Please be truthful and call it a "Depression".

//I'm in the camp that really worries about the L-shaped recession. //

CR,

I think he is going to make ruby slippers for everyone. Something about clicking them thrice and saying there is no depression.

//The "unremitting freefall" might be ending, but what will be the source of growth? //

The real problem is that we can't blow another bubble big enough to cover this one. This means we will actually have to produce something.
A few hundred American inventions on the magnitude of the iPOD should do it. Also building a few hundred NUKE plants will help us, but of course if it cuts off the oil money, well then that part of the world will disintegrate..

We are officially in a pickle...

Have you been cashtrated yet? If not, get ready!

Gee, more "containment". Where have we heard that before?

I have suggested that some time ago.. Build a bigger and better infrastructure.

//Also building a few hundred NUKE plants will help us, but of course if it cuts off the oil money, well then that part of the world will disintegrate..//

@ Nova

Here is what bugs me about the entire auto industry... BILLIONS spent on R&D for the last 10 years.. Name a SINGLE feature that is compelling and draws people to buy a new car from ANY manufacture...

Pretty much nothing significant from the entire industry... The biggest change is that I can pay more for a Hybrid that in most cases has less features.

April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Executives and insiders at U.S. companies are taking advantage of the steepest stock market gains since 1938 to unload shares at the fastest pace since the start of the bear market.

... While the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed 26 percent from a 12-year low on March 9, CEOs, directors and senior officers at U.S. companies sold $353 million of equities this month, or 8.3 times more than they bought, data compiled by Washington Service, a Bethesda, Maryland-based research firm, show. That’s a warning sign because insiders usually have more information about their companies’ prospects than anyone else, according to William Stone at PNC Financial Services Group Inc.

Let me guess : Agriculture, IT, rebuilding infrastructure. It's a good occasion to reassess entire social and economic structure. Women stay half of their time at home to raise kid. Men work less, more vacation, enjoy simple life, like in North Korea. Without money, and without work, but with good and healthy food and drink, life goes on fine.

It the disruption of social role that is most dangerous. But Obama is the best community organizer ever, and first in many respect, so may be...

But I don't believe much what I've wrote.

Who is running those companies.. engineers or MBAs.

//Name a SINGLE feature that is compelling and draws people to buy a new car from ANY manufacture.//

I totally agree about the L shape and the comments about "where would the recovery come from"? This is the question I ask people when they say..."oh, it will pick up.....". We are tied globally with wages, trade, deficits like never before in history....

If govt-backed non-recourse 100% loans were offered for houses and maybe even some other investments, then why wouldn't everyone go out and buy, triggering happy days for everyone again? I realize there is some reluctance to dial all the way to this extreme immediately, but I don't see any reluctance to get as close as it takes to reflate. Granted, this may simply resurrect the underlying problems that got us into the mess, but again I don't see any real recognition that we were overborrowed and assets were overpriced, so reflating seems to be the end goal.

What can we compete, complete, and export that can not be made somewhere else cheaper? Yes, there are exceptions. Those exceptions will not provide the kind of recovery most people are hoping for.

Sorry just got back from dinner.

"Mr.Smith (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sun, 4/26/2009 - 7:33 pm reply Normally I lurk, been lurking here for years, but I so strongly agree with Hoopajoops on what a dump on the discussion boards credibility all that Chemtrails nonsense is. Michael, anybody interested already has seen that nonsense and has not risen up because, well, its just to stupid to fathom. Don't you have a forum for paranoid types you can post that stuff to?
Ditto that poster a while back with all the anti Mexican racist stuff.
Maybe we need more than an ignore button. Are you listening Ken? Pretty please? I'll promise to double my Hoocoodanone chip in the day it shows up."

Here is proof positive from the previous thread I Influence lurkers. Please feel free to donate and support Hoocoodanode and join in on the conversation.

First step in our 12 step Brainwashed Anonymous Program is admitting you have a problem with being brainwashed.

Michael, what did you have for dinner?

Ken
If you don't get the ignore button up soon I'm gonna start talking about transit!

Seriously, you and CR are doing great. Keep it up.

sorry, i am stepping away

@ Nova

Digital radio.. Big whoop... Been losing money since the day it was born. And for a couple hundred bucks you can upgrade any car to have it.

In fact digital radio is a great way to upgrade an old ride and avoid purchasing a new ride...

What is the next Air Conditioning? Power Steering?

There is your problem! You believe in the concept of "hedonics".

//We won't even go into the impact of hedonics.//

It's hard to see where recovery comes from.
Get that Yuan and Rupee to appreciate 30% and US entrepreneurs will be complaining about not finding enough labor, Krugman will go back to finetuning his trade theory ideas and Michael will be off the unemployed twits list.

Is Tamiflu made in the US? Sales of Tamiflu could help our manufacturing numbers.

"Is Tamiflu made in the US? Sales of Tamiflu could help our manufacturing numbers. "

Roche. I believe they are Swiss, but American traded.

ETF is basically a hybrid of closed-ended and open-ended mutual funds.

Chrysler Has Labor Deal !!!

More Info

Where are the creditors?

Lucifer

I think Summers was saying that in Q4 we had a nasty mark-to-market like of adjustment of the economy, which is forward looking as business and consumers were battening down the hatches for the long haul.

Now, in Q1 and on, the economy will just grind lower and lower, more like in the loan loss accrual fashion, as the prices get adjusted to the new level, reflecting both the rising unemployment and inflationary pressures.

I hadn't thought about until now, but phones have kind of killed whatever electronics they could add to cars.

They'll probably wind up killing the PC too. That's been the history of things over the past 50 years or so... the threat to the current paradigm always came from below.

only if the dollar is dropped down to make American labor competitive with China

Or if they require ALL imports to be inspected and reorganize the Customs Service so it has the efficiency of the California DMV.

It won't be a trade barrier. It will just be a clusterf*ck, which we will promise the World Trade Organization that we are working diligently to fix.

What is the next Air Conditioning? Power Steering?

I've had DINKS tell me that they purchased their new huge SUV because it had the most airbags.

I've also heard city-types who have never gotten their boots dirty that they purchased (or leased) their SUV because it has the largest towing capacity in its class. And with no Class I trailer hitch, and nothing that needs trailering, I'd say the marketers will find something to sell as the next "gotta have it"

This from hoops on previous thread.

"Discredit. Distract. Distort. If they start threatening the bankers, bring up chemtrails, jews, rosicrucians, aliens, anything on the approved list. If they question you, tell them you're one of them, and you're there to help. No matter what, you're always there to help. If exposed, return to bankerdome for instructions.

The purpose of our tactics is to aid people in entertaining more than one subject in their brains at a time, this helps in the de-programming process. A consensus on our economic topic of discussion on CR has already been reached in our circles and are being accepted more and more by the non believers( main stream).

"Do you have a direct chain of command or are you managed as an independent agent? "

I am a self directed independent agent consulting only when necessary and we don't work for money. Our only pay is personal satisfaction.

Have your policies eff up the financial system then get called it to fix it. Nice gig if you can get it.

I do not care about the presence or absence of the ability to post anonymously.

//What value would you assign to Ken Cooper turning off anonymous posting?//

Nova'

NY strip steak, baked potato and vegetables.

Did You ask me about seeing a PM in the previous thread? How do I go about accessing that Mail?

Speaking of the CPI inflation - do not forget the owner’s equivalent of rent, which contributes more than 20% to CPI. In theory, it should go down as rents are falling across the country. In practice. however, I am not sure what it will do, as the way it is measured seems to be as follows
The BLS asks each homeowner for their estimate of the house’s implicit rent and what occupants would get for their rent (how many rooms, etc.) if the owner did rent their home.
When the Bureau of Labor and Statistics do their surveying for shelter index portion of CPI they ask the following question (verbatim):
“If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it would rent for monthly, unfurnished and without utilities?”

So much for the measurement of the core inflationary index, which drives many of the government programs.

Bond Girl (homepage, profile) wrote on Sun, 4/26/2009 - 5:59 pm

Apple might actually be able to make something out of GM. They could make GM cool.

They could make "chick" cars to go with their "chick" phones.

Nerds just hate "chick" phones. You can't easily screw up the operating system and functionality by tweaking it. They just work.

"The "unremitting freefall" might be ending, but what will be the source of growth?"

There are a number of things, but we won't know which ones make the most sense until the current economy burns down to the waterline. It is the process of doing so. Then we beach it and rebuild from the keel. At that point we'll have the will to do it, and move off in new directions. Because we'll have no choice.

This will be a hard process. I personally may be out of work in two months; one year at the outside.

Labor isn't the largest cost of producing tech. products. The cost of the labor isn't so great that a lot of products couldn't be made here, sold at the price they're currently sold at, and be profitable. Apple could make money if it manufactured the iPod in the US and sold it for the same price that it sells for today.

Chrysler skirts by?

Chrysler Reaches Labor Accord With UAW, Ratification With CAW
UAW Said to Get 55% Chrysler Ownership, Board Seats (Update1) - Bloomberg.com

Summers is a jackass and I can only assume CR posts his comments because we need comic relief.

Geez, CR is starting to sound like us.

Scary, isn't it.

Pavel alludes to something which is quite different in this recession. In the 1930s, people have less of everything, and spent a much larger portion of their budget on necessities. In 2009, most people could cut back long term on spending, and keep it that way. That gives you an L shaped recession, at least until the cancer and heart disease vaccines, new sources of energy, etc.

Have we reached a point of "diminishing return"?

Have people obtained all material goods that they ever needed and there no much un-met needs ?

So where the demands for goods will come?

Apple and GM? Great... cars that come in 7 colors, scratch if you breathe on them, and run on nonreplaceable batteries.

Those useful employees are maybe 10% of the workforce. Less retail and service means more marginal citizens unemployed. Robots in plants and AI will further marginalize them.

Wachovia, I think, had/has 18,000 financial advisors. How many of them are menu monkees?

How many people in America are border line dysfuntional that barely stayed employed during the boom times?

OT from last dead thread--Roubini looks like he cleaned up a bit.

Too bad, I liked the smoldering sulky, 5 o'clock shadow look.

liz, would you like a poster of otis?

Now, it's a big place and all, but, yeah, Nova, I can walk around the office and point out a couple of dozen $60K guys that absolutely no one would miss if they were gone tomorrow. Not even sure anyone would realize they were missing.

Hoops, while the plan seems good, in a deflationary doomsday scenario I don't see why you wouldn't take the biglaw money as long as possible. Agricultural science programs will still exist or else there'd be no point in getting in one right away. If you just want to make the change, that's different of course.

Part of me thinks we're about to enter a doomsday fucking apocalypse.

Put yourself in a dark room listening to Godspeed You and you'll be sure of it.

nova:
Absolutely not, though I can COBRA for two years.

Summers and most of these guys are a laugh. We are about half way into this mess and we have no real economic stimulus coming. Cars are a dead player especially if Obama push for electric powered. Over stock of housing, more foreclosures, Baby Boomers retirement slashed, Student loans with no job opportunity list goes on. " L" recession is a slam dunk from here on at best.

Otis writes from previous thread,

"--- - .. ... .... . .-. - --.. (homepage, profile) wrote on Sun, 4/26/2009 - 8:28 pm reply micheal is in with this utopian sideshow:

Research Center

in zeitgeist and their other videos the narrator starts off with truths about the system, throws in some populist agitation, does a fine job of deconstructing religion,indicts the financial system, basically says a lot of undisputed things about the world's problems."

Agree with many things in Zeitgeist( Ghost of our time) but completely disagree with it's summation. I Only approve of a totally run Constitutional society strictly adhered to. It keeps the animal instincts in us at bay.

Sure, a poster of Otis would be great.

Come on, guys, come up with an original idea. Thomas Freidman suggested Apple build cars months ago.

OP-ED COLUMNIST; How to Fix a Flat - NY Times

I'm scheduled to give notice I'm quitting in 15 days or so, and I'm going back to school for some agricultural sciences

Can you talk them into firing you so you can get unemployment insurance?

Also, does your spouse have health insurance? If not, look into Costco with a high deductible. Once you lose insurance coverage, it is hard to get covered without jumping through hoops (no pun intended) for preexisting conditions.

Gosh, I guess I'd much rather listen to sad stories of HOW I GOT INTO THIS FINANCIAL MESS AND AM BEING FORECLOSED. At least there are human beings involved, and there is enough variation to be modestly interesting as well as depressing.

Why are you working so hard in your last 15 days? Why isn't anybody else there helping you?

Hoops... the probability that we are truly entering a doomsday apocalyptic scenario are quite low. Follow your passion, not your sense of dread.

"Paradigm Lost (profile) wrote on Sun, 4/26/2009 - 6:40 pm reply Hoops: You may be onto something. He never gets offended by anything we say, like go away. Hide of a rhino, that one. No passion like a real ideologue. "

Now this person can read people pretty well.

Can you talk them into firing you so you can get unemployment insurance?

I would totally do this. The problem is that I want to start classes and attending classes disqualifies one from unemployment.

Why are you working so hard in your last 15 days? Why isn't anybody else there helping you?

Everyone else at my level quit. One is now a puppeteer (no joke), two have left the law and I have no idea what they're doing, and one is running his own bar. Believe me, I'm filling a seat, but I'm not working very hard.

Nova says
"Those useful employees are maybe 10% of the workforce. Less retail and service means more marginal citizens unemployed. "

It's funny how I both agree and disagree with this at the same time. If I look at people in my industry (economists, financial advisors), and I realize that I know more than most of them in their own specialties. That is not as much a piece of conceit or hubris as you might think. Many of them are less useful than throwing darts. A good number of them are far less useful than doing a couple of days' research yourself on a particular topic. Some of them are stupid, but the more common problems are getting paid to give certain types of biased advice, and giving "steady state" advice. When things are pretty consistent with the recent past, not-terribly-bright people who follow a topic can often give good advice. When you encounter very fast and turbulent change, you find out that CR knows more about the future than Hank Paulson, Tanta knew more about mortgages than Bear Stearns, and that I knew more about the future than the entire National Association of Realtors. You find that Robert Shiller and Nouriel Roubini knew more about the future than 98% of the economics profession combined.

"I'd like a poster of Otis too, preferably a closup of his face stylized in soviet style with a big brother angry-stare."

working on the soviet stylee beard. instances of panhandling dropped off by 89% once it got long.

liz - yup feel shitty....

Otis,
I still love your epic descriptions describing Florida of old and what it has become.

Tell us, nova.

It is late Sunday nite, and I want to know.

nova,

have you posted that "svt" at after the crash?

Hoops, good luck. If your job is so soul-deadening that you'd rather step out into the maelstrom than do the smart thing and stay on until they get rid of you..... well, I've been there.

I smell panic at CR's place.
Jez, get a sense of humor
Like soon-to-unemployed-forever hoopdejoop's

sanityclause --

There's really nothing wrong with cars.

Well that's the problem, then. What the U.S. economy really needs is cars that have to be replaced every 6-12 months.

Hm, the Apple/GM merger keeps making more and more sense... (Even if it's not original.)

"I would totally do this. The problem is that I want to start classes and attending classes disqualifies one from unemployment."

why don't you just start learning? take the classes later, when they go on sale.

Maybe Hoops doesn't have a sofa to crash on.

You plan to start in the summer?

Pretty please, tell us Nova.

i would think the UAW would be the most willing to negotiate with Chrysler, given they have the most to lose. If they don't strike a deal, they are out of a job for sure.

It is not so clear what the rationale response is for the debtholders. Is equity in Chrysler really worth anything? Should they liquidate, sell the factories, to the Chinese, and cut their losses now?

And Fiat, I have no idea what they are thinking. Seems sort of like BofA buying ML. Time to hunker down, don't try to overreach and be a hero. But I guess management egos are not always subject to logic.

"Well that's the problem, then. What the U.S. economy really needs is cars that have to be replaced every 6-12 months."

I knew that American society had completely lost touch with reality a couple of years ago when I heard that makers of uber-trendy clothing for young women were having them made more cheaply (for a slight decrease in sales price) because "women's clothing in that class goes out of style so fast that it's only worn for a couple of months."

That paradigm's gone along with the credit and 19-year-old carrying 5K credit card balances.

Thx liz...other half is a MD (but mostly brain cutting). Had two cool baths this afternoon. I know, 103 is the trigger....so far so good. Feel like absolute crap. These things never get me down. This one not so sure.

The problem is that I want to start classes and attending classes disqualifies one from unemployment.

Only if you tell them.

This is California.

Land of Grifters, For Grifters, Run by Grifters.

Get with the program.

Channel your inner Grifter.

I would much rather be paying unemployment insurance premiums knowing that helps you sit on your ass in school than that it helps someone else sit on their ass at home watching TV.

I'm serious!

NW

Hoop, that's the first 20 seconds of a good proposal for venture funding. Now you just have to decide what the venture is.

So you are awake when this happens.

Why do you want to turn it off.

Never mind, I would too.

Still, I'd love to know what happens next.

How long does it last? How do you turn it off?

Hoop, in my spare time after work I was able to do a gigantic amount of research on other topics which interested me. Get a running start. You don't have to quit to start looking.

futures are down >1%. Interesting, it seems like institutional traders are dumping positions at the end of the trading day. And buy those back early in the morning. I don't remember a single day last week when OTC was positive overnight. SOmeone must be very trigger happy.

p.s. Black Swan Jr, might be here.

Ummm, maybe he does have to quit.

Something so soul deadening might get you to feeling paralyzed.

NW,
Yeah, I know. Actually I don't... There is a peregrine falcon in those woods. That is very cool. Oh, and the Woods people, and deer.

nova: I just reread my last post. I was trying to be funny, but it came out snarky. Sorry. I enjoy your stories.

Absolutely. Who do you think I'm moving in with to save dough?

Have your visions gotten painful-er with the economic problems?

I'm sorry, I'm just very curious.

Ignore me if you want.

Hoops - FWIW, I have a cousin who also cranked through college, wound up in Law School by default, and then discovered that he hated the practice of law. He bailed out after a few years (and a divorce), built computers and learned programming during the dot-com bubble, and now runs a smallish hedge fund. (He's good at surfing bubbles, it seems.)

Another former lawyer, much more famous, is Warren Buffett's partner Charlie Munger. He saved up enough doing law to start up a real estate development venture (back in the 50s when such things were going gangbusters) and then used the profits from that to run his own investment show (and eventually hit it off with Buffett).

One option for redemption after your current legal crisis would be to do something like what Mike Morgan does down in Florida. You could use your legal expertise, entrepreneurial spirit, and passion for financial matters to bring the hellfire down upon the fraudsters. There has to be something worth doing in that arena!

Suppose Summers suceeds Bernanke at the Fed. Well that would be special.

Gotta turn in. Night all. Thx Mike.

Hoops,
How about quiting and moving to Republic of Lakotah Republic of Lakotah – Mitakuye Oyasin

The UK is not dependent on tourism I hope...

"and graduated with a JD around age 23."

I would try VC if I were you. It's mostly hyper & very adaptive. In the science field you can't do much of research unless you ve got your PhD. And most of other options usually fall a bit short of being cutting edge exciting job. A lot also depends on the company you work for. There is a huge difference between working for Cal Tech tied Start Up & one of those old guard corporate giants...

Well thank you. In case that happens, I have a cave to live in.

PHD seems likely, to be honest. Whether I go for a PHD or a MA depends on whether I find a job with a Masters + JD that is as compelling as pursuing studies.

Hoops:

Congratulations on the change; if you can hate being the person that you see in the future, then it's time. One of the reasons that I stayed with the kids years ago was that I could see what I was becoming and hated that with a passion.

If you're doing Ag Sciences however, get ready for Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. They are stone cold killers.

I loved O and inO Chem.

Nova:

My elder sister had a hippy dorm mate from NYC in the late 1960s who was doing an internship in the wilds of southern Ohio. One day Earth Mamma (my nickname for her) noticed that the street where she was living was full of armed men dressed in camo. She breathlessly called my sister to report that she thought the revolution was starting.

My sister had to break the news to her that it was just the start of hunting season. Earth Momma was crestfallen.

The venture capital / startup option sounds cool. I've lost track of the number of times I've had some wild idea that ought to be really interesting to pursue, and would make a great startup, but I couldn't get anywhere with it because the legal/corporate system intimidates me (and because I don't have enough savings yet to make the wild leap into financial independence, since I've got wife + kids to worry about too). ETA for me is about 5 more years.

so there's not as much bullshit as with the 18-20 y/o day students

Not as many "distractions" either.

Squidward:

You enjoyed O and Ino Chemistry?

It was intellectually challenging, but trying to do the night courses and studying while caring for a baby/toddler left me a zombie.

Mebbe if I do it later in life without kids...nah.

"I might end up doing a masters in chemistry."

Masters in chemistry is not enough to do R&D. It' is also very time consuming. Organic chemistry is all about memorization and getting mechanisms. Inorganic chemistry is fun, think of it as molecular geometry. Biochem is a fun killer and you ve got to do memorization 24/7.

TJ:

Dude, there were some serious late 20-something lookers in my classes. I'd take that crew over the teens anyday.

Now I'm seriously into the Sandra Day O'Connor look...

".......[water scarcity] means opportunities for those with know-how to be paid to provide solutions."

.....Hoops....think "grey water" usage. Today's building codes make you dump it into the sewer. The biggest amount of water waste out there.

I didn't find organic chemistry that hard. Statistics either. You get it or you don't. Once I got to the theory of relativity, though, I was lost. It didn't help that the TA said spaceshit instead of spaceship.

OT to Nova:

Continue to like the site BTW...

Now I gotta run to work on article of my own...something to effect of Child-beating as an Aerobic Workout.

TJ:

Yep, much preferred Mrs. Kensington to her daughter...

"Re: The VC route;"

I knew someone with JD in VC industry. She was involved with patents & related and was pretty happy with her job. She had both JD & biochem background. However many other options with the JD in VC & related industry.

For those interested my higher beliefs more align with the information found in these videos by the same author, Not Zeitgeist.

Esoteric Agenda
No longer found on google video

KYMATICA
KYMATICA

So Summer's admits the obvious? [lots more u/e] Well I suppose that is a start.

As for what will get us out of this 'L' recession? CR says RI & consumption is the usual 'driver' but there are usually drivers of that driver [like wealth generated from IT driving consumption]... that was what 'longwaver' was suggesting. It is classic 'schumpeter stuff'. The good news is that innovative waves do come along fairly regularly... bad news is the periodicity is something like 40-50 years and we just exited a phase maximum about ten years ago suggesting we won't see another major wave for 10-15 years. There's you 'Japanese L Shaped Recovery' even IF they did policy right.

It is likely to be a grind whether we like it or not.

As for Hoops & science? Go for it... let us know how it works out. If you want to bounce ideas off us - many here have been in some type of 'applied science' for a long time.

BTW if you are interested in agriculture AND science - look into terra preta... find a way to replicate this 'ancient technology' and you would have a pretty interesting career and possibly a Nobel Peace Prize.

"Once I got to the theory of relativity, though, I was lost. It didn't help that the TA said spaceshit instead of spaceship. "

Ohh.... Relativity is easy once you realize that light travels at the speed of time.