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I am very thankful to have a job these days.
Seconded
but did they fire Nemo's monkey?
heard a rumor about San Juan Capistrano and found this:
Capistrano Dispatch
not sure if its just city hall employees or a wider furlough.
350k loss on Friday?
Unemployment is all in your mind.. stop being so negative!
CNBC....Crappy Network of Bottom Callers
McCain...the fundamentals of our economy are strong
I'm sure Nemo's monkey is fine, probably just caught him on a banana break.
Nothing looks good to me right now, and I don't see how these numbers can do anything but help reinforce a positive feedback loop.
Of course since it's bizzaro world, I'll concur with the Dow 36,000 call.
I may never get rich, but at least I've got a stable job at a state University with good bennies and the promise of a pension...
*reads newspaper article talking about the 40% underfunded state pension fund that took a 30% loss last fiscal year, "But don't worry, everything's gonna be fine by the time you all retire..." *
Oy.
the entire employment picture was horrid, for large business, medium sized businesses, and small businesses...
very concerning.
rich, you have been a huge proponent of the ultrashort/long funds and said they track well against the indexes 2X. I agree, when 1 day is your time horizon.
Here's one. What is say the index is off 50% in a week. How does the ultrashort continue to trade?
the entire employment picture was horrid, for large business, medium sized businesses, and small businesses...
very concerning.
Take the market on that!!!
I may never get rich, but at least I've got a stable job at a state University with good bennies and the promise of a pension...
Might be a good time to read up on exigency clauses.
Comscore out with 'etailing' stats - some catchup spending over the weekend and Monday - Nov.1 to Dec.1 spending total -2% YoY(was -4% prior to this past weekend/Monday).
There is a great chart (OK, not as good as CR's but still pretty good) towards the bottom of the page on the link below that shows the weekly spending patterns 2003-2008.
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2607
Bearly - the ultrashorts continue to trade. Look at SKF - hit $211 when Bear Stearns blew up.. then fell back to the $90's - recently ran up as high as $303. They should not be HELD over the long term.. you gotta trade them, otherwise you will have ulcers.
I guess the gubbermint figures will have a lot to do with how they fudge their birth/death model.
Productivity INCREASING. Time to BUY BUY BUY!
Metrowest Boston - last week my company, wife's company, and sister's company had layoffs on the same day. Sister-in-law's company (big name brand electronics direct marketer) has big layoffs in process. From colleagues, I am hearing nothing but anecdotal layoff stories.
BoA is going to cut how many? Citi can't be done. Other financials can't be done. Big 3 and UAW will (must) lose more.
It's just getting started. This report is just scratching the surface.
feesher, let me guess...Bose?
Hey who was it that was talking about Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies" a week or two back? Just arrived last night, looking forward to digging into to it as family and work permit...was that Byzantine Ruins? Thanks.
Harvard down $8 billion in a few months...good thing they have the "best and brightest" managing their money...
The article requested is no longer available.
My contract is not going to continue after 2009.
Lucky I have saved significantly and can survive 5 years of being on the bench.
How will this affect job placement services?
"The university's president warns that the estimated drop may be conservative because some money managers that have yet to report figures"
LOL!!
Bad news everywhere!!!!!
I talked to a State of Minnesota finance guy yesterday and he said Minnesota will have a deficit in excess of $10 billion.
YTL from last thread:
nicely put.
also nice to be around for 20+ years post disease.
hang in there. Now to work...
woah!
10 billion!
I'm a minnesotan and I had no idea that it could be that much.
for our population that's remarkable. are you sure that it wasn't 1 Billion????
Anecdote from the OC coast. Out for a drink last night (friend plays drums in jazz trio) and talking to a PYT at the bar.
"People should just spend more, it would solve everything," she said. "I just bought a new car."
GM?
"No, a Yaris."
What about people not having money, only debt?
"My boss is a millionaire. It's those people who should be spending. Oh, yeah, we let go 4 people this week. Hmmm. I guess they won't be spending."
Silence.
"We just have to be positive and not so negative."
.... not worth arguing anymore - being Dr Doom only works with the ladies in NYC, I suppose.
Booooyaaahhahahahahah
bad news is good. It's Great.
JP,
I have been, and lately they make me want to crawl under my desk and whimper. Makes me very glad my husband and I have a long-standing tradition of living on half to 2/3rds our take-home, and slapping the rest into savings. We've both got fairly secure jobs, but...
thanks homedad.
That is what the finance guy said. They would have to cut $5000 per student in education to make it work.
Raising stupid children is probably not the best way out of this.
Crewman writes:
That is what the finance guy said. They would have to cut $5000 per student in education to make it work.
Better to think of this as $150,000 per teacher.
A couple of comments about the Auto industry "bailout":
WASHINGTON A top executive of General Motors Corp. said Wednesday bankruptcy isn't a viable option, as the United Auto Workers braced for a decision on contract concessions to the endangered Big Three. Fritz Henderson, president and chief operating officer of GM, said that choosing the bankruptcy route would further erode consumer confidence in the automaker and "we want them to be confident in their ability to buy our cars and trucks."
OK, this is getting silly. Sure, Mr. Henderson can state unequivocally that bankruptcy is not a "viable option" for the auto industry. He can say whatever the hell he wants, frankly. He can say that the sky is yellow and the sun is blue, but that doesn't change reality. At least as far as we humans can perceive, the sky is indeed blue and the sun yellow, and no amount of silliness to the contrary can change that fact.
The only thing here that is not "viable" is the American auto industry. But don't get me wrong: I'm not one of those auto industry bashers who likes to complain about how bad our cars are in comparison to Japanese cars, etc. and so forth. In fact, the Japanese auto industry is not nearly as innovative as is the U.S. industry: they are simply good at borrowing the right ideas, making them better, and pushing their workers to the brink of death during the production cycle.
Here is my point. ANY conveyance employing a combustion engine is soon going to lack viability:
And so, I would posit that the question of viability has nothing to do with the potential bankruptcy of the auto industry, and instead has to do with the existence of the industry altogether. My 2 cents.
Citizen Energycon, that was me talking about Tainter.
Although I think some of his final conclusions are wrong (such as, "civilization is now everywhere and so it can no longer collapse" - well, ask the Somali pirates about that), his theories are well supported and have a great many parallels to what we're seeing today in many aspects of Western society (all our systems - financial, educational, health care, scientific research - are returning less and less on more and more complexity, and more effort thrown into complexity is not going to change that curve).
Thanks mal!
Need to dig into it to discuss conclusions, but diminishing returns is hard to argue with! Also, I would expect that any collapse per se would not be evenly distributed, nor would outcomes (some large pop centers really crater, others don't - likely dependent on local access to food and energy). Looking forward to the "read and evaluate."
"Fritz Henderson, president and chief operating officer of GM, said that choosing the bankruptcy route would further erode consumer confidence in the automaker and "we want them to be confident in their ability to buy our cars and trucks." "
Oh for the love of...What's left to erode???
ISM services baaaad: 37.3
So, will Bush be the first president to preside over a loss of private sector jobs over 8 years?
New Flash
Market rallies on awful ISM Number.
Scratching the surface of a rotten apple.....same result...tainted fruit. Jobs drive the economy and the economy is in reverse at full steam. Hang onto your family and virtues because that will be all that is left, after the fallout. Godd Luck and GOD BLESS you ALL.
So how is this for more gloom.....
Don't shoot the messenger!
The Financial Times
UN team warns of hard landing for dollar
By Harvey Morris in New York
December 1 2008 08:48
The current strength of the dollar is temporary and the US currency risks a hard landing in 2009, according to a team of United Nations economists who foresaw a year ago that a US downturn would bring the global economy to a near standstill.
In their annual report on the world economy published on Monday, the economists said the dollars sharp rebound this autumn had been driven mainly by a flight to the safety of the international reserve currency as the financial crisis spread beyond the US.
The overall trend remained a downward one, however, reflecting perceptions that the US debt position was approaching unsustainable levels. An accelerated fall of the dollar could bring new turmoil to financial markets.
Investors might renew their flight to safety, though this time away from dollar-denominated assets, thereby forcing the US economy into a hard landing and pulling the global economy into a deeper recession, the report said.
Publication of the annual survey by the UNs Department of Economic and Social Affairs, its trade organisation Unctad and UN regional bodies, was brought forward by a month in the light of the financial crisis. It was launched in Doha to coincide with the UN-sponsored development financing conference in the Qatari capital.
The UN team said that, as the financial crisis spread beyond the US, there had been a massive shift of global financial assets into US Treasury bills, driving their yields almost to zero and pushing the dollar sharply higher. At the same time, however, the USs external debt had risen to new heights that could provoke a dollar collapse.
dan
you got me curious about just how many things are made/based on petroleum so i googled it.
A partial list of products made from petroleum
citizen energyecon--thanks for the link to comscore. It seem like -2% is bad but not horrible for the month of november?
RIMM preannounced negatively in case one didn't catch it. Infineon slashed their outlook (big chip supplier to cars--ouch).
I still like the ultrashorts for short-term exposure. Right now, I'm very heavy on EEV, for example.
But for any holding period of more than a couple of months, I'm no longer such a big fan of ultrashorts. They do not tend to perform well in highly volatile markets, relative to double short their benchmarks. This is because they are marked to market (via swaps) daily.
I'd suggest single shorts such as EUM for emerging markets and RWM for small-cap U.S. for longer holding periods.
Hit the te
Anecdote, not statistics:
I live in Santa Fe. Major industry is "hospitality"; i.e. tourism. Hilton opened a huge Casino/golf resort just north in August ("Buffalo Thunder"). Laid off 200 staff last week (not sure out of how many). One of the top local hotels laid off 20 kitchen staff Monday. We are a very small town & those are just the ones I've heard about via friends in the biz. Gonna be a cold winter.
check the yields on sp500 names vs tnx dcfm
wait till the retail and services sectors begin mass layoffs in january that accelerate through the summer. structural unemployment will mean these numbers will be multiples higher.
Oil. What you think Rich? USD 15? 90% down from peak.
atlanta cut 222 jobs and closed 22 rec centers
Would selling my home right now be the worst think I could do?
Would selling my home right now be the worst think I could do?
--red
Shooting yourself in the leg at a nightclub might be worse.
Especially with an illegal unregistered gun...IE a recent football player.
Would selling my home right now be the worst think I could do?
--red
depends on your situation.
Which would be a better long-term situation:
5-10 years out, who is better, assuming no job loss.
red writes:
Would selling my home right now be the worst think I could do?
Ahh, the Realitter paradox. Since they are saying now is a good time to buy then the obvious corollary is that it must be a bad time to sell.
Why is it that you guys have no problem with giving the crooks at Wall Street 5 trillion, but can't give GM 20 billion? Who caused this mess? 50:1 illegal leverage, cds fraud or a few pick-up trucks?
5-10 years out, who is better, assuming no job loss. red
The renter.
Why is it that you guys...
Comrade Peronista
Why is it the you guys think we, the people, have any real control over what is happening right now. This is the government playing father knows best.
Home prices a decade from now won't look much different than now, inflation adjusted.
Why is it that you guys have no problem with giving the crooks at Wall Street 5 trillion, but can't give GM 20 billion? Who caused this mess? 50:1 illegal leverage, cds fraud or a few pick-up trucks?
Comrade Peronista | 12.03.08 - 10:21 am | #
Most factory workers are in flyover country?
Comrade Peronista writes:
Why is it that you guys have no problem with giving the crooks at Wall Street 5 trillion, but can't give GM 20 billion? Who caused this mess? 50:1 illegal leverage, cds fraud or a few pick-up trucks?
Why is it that you are asking this question without first even bothering to read the near universal outrage at the financial sector bailouts on this blog?
The reason for the different treatments is because Congresscritters think they understand the auto business (they don't) but they are sure they don't understand the financial sector. Legislators fear what they don't understand. It was that fear as delivered by Paulson that drove their decisions.
Comrade Peronista writes:
Why is it that you guys have no problem with giving the crooks at Wall Street 5 trillion, but can't give GM 20 billion? Who caused this mess? 50:1 illegal leverage, cds fraud or a few pick-up trucks?
A systemic hatred of labor and unions from the elites and wannabe elites
Comrade Peronista writes:
Why is it that you guys have no problem with giving the crooks at Wall Street 5 trillion, but can't give GM 20 billion?
Because they are not smart enough to realize that unemployed people sometime kick in the front door and rob rich people so they are comfortable in their dream world. And they have been taught to hate unions.
Dave of SV,
I color it horrible based on the history of double digit growth in online spending - we will see what the rest of the season holds - Comscore has a forecast of flat spending YoY for the entire holidays.
Non-manufacturing ISM is out, at 37.3 (down from 44.4).
"The New Orders Index decreased 8.6 percentage points to 35.4 percent, and the Employment Index decreased 10.2 percentage points to 31.3 percent. These are the lowest levels for each of these indexes since they were first reported in 1997. The Prices Index decreased 16.8 percentage points to 36.6 percent in November, indicating a decrease in prices from October. This is the largest-ever one-month decline in the index and its lowest level since it was first reported in 1997."
ISM - ISM Report - November 2009 Non-Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®
Why? Marketing.
Comrade Peronista | 12.03.08 - 10:21 am | #
Got to call bullshit on that - white hot outrage is a fairer description of the reaction to what has been repeatedly characterized as "the biggest swindle in human history" in the comments section here...universal disdain for Paulson & the TARP.
Igor | 12.03.08 - 10:28 am | #
Another bullshit call - there is a wide mix here from rabidly anti-union to rabidly pro-union.
Let this sink in...
$64.72 billion in gross CDS exposure outstanding on GM
Let them go....That is nothing
OT:
Is this a bad time to bring up the fact that the world is currently one major crop failure away from a regional famine?
I have a client in the fertilizer business. That stuff got very expensive this summer and not everyone was planting. Also, Argentina's agriculture is still reeling from export bans only recently lifted.
Is there an entity that tracks trends in underemployment--as in the number of folks who are being asked to take salary cuts or work less hours ? I would think that this is an increasing parameter right now, particularly with smaller businesses.
the new national bank will have lots of business making loans to fill the void of the lost credit creation which was coming from outside of the traditional fed controlled banking system. people and firms will be begging for those loans (kibble) at ever higher interest rates.
abstract finance has become a disproportionally large part of the economy. finance serves commerce, not the other way around.
the leverage monster we created is starving and will consume any feed.
and now there is only one bank in town.
Is there an entity that tracks trends in underemployment--as in the number of folks who are being asked to take salary cuts or work less hours ? I would think that this is an increasing parameter right now, particularly with smaller businesses.
Show Me The Pony
Here's a really good page:
Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject
Here's a data retrieval area for current employment statistics. One of these might be something you will find useful.
Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)
Thanks Doc !
the credit creation reflected in the non cash money supply of the shadow banking system did a lot of nice things for people an built a lot of excess capacity.
that excess capacity has a lot of inertia.
the problem is the huge inertia from the old system is now feeding the negative spiral. the old system had mass that is in flux right now, convusling, and SHRINKING.
all the little debt colonies we called category killer retail and collapsing under their own appetite for debt.
if the retail numbers for the fourth quarter come in at 15% decline or more, most retailers will fold.
services and consumption are, um, like 70% of GDP.
hey, where did everybody go?
two new threads
feesher: "last week my company, wife's company, and sister's company had layoffs on the same day"
Reminds me of the exercise where you have to determine the likelihood that two people out of N have the same birthday.
I love "nonfarm" employment numbers, as if they're so much different from "farm" numbers with our open border policy, which Janet Napolitano will crack wide-open. Go O!
Layoffs are the solution, not the problem. That's the only way many companies will be profitable and eventually rehire.
Layoffs are the solution, not the problem. That's the only way many companies will be profitable and eventually rehire.
BDiego | 12.03.08 - 4:00 pm | #
Just testing...
Curious, Ken can't read your comment b/c you are not on the 'watch' list.
Uncle Ar | 12.05.08 - 3:17 pm | #
My 7 year old has this thing where he says something funny, and after seeing it made everyone laugh, he repeats it, again, and again, and again.
My 7 year old has this thing where he says something funny, andafter seeing it made everyone laugh, he repeats it, again, and again,and ag
More Tests
Testing again, sorry.
Smore tests