision to award lucrative contracts for managing bonds transactions to CDR Financial Products. The firm gave over $110,000 to Richardson political committees between 2003 and 2005. One $75,000 contribution came less than a week before CDR was selected for the contract. The focus of the probe had been on the governor and three of his close aides or advisers, one of whom, David Harris, led the state finance agency that officially picked CDR.

[Demeter]

86. At this point, who cares?

If there wasn't anything to prosecute, it was just slander and a fishing expedition.

If there is a crime, it will out.

[Epoon]

100. It is TPM

Not like a Right wing site is making the claim.

[Name removed]

106. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tclambert]

138. Epoon hasn't posted anything more negative than Tansy Gold or Demeter or The Watcher.

Just ask Tansy about the appointment of Geithner or Summers. You'll get crispy on one side. To me, it sounds like honest debate, and I'm for that. I suspect he might be a Naderite myself. He spells too well to be a Freeper.

[Epoon]

71. Latin America Moving Away From Drug Prohibition?

http://agonist.org/nat_wilson_turner/20090827/latin_america_moving_away_from_drug_prohibition
The Argentinian Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to punish people for smoking marijuana as long as they harm no one else.

Combined with Mexico's enactment of laws decriminalizing possession of small quantities of some drugs and Brazil's 2006 decriminalization of consumption, this has the NY Times talking about what it all means:

The new laws and court decisions in the region reflect an urgent desire to reject decades of American prescriptions for distinctly Latin American challenges. Countries in the region are seeking to counteract prison overcrowding, a rise in organized crime and rampant drug violence affecting all levels of society, but in particular the poor and the young.

In February, a commission led by three former Latin American presidents issued a scathing report that condemned Washington’s “war on drugs” as a failure and urged the region to adopt drug policies found in some European countries that focus more on treatment than punishment.

“The global consensus on drug policy is cracking, and an increasing number of countries are agreeing that over-reliance on criminal justice as the ‘solution’ to the drug problem is not helpful at best, and is often harmful,” said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Open Society Institute's Global Drug Policy Program, based in Warsaw, who advocates for treatment for users rather than prison time.

[Epoon]

76. Sadly there is No Obama unicorn bacon pic

I tried. I really tried. But there are no Obama astride a unicorn eating Bacon pictures.
Not even one where he is consuming fish while mounted pon his trusty unicorn. It is Friday.
Maybe I should try Obama Narwhal Bacon.
Or Obama Three Wolf t-shirt.
If only all of the above could be combined then the problems of the nation would be solved.

[Epoon]

82. I found this adivce on my future money issue.

Going all the way back to my original posts last weekend I found this money advice.
Well I actually copied a bunch of stuff from related topics other places. I haven't sorted it just posted each point as I found them.
Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service (CDARS) was a nice discovery.
Maybe it is useful to others.

If you have more than $250,000 in deposits, consider signing up for a Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service (CDARS), a program in which you can deposit more than the insured limit with one participating bank, says Jim Chessen, the chief economist at the American Bankers Association. Your bank will swap the amount in excess of $250,000 to another bank so that you maintain full FDIC protection on your investment. The money is at multiple banks, but you sign one agreement with the participating bank of your choice, earn one interest rate on all your accounts, and receive a regular statement. To locate a bank that offers this program in your region, click

do a rolling CD investment plan. By this I mean don't put 25,000 into one CD, but put 4 grand into a one year cd every other month for a year. This way, every two months you'll have a CD maturing that you can cash out with if you absolutely need access to the money.Consider a one-time adjustable rate CD because if they go up, you can adjust the rate to make it higher and dump in more money, depending on your institution.I would do CD laddering to protect against the risk of the rates rising in the near term.

http://www.mybanktracker.com/bank-news/2009/07/02/the-cd-ladder-explained-maximizing-yields-and-balancing-risks/


For a list of current CD rates: http://www.mybanktracker.com/cd-rates


below to put them in to Treasury Bonds and Corporate Bonds. that's not a bad idea either, but it got me thinking. and I just realized something: Municipal Bonds. forget CD's, Municipal Bonds will pay very high interest over a period of 10-20 years, and $25,000 is the floor for buying one (the investment range is usually $25,000 to $50,000, but it can vary depending on the needs of the municipality issuing).Just make sure the city you live in will make good on the bond - a lot of angry people are sitting in california right now with IOU payments from the government as opposed to their money :)

#

Check into money market accounts (such as those offered by INGDirect or other online banks) that provide near-instant access to cash at all times while also providing a percentage return. When I checked rates a year ago, the CD actually provided less return until you started getting to 5, 10, and 20 year CDs. You don't want to tie your money up that long, and given your uncertainty, the 1.5% return in a money market account might not be a bad first start.
#

My money market account was 5% until the crash, and the rates change regularly. CDs can lock you into a rate and you'll miss out if and when interest bounces back up (it certainly can't drop much farther down). I suggest having 2 banks - one online for money market cash storage, and a bank or credit union with physical locations near you for checking and deposits/withdrawals. All transactions can be easily completed online within 2 business days, making life easier.

Start a Roth IRA. It is NEVER to early to start saving for retirement!
Put $5,000 into U.S. Treasury I-BondsMaximize your 2009 contribution to a Roth IRA (that's $5,000).

CDs are not keeping up with inflation. You should find a broker at a very conservative firm and have them help you pick out a mix of Mutual Funds, ETFs, Bonds and even a CD. Diversification protects you from both downside and inflation. I would look at working with an older broker at Edward Jones. They were conservative to begin with and have grown more paranoid with the downturn. Taxation will not be a worry for you until you actually make enough to warrant the concern.

A good broker will be a bit more expensive but in the end it will be worth it. Many on here will bring up specious arguments and paranoid pronouncements. The reality is, as someone who inherited 30,000 when my grandfather died, my father was already dead, you need someone to help you with your money. You need someone to be responsible to when you get a wild hair to buy a car, buy a boat or a house. You will be tempted to start a business without a business plan or loan money to friends for their business. A broker will be a sounding board that at least in regards to your nest egg will keep you from making bad decisions too.

Try a low cost, low risk mutual fund. You can get one via Ameritrade or other service. Reinvest the dividends into the fund. A fund like the one below may only go up 6% per year but it also pays dividends and is low risk. Don't give you money to a bank, they earn the interest and pay small percentage of what they earn.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=vfcix


Or take a few dollars and go see a financial planner. He'll tell you what to do and it will be close to what I have just said. Broad based or index low cost mutual fund. Good luck

The other money I would split between CDs and mutual funds. One the CD's, pick several long term and several short term CDs to stagger when they come due. On the mutual fund, pick two or three that appeal to you and invest $100 a month in each one.

Put it into a GIC, or, if you want to get really creative, buy 5 GIC's of $5000 each, in 5 different currencies, from western countries. (IE: Canada, Australia, NZ, US, and EUR) or something similar, and sit on them. Leave it invested for about 10 years.

BUY REAL ESTATE while it's still cheap. If you can do any home improvement it's not hard to run a rental and pay your mortgage with the rental alone.

As real estate goes up so will your income and property value. It's by far the best investment right now, but soon the market will recover.

[Demeter]

89. Yes, Our Condo Association Did That

Now we have to sweat over MULTIPLE small banks going under, and waiting for the FDIC to pay off the brokered deposit account holders...I'm not sure it will work long term. Too many banks are daily slipping over the edge into insolvency and failure.

But putting the cash into Chase or Citi or BofA in the expectation that Uncle Sugar will coming riding to the rescue every single time is even more foolish, IMO. Money markets pay nothing, and are less secure than ever. Treasuries are shaky, if the US defaults or hyperinflates. There is no safety, there are only temporary shelters that can get blown away by the next big wind.

[Dr.Phool]

88. Florida Congresswoman short-sales house, shacks up with constituent!

Her best friend in Washington was Mark Foley. She's a good friend of Michelle Bachmann. And she's a big champion of personal responsibility, and family values.

And having locked horns with her and her minions in two elections, she's also an evil (word banned for use on DU).

Me and John Russell played golf at Silverthorne not long ago. My former boss on the railroad lives there. Maybe we'll run across her at the clubhouse.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/us-rep-ginny-brow...



U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite is engaged, friends say

By John Frank, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Thursday, August 27, 2009


A rumor that floated for months in Hernando County political circles is now confirmed: U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, is engaged.

The details about the engagement are still unclear but recently those who know the Brooksville Republican began to talk about her new shiny ring.

A spokeswoman for the 65-year-old Brown-Waite said Wednesday she "is not commenting on her personal life."

The new man is apparently Anthony "Tony" Selvaggio, a Pennsylvania business owner. He popped the question earlier this spring and Brown-Waite now lists her residence as his house on Golf Club Drive in the gated Silverthorn community in Spring Hill.

(snip)

Earlier this year, she sold her house and property off Spring Lake Highway east of Brooksville. The sale was finalized July 13 after a bank-approved short-sale.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paid $600,000 for the place. Sold it short for $355,000.Personal responsibility my ass.

[Demeter]

90. Wow. that's some loss.

[Hugin]

96. Remind me to relate the story of when...

I was a Congressman-for-a-day.

I was able to force through some needed reforms, but, it ended badly. :|

[Epoon]

102. Ben Franklin was FOX newsworthy

http://www.cracked.com/article/100_the-5-ballsiest-lies-ever-passed-off-as-journalism/
The 5 Ballsiest Lies Ever Passed off as Journalism
Of all the great things Ben Franklin was known for--lightning rods, bifocals, love of French prostitutes--journalistic integrity isn't on the list. But what he did have was a gigantic set he loved to show off. For one thing, Franklin wrote and distributed a supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle reporting that American Indians were sending the British Royal Court hundreds of American scalps, the implication being that the British troops were using ruthless, child hating Indian-mercenaries to help them win the Revolutionary War.
The news outraged Americans, horrified British citizens and, when word reached the British Royal Court, deeply confused the monarchy, as they had yet to receive any scalps. Franklin wrote the supplement to garner support from European nations for the U.S., and it totally worked. The kicker? The last American Revolution battle ended in October of the previous year, which made the supplement unnecessary and balltuitous. (Balls + gratuitous. Look it up.)
Still, that's not quite as bizarre and dickish as what Franklin did to Titan Leeds. Publishing under his Richard Saunders pseudonym in his famous Poor Richard's Almanac, in between weather predictions and crop suggestions, Franklin predicted the death of Leeds, a rival almanac owner. When the predicted day arrived and Leeds, predictably, was still alive, Franklin decided to report and confirm the death anyway.
Leeds desperately published his counter-argument ("No I'm not.") but Franklin, an accomplished black belt in the subtle art of being a dick (or, "dickjitsu") pushed his lie even further and reported that, not only did Leeds die, but he was replaced by an impostor who was shamelessly hijacking the Leeds name to continue publishing almanacs. When Leeds eventually did die (five years after Franklin had predicted it), you'd think Franklin would come clean, but that's because you are, at best, a dickjitsu yellow belt.
Instead, in an act of unequaled dickishness, Franklin came out and congratulated the Leeds impostor for finally owning up to their lie and ending the whole charade (by dying). To reiterate, a guy's death is wrongfully reported, that guy tries to correct the mistake, Franklin calls him a shameless fraud and, at his death, congratulates him for dying. Textbook dickjitsu

[Dr.Phool]

129. Nation's Unemployment Outlook Improves Drastically After Fifth Beer

WASHINGTON—Despite ongoing economic woes and a jobless rate that has been approaching 10 percent, U.S. unemployment projections drastically improved Monday after the consumption of five beers.
Enlarge Image Unemployment Chart

"It's going up," leading economist David Singleton said confidently, indicating the predicted growth in jobs with an upward wave of a Bud Light bottle. "All the way up. By the end of the month. No problem."

Singleton said the economy would begin its rebound once employers realized that there were many currently unemployed skilled laborers across the country who would "bust their asses" in a number of growing fields.

"Whether it's manufacturing, finance, hospitality, or manufacturing, these dudes trying to reenter the workforce right now have awesome skill sets and, most of all, they really deserve it," he said. "They're great, great guys. All of them."

According to analysts, both long- and short-term forecasts showed signs of recovery between the third and fourth beer, but the fifth alcoholic beverage was the point at which the employment rate began to close in on 100 percent.

(more) http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nations_unemployment_outlook

------------------------------------------

I haven't had any yet, but I'm going to head out and save the economy now!

Who knows? Maybe after 7 or 8, and a little vodka, we can have Single-Payer too!

:toast: :beer: :beer: :beer: :toast:

[Ghost Dog]

133. Is that something to do with all those folks who fall off

the unemployment rolls after staying out of work too long?

:smoke:

--> Real US unemployment rate at 16%

Writer: AFP
Published: 27/08/2009 at 01:32 AM

The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.

"If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking _ so-called discouraged workers _ and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

...

Lockhart, who heads the Atlanta, Georgia, division of the Fed, is the first central bank official to acknowledge the depth of unemployment amid the worst US recession since the Great Depression.

...

Lockhart noted that construction and manufacturing had been particularly hard hit in the recession that began in December 2007 and predicted some jobs were gone for good.

Prior to the recession, he said, construction and manufacturing combined accounted for slightly more than 15 percent of employment. But during the recession, their job losses made up more than 40 percent of all US job losses.

"In my view, it is unlikely that we will see a return of jobs lost in certain sectors, such as manufacturing,'' he said.

"In a similar vein, the recession has been so deep in construction that a reallocation of workers is likely to happen _ even if not permanent.''

Payroll employment has fallen by 6.7 million since the recession began.

/... http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews/152756/real-us-unemployment-rate-at-16

[tclambert]

140. The economy might look all rosy tonight,

but will you chew your arm off in the morning?

[tclambert]

142. Stock Market didn't move much today.

Dow slightly down, Nasdaq slightly up, S&P slightly down.

Fannie Mae up another 12 cents per share. Darn, I coulda made a few more bucks. Still, I don't want to be in it when people are saying this:

BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- Trading in financial institutions that owe the government billions of dollars has accounted for an outsized chunk of stock-market volume in August and led to a tripling of shares of American International Group Inc., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

By John Spence, MarketWatch

So far this month through Thursday's close, AIG /quotes/comstock/13*!aig/quotes/nls/aig (AIG 50.31, +0.08, +0.16%) shares were up 264%, according to FactSet Research, while Freddie Mac /quotes/comstock/13*!fre/quotes/nls/fre (FRE 2.36, -0.04, -1.67%) rallied 261% and Fannie Mae /quotes/comstock/13*!fnm/quotes/nls/fnm (FNM 2.04, +0.12, +6.25%) jumped 231%.

Day traders have gravitated to low-quality financial names this summer and helped whip up the eye-popping gains and trading volume. In the case of mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie, the consensus Wall Street view is that the common equity is worthless.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/aig-fannie-freddie-shares-have-tripled-in-august-2009-08-28?siteid=yhoof

[Joe Chi Minh]

146. How about Adair Turner, Chairman of the Financial Services Authority,

sticking his neck out, to do the job our decadent country's politicians should have done!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/27/turner-fsa-g20

Not exactly the latest news I think, but don't you think napalm's over-rated, with the possibility of this in prospect?

Incidentally, on a less upbeat note, I came across this snippet by Charles Bean, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, in our Edinburgh Evening News:

"We have seen the eruption of a systematic financial crisis of quite unusual intensity and international reach. The nearest precedent is probably the widespread closing of capital markets on the eve of the First World War."

Well, he certainly avoids Mr Kunstler's rogues' gallery of "assorted quants, pimps, nerds, factotums, catamites and cretins," doesn't he?