In my office building, a major tenant recently reduced its use of office space by 1/4. Apparently, as their budget was reviewed, it was "discovered" that they could make do with 1/4 less space for the same number of workers.
A lot of inefficiency existed with regards to office space during the bubble.
Does the rent calculation also include the reduced real estate agent finder's fee. I know that in my area the finder's fee have gone up from one month's rent in mid 1990's to 1.5 month rent in early 2000's to 2 months' rents in 2005 - 2007 period. Now they have dropped back down to 1 month's rent when I was looking for an apartment to rent. I imagine the same applies to CRE world. One months reduction say over 2 years lease agreement is a nice 4.17% annual rent decrease. That is deflation in my book.
"While unemployment figures tend to be a lagging indicator of economic problems, Mr. Biden's comments suggested that the "green shoots" the administration has begun talking about may not be as green as they may have initially envisioned."
Hoocoodanode? Should be an interesting quarter for the market bulls.
[BEIJING (AP) -- China has no plans to raise its proposal for a new global currency to replace the dollar at the G8 meeting this week but is willing to discuss it, a top Chinese diplomat said, as President Hu Jintao left Sunday for Italy.]
F@ck china. If they have a problem with the dollah - Depeg.
From the same story:
[China has criticized a U.S. bill to impose tariffs on imports from countries that fail to cut emissions of gases blamed for global warming. "We are firmly against such attempts to advance trade protectionism under the pretext of climate change," He said.]
adornosghost--wavy gravy, wow, he's real?
Yep, and quite active. Runs Camp Winnarainbow, a clown camp for kids up in Mendo.
Also involved with the Seva Foundation.
I think Dilbert is being very timely here... Last night on the SciFi channel I saw the old Twilight Zone episode "How to Serve Man".... The aliens book was finally deciphered, and it's a cookbook...
unemployment is a lagging indicator- it is amazing how this line has got stuck into the collective consciousness of the MSM in particular. While it is accurate that unemployment will continue to go up even after the economy has bottomed (combination of the natural increase in the labor force and discouraged workers coming back) and thus a lagging indicator - that also requires that monthly job losses be less than 50,000.month. When payrolls are decreasing by over 450,000 unemployment is not a lagging indicator.
Habitat finds buying is cheaper Charlotte's Habitat is among the first in the nation to start buying up houses in troubled neighborhoods where up to a third of the homes are vacant due to foreclosure. Average cost: $38,000 to $55,000, less than half the original price.
“We're getting them as low as $30,000, knowing we'll put in $10,000 of repairs,” said Meg Robertson, an associate director with Habitat. “To build a new one is over $60,000 … we're $20,000 to $30,000 cheaper per home.”
Best of all, Habitat expects to be reimbursed for most of the costs through a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program that aims to stabilize subdivisions staggered by foreclosures.
unirealist,
the big problem is productivity.
We can feed everybody, cloth everybody, and get them to work with 10% of the working population, health care requires 15% of the working population, government 10% of the working population. So now we have to come up with something for about 90 million people in their productive prime to do.
Craft projects are not going to do it.
Gotta have some edifice to soak up folks.
FIRE did a good job for a while- but really we only need 6%, not 15% in that racket.
Casinos are good, they recycle dollars fast.
See my point? All of this fantasy about people making things and metal bashing is very old fashioned.
Not gonna happen unless we decide to value handmade again.
crazyv - saw a good clip on this the other day, maybe Rosenberg via bloomie tv, that this time around employers have reduced hours/days, and rapidly enforced part-time (or more part-time) alongside early layoffs, in order to bring the payroll obligations down in the short term to meet absent order book volumes, but re-employment will involve first and mainly those on reduced / part hours.
In short, those laid off in mfg could be in long-term trouble. And the UE numbers could be harder to shift than previous recessions.
A lot of inefficiency existed with regards to office space during the bubble.
And a lot of companies warehousing high-priced space for their future growth needs. Maybe subletting in the meantime, maybe not. Now, it's like an inventory adjustment. All that warehoused space isn't needed, and a lot of those sublets are coming back on the market. In almost all tiers of CRE, there is no need for any new construction for a decade.
The recurring theme for US economy into 2011 ( as reflected in CR's posts )
- CRE getting crushed
- RRE still tanking
- Continuing Unemployment with U6 likely at 20%
- Consumer spending going down
- The MSM and Obama admin desperately pushing green shooties meme
So now we have to come up with something for about 90 million people in their productive prime to do.
--Citizen Allen
If that's all office work does, then why do we have to bring in cheap illegals to do so much of the real work? At 1/10 the wage?
The fact is that everybody wants to work in an air-conditioned office pushing papers, rather than break their backs in a warehouse hand-loading crates under the watchful eye of a foreman counting cases per hour, or get up at four AM to hook up milking machines or move wheel sprinklers, or descend two miles into a coal mine.
That's why we have so many offices.
Perhaps I shouldn't say this here, because so much of the commentariat works in offices, but office work is 90% parasitic on the body of the economy.
@ bearly (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 11:19 am
[BEIJING (AP) -- China has no plans to raise its proposal for a new global currency to replace the dollar at the G8 meeting this week but is willing to discuss it, a top Chinese diplomat said, as President Hu Jintao left Sunday for Italy.]
Who cares...here's what's happening
In China, a Burst of Corporate Bonds
Thanks to streamlined regulations, more companies are issuing debt cheaply and fast
Hong Kong - Here's a little-known fact: Chinese companies now issue more corporate debt than their counterparts in Japan, making the yuan-denominated bond market the world's No. 3, after those for dollars and euros. In the first five months of 2009, mainland companies sold $82 billion worth of debt, vs. $51 billion for the Japanese. "The growth in issuance has been phenomenal," says Liao Qiang, credit analyst at Standard & Poor's (MHP) in Beijing.
Corporate bonds will be crucial to Beijing's efforts to make the yuan a global currency. For that to happen, the mainland's capital markets need to be far more sophisticated and better integrated into the international financial system than they are today. "The government is pushing to make financial markets more broad-based and mature, and without debt you cannot say that is complete," says Frank Gong, chief China economist at JPMorgan Chase (JPM).
It was awesome how we built loads of extra highways, malls, houses and coffee shops by leveraging the surplus savings of the rest of the world and then refusing to pay.
Behold the last gasp of the super predator consumer society where every rational action is a Hot Potato trick to force the bag onto someone else.
We get to keep all our houses, ATV's, flat screens, Winnebagos, Harleys, and barbecues, default, and the developing world will still be forced to cheaply sell our toys to us. Otherwise, emerging economies will have find something to do instead of developing junk for export.
We Rule! America, fuck yeah! I'm ready to do it again. Let's Bubble Up. Change the value of the dollar, install currency pegs, collapse prices, inflate prices, throw all options in a bowl and do it simultaneously, whatever, the game will survive!
Leverage in the name of greed will always trump work in a get rich quick culture.
unirealist,
They are showing up because the value of the dollar dictates they will work cheaper than folks who are fully invested in the economy.
If we deported them and fined the crap out of the employers, wages would rise in those industries and folks would do the jobs.
I am not a believer in Americans won't slave for dirty jobs- they will and do, they just expect more than starvation wages for them.
Have you seen the living conditions the illegal immigrants put up with to survive here? Why? Because they are getting $20 an hour?
The destruction of living wage jobs by the labor broker is a crime, and I usually don't support much left wing thinking, but that is the result of our incompetent labor policies.
I note that nobody questions the large profits in a lot of the exploitative industries.
Kosher butchers need really cheap labor? Cheaper than legal immigrant?
Nope, they just have as much greed as anybody else.
That entire argument pisses me off, I scrubbed enough toilets as a young man.
I have seen admin staff complain bitterly about having toooo much to do, while on the phone to family and friends 1/4 of the day. Most have the attention span of a knat and then need to leave early to do something non-work related.
This seems to be the norm. The exception can do 8 hours of work in 6 and still find time for lunch. The key seems to be to concentrate on getting the job done first in the most effective way.
My dad always told us kids "Any honest job is a good job." and "An honest days work for an honest days pay."
I have spent time washing dishes and waiting tables.
My biggest problem with increasing social security or retirement age is about the people who unload the trucks and clear the irrigation ditches. They can't do that kind of work at 70. At least for the most part.
OTOH, this is "retirement age" is a fairly new concept looking historicly. People used to work until they died, but they died much younger.
We progress and still fall behind. Humans are a strange group.
My dad always told us kids "Any honest job is a good job." and "An honest days work for an honest days pay." ~joasp
While I tend to agree I also think that as of late this type of work never actually pays the bills and the average American is left struggling... Mortgage or not.....
Added fillip - I had totally forgotten this bit about that book:
Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who get shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalía in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis has crippled the world's economy. Shortly thereafter, a disease renders all humans on earth infertile, with the exception of the people on Santa Rosalía, making them the last specimens of humankind.
Ted Koeppel had a tv series about China last year, and watching 35 year old Chinamen taking turns driving a sledgehammer into reinforced concrete, to get @ the rebar within-for the princely sum of 40 cents an hour didn't faze me, but the idea that they were all smiling and seemed happy with their lot in life, did.
Technology seems to be a factor in the rising office vacancies as well. As things like telepresence (full video display of the entire conference room), webcams to track employees, hours management system/issues tracking for remote employees get more popular, the needs to have an actual office gets less and less important. (it's really mainly for show for investors/clients, as I've worked in several internet startups...but thrift will rule the day from here on out)
I am 55. So I grew up in a far differant point of view about work, wages, credit, home ownership etc. Guess I have retained many of those ideas and ideals. Probably not in my best interest in this day and age. But I am too old to change now. And I sleep well at night.
You are still living in the 1950s.. Can you really say that with a straight face or conscience. Even after what went on in this country since the early 1980s?
//My dad always told us kids "Any honest job is a good job." and "An honest days work for an honest days pay." I have spent time washing dishes and waiting tables.//
So is the internet and pretty much everything you know.. You do realize that time in a evolving system cannot be reversed, right?
//OTOH, this is "retirement age" is a fairly new concept looking historicly. People used to work until they died, but they died much younger.//
That is because most people are stupid! Most people choose to ignore the obvious, the rational and the objective. Instead they seek solace in the herd, zero-sum games, mumbling something about the "good old days", morality and other assorted BS.
Scrooge McDuck - do you have a link for that Japanese school? I cant contact you thru the network.... Which might be a good thing when they come for you! LOL!
Don't think I am living in the 50s. But I so hold the ideals of that time I guess.
I am not in debt. I don't lie to my clients. I earn my money. I value my friends. I take care of my mom in her old age. I feed the dog everyday LOL.
What I am saying, I think, is that I resisted the marketing plan to tell me what I had to have or what I deserved and right now. I have what used to be called FU money. But, I didn't own a TV from 1972 to 2000. I did read the news paper.
I researched a couple online, and this one seems to have gotten alot of good reviews in the internet forums and online (as well as being the biggest/cheapest)
And they'll give you a list of rentals after you've contacted them, most around $400-600/month.
You are talking about religious-type morality, not reason.
Let me translate that for you- "I resisted the whisperings of the devil who wanted me to acquire stuff and stuck with the one and only true god (insert your god or virtue of choice)"
//I resisted the marketing plan to tell me what I had to have or what I deserved and right now. I have what used to be called FU money. But, I didn't own a TV from 1972 to 2000.//
"Perhaps I shouldn't say this here, because so much of the commentariat works in offices, but office work is 90% parasitic on the body of the economy."
A great deal of it has to do with keeping economic score and transferring wealth -- what do we have, what do they owe us, how can we get more from them -- without actually creating anything.
The outfit I work for is all about persuading people with money to freely give it to an institution that will (it promises) do Great Things with it. All our office does, then, all 100+ of us, is try to move cash from one pocket to another.
And think about banksters, accountants, lawyers, investment analysts, and more, and the minions that serve them -- all there to move the money around, maybe rent it out, while grabbing a vast piece for simply being a conduit. And being very cavalier in where the money ends up, or whether it's wasted in the end, as long as they get their piece up front.
The size of the unproductive workforce is largely a function of how much wealth in a society is gathered through speculation and gatekeeping of artificially controlled resources.
July 5 (Bloomberg) -- Vice President Joe Biden said the Obama administration “misread the economy” when it forecast unemployment would peak at 8 percent if Congress enacted a $787 billion fiscal stimulus.
... Biden also said it was premature to discuss crafting another economic stimulus measure because the administration has paid out only about $120 billion of the funds approved for road and school construction and other job-creating projects in February.
“You’re going to start to see a lot more jobs created” as more funds from the stimulus package are disbursed, he said...
I wonder how long it'll take for the honest, real work-producing people to realized how much they're being robbed, and stop working. Sadly, it's those people that are propping up the corrupt system, and keeping it on the life support.
I just don't equate sucess with having more toys, I do equate it with having the toys I want after paying the bills first. I just never thought that 2 people needed 3000 sq ft for a starter home. Some of, no many, of the things we are taught to value really have no value. Unless it is the value your neighbor places on wanting what you have.
from the last thread.. my take on that article was foreclosure had a lot to do with people losing their notional equity gains in houses that they bought with almost nothing down. quite rational..
It certainly did not help that the housing ATM also closed down..
To watch what's become of the Grand Old Party, is like watching an aging formerly excellent professional athlete now not capable of taking the field of play, without embarrassing himself in the process. In lieu of using performance enhancing steroids, dogma is the preferred substance abuse method...
They'll have to know. When they're staring at their 60% tax bill. When they're driving by coffeehouses and seeing packed house with people lounging around. When they're seeing slow services at government agencies, and unpaved road for months, while workers stand around. When they notice that their relatives are just playing video games/watching tv all day, while living off government aid. When their coworkers slowly disappear, and they have to do the job of three men.
Unless we find ways to pay people to consume, we are screwed. Technology causes product and service deflation + loss of jobs.. however jobs require other people to consume.
i just hope people dont fail to see the fraud and casino (leveraged debt, SIVs, derivatives) behavior that was built upon the mortgage fiasco and thus took this crisis from an 80 s type S&L thing and turned it into a world beater
Over a year ago, I told DC1000 this was going to happen.
He didn't listen.
He talked a good game, though.
I believe he is now bankrupt.
I was in DC the last time it melted down. The whole "this area is recession proof due to government spending argument" got shot full of holes then. And I predicted it would again. Didn't take long.
Those that ignore history are doomed to sell me things at cut rate prices.
Earnings Drop Worldwide as Job Losses Hurt Consumers - Bloomberg.com
By Jack Kaskey and Melita Marie Garza
July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Earnings at such companies as Ford Motor Co. and ArcelorMittal may continue to decline in the next three months as the highest unemployment in a quarter-century keeps consumers from spending. The year-over-year profit slide for Standard & Poor’s 500 Index members may narrow to 21 percent from July through September, after declines of an estimated 34 percent in the second quarter and about 60 percent in the year’s first three months, according to data compiled by S&P and Bloomberg. Earnings may rise by year-end based on comparisons to late 2008, which was roiled by the meltdown in financial markets.
Did someone try to steal Goldman Sachs' secret sauce? While most in the United States were celebrating the Fourth of July holiday, a Russian immigrant living in New Jersey was being held on federal charges of stealing secret computer trading codes from a major New York-based financial institution. Authorities did not identify the firm, but sources say that institution is none other than Goldman Sachs. The charges, if proven, are significant because the codes that the accused, Sergey Aleynikov, tried to steal are the secret sauce to Goldman's automated stock and commodities trading business. Federal authorities contend the computer codes and related-trading files that Aleynikov uploaded to a German-based website help this major financial institution generate millions of dollars in profits each year.
Unless we find ways to pay people to consume, we are screwed.
Ah, herein lies the rub - minimizing labor expenses has been one of the key objectives of the Anglo-Saxon corporate management over the past 20 years was on (e.g., moving labor intensive parts of operations to countries with cheap labor, union busting, increased reliance on contractors and temps).
While the incomes have been stagnant, cheap credit allowed increasing consumption, so the problem was not acute.
Addressing this problem in the current environment is, IMO, politically impossible. Just imagine the Republican outrage (unless, of course, we are talking about ways to pay bankers more).
Biden seems to have an honesty problem - he is more honest than is good for a politician. I expect all politicians to lie, so his honesty signifies a lack of competency more than an excess of morality. He should have simply said that the Bush administration handed an even weaker economy to Obama than everyone realized. In other words, assign 100% of the problem to Bush. Don't accept any responsibility for errors in the new administration, even if it's only misreading the other guy's screw-ups. Politics 101. Sleazy, but if you play the game, you should play it well.
Mock Turtle, I think you correctly pointed out in the last thread that the Bush administration very enthusiastically pushed for greater home ownership, and emphasized efforts to get traditional minority groups to buy more homes. I absolutely agree. Greenspan and banker lobbies were very anxious to keep the punchbowl full, as were the charity groups pushing lower down payment programs, as were most voters, counting up their home price appreciation gains.
Now we are in 2009, and we have choices to make. The key people are named Frank, Dodd, Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, Summers and Bernanke. We will all have to live in the world formed by their decisions.
In judging what that future world should look like, it would be really good to avoid a repeat of the morass we got ourselves into last time. It was caused by a confluence of dozens of factors, and the motivations and actions of millions of people. But if we want to make an effective change, we need to identify the chokepoints, the levers, the things that take the least effort to change, but that would have the most impact. That study on home foreclosures described by Stan Liebowitz in the WSJ merely pointed out that the amount of homeowner skin in the game is more important than credit cores, ability to pay, and a host of other factors that are being held up as the keys to avoiding another rash of bad home loans. And the measure of owner skin in the game at the time when a new loan is underwritten is the down payment.
So if we want to achieve results in preventing a future rash of bad home loans that endangers our entire economy, we would be forcing higher down payments as a requirement of new home loans, at least those that benefited in some way from taxpayer support. And we'd be holding the people in power now (see the list above) accountable for getting it done.
I have no problem with beancounters who know they are beancounters. However, many of them start believing in their ability to make predictions, run organisations etc.. and then things go to hell.
Lucifer (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 1:24 pm
I have no problem with beancounters who know they are beancounters. However, many of them start believing in their ability to make predictions, run organisations etc.. and then things go to hell.
I could add Pfizer, Merck, Astra-Zeneca, Sanofi, Novartis, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Glaxo-Smith-Klein and pretty much every large/medium cap in the pharma/biotech area to that list.
I have no problem with beancounters who know they are beancounters. However, many of them start believing in their ability to make predictions, run organisations etc.. and then things go to hell.
I would also add econ professors to the category of beancounters and use Larry Summers as Exhibit 1.
preventing a future rash of bad home loans that endangers our entire economy, we would be forcing higher down payments as a requirement
That may be difficult to do in an enviroment of lowered wages, fewer jobs and a very slowly unwinding RE market. When average home prices are in line with average wages things will be "normal" (or another better term). We are still seeing both wages/jobs and RE prices falling.
what are you willing to do about it? Run for office? If all we do is comment on blogs and work on making ourselves richer, we really don't have much of a leg to stand on in the argument.
Politics is a lot like child rearing. The people who probably would be the best at it don't do it. The ones that have no ability embrace it.
I could add Pfizer, Merck, Astra-Zeneca, Sanofi, Novartis, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Glaxo-Smith-Klein and pretty much every large/medium cap in the pharma/biotech area to that list.
Clinton and Obama administrations? (Bush II was too incompetent to qualify)
Plus the Federal Reserve, of course
"Bank of the West has inked easily the largest local office deal of the year, signing a lease for 240,000 square feet at Bishop Ranch that allows it to consolidate 1,600 employees now spread among seven East Bay offices.
...Bank of the West is just one of many companies nearing the end of their leases that are shopping around for space, often playing landlords off one another to secure the best price and driving down average rents in the process, he said.
More notably, the Bishop Ranch lease represents a slight decline in the bank's total East Bay space and will come at a high cost to the markets where its offices are now located. The consolidation will leave at least 160,000 square feet of vacant space around Interstate 680, emptying the bank's main building at 1450 Treat Blvd. in Walnut Creek and single-handedly pushing vacancy near the Pleasant Hill BART station from 29 to 38 percent, Del Beccaro said. "It's going to have a ripple effect in terms of causing almost all trends to drift down further," he said.
LL, those people are the decision-makers for us all, whether we like it or not. Sure, people can lobby them, and bribe them, but they are the decision-makers. Some pols like to pass responsibility for their actions onto the lobbyists, but that's false. Just because a pol is not brave enough to say No to a contributor doesn't mean he is powerless. It means he is more interested in his position than he is in the general welfare. They have the power, but may choose to use it to stay in office rather than do the right thing. That's not the same as not having the power.
Lucifer (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 1:30 pm
Rob Dawg,
I could add Pfizer, Merck, Astra-Zeneca, Sanofi, Novartis, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Glaxo-Smith-Klein and pretty much every large/medium cap in the pharma/biotech area to that list.
Right, just everyone knows the GM story. If I were to pick a poster child; HCA.
For every one person who comments, there are > 20 who read.
//what are you willing to do about it? Run for office? If all we do is comment on blogs and work on making ourselves richer, we really don't have much of a leg to stand on in the argument.//
Few appreciate that Dreamliner is a major technological leap and its predicted operational life is problematic.
If Boeing screws it up, it's lights out for them.
mp - Why? Airbus has been having problems of its own, A380 is just one example. It seems that Boeing's survival rests more on its relative success/failure rather than on its ability to avoid mistakes altogether, no?
josap, I agree that requiring higher down payments now would be "difficult". But difficult for whom? It would merely accelerate a return to sustainable financial and economic housing activities, dominated by much lower prices for RE. We are trying to avoid that outcome, and wasting valuable time and resources in the process.
Few appreciate that Dreamliner is a major technological leap and its predicted operational life is problematic.
If Boeing screws it up, it's lights out for them.
Boeing signed their own obituary when they relocated corporate.
For the record Boeing has no idea how to build a composite aircraft. The inside joke is that they scratched off the materials list and wrote in "composites." We used to call this "black aluminum" design. I saw where Boeing was going to have problems right away. I was tasked with addressing the same problem class (and solved it) 25 years ago. Like most terminal companies "not invented here" reigns.
MrM, Boeing has staked everything on composite technology, and there are still a lot of unknowns there. This isn't the forum for such a discussion, but consider the following:
We're still learning how to properly inspect composite structures. Interlaminar failures, not visible to the naked eye, can cause a structure to fail in shear without warning.
Dreamliner's entire "airframe" is basically a molded composite structure, which is glued together, and Boeing has bet the farm on it. There are also a lot of things we don't know about adhesives.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but it requires a major re-think--from the ground up--as to how airplanes are constructed and maintained.
I don't disagree with your assessment of politics. I'm just stating that we can't complain if we don't do anything about it. I'm currently running someone's campaign (which is why i haven't been commenting much here in the past 6 months).
It is an ugly business populated by low IQ suits. The people on this board could take over if we all got involved. But we don't.
12th percentile, your experience inside politics may give you more insight than most of us here. If it's school board politics, maybe not, but if it's Congressional, then yes. I guessed that the ultimate decision-makers on home financing issues were Frank, Dodd, Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, Summers, and Bernanke. Is that about right? And do you think that we as individuals can push on them in any way? Is the most effective way through our own Congressmen?
"Ideas have to spread.. Change comes when enough people start questioning."
When I quit my job/moved most of my wealth out of dollar, I told everyone about it and warned about the coming collapse (have been for 3 years). Family, friends, neighbors, random people in coffee shops/restaurants. In my resignation email, I sounded some alerts about the great depression/collapse of dollar. (it was a rather large department that I sent my email to).
I remember two instances distinctly: one was where some travelers and I were in a Waikiki breakfast place, discussing the day Palin got nominated. I mentioned that it won't matter, that if the great depression hits that year, Obama's got it. The tourists from England sounded skeptical, but I reminded them of the run on british banks (back in aug '08). The other was when I was in Gary Danko in SF a year ago and I was chatting with a big developer in DC, and I told him about the great depression. He sounded skeptical, but he mentioned he has been seeing lots of dropped business, and he's had to lay off contractors already. In both cases, I'm sure those people are more acutely aware of the circumstances after the crash has happened.
Sorry for the long rant, but my point is, we have to let people know. They have to know that the system is actively working against them, to make sure the main stakeholders get out safe, before dropping the safe on everybody.
mp - thanks!
I do appreciate the fact that it is an entirely new type of material and even traditional things like looking for stress faults are quite complicated and prone to error.
My point was very simple - the worst case scenario is Boeing has to scrap Dreamliner altogether. However, Boeing will still benefit from the generous support of the US federal government, which will not allow Airbus rule the world of commercial aircraft. So I would not write Boeing's obituary even if Dreamliner turns into disaster.
I think Biden-the-VP is more tactical than given credit, Recall how Obama-the-Candidate stumbled into many a mess of his own making on the campaign trail, the 20-yr Jeremiah Wright being a glaring example and one where he understood the best way to hold his base and also hold onto wavering voters leaning his way was to fess up he had made character-judgments errors with Wright, cut anchor and move on. Toady, remember that Obama appointed everyone accused of giving him bad economic advice.
Remember that he was the greatest candidate for the pressing issues of 2005 when he decided to run (and in 2005 re-structuring the US economy via a gut-rehab was NOT one of the pressing polling issues amongst voters, no matter how many history-revisionists lurk in blogdom) issues. Neither he nor the DNC-braintrust displayed any strong grasp of the true core financial problems even as late as their August 08 convention.
At present, Obama remains a neophyte on the core economic issues; simply jawboning about tweaking NAFTA (his primary economic position circa 2005), and now ape-ing the Bush-Paulson bailout merry-go-round, will not cut it and he's bright enuff to realize this and also that even the vaunted Reagan faced 50% disproval ratings as the mid-term elections of his 1st term loomed in 1982 because he had not ‘fixed’ the economy.
Polling is showing ‘Blaming Bush’ has played out amongst key MOR and base voters.
Summers, Goolsbee, Geithner are, respectively, far too wedded to personal ego & vanity, orthodox textbook ‘don’t-rock-the-boat’ economics, and Wall Street banks, to effectively deliver the message of "Wow, our ‘bad’, he he, that didn’t work did it? Well here's what we're gonna do differently"....so it's up to Biden....to merely send it up as a trial balloon so all can see how this mea culpa plays out.
Some time ago, son of mp and I watched a program concerning the F22? design competition. The program showed a wing skin being laid-up using prepreg material.
Son of mp and I watched--in horror--as they proceeded to vacuum bag the assembly. It was obvious these people didn't know what they were doing. They didn't pull the bag before entering the autoclave Therefore, they couldn't massage the bag to fit the concave surface. As it pulled in to the concave surface of the mold, it caused interlaminar welts to occur, perpendicular to, and radiating from, the center of curvature.
Thus wasting about half a million in carbon.
Anyway, they showed the panel when it came out of the autoclave. The bag pulled up around the panel, introducing interlaminar bubbles, just as we agreed would happen.
Unbelieveable, but I agree with Dawg.
At the time of the program, the Boeing we watched didn't know shit about composites.
No more freebies today. If you want more, I want a pony.
Alcoa, whose results are traditionally viewed as an indicator of the country's economic health, is expected to post a third consecutive quarterly loss this week. But many on Wall Street no longer see the aluminum producer's numbers as a bellwether portending either a deeper recession or an easing of the global downturn.
Statistically, a large number of people read blogs but not comments.
Quantcast has an estimate of the readership, and says 5% of the readers generate 58% of the traffic for CR.
"Sara is a drama queen" "The fact that Palin takes herself seriously is pure comedy to me"
......it seems when John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate, a considerable amount of hate was directed towards her, most of which seemingly unwarranted, for the little we knew about her. Afterwhich, she goes back to AK, decides to give up the Governorship, and the unveiled hate comes back. What seems to scare you guys? The people screaming invectives towards Palin are the same people who voted for our current President. How has THAT worked out? I'd be careful what is wished for - it's liable to bite us ALL hard on the posterior.
Prior to Bush II leaving office, I assumed he might go down in history as one of the poorest Presidents we've had. The current President though is trying mighty hard to beat out Bush II for THAT title.
Bottom line: this equation no longer works: GDP of a ponderous 300+million person economy = (70% driven by Debt-Enabled Consumer Spending + (30% Public Spending & Private Investment).
Debt Unwind will determine fresh new percentages for the equation that are doable and doable only for maybe 10 more years; in the interim the US faces constructing social safety padding for laying atop the concrete economic floor that millions of workers will be landing on (a safety net in the USofA?? in ur dreams).
And the launch of gubbmint public works labor initiatives to tide the unwashed masses over for years til Debt Unwind decides what the new financial sustainability equilibrium points are in the global financial community and intertwined markets.
Credit extended by banks will not fix this...not as long as the collateral for the loans deteriorates in value while the creditworthiness of the residential and corporate borrowers also deteriorates, and not as long as masses of fresh new suckers as bag holders can not be found around the globe.
12th percentile, your experience inside politics may give you more insight than most of us here. If it's school board politics, maybe not, but if it's Congressional, then yes. I guessed that the ultimate decision-makers on home financing issues were Frank, Dodd, Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, Summers, and Bernanke. Is that about right? And do you think that we as individuals can push on them in any way? Is the most effective way through our own Congressmen?
My experience in politics goes beyond the school board. I do not think you can do much by trying to pressure your congresspeople. You make a phone call. A corporate donor moves hundreds of thousands of dollars. Save your breath.
the only way we change things is if people like us, who know a thing or two about making and investing money, run for office and don't sell our souls to big business. Big business is ruining the working class in this country. We need some people to stand up for the working people in this country. I'd vote for mp, dryfly...maybe few others. Liz has my vote. This country used to be a place where an honest person could work hard and make an honest day's wages and raise their family. No longer. I don't enjoy making my money shorting america. but I do it as I'm certain my elected officials (hey, chuck schumer) don't give a damn about me and only work for wall street.
it is a tall order. I'm dabbling in politics to see if i can stomach it. My better half (my wife and the sane part of my brain), recommends we just move to Costa
Rica and not try to fight the tide of humanity.
"But many on Wall Street no longer see the aluminum producer's numbers as a bellwether portending either a deeper recession or an easing of the global downturn. "
It doesn't look like a pony, so it doesn't count anymore. If the numbers don't conform to the numbers they want - they reasign value to those numbers. Just like Clinton changed the way we figure CPI and UE, make things look better. Just like they changed the way they figure when our rainy season starts, change the numbers they look for.
mp,
When the Beechcraft Starship was being put into production my boss was on the VIP factory tour. The VP was proudly displaying the new and very expensive ultrasound topographic contour interlaminar defect inspection machine. The wing panel was followed by a nozzle spraying water and an ultrasound signal was used to detect voids. After several minutes the screen lit up with a ~6 cm area of concern. My boss asked the VP for a quarter. He proceeded to tap, tap, tap, tic,tap, tap, tap, tic, tic and in 30 seconds had a 2cm defect area. He kept the quarter.
patientrenter, as you can tell, I disagree with your take.
Doesnt really matter who on team Obama fesses up first....it was inevitable that they would have to fess up eventaully and jettison chunks of their economic approaches of the past 5 months.
But as always...time (and not blogdom readership) will tell whose perspective on this is correct.
tick-tock
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch
Jul 5, 2009, 7:00 a.m. EST
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- For months, policymakers from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on down told investors that a second-half recovery was a safe bet. Investors, optimists by nature, eventually bought in. But now, even though the second half has actually arrived, the curtain on the recovery has so far remained down and questions are being raised on whether it will go up at all. Suddenly notable economists say the whole thing might not happen. Others, including Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, predict the curtain may go up for a brief period but then go crashing back down.
12th percentile, you seem to have concluded that reelection chances are directly proportional to campaign spending. If that were true, then generating campaign contributions would be more effective than standing for office. Are you maybe a little less cynical than you appear?
Avl Dao, I hope you are correct. It's always better to have people who know what they are doing running the show than people who make random blunders.
In religion, the term false prophet is a label given to a person who is viewed as illegitimately claiming charismatic authority within a religious group. The individual may be seen as one who falsely claims the gift of prophecy, or who uses that gift for demagogy or evil ends.
..The term is sometimes applied outside religion, to describe someone who fervently promotes a theory that the speaker thinks is false.
Commercial aviation people are among the most conservative on the planet. They don't like things falling out of the sky.
I do not pretend to be very knowledgeable in this area, so I am first to admit I am out of my depth here.
Still, I got to believe Boeing will test the hell out of any new aircraft. Problems will also happen - just think of the recent crash of Air France's A330, which had a very good track record until it just fell into the ocean.
There are only two major players in the commercial wide-body aircraft, and it is hard to imagine either one of them will lose all of its clients and future orders because of problems with one model.
12thpercentile, you sure sound genuine. And that's a good thing.
Im skeptical that honest guys like you will get far in the political process as long a sthe other side has so much greater fighter-power.
Part of th eproblem is the sheer size of the US and how it enables various special interests to leverage so much money and firepower. Imagine if we were 30 separate nations of about 10 million persons each, in essence 30 much smaller economies. Many more of us would live in better managed nations because the scalability for money for lobbying wouldnt be there with such smaller economies.
Hope that seems clear.
last november the SEC permitted the nyse to create a new category of market maker called an SLP (supplemental liquidity provider)
to my knowledge goldman sachs is the only member of that elite club
why, when GS is already one of the dozen or so primary broker dealers on the nyse, does it advantage either the nyse or goldman to be an slp???
i just heard about this reading comments over at zero hedge regarding the allegation that gs uses web site data to do some front running to which gs of course obfuscated and denied see comments
Still, I got to believe Boeing will test the hell out of any new aircraft. Problems will also happen - just think of the recent crash of Air France's A330, which had a very good track record until it just fell into the ocean.
All they've got is models. They've specifically rejected the advice of experts for a very long time. "Not invented here."
Heath Techna has lot's of experience with composites and they were owned by boeing in 80's
Ciba Geigy was doing quite a bit with composites in the 80's, sikorsky graphilte rotors, B-2 and nighthawk, boeing floor and storage panels..It's been around and proved reliable...I ran a QC dept. and mil spec guidelines were the rule...I think theirs tons of potentials...
By Brian Wargo (contact), In Business reporter
Fri, Jul 3, 2009 (3 a.m.)
With the Las Vegas economy mired in a deep recession, some are suggesting it’s time for the community to hit the reset button. That is the topic for the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies, which will host its 12th-annual round table Aug. 19 and 20. About 80 business leaders, academics and politicians will discuss “What’s Happened? What’s Next?’’ The group will assess what happened to Las Vegas in the past 18 months and what can be done for future growth.
"There are only two major players in the commercial wide-body aircraft, and it is hard to imagine either one of them will lose all of its clients and future orders because of problems with one model."
MrM, here's a little history for you.
In 1938, there were three serious manufacturers of land-based commercial aircraft in the US: Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed.
In early '38, Lockheed introduced the Super Electra, a scale-up of the Model 10 (the model Amelia Earhart purchased in '36).
Anyway, the Super Electra, like the Model 10, had the famous twin tail design for which Lockheed was known. It developed that the tail had flutter problems. In rough weather, it would literally rip off the airplane, often with little or no warning. This happened twice to Northwest Airlines, whose entire fleet was the Electra series.
After investigation, it turned out that the instrument Lockheed had been using to measure resonant vibrations was OUT OF CALIBRATION, hence leading to a faulty design.
Even though Lockheed remedied the problem, Northwest sold ALL of their Super Electras because passengers wouldn't fly in them. Northwest bought the Douglas.
This damned near killed Lockheed. If it hadn't been for World War II, Lockheed could very well have ceased to exist. There was ENORMOUS reputational damage.
PatientRenter, I speak as a former Illinoisian very active in Obama's district back when he was a state senator and quite assessible for evaluating how he ticks.
Dont hold ur breath. He and his economic advisors would need to make the equivalent of a change of religious belief before they see: 1) a financially sustainable US economy as not driven by excessive credit, 2) banking & bank CEOs as not Brahmins as Geithner preaches to them, 3) globalization as not the solution, and 4) intellectual 'black boxes' as not reliable sources of fixes but simply mental placebos that allow folks to sleep well at night under the premise that 'someone real smart ' will invent a solution tomorow.
manana manana.
Despite all of Reagan's charisma, had the economy not turned around in 1982-1984, voters would have kicked him to the curb as they did his 3 predeccessors in quick succession. This in contrast to the 25-year secular bull market and 25 years of rising and multiple overlapping economic bubbles that allowed every president to get re-elected, save one hapless soul, GB1st.
mp - There few things more valuable than a good story of what actually happened.
That said Do you really believe that air lines will go to Airbus-only fleets? That would give Airbus too much pricing power and air lines would be very afraid of that.
Plus political pressure on US airlines ...
there really is no room for the honest in politics. I just like to saddle up my donkey and go after windmills.
If we all get together and tried to change things we could do it. But then again, we all are stupid rich and spend our time commenting on which securities to trade. We ain't exactly repressed.
And as we comment some half wit law school graduate with a nice smile is being groomed to run for office to represent us.
Will we step up and change things? My money says not this generation.
Roberto Calvi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Best I could find on the banker hanging.
second, third or whatever.
who needs an office when you don't have a job ...
Doesn't look too bad in a historical context ....
In my office building, a major tenant recently reduced its use of office space by 1/4. Apparently, as their budget was reviewed, it was "discovered" that they could make do with 1/4 less space for the same number of workers.
A lot of inefficiency existed with regards to office space during the bubble.
The % isn't bad so far - but it will continue to climb.
The only real difference is the number of 0s of the loan. Then the % of inflation figured in.
Whatever, it isn't pretty and lipstick won't help.
Does the rent calculation also include the reduced real estate agent finder's fee. I know that in my area the finder's fee have gone up from one month's rent in mid 1990's to 1.5 month rent in early 2000's to 2 months' rents in 2005 - 2007 period. Now they have dropped back down to 1 month's rent when I was looking for an apartment to rent. I imagine the same applies to CRE world. One months reduction say over 2 years lease agreement is a nice 4.17% annual rent decrease. That is deflation in my book.
flip the chart sideways and it looks a lot like the Cat In the Hat
Very short article on indutrial vacancy rates
Economist's Commentary: June 19, 2009
It would seem to me that office would be behind industrial and manufacturing space rates.
Volker: did you take the brown stuff at woodstock?
"While unemployment figures tend to be a lagging indicator of economic problems, Mr. Biden's comments suggested that the "green shoots" the administration has begun talking about may not be as green as they may have initially envisioned."
Hoocoodanode? Should be an interesting quarter for the market bulls.
volker the viking (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 11:02 am reply Ignore user flip the chart sideways and it looks a lot like the Cat In the Hat
You didn't see the unicorn???? What about the skiddles?
Volker: did you take the brown stuff at woodstock?
I saw Wavy Gravy last weekend, the person who made that announcement.
He was walking his fish.
josap--nope, just a cat in a hat
dr munch--I don't recall.
adornosghost--wavy gravy, wow, he's real?
We're so pretty, oh so pretty... VACANT.
YouTube -
C
[BEIJING (AP) -- China has no plans to raise its proposal for a new global currency to replace the dollar at the G8 meeting this week but is willing to discuss it, a top Chinese diplomat said, as President Hu Jintao left Sunday for Italy.]
F@ck china. If they have a problem with the dollah - Depeg.
From the same story:
[China has criticized a U.S. bill to impose tariffs on imports from countries that fail to cut emissions of gases blamed for global warming. "We are firmly against such attempts to advance trade protectionism under the pretext of climate change," He said.]
The Associated Press
Anyone have a link to this issue? I am interested.
adornosghost--wavy gravy, wow, he's real?
Yep, and quite active. Runs Camp Winnarainbow, a clown camp for kids up in Mendo.
Also involved with the Seva Foundation.
bearly - I know I've seen the original but have misplaced. Good summary and multi links here:
China Day Ahead: U.S. Jobless Rate Weigh on World Stock Markets - Bloomberg.com
C
For those seeking a new career, I offer today's Dilbert strip..
The official Dilbert website with Scott Adams' color comic strips, animation, mashups and more!
I think Dilbert is being very timely here... Last night on the SciFi channel I saw the old Twilight Zone episode "How to Serve Man".... The aliens book was finally deciphered, and it's a cookbook...
SoylentGreenIsPeople is around here somwhere, I'm sure...
Real work isn't done in offices. Real work is done in labs, farms and ranches, mines, factories, warehouses, and on highways.
If this country is ever to produce more than it consumes again, at least half its offices must be nailed shut.
Goldman Sachs first.
Two pet peeves:
A more timely movie - Daybreakers.
Apple - Trailers - DAYBREAKERS
Society consists of vampires who have sucked the blood out of almost every remaining human.
Mmmmm - nice tender office worker.... braised or roasted, fried or grilled.... Want fries with that?
unemployment is a lagging indicator- it is amazing how this line has got stuck into the collective consciousness of the MSM in particular. While it is accurate that unemployment will continue to go up even after the economy has bottomed (combination of the natural increase in the labor force and discouraged workers coming back) and thus a lagging indicator - that also requires that monthly job losses be less than 50,000.month. When payrolls are decreasing by over 450,000 unemployment is not a lagging indicator.
Jobless Recovery sounds as silly as a Famine Buffet
at least habitat isn't building any more houses.
Habitat finds buying is cheaper
Charlotte's Habitat is among the first in the nation to start buying up houses in troubled neighborhoods where up to a third of the homes are vacant due to foreclosure. Average cost: $38,000 to $55,000, less than half the original price.
“We're getting them as low as $30,000, knowing we'll put in $10,000 of repairs,” said Meg Robertson, an associate director with Habitat. “To build a new one is over $60,000 … we're $20,000 to $30,000 cheaper per home.”
Best of all, Habitat expects to be reimbursed for most of the costs through a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program that aims to stabilize subdivisions staggered by foreclosures.
Fallout is a lagging indicator of nuclear war.
unirealist,
the big problem is productivity.
We can feed everybody, cloth everybody, and get them to work with 10% of the working population, health care requires 15% of the working population, government 10% of the working population. So now we have to come up with something for about 90 million people in their productive prime to do.
Craft projects are not going to do it.
Gotta have some edifice to soak up folks.
FIRE did a good job for a while- but really we only need 6%, not 15% in that racket.
Casinos are good, they recycle dollars fast.
See my point? All of this fantasy about people making things and metal bashing is very old fashioned.
Not gonna happen unless we decide to value handmade again.
Not likely.
Someday this war's gonna end...
crazyv - saw a good clip on this the other day, maybe Rosenberg via bloomie tv, that this time around employers have reduced hours/days, and rapidly enforced part-time (or more part-time) alongside early layoffs, in order to bring the payroll obligations down in the short term to meet absent order book volumes, but re-employment will involve first and mainly those on reduced / part hours.
In short, those laid off in mfg could be in long-term trouble. And the UE numbers could be harder to shift than previous recessions.
Pretty sh!tty really.
C
And a lot of companies warehousing high-priced space for their future growth needs. Maybe subletting in the meantime, maybe not. Now, it's like an inventory adjustment. All that warehoused space isn't needed, and a lot of those sublets are coming back on the market. In almost all tiers of CRE, there is no need for any new construction for a decade.
The recurring theme for US economy into 2011 ( as reflected in CR's posts )
- CRE getting crushed
- RRE still tanking
- Continuing Unemployment with U6 likely at 20%
- Consumer spending going down
- The MSM and Obama admin desperately pushing green shooties meme
So now we have to come up with something for about 90 million people in their productive prime to do.
--Citizen Allen
If that's all office work does, then why do we have to bring in cheap illegals to do so much of the real work? At 1/10 the wage?
The fact is that everybody wants to work in an air-conditioned office pushing papers, rather than break their backs in a warehouse hand-loading crates under the watchful eye of a foreman counting cases per hour, or get up at four AM to hook up milking machines or move wheel sprinklers, or descend two miles into a coal mine.
That's why we have so many offices.
Perhaps I shouldn't say this here, because so much of the commentariat works in offices, but office work is 90% parasitic on the body of the economy.
Unirealist...
Damn, I wish I didn't have to agree with you!
@ bearly (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 11:19 am
[BEIJING (AP) -- China has no plans to raise its proposal for a new global currency to replace the dollar at the G8 meeting this week but is willing to discuss it, a top Chinese diplomat said, as President Hu Jintao left Sunday for Italy.]
Who cares...here's what's happening
In China, a Burst of Corporate Bonds
Thanks to streamlined regulations, more companies are issuing debt cheaply and fast
Hong Kong - Here's a little-known fact: Chinese companies now issue more corporate debt than their counterparts in Japan, making the yuan-denominated bond market the world's No. 3, after those for dollars and euros. In the first five months of 2009, mainland companies sold $82 billion worth of debt, vs. $51 billion for the Japanese. "The growth in issuance has been phenomenal," says Liao Qiang, credit analyst at Standard & Poor's (MHP) in Beijing.
Corporate bonds will be crucial to Beijing's efforts to make the yuan a global currency. For that to happen, the mainland's capital markets need to be far more sophisticated and better integrated into the international financial system than they are today. "The government is pushing to make financial markets more broad-based and mature, and without debt you cannot say that is complete," says Frank Gong, chief China economist at JPMorgan Chase (JPM).
In China, a Burst of Corporate Bonds - BusinessWeek
It was awesome how we built loads of extra highways, malls, houses and coffee shops by leveraging the surplus savings of the rest of the world and then refusing to pay.
Behold the last gasp of the super predator consumer society where every rational action is a Hot Potato trick to force the bag onto someone else.
We get to keep all our houses, ATV's, flat screens, Winnebagos, Harleys, and barbecues, default, and the developing world will still be forced to cheaply sell our toys to us. Otherwise, emerging economies will have find something to do instead of developing junk for export.
We Rule! America, fuck yeah! I'm ready to do it again. Let's Bubble Up. Change the value of the dollar, install currency pegs, collapse prices, inflate prices, throw all options in a bowl and do it simultaneously, whatever, the game will survive!
Leverage in the name of greed will always trump work in a get rich quick culture.
Office as nervous system, viewed through the prism of Kurt Vonnegut's "Galapagos":
Trout maintains that all the sorrows of humankind were caused by "the only true villain in my story: the oversized human brain".
Galápagos (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
unirealist,
They are showing up because the value of the dollar dictates they will work cheaper than folks who are fully invested in the economy.
If we deported them and fined the crap out of the employers, wages would rise in those industries and folks would do the jobs.
I am not a believer in Americans won't slave for dirty jobs- they will and do, they just expect more than starvation wages for them.
Have you seen the living conditions the illegal immigrants put up with to survive here? Why? Because they are getting $20 an hour?
The destruction of living wage jobs by the labor broker is a crime, and I usually don't support much left wing thinking, but that is the result of our incompetent labor policies.
I note that nobody questions the large profits in a lot of the exploitative industries.
Kosher butchers need really cheap labor? Cheaper than legal immigrant?
Nope, they just have as much greed as anybody else.
That entire argument pisses me off, I scrubbed enough toilets as a young man.
Someday this war's gonna end...
Unirealist. true, sad but true.
I have seen admin staff complain bitterly about having toooo much to do, while on the phone to family and friends 1/4 of the day. Most have the attention span of a knat and then need to leave early to do something non-work related.
This seems to be the norm. The exception can do 8 hours of work in 6 and still find time for lunch. The key seems to be to concentrate on getting the job done first in the most effective way.
My dad always told us kids "Any honest job is a good job." and "An honest days work for an honest days pay."
I have spent time washing dishes and waiting tables.
My biggest problem with increasing social security or retirement age is about the people who unload the trucks and clear the irrigation ditches. They can't do that kind of work at 70. At least for the most part.
OTOH, this is "retirement age" is a fairly new concept looking historicly. People used to work until they died, but they died much younger.
We progress and still fall behind. Humans are a strange group.
son of Vonnegut's recurring character Kilgore Trout
Doesnt he post here? LOL! ! !
One (I) learns something new everyday....
My dad always told us kids "Any honest job is a good job." and "An honest days work for an honest days pay." ~joasp
While I tend to agree I also think that as of late this type of work never actually pays the bills and the average American is left struggling... Mortgage or not.....
Added fillip - I had totally forgotten this bit about that book:
Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who get shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalía in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis has crippled the world's economy. Shortly thereafter, a disease renders all humans on earth infertile, with the exception of the people on Santa Rosalía, making them the last specimens of humankind.
Ted Koeppel had a tv series about China last year, and watching 35 year old Chinamen taking turns driving a sledgehammer into reinforced concrete, to get @ the rebar within-for the princely sum of 40 cents an hour didn't faze me, but the idea that they were all smiling and seemed happy with their lot in life, did.
Technology seems to be a factor in the rising office vacancies as well. As things like telepresence (full video display of the entire conference room), webcams to track employees, hours management system/issues tracking for remote employees get more popular, the needs to have an actual office gets less and less important. (it's really mainly for show for investors/clients, as I've worked in several internet startups...but thrift will rule the day from here on out)
Nades,
I am 55. So I grew up in a far differant point of view about work, wages, credit, home ownership etc. Guess I have retained many of those ideas and ideals. Probably not in my best interest in this day and age. But I am too old to change now. And I sleep well at night.
Sunday afternoon reading at zerohedge for those conspiracy theorists who need more than CRE busts to keep fresh:
H. Rodgin Cohen's (Failed?) Quest To Backstop Every Bank... Ever (And Usurp Geithner's Throne) | zero hedge
looks like 20% vacancy is on the cards
Maybe Sarah is paling around with Lil' Kim?
Run DMZ
Sara is a drama queen. (oopps, did I really type that?)
You are still living in the 1950s.. Can you really say that with a straight face or conscience. Even after what went on in this country since the early 1980s?
//My dad always told us kids "Any honest job is a good job." and "An honest days work for an honest days pay." I have spent time washing dishes and waiting tables.//
Sarah is everything that's wrong with America.
So is the internet and pretty much everything you know.. You do realize that time in a evolving system cannot be reversed, right?
//OTOH, this is "retirement age" is a fairly new concept looking historicly. People used to work until they died, but they died much younger.//
That is because most people are stupid! Most people choose to ignore the obvious, the rational and the objective. Instead they seek solace in the herd, zero-sum games, mumbling something about the "good old days", morality and other assorted BS.
//We progress and still fall behind. //
Guess I have retained many of those ideas and ideals.
If you stay away from urban America and have good health care I'd bet you dont....
................
The fact that Palin takes herself seriously is pure comedy to me.... You're not a republican you're a redneck... There used to be a difference....
.............................
Scrooge McDuck - do you have a link for that Japanese school? I cant contact you thru the network.... Which might be a good thing when they come for you! LOL!
Banksters and MBAs?
//Society consists of vampires who have sucked the blood out of almost every remaining humans//
Don't think I am living in the 50s. But I so hold the ideals of that time I guess.
I am not in debt. I don't lie to my clients. I earn my money. I value my friends. I take care of my mom in her old age. I feed the dog everyday LOL.
What I am saying, I think, is that I resisted the marketing plan to tell me what I had to have or what I deserved and right now. I have what used to be called FU money. But, I didn't own a TV from 1972 to 2000. I did read the news paper.
And I have vices and enjoy all of them.
Who said the fuckheads had to take welfare (FDIC insurance)? Let the banks eat cake.
"In short, those laid off in mfg could be in long-term trouble."
Could be in trouble?
Counterpointer, no offense intended, but where have you been the last forty years?
US Manufacturing is DYING, and won't begin to come back until the schism occurs.
@nades
ah yes; here you go:
Japanese language school:
HOME - ARC Academy
I researched a couple online, and this one seems to have gotten alot of good reviews in the internet forums and online (as well as being the biggest/cheapest)
And they'll give you a list of rentals after you've contacted them, most around $400-600/month.
I'm attending the school in Shinjuku in october.
You are talking about religious-type morality, not reason.
Let me translate that for you- "I resisted the whisperings of the devil who wanted me to acquire stuff and stuck with the one and only true god (insert your god or virtue of choice)"
//I resisted the marketing plan to tell me what I had to have or what I deserved and right now. I have what used to be called FU money. But, I didn't own a TV from 1972 to 2000.//
"Perhaps I shouldn't say this here, because so much of the commentariat works in offices, but office work is 90% parasitic on the body of the economy."
A great deal of it has to do with keeping economic score and transferring wealth -- what do we have, what do they owe us, how can we get more from them -- without actually creating anything.
The outfit I work for is all about persuading people with money to freely give it to an institution that will (it promises) do Great Things with it. All our office does, then, all 100+ of us, is try to move cash from one pocket to another.
And think about banksters, accountants, lawyers, investment analysts, and more, and the minions that serve them -- all there to move the money around, maybe rent it out, while grabbing a vast piece for simply being a conduit. And being very cavalier in where the money ends up, or whether it's wasted in the end, as long as they get their piece up front.
The size of the unproductive workforce is largely a function of how much wealth in a society is gathered through speculation and gatekeeping of artificially controlled resources.
mp,
We have left the world of reality a long time ago.. this is not suprising.
//"In short, those laid off in mfg could be in long-term trouble."//
Scrooge McDuck - thanks.... Maybe I'll see you over there... I'll the tall pale white boy... LOL!
...............
Laser all.....
Ok.. If you misread this situation the first time around, why won't you do it again? (especially with the same advisors)
120 billion to the real economy, 13.9 trillion to the 'ether'?
Biden Says Obama Administration ‘Misread’ Economy (Update1)
Biden Says Obama Administration ‘Misread’ Economy (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
By Ryan J. Donmoyer
July 5 (Bloomberg) -- Vice President Joe Biden said the Obama administration “misread the economy” when it forecast unemployment would peak at 8 percent if Congress enacted a $787 billion fiscal stimulus.
... Biden also said it was premature to discuss crafting another economic stimulus measure because the administration has paid out only about $120 billion of the funds approved for road and school construction and other job-creating projects in February.
“You’re going to start to see a lot more jobs created” as more funds from the stimulus package are disbursed, he said...
I wonder how long it'll take for the honest, real work-producing people to realized how much they're being robbed, and stop working. Sadly, it's those people that are propping up the corrupt system, and keeping it on the life support.
LOL, I am an athiest.
I just don't equate sucess with having more toys, I do equate it with having the toys I want after paying the bills first. I just never thought that 2 people needed 3000 sq ft for a starter home. Some of, no many, of the things we are taught to value really have no value. Unless it is the value your neighbor places on wanting what you have.
Maybe I am not making any sense.
Do they want to know? It is so much easier to blame blacks, mexicans, indians, chinese for their problems..
//I wonder how long it'll take for the honest, real work-producing people to realized how much they're being robbed, and stop working.//
josap,
You might think you are an atheist, but your beliefs have all the marks of a pious christian. Happens a lot nowadays..
us manufacturing wont come back until american workers are willing to work cheaper and for less benefits than workers in the third world
or cheaper than robots
almost forgot...epa and osha are gonna have to back off too
Is it just mere coincidence that both the $787 Billion stimulus package and the 787 Dreamliner can't seem to get off the ground?
I would think the rational manufacturing laborer would be better served pitchforking it out of the leisure class.
mock turtle,
from the last thread.. my take on that article was foreclosure had a lot to do with people losing their notional equity gains in houses that they bought with almost nothing down. quite rational..
It certainly did not help that the housing ATM also closed down..
Dreams might not translate into reality.
//Is it just mere coincidence that both the $787 Billion stimulus package and the 787 Dreamliner can't seem to get off the ground?//
To watch what's become of the Grand Old Party, is like watching an aging formerly excellent professional athlete now not capable of taking the field of play, without embarrassing himself in the process. In lieu of using performance enhancing steroids, dogma is the preferred substance abuse method...
Boeing is being led by a clueless beancounter.
In brief, that's why Dreamliner isn't happening.
A great name is being flown into the ground.
"Do they want to know?"
They'll have to know. When they're staring at their 60% tax bill. When they're driving by coffeehouses and seeing packed house with people lounging around. When they're seeing slow services at government agencies, and unpaved road for months, while workers stand around. When they notice that their relatives are just playing video games/watching tv all day, while living off government aid. When their coworkers slowly disappear, and they have to do the job of three men.
mock turtle,
Unless we find ways to pay people to consume, we are screwed. Technology causes product and service deflation + loss of jobs.. however jobs require other people to consume.
Which large company is not?
//Boeing is being led by a clueless beancounter.//
no argument there lucifer
i just hope people dont fail to see the fraud and casino (leveraged debt, SIVs, derivatives) behavior that was built upon the mortgage fiasco and thus took this crisis from an 80 s type S&L thing and turned it into a world beater
Over a year ago, I told DC1000 this was going to happen.
He didn't listen.
He talked a good game, though.
I believe he is now bankrupt.
I was in DC the last time it melted down. The whole "this area is recession proof due to government spending argument" got shot full of holes then. And I predicted it would again. Didn't take long.
Those that ignore history are doomed to sell me things at cut rate prices.
Scrooge McDuck,
Ever saw the movie "the matrix".. think of the character of cypher..
Good for a 300 point rally on the Dow?
Earnings Drop Worldwide as Job Losses Hurt Consumers
- Bloomberg.com
By Jack Kaskey and Melita Marie Garza
July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Earnings at such companies as Ford Motor Co. and ArcelorMittal may continue to decline in the next three months as the highest unemployment in a quarter-century keeps consumers from spending. The year-over-year profit slide for Standard & Poor’s 500 Index members may narrow to 21 percent from July through September, after declines of an estimated 34 percent in the second quarter and about 60 percent in the year’s first three months, according to data compiled by S&P and Bloomberg. Earnings may rise by year-end based on comparisons to late 2008, which was roiled by the meltdown in financial markets.
"Which large company is not?"
Well, now you know why I hope Harvard Business School becomes small enough that it can be drowned in a bathtub.
Hold on for a sec. Isn't there supposed to be a recovery in RE?
Spring U.S. housing market hints at awaited recovery
| Reuters
"Spring U.S. housing market hints at awaited recovery"
ROFL
it is another kitchen sink quarter. Second half recovery on the way
Hahaha.. Goldman's secret sauce is their revolving door access to the government!
A Goldman Trading Scandal?
A Goldman Trading Scandal? - Financials * US * News * Story - CNBC.com
By: Reuters | 05 Jul 2009 | 04:14 PM ET Text Size
Did someone try to steal Goldman Sachs' secret sauce? While most in the United States were celebrating the Fourth of July holiday, a Russian immigrant living in New Jersey was being held on federal charges of stealing secret computer trading codes from a major New York-based financial institution. Authorities did not identify the firm, but sources say that institution is none other than Goldman Sachs. The charges, if proven, are significant because the codes that the accused, Sergey Aleynikov, tried to steal are the secret sauce to Goldman's automated stock and commodities trading business. Federal authorities contend the computer codes and related-trading files that Aleynikov uploaded to a German-based website help this major financial institution generate millions of dollars in profits each year.
Not meaning to bring politics into it, but comment above reminded me of a bumper sticker I saw a couple of days ago.
It was an image of Abe Lincoln, and the text, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to."
lucifer
can I just be a pious athiest with vices?
mp,
You must be aware of my ideas about the use of incinerators to process ivy leaguers.. right?
Is Biden misspeaking/telling the truth again?
Bad Biden!!
@Lucifer
You got me there. My hope is that those kind of people usually never produces anything important/useful. They're just beancounters.
"You must be aware of my ideas about the use of incinerators to process ivy leaguers.. right?"
No, but I wholeheartedly agree with the concept.
Sure, but do not lie to yourself about your motivations.
Lying to yourself will always get you into big problems. Just ask Ben..
//can I just be a pious athiest with vices?//
mp (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 1:21 pm
"You must be aware of my ideas about the use of incinerators to process ivy leaguers.. right?"
No, but I wholeheartedly agree with the concept.
Dibs on the carbon credits.
Unless we find ways to pay people to consume, we are screwed.
Ah, herein lies the rub - minimizing labor expenses has been one of the key objectives of the Anglo-Saxon corporate management over the past 20 years was on (e.g., moving labor intensive parts of operations to countries with cheap labor, union busting, increased reliance on contractors and temps).
While the incomes have been stagnant, cheap credit allowed increasing consumption, so the problem was not acute.
Addressing this problem in the current environment is, IMO, politically impossible. Just imagine the Republican outrage (unless, of course, we are talking about ways to pay bankers more).
Biden seems to have an honesty problem - he is more honest than is good for a politician. I expect all politicians to lie, so his honesty signifies a lack of competency more than an excess of morality. He should have simply said that the Bush administration handed an even weaker economy to Obama than everyone realized. In other words, assign 100% of the problem to Bush. Don't accept any responsibility for errors in the new administration, even if it's only misreading the other guy's screw-ups. Politics 101. Sleazy, but if you play the game, you should play it well.
Mock Turtle, I think you correctly pointed out in the last thread that the Bush administration very enthusiastically pushed for greater home ownership, and emphasized efforts to get traditional minority groups to buy more homes. I absolutely agree. Greenspan and banker lobbies were very anxious to keep the punchbowl full, as were the charity groups pushing lower down payment programs, as were most voters, counting up their home price appreciation gains.
Now we are in 2009, and we have choices to make. The key people are named Frank, Dodd, Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, Summers and Bernanke. We will all have to live in the world formed by their decisions.
In judging what that future world should look like, it would be really good to avoid a repeat of the morass we got ourselves into last time. It was caused by a confluence of dozens of factors, and the motivations and actions of millions of people. But if we want to make an effective change, we need to identify the chokepoints, the levers, the things that take the least effort to change, but that would have the most impact. That study on home foreclosures described by Stan Liebowitz in the WSJ merely pointed out that the amount of homeowner skin in the game is more important than credit cores, ability to pay, and a host of other factors that are being held up as the keys to avoiding another rash of bad home loans. And the measure of owner skin in the game at the time when a new loan is underwritten is the down payment.
So if we want to achieve results in preventing a future rash of bad home loans that endangers our entire economy, we would be forcing higher down payments as a requirement of new home loans, at least those that benefited in some way from taxpayer support. And we'd be holding the people in power now (see the list above) accountable for getting it done.
Josap, after my son left, we had 2 people rattling around in a 2800 square foot house.
Now my mom is here, and it is ok.
Scrooge McDuck'
I have no problem with beancounters who know they are beancounters. However, many of them start believing in their ability to make predictions, run organisations etc.. and then things go to hell.
Carbon credits == another version of the parasitic arbitrage game.
Lehman brothers was going into that area in a big way before the SHTF.
//Dibs on the carbon credits.//
Lucifer (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 1:24 pm
I have no problem with beancounters who know they are beancounters. However, many of them start believing in their ability to make predictions, run organisations etc.. and then things go to hell.
General Motors.
A revolutionary concept
//And the measure of owner skin in the game at the time when a new loan is underwritten is the down payment.//
I don't want to live in a world designed by Tommy D'Alessdro's daughter Pelosi.
Nor all those other freaks either.
Rob Dawg,
I could add Pfizer, Merck, Astra-Zeneca, Sanofi, Novartis, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Glaxo-Smith-Klein and pretty much every large/medium cap in the pharma/biotech area to that list.
I have no problem with beancounters who know they are beancounters. However, many of them start believing in their ability to make predictions, run organisations etc.. and then things go to hell.
I would also add econ professors to the category of beancounters and use Larry Summers as Exhibit 1.
preventing a future rash of bad home loans that endangers our entire economy, we would be forcing higher down payments as a requirement
That may be difficult to do in an enviroment of lowered wages, fewer jobs and a very slowly unwinding RE market. When average home prices are in line with average wages things will be "normal" (or another better term). We are still seeing both wages/jobs and RE prices falling.
lawyerliz
what are you willing to do about it? Run for office? If all we do is comment on blogs and work on making ourselves richer, we really don't have much of a leg to stand on in the argument.
Politics is a lot like child rearing. The people who probably would be the best at it don't do it. The ones that have no ability embrace it.
I could add Pfizer, Merck, Astra-Zeneca, Sanofi, Novartis, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Glaxo-Smith-Klein and pretty much every large/medium cap in the pharma/biotech area to that list.
Clinton and Obama administrations? (Bush II was too incompetent to qualify)
Plus the Federal Reserve, of course
Few appreciate that Dreamliner is a major technological leap and its predicted operational life is problematic.
If Boeing screws it up, it's lights out for them.
Slight nudge toward back on topic:
"Bank of the West has inked easily the largest local office deal of the year, signing a lease for 240,000 square feet at Bishop Ranch that allows it to consolidate 1,600 employees now spread among seven East Bay offices.
...Bank of the West is just one of many companies nearing the end of their leases that are shopping around for space, often playing landlords off one another to secure the best price and driving down average rents in the process, he said.
More notably, the Bishop Ranch lease represents a slight decline in the bank's total East Bay space and will come at a high cost to the markets where its offices are now located. The consolidation will leave at least 160,000 square feet of vacant space around Interstate 680, emptying the bank's main building at 1450 Treat Blvd. in Walnut Creek and single-handedly pushing vacancy near the Pleasant Hill BART station from 29 to 38 percent, Del Beccaro said. "It's going to have a ripple effect in terms of causing almost all trends to drift down further," he said.
See: Bank of the West to move to Bishop Ranch
LL, those people are the decision-makers for us all, whether we like it or not. Sure, people can lobby them, and bribe them, but they are the decision-makers. Some pols like to pass responsibility for their actions onto the lobbyists, but that's false. Just because a pol is not brave enough to say No to a contributor doesn't mean he is powerless. It means he is more interested in his position than he is in the general welfare. They have the power, but may choose to use it to stay in office rather than do the right thing. That's not the same as not having the power.
Lucifer (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 1:30 pm
Rob Dawg,
I could add Pfizer, Merck, Astra-Zeneca, Sanofi, Novartis, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Glaxo-Smith-Klein and pretty much every large/medium cap in the pharma/biotech area to that list.
Right, just everyone knows the GM story. If I were to pick a poster child; HCA.
Re : Bishop Ranch : consolidation doth not an improving market make.
For every one person who comments, there are > 20 who read.
//what are you willing to do about it? Run for office? If all we do is comment on blogs and work on making ourselves richer, we really don't have much of a leg to stand on in the argument.//
Few appreciate that Dreamliner is a major technological leap and its predicted operational life is problematic.
If Boeing screws it up, it's lights out for them.
mp - Why? Airbus has been having problems of its own, A380 is just one example. It seems that Boeing's survival rests more on its relative success/failure rather than on its ability to avoid mistakes altogether, no?
The hub ran on the repub platform in 66 for Md State House of Delegates.
I saw all I wanted to see about running for office then. Ick.
I'm sure it's only gotten worse. And the thought of having to deal with the
lobbyists and brown nosers. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
josap, I agree that requiring higher down payments now would be "difficult". But difficult for whom? It would merely accelerate a return to sustainable financial and economic housing activities, dominated by much lower prices for RE. We are trying to avoid that outcome, and wasting valuable time and resources in the process.
For every one person who comments, there are > 20 who read.
"There are currently 45 users and 261 guests online."
The ratio is more likely to be >50
mp (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 1:32 pm
Few appreciate that Dreamliner is a major technological leap and its predicted operational life is problematic.
If Boeing screws it up, it's lights out for them.
Boeing signed their own obituary when they relocated corporate.
For the record Boeing has no idea how to build a composite aircraft. The inside joke is that they scratched off the materials list and wrote in "composites." We used to call this "black aluminum" design. I saw where Boeing was going to have problems right away. I was tasked with addressing the same problem class (and solved it) 25 years ago. Like most terminal companies "not invented here" reigns.
Ideas have to spread.. Change comes when enough people start questioning.
//The ratio is more likely to be >50//
They signed their obituary, when they stopped innovating years ago..
which was the last truly innovative aircraft that Boeing designed and made?
//Boeing signed their own obituary when they relocated corporate.//
MrM, Boeing has staked everything on composite technology, and there are still a lot of unknowns there. This isn't the forum for such a discussion, but consider the following:
We're still learning how to properly inspect composite structures. Interlaminar failures, not visible to the naked eye, can cause a structure to fail in shear without warning.
Dreamliner's entire "airframe" is basically a molded composite structure, which is glued together, and Boeing has bet the farm on it. There are also a lot of things we don't know about adhesives.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but it requires a major re-think--from the ground up--as to how airplanes are constructed and maintained.
liz
I don't disagree with your assessment of politics. I'm just stating that we can't complain if we don't do anything about it. I'm currently running someone's campaign (which is why i haven't been commenting much here in the past 6 months).
It is an ugly business populated by low IQ suits. The people on this board could take over if we all got involved. But we don't.
It is even more funny because creative and innovative people must have left boeing a long time ago..
//I'm not saying it can't be done, but it requires a major re-think--from the ground up--as to how airplanes are constructed and maintained.//
12th percentile, your experience inside politics may give you more insight than most of us here. If it's school board politics, maybe not, but if it's Congressional, then yes. I guessed that the ultimate decision-makers on home financing issues were Frank, Dodd, Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, Summers, and Bernanke. Is that about right? And do you think that we as individuals can push on them in any way? Is the most effective way through our own Congressmen?
"Ideas have to spread.. Change comes when enough people start questioning."
When I quit my job/moved most of my wealth out of dollar, I told everyone about it and warned about the coming collapse (have been for 3 years). Family, friends, neighbors, random people in coffee shops/restaurants. In my resignation email, I sounded some alerts about the great depression/collapse of dollar. (it was a rather large department that I sent my email to).
I remember two instances distinctly: one was where some travelers and I were in a Waikiki breakfast place, discussing the day Palin got nominated. I mentioned that it won't matter, that if the great depression hits that year, Obama's got it. The tourists from England sounded skeptical, but I reminded them of the run on british banks (back in aug '08). The other was when I was in Gary Danko in SF a year ago and I was chatting with a big developer in DC, and I told him about the great depression. He sounded skeptical, but he mentioned he has been seeing lots of dropped business, and he's had to lay off contractors already. In both cases, I'm sure those people are more acutely aware of the circumstances after the crash has happened.
Sorry for the long rant, but my point is, we have to let people know. They have to know that the system is actively working against them, to make sure the main stakeholders get out safe, before dropping the safe on everybody.
mp - thanks!
I do appreciate the fact that it is an entirely new type of material and even traditional things like looking for stress faults are quite complicated and prone to error.
My point was very simple - the worst case scenario is Boeing has to scrap Dreamliner altogether. However, Boeing will still benefit from the generous support of the US federal government, which will not allow Airbus rule the world of commercial aircraft. So I would not write Boeing's obituary even if Dreamliner turns into disaster.
mp,
They could increase fuel efficiency by over 20% if the engines were allowed to be noisier.
I think Biden-the-VP is more tactical than given credit, Recall how Obama-the-Candidate stumbled into many a mess of his own making on the campaign trail, the 20-yr Jeremiah Wright being a glaring example and one where he understood the best way to hold his base and also hold onto wavering voters leaning his way was to fess up he had made character-judgments errors with Wright, cut anchor and move on. Toady, remember that Obama appointed everyone accused of giving him bad economic advice.
Remember that he was the greatest candidate for the pressing issues of 2005 when he decided to run (and in 2005 re-structuring the US economy via a gut-rehab was NOT one of the pressing polling issues amongst voters, no matter how many history-revisionists lurk in blogdom) issues. Neither he nor the DNC-braintrust displayed any strong grasp of the true core financial problems even as late as their August 08 convention.
At present, Obama remains a neophyte on the core economic issues; simply jawboning about tweaking NAFTA (his primary economic position circa 2005), and now ape-ing the Bush-Paulson bailout merry-go-round, will not cut it and he's bright enuff to realize this and also that even the vaunted Reagan faced 50% disproval ratings as the mid-term elections of his 1st term loomed in 1982 because he had not ‘fixed’ the economy.
Polling is showing ‘Blaming Bush’ has played out amongst key MOR and base voters.
Summers, Goolsbee, Geithner are, respectively, far too wedded to personal ego & vanity, orthodox textbook ‘don’t-rock-the-boat’ economics, and Wall Street banks, to effectively deliver the message of "Wow, our ‘bad’, he he, that didn’t work did it? Well here's what we're gonna do differently"....so it's up to Biden....to merely send it up as a trial balloon so all can see how this mea culpa plays out.
Avl Dao, you read a lot into Biden's "we misread" comment. I see it as a slip of the tongue, that's all.
Some time ago, son of mp and I watched a program concerning the F22? design competition. The program showed a wing skin being laid-up using prepreg material.
Son of mp and I watched--in horror--as they proceeded to vacuum bag the assembly. It was obvious these people didn't know what they were doing. They didn't pull the bag before entering the autoclave Therefore, they couldn't massage the bag to fit the concave surface. As it pulled in to the concave surface of the mold, it caused interlaminar welts to occur, perpendicular to, and radiating from, the center of curvature.
Thus wasting about half a million in carbon.
Anyway, they showed the panel when it came out of the autoclave. The bag pulled up around the panel, introducing interlaminar bubbles, just as we agreed would happen.
Unbelieveable, but I agree with Dawg.
At the time of the program, the Boeing we watched didn't know shit about composites.
No more freebies today. If you want more, I want a pony.
Green shoots
Alcoa To Post Loss, but What Does It Mean for the Economy?
Alcoa To Post Loss, but What Does It Mean for the Economy? - Earnings * US * News * Story - CNBC.com
By: Reuters | 05 Jul 2009 | 04:30 PM ET
Alcoa, whose results are traditionally viewed as an indicator of the country's economic health, is expected to post a third consecutive quarterly loss this week. But many on Wall Street no longer see the aluminum producer's numbers as a bellwether portending either a deeper recession or an easing of the global downturn.
The ratio is more likely to be >50
Statistically, a large number of people read blogs but not comments.
Quantcast has an estimate of the readership, and says 5% of the readers generate 58% of the traffic for CR.
calculatedriskblog.com - Quantcast Audience Profile
"So I would not write Boeing's obituary even if Dreamliner turns into disaster."
I would, and I'll tell you why.
Commercial aviation people are among the most conservative on the planet. They don't like things falling out of the sky.
If Dreamliners die, the reputational damage to Boeing will kill them.
In commercial aviation, reputation is everything.
"Sara is a drama queen"
"The fact that Palin takes herself seriously is pure comedy to me"
......it seems when John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate, a considerable amount of hate was directed towards her, most of which seemingly unwarranted, for the little we knew about her. Afterwhich, she goes back to AK, decides to give up the Governorship, and the unveiled hate comes back. What seems to scare you guys? The people screaming invectives towards Palin are the same people who voted for our current President. How has THAT worked out? I'd be careful what is wished for - it's liable to bite us ALL hard on the posterior.
Prior to Bush II leaving office, I assumed he might go down in history as one of the poorest Presidents we've had. The current President though is trying mighty hard to beat out Bush II for THAT title.
Bottom line: this equation no longer works: GDP of a ponderous 300+million person economy = (70% driven by Debt-Enabled Consumer Spending + (30% Public Spending & Private Investment).
Debt Unwind will determine fresh new percentages for the equation that are doable and doable only for maybe 10 more years; in the interim the US faces constructing social safety padding for laying atop the concrete economic floor that millions of workers will be landing on (a safety net in the USofA?? in ur dreams).
And the launch of gubbmint public works labor initiatives to tide the unwashed masses over for years til Debt Unwind decides what the new financial sustainability equilibrium points are in the global financial community and intertwined markets.
Credit extended by banks will not fix this...not as long as the collateral for the loans deteriorates in value while the creditworthiness of the residential and corporate borrowers also deteriorates, and not as long as masses of fresh new suckers as bag holders can not be found around the globe.
More green shoots... the kind I like!
Chicken Noodles Soup With Bamboo Shoots
1 medium chicken
2 spring onions, chopped (separate white and green parts)
3 thick slices ginger
250g (8 oz) fine rice vermicelli
180g (6 oz) canned bamboo shoots
3 tbsp fish sauce (nuoc mam)
fresh coriander
12th percentile, your experience inside politics may give you more insight than most of us here. If it's school board politics, maybe not, but if it's Congressional, then yes. I guessed that the ultimate decision-makers on home financing issues were Frank, Dodd, Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, Summers, and Bernanke. Is that about right? And do you think that we as individuals can push on them in any way? Is the most effective way through our own Congressmen?
My experience in politics goes beyond the school board. I do not think you can do much by trying to pressure your congresspeople. You make a phone call. A corporate donor moves hundreds of thousands of dollars. Save your breath.
the only way we change things is if people like us, who know a thing or two about making and investing money, run for office and don't sell our souls to big business. Big business is ruining the working class in this country. We need some people to stand up for the working people in this country. I'd vote for mp, dryfly...maybe few others. Liz has my vote. This country used to be a place where an honest person could work hard and make an honest day's wages and raise their family. No longer. I don't enjoy making my money shorting america. but I do it as I'm certain my elected officials (hey, chuck schumer) don't give a damn about me and only work for wall street.
it is a tall order. I'm dabbling in politics to see if i can stomach it. My better half (my wife and the sane part of my brain), recommends we just move to Costa
Rica and not try to fight the tide of humanity.
Especially now, that we have Airbus!
//They don't like things falling out of the sky.//
"But many on Wall Street no longer see the aluminum producer's numbers as a bellwether portending either a deeper recession or an easing of the global downturn. "
It doesn't look like a pony, so it doesn't count anymore. If the numbers don't conform to the numbers they want - they reasign value to those numbers. Just like Clinton changed the way we figure CPI and UE, make things look better. Just like they changed the way they figure when our rainy season starts, change the numbers they look for.
mp,
When the Beechcraft Starship was being put into production my boss was on the VIP factory tour. The VP was proudly displaying the new and very expensive ultrasound topographic contour interlaminar defect inspection machine. The wing panel was followed by a nozzle spraying water and an ultrasound signal was used to detect voids. After several minutes the screen lit up with a ~6 cm area of concern. My boss asked the VP for a quarter. He proceeded to tap, tap, tap, tic,tap, tap, tap, tic, tic and in 30 seconds had a 2cm defect area. He kept the quarter.
patientrenter, as you can tell, I disagree with your take.
Doesnt really matter who on team Obama fesses up first....it was inevitable that they would have to fess up eventaully and jettison chunks of their economic approaches of the past 5 months.
But as always...time (and not blogdom readership) will tell whose perspective on this is correct.
tick-tock
A second half recovery is suddenly not a sure thing: An end to the green-shoot rally?
Second-half recovery suddenly not a sure thing - MarketWatch
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch
Jul 5, 2009, 7:00 a.m. EST
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- For months, policymakers from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on down told investors that a second-half recovery was a safe bet. Investors, optimists by nature, eventually bought in. But now, even though the second half has actually arrived, the curtain on the recovery has so far remained down and questions are being raised on whether it will go up at all. Suddenly notable economists say the whole thing might not happen. Others, including Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, predict the curtain may go up for a brief period but then go crashing back down.
12th percentile, you seem to have concluded that reelection chances are directly proportional to campaign spending. If that were true, then generating campaign contributions would be more effective than standing for office. Are you maybe a little less cynical than you appear?
Avl Dao, I hope you are correct. It's always better to have people who know what they are doing running the show than people who make random blunders.
False prophet
False prophet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In religion, the term false prophet is a label given to a person who is viewed as illegitimately claiming charismatic authority within a religious group. The individual may be seen as one who falsely claims the gift of prophecy, or who uses that gift for demagogy or evil ends.
..The term is sometimes applied outside religion, to describe someone who fervently promotes a theory that the speaker thinks is false.
Commercial aviation people are among the most conservative on the planet. They don't like things falling out of the sky.
I do not pretend to be very knowledgeable in this area, so I am first to admit I am out of my depth here.
Still, I got to believe Boeing will test the hell out of any new aircraft. Problems will also happen - just think of the recent crash of Air France's A330, which had a very good track record until it just fell into the ocean.
There are only two major players in the commercial wide-body aircraft, and it is hard to imagine either one of them will lose all of its clients and future orders because of problems with one model.
Now RJs is a different story, of course.
12thpercentile, you sure sound genuine. And that's a good thing.
Im skeptical that honest guys like you will get far in the political process as long a sthe other side has so much greater fighter-power.
Part of th eproblem is the sheer size of the US and how it enables various special interests to leverage so much money and firepower. Imagine if we were 30 separate nations of about 10 million persons each, in essence 30 much smaller economies. Many more of us would live in better managed nations because the scalability for money for lobbying wouldnt be there with such smaller economies.
Hope that seems clear.
CR...or anyone
last november the SEC permitted the nyse to create a new category of market maker called an SLP (supplemental liquidity provider)
to my knowledge goldman sachs is the only member of that elite club
why, when GS is already one of the dozen or so primary broker dealers on the nyse, does it advantage either the nyse or goldman to be an slp???
i just heard about this reading comments over at zero hedge regarding the allegation that gs uses web site data to do some front running to which gs of course obfuscated and denied see comments
Goldman Sachs Responds To Zero Hedge | zero hedge
and for the original article announcing the slp program see
NYSE Launches SLP Program with Goldman Sachs
note
jeffery davis chief counsel for nasdaq complained in a letter to the sec that this proposal grants non competetive advantages to gs
http://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-nyse-2008-108/nyse2008108-1.pdf
MrM (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 2:16 pm
Still, I got to believe Boeing will test the hell out of any new aircraft. Problems will also happen - just think of the recent crash of Air France's A330, which had a very good track record until it just fell into the ocean.
All they've got is models. They've specifically rejected the advice of experts for a very long time. "Not invented here."
Heath Techna has lot's of experience with composites and they were owned by boeing in 80's
Ciba Geigy was doing quite a bit with composites in the 80's, sikorsky graphilte rotors, B-2 and nighthawk, boeing floor and storage panels..It's been around and proved reliable...I ran a QC dept. and mil spec guidelines were the rule...I think theirs tons of potentials...
Did these clowns not get us here in the first place?
LV business leaders, experts to tackle what’s next for economy
LV business leaders, experts to tackle what’s next for economy - Las Vegas Sun
By Brian Wargo (contact), In Business reporter
Fri, Jul 3, 2009 (3 a.m.)
With the Las Vegas economy mired in a deep recession, some are suggesting it’s time for the community to hit the reset button. That is the topic for the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies, which will host its 12th-annual round table Aug. 19 and 20. About 80 business leaders, academics and politicians will discuss “What’s Happened? What’s Next?’’ The group will assess what happened to Las Vegas in the past 18 months and what can be done for future growth.
"There are only two major players in the commercial wide-body aircraft, and it is hard to imagine either one of them will lose all of its clients and future orders because of problems with one model."
MrM, here's a little history for you.
In 1938, there were three serious manufacturers of land-based commercial aircraft in the US: Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed.
In early '38, Lockheed introduced the Super Electra, a scale-up of the Model 10 (the model Amelia Earhart purchased in '36).
Anyway, the Super Electra, like the Model 10, had the famous twin tail design for which Lockheed was known. It developed that the tail had flutter problems. In rough weather, it would literally rip off the airplane, often with little or no warning. This happened twice to Northwest Airlines, whose entire fleet was the Electra series.
After investigation, it turned out that the instrument Lockheed had been using to measure resonant vibrations was OUT OF CALIBRATION, hence leading to a faulty design.
Even though Lockheed remedied the problem, Northwest sold ALL of their Super Electras because passengers wouldn't fly in them. Northwest bought the Douglas.
This damned near killed Lockheed. If it hadn't been for World War II, Lockheed could very well have ceased to exist. There was ENORMOUS reputational damage.
PatientRenter, I speak as a former Illinoisian very active in Obama's district back when he was a state senator and quite assessible for evaluating how he ticks.
Dont hold ur breath. He and his economic advisors would need to make the equivalent of a change of religious belief before they see: 1) a financially sustainable US economy as not driven by excessive credit, 2) banking & bank CEOs as not Brahmins as Geithner preaches to them, 3) globalization as not the solution, and 4) intellectual 'black boxes' as not reliable sources of fixes but simply mental placebos that allow folks to sleep well at night under the premise that 'someone real smart ' will invent a solution tomorow.
manana manana.
Despite all of Reagan's charisma, had the economy not turned around in 1982-1984, voters would have kicked him to the curb as they did his 3 predeccessors in quick succession. This in contrast to the 25-year secular bull market and 25 years of rising and multiple overlapping economic bubbles that allowed every president to get re-elected, save one hapless soul, GB1st.
mp - There few things more valuable than a good story of what actually happened.
That said
Do you really believe that air lines will go to Airbus-only fleets? That would give Airbus too much pricing power and air lines would be very afraid of that.
Plus political pressure on US airlines ...
MrM, I'm only saying that it's possible, that's all.
I know - I am not really arguing for or against, as I said, it is not my area of expertise
Just my high level thinking ...
Speaking of false prophets - "I drink your milkshake!! I drink it up!"
Hey why not, just got pigged anyway.
there really is no room for the honest in politics. I just like to saddle up my donkey and go after windmills.
If we all get together and tried to change things we could do it. But then again, we all are stupid rich and spend our time commenting on which securities to trade. We ain't exactly repressed.
And as we comment some half wit law school graduate with a nice smile is being groomed to run for office to represent us.
Will we step up and change things? My money says not this generation.