Given that you can't swing a dead cat without encountering someone moaning about the price of gas and/or their inability to unload their SUV or truck, I predict with 100% certainty and confidence that very soon we will see a headline stating "US Auto Sales Decline Unexpectedly in June." The anonymous AP or Reuters writer will then use the word "surprise" when describing the plummeting sales in the article.

OT: Regional Banking index nosediving today.

Check it here.

With all these news, the DOW is still holding above 12k and crude has slopped too.

Incredible! Someone here's lying...

"Anyone seen the big model rollout advertising for the 2009 Pilot? 16/22 mpg. Ooops."

A client of mine bought an '07 Pilot, and boy were they disappointed in the mileage. I'm surprised that Honda would be so dumb as to not improve on it. Even if the mileage were better I would never consider one myself because of that godawful steering-column mounted gearshift.

$12.5 MILLION would be a "greater depression" - see Jas J.

RE: Price of gas and paulsons comp:

The stench of criminality in our pseudo-government is palpable. We will be left holding the (empty) bag. When the Enronesque looting is done, we'll all act like we didn't hold the door for the burglars.

If you let robbers into your home, they'll steal all of your shit?

Hoocouldanowed? (however the hell you spell it).

"With all these news, the DOW is still holding above 12k and crude has slopped too."

Just another confirmation of my belief that 12k is a rubbery yet still immutable law of the universe. Should the Dow sink briefly below, it will quickly spring back up above with equal or greater velocity.

Either that, or we're on the verge of a black hole, and our progress towards it is constantly impeded by the great amounts of crap being radiated out of the black hole as a result of the creative destruction going on. But once we get too close to the event horizon, our descent into the singularity will be incredibly quick and impossible to resist. Then we're through to the other side, and lord knows what'll be waiting for us, and in what condition we'll be in.

Incredible! Someone here's lying...

The Dow itself is doing a huge 550 point A-B-C down, with a smaller intraday A-B-C down today. Just wait.

I listened to Bush's speech while driving in to work this morning; he sounded like a guy reading the back of a cereal box out loud. He sounded like a guy who needs a vacation. Good thing he's got one coming up in about six months.

I have been able to drive my cars at least ten years before maintenance costs start to get close to the cost of a monthly pymt on a new vehicle. The wife currently drives a 98 Ford Taurus wagon that runs fine. Granted, we had to replace the transmission 3 yrs ago, but still.

Does anyone here really believe that any of the Big Three can avoid BK? Just think about what that'll do to the PBGC, too.

BTW, my older MDX averages 17mpg in the city, which is exactly what the sticker predicted (17/23). I'm surprised the new Pilot -- essentially the same platform -- with it's cylinder shutoff capability doesn't do better.

tj,

Nope. And the PBGC is gonna see just what toxic crap the DBP have in them. GM's pension is now run by UAW though, I think.

Cheers,

I still think Cerberus will rape Chrysler and sell what little is left to China or India.

Coming soon, the Chrysler/Chery Lucky Dog in Happy Garden.

Chlysler?

From Bloomberg:

"Nardelli and Jim Press, who joined Chrysler from Toyota in September as co-president of sales, tell Chrysler employees the new Ram is an essential part of the automaker's revenue plan for 2008.

It has been made very clear to Mike and me how important this project is,'' says Scott Kunselman, vice president of truck projects, referring to chief engineer Michael Cairns.Everything depends on it.''

The new version of Chrysler's most popular vehicle comes with satellite TV, a carlike ride and a bin in the cargo box for hauling 10 cases of beer. It's set to go on sale in September, not the best time for a pickup that gets about 15 mpg in city driving and can cost more than $40,000."

Chrysler's whole business depends now on a new truck with a prime feature of a special bin for hauling beer.

Is there a CEO more incompetent than Nardelli. First, Home Depot, then Chrysler. What's next POTUS?

Re: ""This is the lowest sales level in 16 years and indicates a significant and continued softening of the U.S. automotive market,"

Just wait until the subprime auto loans become more of a factor for derivative swap players like Goldman!!!

Also see: The Interior Department estimates that the Outer Continental Shelf has more than 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

& royalty suspension also will be allowed for deep gas wells on the Gulf’scontinental shelf..

“We recognize that Wall Streetdoes not look with favor on the Gulf ofMexico,” Farris said. “But quite franklythe Gulf generates the highest grossmargins in the company. And the returnon an invested dollar is higher than anyother region.

So, Chrysler's continued survival depends on a $40,000, 15-mph truck with a special bin for hauling beer.

If this wasn't on Bloomberg I would have bet money it was from The Onion.

The failure of this model is going to be spectacular. It will rival that of the Ford Edsel in the late 50s, only with far more dire consequences for Chrysler now. With executive leadership like this, Chrysler deserves to fail. The problem is that jackasses at the top like Nardelli will never feel any pain, while the hourly workers and middle managers will be hosed.

"12.5 M auto sales is not a recessionary level. Its borderline depression level"

Maybe our roads will look like those in Cuba in 10 yrs, with only ancient automobiles ?

One of my formative experiences was working in the old Chrysler Jefferson Assembly plant in Detroit for two summers during college in the early '70s. The first summer there I worked in the pit underneath the line, and I'll never forget the time a Newport slowly went by above me with a dead rat hanging by its tail from the rear trunk lid. An portent of things to come...

The CEO's of top US companies are somewhat more pessimistic about the economic outlook than they were in the first quarter of the year, but they still do not see a recession, now or on the horizon, according to a survey released today by the Business Roundtable.

Business finance news - currency market news - online UK currency markets - financial news - Interactive Investor

Think they are about to get that happy talk slapped off their face.

"It develops that they've been cooking the books just as thoroughly as the Latin Americans they so often criticized for "lack of transparency."

I think that makes them Banana Republicans.

Next up - the disposable cargo ship: 1 trip from China and off to the steel mill.

Badger Boy --

You're kidding, right? The Hollywood YMCA costs $49/month with a $100 sign-up fee. I used to belong there for a while and considered it a kind of donation to charity because they do provide a lot of services to the community.

But then I joined 24 hour fitness, which has a beautiful gym on Sunset Blvd. I paid $650 for a three year membership ($18/month) which is now recurring at $99 a year. ($8.25/month). I couldn't justify the expense of the Y, since I only go a couple times a week (yeah, I'm lazy).

Go badgers, by the way. I was born in Madison.

Any troubled U.S. investment bank headed toward bankruptcy should be subject to supervisory intervention just like commercial banks, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said on Wednesday.

FDIC willing to oversee failed investment banks
| Reuters

Damn right!

“The Atlantis South field is a significant
hydrocarbon resource. Although we have considerable drilling remaining, we are
pleased to begin oil and gas production from this world-class field,” said J. Michael
Yeager, chief executive officer for BHPBilliton Petroleum. The Atlantis production
platform has nameplate processing capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil and 180 million
cubic feet of gas per day.

EMGS has been awarded a contract by the major national oil
company Pemex to determine the hydrocarbon content of deep
water drilling locations located on the Mexican side of the Gulf of
Mexico. The contract is worth about $10 million.

The offshore installation campaign will be car-
The Cascade and Chinook fields are
being developed using a Floating
Production Storage and Offloading facili-
ty (FPSO) to be installed in 2010. This is
the first time such a development concept
has been used in the American waters of
the Gulf of Mexico.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) was to hold its first federal Outer
Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea offshore Alaska since
1991 on February 6. The agency issued the Final Notice of Sale for Chukchi Sea Sale
193, which outlines the sale area, terms and conditions for the sale, and requirements
for protecting the environment and natural resources of the area.

The swollen Mississippi River ran over the top of at least nine more levees on Wednesday as floodwaters swallowed up more U.S. farmland, feeding inflation fears as corn prices soared to record highs.

WRAPUP 6-Mississippi overflows levees, crops threatened
| Reuters

Is the fraud from government spending that is going to come from all this priced in?

ac writes:

Last time I checked the point of these policies were to prop prices up, not to foster more efficient production.

The force is strong with the lobbyists..

"Last time I checked the point of these policies were to prop prices up, not to foster more efficient production."

The joke where I live is it take CONgress 6 months to write the bill and farmers 6 minutes to figure out how to milk it. To bad it isn't a joke.

If the dollar didn't fall by 30% over the last yearc or so, oil adjusted would be around 93.80.. waittaminit... am on to something..
What cause this precipitous drop, that must be where the speculators are.
Now lets see, FED drop rates, dollar drops, hence FED is the biggest speculator...congress you know what to do!

The U.S. Federal Reserve will undertake a $75 billion Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) auction on Thursday, the New York Fed's Web site announced on Wednesday.

Fed to conduct $75 bln TSLF auction on Thursday
| Reuters

Bubble fuel.

"The next wave in the credit crunch is upon us."

About damn time.

“The collapse of the dollar exchange rate, alone, explains at least half of the increase in the
pump price of gas over the past five years. If it wasn’t for the falling value of the dollar, the
price of gasoline wouldn’t be an issue.”
David T. King, former chief of the New York Federal Reserve’s
Industrial Economies Division, in a Wall Street Journal Op/Ed published May 23, 2008

"with it's cylinder shutoff capability doesn't do better."
tj & the bear | 06.18.08 - 12:07 pm

Frontal area.
Weight.
Rolling resistance.
If it takes say,30 hp,to move the vehicle at 65 mph,Does it matter if you produce that 30hp on 4/6/8 cylinders?? Roughly, most engines are .45-.5/lbs/hp/per hr in modern fuel injected form. You can run them lean of peak for slightly better milage but there are compromises going that direction...

Chris

dryfly:
Oh ya - it was going to come from 'greater efficiency & synergy' provided by the PE firms.

Right. Bankers & financial speculators thinking they can carve our some fat for themselves from mfg companies in mature market segments. What a clueless bunch of morons - those bones were well picked twenty years ago.

Actually, I think the "synergy" crapola was just half-baked effort on the PE's part so they didn't have to admit anything at the time of purchase; as a workerbee in one of those recently bought, formerly public companies owned by a big PE firm, we know that synergy=pink slips. Nothing more.

Largely because of the financials' ongoing woes, veteran market watcher Richard Suttmeier believes more bear market action lies ahead. Suttmeier forecasts the Dow will hit 10,747 by the end of 2008, a roughly 11.5% drop from Tuesday's opening level.

US equity markets have not been hit as hard as other markets from the emerging economies, it is highly likely that there would be a minimum of 10-20% decline.

Having said that the DOW today is stubborn and won't yield, despite the fact today that crude is up in the positive again!

Paulson & Co. Says Writedowns May Reach $1.3 Trillion (Update3)
Paulson & Co. Says Writedowns May Reach $1.3 Trillion (Update4) - Bloomberg.com

John Paulson, founder of the hedge fund company Paulson & Co., said global writedowns and losses from the credit crisis may reach $1.3 trillion, exceeding the International Monetary Fund's $945 billion estimate.

We're only about a third of the way through the writedowns,'' Paulson, 52, told the GAIM International hedge fund conference in Monaco today.There are a lot of problems out there and it will continue to be felt through the year. We don't see any signs of stabilizing.'

The U.S. is heading into a recession as falling home prices weigh on consumer spending, Paulson said. The second half of this year will be worse than the first as the economic slowdown spills into 2009. Signs of stress are ``accelerating'' in the housing market, and he's betting on falling securities prices, he said.

I don't consider myself a bull or a bear,'' he told the audience at Monaco's Grimaldi Forum.I'm a realist.''

Cerberus Rues Chrysler Drain as Nardelli Fails to Arrest Losses

Bloomberg

Even with fewer models, a smaller workforce and Nardelli busy at the helm, Chrysler is losing ground. The automaker will burn through $2.5 billion of cash this year, according to a person familiar with the situation. In May, it slid to fifth place in U.S. sales, a monthly ranking it has held only twice before. Buyers shunned the trucks, minivans and sport utility vehicles that make up 66 percent of Chrysler's U.S. fleet.

Short Timeline

At an average of 22.8 miles per gallon, Chrysler is tied with Ford Motor Co. for worst fuel economy among the eight major automakers, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

``With the company using this much cash and with high gasoline prices, Chrysler has months, not years, to establish alliances to get products it doesn't have,'' says John Casesa, managing partner of Casesa Shapiro Group, a New York-based consulting firm.

Cerberus also borrowed $7 billion from Bear Stearns Cos., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley to invest in Chrysler. In turn, the banks planned to sell most of the debt to reduce their own exposure to Chrysler. They targeted pension funds, hedge funds and other investors with collateralized-debt obligations, or bonds derived from pools of assets including mortgages and bank debt.

As Bachman sees it, Cerberus's stake in Chrysler is worthless unless Nardelli can pull off a turnaround.

``I consider Cerberus's equity an out-of-the-money call option that may or may not achieve value,'' says Bachman, referring to options that are trading below the price at which they can be exercised for a profit.

agging Pipeline

Chrysler's product pipeline severely lags the industry,'' Murphy says.We believe this is an active decision by new owners to rationalize the product portfolio in advance of a breakup or sale.''

John Gunning, owner of Manassas Dodge in Manassas, Virginia, worries about Nardelli's cuts for different reasons.

You can't, in six months, or a year, or 18 months, change the product line,'' Gunning says.Until we come to grips with that, we are not going to be a viable company.''

To relieve customer anxiety about fuel prices, Chrysler may extend a program to reimburse customers for three years whenever gasoline costs more than $2.99 a gallon.

LOL..where will they get the cash?

UK small caps were lower in early trade, reflecting weakness in the wider market, with London Scottish Bank hard-hit amid rumours that the subprime lender is sounding out support for a deeply-discounted equity fundraising.

London Scottish Bank was a major casualty, sliding 19 percent, or 1.61 pence, to 6.75 pence following a report in the Financial Times that the company is gauging investor support for an equity fundraising at a massive discount to Tuesday's share price. Gossips suggest the subprime lender may be looking to raise between 40 million pounds and 45 million pounds.

Page not found - - CNBC.com

Matson raises fuel surcharge to 38.25%

honoluluadvertiser.com | Honolulu | The Honolulu Advertiser

Matson said its fuel expenses rose 27 percent since May and 38 percent since April, when the company last increased its fuel surcharge.

"Escalating fuel prices have hit levels that are unprecedented and are adversely impacting virtually all businesses, as well as consumers," said Dave Hoppes, senior vice president for ocean services at Matson, in a written statement.

"Unfortunately, the extraordinarily dramatic spikes in fuel prices experienced recently require this new adjustment."

About 80 percent of all goods sold in Hawai'i come via ship.

Mike McKenna, president of Mike McKenna's Windward Ford, said the price of shipping a car to Hawai'i has risen by about $100 in the past 18 months to about $900 per vehicle. Over the past five years, it's gone gone up by about $300 per car, he said.

McKenna said the increased shipping costs are coming at a bad time.

Sales at Windward Ford were down 50 percent during the first quarter compared to the year-earlier period, although they've shown some improvement during the current quarter, McKenna said.

Young Brothers Ltd. boosted its fuel surcharge 51.8 percent today for freight shipped between the islands in response to fuel prices that have risen nearly 44 percent since March.

The increase to 4.22 percent from the 2.78 percent fee implemented in March marks the company's third fuel surcharge since it started adding the fee to customer rates last December.

In December, the company initiated its first surcharge of 1.29 percent.

The rapid spike in oil prices -- with diesel fuel rising to $4.17 a gallon from $2.90 three months ago -- is driving the rate adjustment, the company said.

The adjustment reflects the average fuel costs for the previous three months, but does not reflect the current cost of fuel, said Roy Catalani, Young Brothers' vice president of strategic planning and governmental relations.

Air Canada says soaring fuel costs are forcing the company to cut at least 2,000 jobs and reduce its capacity, and more jobs could be lost if prices keep rising.

"There are no assurances at all that this is the end (of job cuts)," Lesley Swan, president of the Air Canada component of CUPE, told CTV's Mike Duffy Live on Tuesday.

Logistics firms increase fuel surcharges

Logistics firms increase fuel surcharges - 2008-06-18 18:10:00 | Purchasing

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, Edward Zaninelli, vice president of trans-Pacific westbound trade at Orient Overseas Container Lines in San Ramon, Calif., a major shipping line, says he's heard from customers who are moving production back to the U.S., including a maker of steel pans for car engines.

Is any falling for Bush's latest ploy? Cheap leases for Big Oil. We are not all
subprime, we are all serfs if we fall to this B.S. Apparently, Big Oil is sitting
on 33.5 million acres off-shore leases oil is not exploring/developing. Peak oil... what a scam.

Kona Gold;
That's going to work real well...not! President Nixon tried that here in the US and look where that got us. This will shift trade in these commodities to black markets, which we all know are well established in Mexico.

State bill could end tax breaks for condos, coops

404 - Resource not found

wo town houses in gated Smithtown communities offer similar features and amenities such as a pool and clubhouse - but one costs less than half as much in property tax as the other. The reason? It's a condo.

roperty taxes: Because condos are owned individually, they appear in the property tax rolls as separate entities and, accordingly, individual owners are taxed separately.

The entire property co-op is owned by the corporation, so it appears on the tax rolls as a single piece of property. The corporation pays the property taxes and passes along the cost to the tenant-shareholders, usually as part of the monthly maintenance fee.

Property taxes generally run lower in co-ops than in condos. That again goes back to the form of ownership. When condos are resold as separate entities, the appraisals and higher sales prices are recorded individually. This has the effect of producing higher assessed values and consequently, higher property taxes. Co-ops -- as sales of stock -- are not recorded at all and the only way a sale could be reflected in tax rolls is if the entire piece of property were sold, which is rare. Therefore, the rising value of the property usually lags in terms of assessed value and corresponding tax bills.

And on and on and on...

Janjuah's warning: "A very nasty period is soon to be upon us--be prepared," he said, according to a report published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper on Wednesday. He advised that cash was the "key" safe haven.

Well if cash is 'key' heading into what could become a serious economic decline, I'm going to keep track of two homeowner families, each with 10% current equity, and contrast how they are doing at the end of 12 months using 2 approaches:

Family 1 will become "stay-ins", saving the PI and tax payments (during the probable 12 month foreclosure process) for use as future rent or downpayment $ so they can walk away from their possibly unsaleable house, retaining the alternative to become current at the end of 10-11 months and stay if home prices are unchanged or slightly lower but heading up, while they heal their credit dent.

Family 2 will stay current, hoping that they won't be trapped in an underwater house at the end of 12 months.

We'll follow them along periodically and see who is doing better at the end of 11 months: The family with cash, a credit dent, and a house or an apartment, or the family staying current in their house.

I'll call family 1's plan PREP: the Personal Real Estate Put.

Hollyweird and celebrity types still believe in flipping, I take it:

Celebrity Real Estate Homes Big Time Listings 

Bought in 2005 for 1,840,000; selling for 2,424,000. Most stuff in Beverly Hills and the Holly Hills belonging to celebrities seems to follow this pattern, although there have been some places that can't get a buyer.