Yup, but the more I know, the more dispirited I get. It still pisses me off that Paulson helped author this disaster, then was in charge of our treasury and did more damage, and is not going to be held accountable. He should be wearing orange and picking up highway debris.

Along these lines what is the delay with Madoff? Were phone calls made telling the SEC to back off and skeleltons now need new burial plots. Madoff made significant campaign contributions. Enquiring minds want to know.

Fair and balanced. Don't let anyone accuse of being a doomster CR. I note that two of your graphs are not cliff diving and are up significantly. Oh... wait... Unemployment and housing supply. Never mind.

Seriously, thanks for all you do.

CR, we owe you big time

you have improved the comments presentation, margin to margin

this will work

thanks mt

I think a simple addin to CR bot could easily add auto refresh. I may look at Ken's code and see if I can help with that.

is what we got now called "in line"? if so i like what you've got going right now

as for the counter...i can get a rough idea by the number of pages bracketed by left and right arrows at the bottom

so not sure if counter is "all that"

however, bottom line this is your site, and i for one will remain no matter what

ok im notsosmart,,,reading down thread im learning this comment style is called pop up?

in any case the current presentation is much better than what we saw this morning and last night IMHO

Except for Nemo's monkey.

In two months the analysts will go back and revise this to a "shitty" month.

Yeah, scrolling through those graphs was like punch punch punch punch to the gut. Hard to see it literally graphically laid out like that.

Command-R on Firefox/Mac refreshes.

This is probably what has AllenM all flustered, since he's an economist for the state of AZ. Look at AZ's January's YoY breakdown, especially the income tax revenue numbers:

http://www.azleg.gov/jlbc/mfh-feb-09.pdf 

Not Flustered, it was expected.
The question is when it starts improving.

Bubbleland is going to be very bad.

The rest of the country is not experiencing these types of declines.

Unfortunately, Arizona is a boom and bust state, and has been for as long as I have live here (22 years), and this is just another bust.

When Virginia posts these kind of numbers, then you should be getting out the squirrel recipes.

Someday this war's gonna end...

In looking at Virginia (which I pulled out of my hat, since I had glanced at mid atlantic totals briefly yesterday), I note that sales tax has hardly fallen, even as income tax shows modest declines.

Curious- I suspect that a lot of folks have decided to stop overwithholding after the california splat.

That happened the last time we in Arizona did a delayed refund in 2002- the estimated payments and withholding declined- so we upped them by statute. Kind of mean, but that is what we did.
gotta run to b-ball- the new comments are better!

Someday this war's gonna end...

I noted the other day in the News Messenger a very optimistic article about home sales in PW County, VA. Saw it first on the electronic version of the paper, then the print. Later that evening I went to pull the electronic version of the article, and it was gone. The sales figures can look awfully good when the inventory of foreclosed properties is as big as it is in this County.

I haven't confirmed yet -- need more comments -- but if you open the comments link in a new tab, then use the browser's refresh button, it may refresh.

CR, the popup comment window is much better than inline. Thanks!

Zephyrum, I don't understand what the pop-up comment window versus inline even means. Moreover, I don't even have the Controls section anymore to change the format from threaded to flat.

Zephyrum, thanks for that explanation. Now that I know what the terms mean, I do like pop-up better than inline.

On using an RSS reader I think I'd rather just muddle through the comment window, changing the threaded to flat on every refresh. I can fall 10 minutes behind just following links and writing replies, so I'd be better off not beginning with a built in delay.

Agree. The popup is much more convenient for tracking comments. Thanks CR.

Third half, dammit, third half.

And, so long to Haloscan. And good riddance.

Yep, you are correct. Didn't see that at the top the first time, but then, it wasn't a pop-up either.

It looks like an upturn in capacity utilization may mark the end of a recession.

Just as soon as Wall St. figures out how to mortgage and securitze them.

there is no reason for home ownership to be above 1974 levels, apart from the unsustainable loosening of credit standards.

Ah, that was it--the Controls link is hidden by the comment-entry window. Thanks.

Thanks BT. I had been wondering where the controls were.

CR, we'll get through whatever mechanics to scratch the itch-- many thanks for the informative post!

Now, to submit, like a sturgeon, posts for the very first time....

"doofus on Kudlow last night forecasting Q209 GDP growth to be 0% and 3rd and 4th qtrs to be positive"

O' was on CNBC?

Erm, that would be shadow banking, dark pool trading, money laudering, systemic fraud and organized crime system, no?

Now THAT's the candor we need.

C

Test

Remember folks, looking at the past is not an adequate predictor of the future, otherwise that Dow 36k prediction would have been accurate.

Crashes and recessions end, eventually. Now all you have to do is endure them;-}

Someday this war's gonna end...

Love the pop-up. Avatars still having trouble loading, locks up system. All hail CR for the great chart porn!

Excellent post, and a big THANK YOU for continuing to be a wonderful resource to those of us looking for real information in a sea of noise.

this may be a repeat? but
My clock says that CR is on Central Standard time.

perhaps JSKit "knows" how to put the time in each poster's local time?

Unfortunately, I see mine in local time. Which means I am way late getting outside to finish my wiring project. Good ot have my most-favorite fix back though. It was a hard night.....

The valley of the shadow of death.

the pop up much much much better, CR

and you know, if you all dont like the threaded nature of JSKit (i dont), dont reply to a comment, just post a brand new one, and copy/paste the original comment in your new one, with italics

YTL writes:
the issue is that for those reading in the threaded mode they DON'T copy what they're referencing... thus those of us in the flat mode have a harder time following along.

alternatively we can stay in the threaded mode, but then I struggle to find out which posts are new or not.

You could open up two comment tabs for the same comments (or in two different windows) and make one flat, the other threaded. Then read the flat to see the latest or the threaded to see the context...

good point about CR.

he needs/deserves a week in cancun or something.

this post alone is a testament to the awesomeness that is CR.

YTL - no, the system is robust to all shocks. The gaussian cupola calcs prove it definitively.

Oh, wait...

Heard Taleb speaking this week on it. Wish Felix Salmon had come instead.

C

You know, knowing the number of comments is really only worthwhile if the comments are numbered so you can tell how far to go until you catch up. Otherwise it's mostly discouraging.

I used to put just a stupid comment in to keep track of where I left off reading. Avatars are a great way to spot your last comment.

CR, I want to thank you for offering us such a wealth of unbiased, easy to undrestand & objective information/analysis. Thanks for all of your efforts and time.

I would highly appreciate if CR, or any of other informed commentators on this forum explain in simple language the recent events of Gov. and Citi Group deal. What does it mean when they say prefered shares are converted to common shares? What are the implication so such event? What is the diffrence of prefered and common shares? Did tax payer got screwed and how?

Thanks and good luck to all fellows.

Check out the discussion here:

Page not found « The Baseline Scenario

Also, visit Nemo's web site. Nemo's pretty pissed about this one.

https://self-evident.org/ 

Crashes and recessions end, eventually. Now all you have to do is endure them;-}

Maybe we won't have a depression, maybe we will have a Super Recession! Doesn't that sound better?

We really don't know what is going to happen. Not only are we sailing blind in uncharted territory but there are lots of other boats all out here with us. Worse some are getting desperate and everyone has the safeties off their weapons. Add to this for some reason our government at every level has developed this unhealthy attitude mistaking servant for master.

My comment about voting on this unprecedented expansion of powers sounds flippant but it contains the seed of what needs to happen before we even stabilize.

CalPERS released their $4b loss for January this week.

sm_landlord wrote:
So what will break first? The pension promises or the bonds?

That is a helluva question. My guess is that inflation will be inflicted on bondholders, and to a lesser extent on pensioners, but there will technically be no defaults

OTOH, I don't know the mix of traditional fixed-rate vs. floaters. If a municipality has a high enough percentage of floaters then inflation won't bail them out and default is more likely. We need someone who lives in that space. Paging Ursula, I mean bond girl...

You can pick and chose from the occasional screaming deal from places like syllc.com
Some of those short term COPs are starting to look tasty. California is in deep doo-doo. If mui rates creep up all the rich are going there and avoiding taxes. you know the taxes that pay for bonds.

as Rob (or was it Rich) said... I know how I'm voting on the bailout packages when the vote is brought to the public.

That was Rob Dawg. The fallacy of course is that we don't get to vote on any policies at all. We have one national election every four years and that's it.

if fallacy = snark, you got it...

That last graph looked pretty positive ...

... what?

Just look at the list of finance related firms, (it's been a while, ) WOW

Financial - Google Finance

Great format improvement. My pop up window still says haloscan at top. is this a combination of JS-Kit and Haloscan ?

Doesn't anyone else see mustard seeds? Oh wait, my monitor was upside down. Never mind.

"Well, even if the recession trough was yesterday at 11:19:35 a.m. EST it would be 3-6 months before we knew about it, simply because of delayed economic data and subsequent revisions."

What scares me is that the market tends to lead the economy by 6 mos. So, that means that 6 mos. from now the "Real" economy will have reached new lows. I surely hope that I am still employed at that point.

That semi-moronic joke was just a test.

Meanwhile, we now have a "delete" key? That's like a coda to the old W.C. Fields joke: "In the morning, I will be sober... and then I will delete all my overnight comments."

Sebastian, welcome back. Modesty becomes you. (And me).

Now, about that "trough"....

"Berkshire ended the year with $25.54 billion of cash, down from $44.33 billion a year earlier. It said it made roughly $6 billion of acquisitions in 2008, and spent $14.5 billion on fixed-income securities from General Electric Co <GE.N>, Goldman Sachs Group Inc <GS.N> and chewing gum maker Wm Wrigley Jr Co. Buffett sold some stocks to fund the latter purchases."

another interesting moment ...

Zephyrum says: Reptillian, your strikeout test with < S > worked fine on RSS...

And there's always ^H^H^H though I suspect the pre-telnet/termcap youngsters might not get it.

Thanks for the info. I read that it has been deprecated, so it may be that my browser doesn't support it.

Anak said: "...Now, about that "trough"...."

Nope, no trough call. No zealot like a convert.

If I was to attempt one the first thing that would have to happen, IMO, is for the stock market to stop falling. No joy on that so far, so...

Sebastia

Dawg - good gag. For all the chart pron, I can't shake the feeling that we're driving down the freeway at 120mph while staring into the rv mirror. The bondies are telling a very different story. That concerns me. Deeply.

C

... I can see the bottom--and it's still a long way down there ....

An OT search tip for Mac Firefox and Safari users (may be true for firefox/ie on a pc too?) command-F opens a little page search field (upper right Safari, lower left Firefox) you can then jump to each instance of, say, JBR and see their comments in context. I guess most folks know that, but if not, much better than the list the js-kit returns. IMHO of course

I tried using Google reader, but I do not see the comments, just the main post. Is there a way to see the comments?

Woo-hoo, I am happy now. Thank you!!!

JBR said: "An OT search tip for Mac Firefox and Safari users (may be true for firefox/ie on a pc too?) command-F opens a little page search field (upper right Safari, lower left Firefox)..."

Also F3 in Firefox/pc.

S.

How come Berkshire can compare its book-value returns to the S&P 500 stock returns?
Berkshire could have overpaid for the assets then it will hide its its true price-book ratio

Has the pagination gone away?

Don't like naked fat guy?

Interesting ... if one deletes the first comment, it doesn't make the whole thread go down the memory hole.

No, hated pagination

CR, I found more on the declining rent hypothesis. Looking at the CPI component for rent of primary residence, even in shrinking areas like Cleveland and Detroit, there were no year to year rent declines.

After the prior bubble (late 1980s) burst. There were some slight rent decreases in LA, SD, & Boston 1992-1996. The biggest drop was under 3%.

While it's a given that we are in a bigger bubble, between looking at declining US cities, US cities in the prior bust, and Japanese rents in their crash, I can't find a large rent decrease.

The CPI rent component is not rent offered for vacant units. It is rent paid for occupied units. This moves more slowly over time. This also adds a subtlety to the rent vs buy calculation in a declining market. You might be able to find another rental unit very similar to your current one for less.

sportsfan - that's something to do with your system, not JS-Kit. Doesn't happen to me.

On the avatar, find a pic and download to a convenient file, then go to your own profile > Manage Avatars > Browse > Select the image > Save Changes. It should appear in the top left corner of your profile, and should load for new comments. Doesn't seem to retrofit onto old comments.

C

whoops! the old lease rate was about $850

CR Companion window is up but the features are not.

Somehow, CR got this back to using a haloscan URL for comments, even though it's JS-Kit code. So CR companion recognizes it - but it's still JS-Kit so CTR companion can't parse it - hence no features.

This is a HUGE improvement. CR! Muchas Gracias!

Now if we can convince everynbody to post in flat mode we're good.

I'm going to view in flat mode, because the latest comments alsways show up last. I suspect everybody else w/ CR companion will too. So if you want your threaded comments to make any sense, include some context.

Threads must Die!!!!

Long flat! Short threads!

C

Ok, this is much better. No pagination and a separate window. Much more usable. Thanks, CR!

As people might expect, CR Companion is broken by this. For now, just disable CR Companion from Tools->Addons.

The port will require some work, as JS-Kit uses a lot more javascript than haloscan. But at least, with no paging, it's not DOA. I'll see if it's worth it.

Ah, so 'flat' means no thread feature displayed. It takes me a while to catch on, but then, I didn't start using computers until I was in my fifties.

Lawyerliz says: Third half, dammit, third half.

Third half of which year?

CR - wishlist dept: a 'preview' feature so I can check my writing? Thanks!

Now if we can convince everynbody to post in flat mode we're good.

That seems to be a growing consensus ... we'll see.

Great video. I like way he separates out the production economy as the real economy, reminds me of London Banker's lecture on productive works. So, London and Wall Street are parasites wrapping the productive real economy, the host, and imitating a brain while taking over the host economy. The parasite extracts 'interest', the gov needs to prop the parasite because the parasite supports the Gov. Its revolution time. Maybe depressions are the required cleansing process, killing the real economy enough so as to kill or shrink the parasite, and then start over with a healthy real economy.

on the bail out of weak financial institutions:

"Though Berkshire's credit rating is pristine -- we are one of only seven AAA corporations in the country -- our cost of borrowing is now far higher than competitors with shaky balance sheets but government backing. "

dinosaurs must die !!! (talking about tarp usage, etc)

Roubini on C

Roubini: Citi Is Already Nationalized, Just Need To Finish The Job (C)

I think the recession started Oct 6th 2007 shortly after breakfast and said as much then but what do I know?

Why did it take until late November '08 for NBER to call it? Ans: because all the old indictors were already breaking down in 2007? Why has near every negative projection, ratings, earnings, default, CRE vacancies, on and on and on all uniformly undershot the reality? THe models they were using and still use are broken. Are you sure the economy and stock market are moving in tandem? That's the old think. In September BRK was 145,000 and closed this week at half off. that level. Clearly one of those prices (or both?) was wrong.

Lawyerliz says: Uhhhhhhh, eeerrrmmmmmmm.

I am in unthreaded mode, so don't know if that was a reply to someone else's comment.

Ken Cooper said: "The port will require some work, as JS-Kit uses a lot more javascript than haloscan. But at least, with no paging, it's not DOA. I'll see if it's worth it."

When I do a "view source" of the JS-Kit comments page I don't see the posted text there. That sounds like trouble. Maybe CR can get the "Comments on this Post" RSS link restored put back somewhere. Parsing that was easy.

Yes it was a response, but now I forget to whom.

Or, it was a moment of internet ecstacy.

At the moment we seem to be in a race between fear of investing in Treasuries, and fear of not investing in Treasuries. If the auctions start to fail, and people doubt the buy-up ploy, then the current system could be vaporized. IMO we should start talking about a new regime. Maybe a new fake currency or a basket of equivalents, who knows. I imagine the people at Davos were already started thinking about this.

RD - see comment end flat mode. Kaboomberger story. Yikes.

C

Zephyrum says: "Bobn, the comments RSS feed is still live at:
calculatedriskblog.com comments
I am happily following it with Google Reader."

That's good news. Soemhow I found Goggle Reader unsatisfying last night when I put it to that use - the reloadining was troublesome.

Anyhow, I just found out the RSS is still alive at previous link once you parse in the new lnog number. So one way or the other, Ken still get at the content if he decides he wants to.. I sure hope he does.

This chart actually shows the cost of buying insurance against a U.S. government debt default in the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market.

It now costs professional bond investors 98 basis points to buy that protection, up 14-fold from just 7 basis points in late 2007. That translates into $9,800 per $1 million of U.S. debt versus $700 previously.
Rising default insurance costs were LEADING indicators of last fall's stock market meltdown. And if default insurance costs continue to rise, I suspect it'll be bearish for long-term U.S. Treasury prices and bearish for stocks as well.

A new depression indicator:
RailPictures.Net Photo: UP 4323 Union Pacific EMD SD70M at Fontana, California by R v Gersdorff

Peak Trainspotting...

C

I am going to take another look at the transports. That's a shitload of assets wasting away while the debt burden gift keeps on giving.

Yeah, definitely a third party cookie being enabled. So, what's the point of an avatar? Is it just to identify the commenter as really being the person who identity is being used?

Actually it's more of a vision test.

A few days ago, I made a comment about the lot of you needing some fresh air, and that you're too depressing.

I retract those statements. Doom and gloom, proceed, full-speed ahead.

Un-f'ing-real. I can see myself now at 80, working. At least by then we'll have genetic therapy. Always a bright-side.

[ring ring] "Yeah?... Yeah? This Jamie. ...Barry who? ...of the what? No, I can't talk right now. The 'effin bond market is blowing up and I'm out of bullets. Take a message. ... What? He wants to borrow some bullets? Oh shi..."

All the bad money is going to have to wash out of the system, before we can proceed. O is just slowing down the process to give people time to adapt to the change. IMO he realizes it's a total cultural change, and that's hard for most people.

Soundtrack for doomers, aka realists:

YouTube -

C

Abelson's Not So Great Depression

Okay, made a joke only an economist would love- my new avatar-

Check out the separating hyperplanes.

Someday this war's gonna end...

So, this is what it takes to<i/> change a boring comment style?

S.

Never mind. I see I have to post a comment to see the controls/toolbox

Actually, you can just hit "Cancel" in the Leave a comment box and the "Controls" link will appear.

O.K., second test, Dell Wintel, Firefox, mostly vanilla. "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me."

March 2009 is going to be a disaster

Um, our shortfall is a moving target- the $4 billion for next year is 45% of the general fund budget- which is close to a 100% increase in taxes without any federal bailout.

Ugly for a state of only 6 million.

Someday this war's gonna end...

<a href="http://www.anotherfp.com/newsite/story.php?id=912>JPM Opensource CDS Pricing Model

CMBX keeps on rippin' higher
CMBX-NA-AAA 5

Jeebus, in most cases setting new highs.

Mommy!

C

We are deep in the woods, murder ballad for the markets:

YouTube - The Birthday Party- Deep in the Woods

C

Excellent day, thank you. Slept in, and doomed all day. Perfick.

C

Indeed. Check your messages on profile.

C

Just received our RE property tax assessment for 2010. We live in NW DC. Reduction of assessed value of approximately 11 %.

It's not all doom-- Faith No More is getting back together!

Faith No More To Reunite - News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News

Yeah, and "Everything's Ruined." Thread Music: YouTube - Faith No More: Everythings Ruined