We've given a tax cut to 95 percent of the people who get a pay stub. They have somewhere -- $60 bucks a month out there that's going into the economy.

I don't think the pols understand how much "stimulus" was created by individuals pledging 30-60% of their incomes for the next 30 years. $60 per month ain't gonna cut it...

Biden couldn't tell you the truth!

Interesting condo project in Florida.

Related’s CityPlace South Tower in 'friendly foreclosure' - The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area:

Biden - is a joke prognosticating economics
Krugman - is shrill and has become a bore
the US is planning to borrow at least $10 trillion over the next 10 years (which we can't afford to do)
America ( not just Cali ) is becoming Latin American economy ( and the biggest banana republic )

So were building all the roads in winter now? "Shovel ready" was the dumbest phrase ever.

BIDEN: The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there.

"everyone" = Timmay & Larry?

CR, you shoulda got "hoocoodanode" copyrighted. It is the lowest form of insult to handwave the barrage of salient criticism coming his way with an inside joke like Krugman has done. Do you remember a few years ago when we were discussing Keynesians and how they are always given an out? They will always claim that whatever was done in their name wasn't done enough.

Someone "borrowed" the code for GS secret computer trading programs:

COLUMN-A Goldman trading scandal?
| Reuters

Ooops, got to watch them thumb drives.

CR, I'd like to see you take a little more critical (in the literal sense) look at Krugman's proposals and the logic supporting them.

I mean really, with this as his logical foundation "you can't wait to see the results, you must act now or it will be too late" the only results can be additional rounds of stimulus spending. Will we need round 3 if UE continues to rise into 2010?

And as others have mentioned, we will have to pay for this (or inflate it away) someday. I guess I'd rather spend money we don't have in an attempt to help people out, as opposed to throwing it into the black hole that passes for a financial system. But we've got to stop digging sooner than a lot of people seem to think.

RD, I was also honored by Krugman's acknowledgment of our little community. That he felt the need to address it tells me something.

I just drove from the Woodside area to the Auburn area using highways 92, 680 and 80. How does the 40 to 50 mile long traffic jam through Sacramento to Cordilia Junction happen in a crappy economy? A lot of people had money to buy gas to get to and come home from the Sierras. Is the SF Bay Area escaping from the down turn? My eyeball data point using highway traffic doesn't seem useful.

"We cannot have a system of rentiers and social dumping..."
What does Sarkozy mean by 'social dumping?'

I do not know. It could be poor translation from French (similar to "It is a chimera to think")

This "You have to pass X now or the world is going to end" stuff has to stop.

Going into Iraq,
First Stimulus,
Bank Bailout,
Second Stimulus

All passed under such fear mongering.

People want to call this the second stimulus plan but it would be in fact be the third.

"Someone "borrowed" the code for GS secret computer trading programs:"

Now we know why GS couldn't keep it over 900 Thursday. Their prop trading system was compromised. (removing tinfoil hat now)

Or maybe this is just cover for the NYSE's move to stop releasing the detailed program trading data. I mean this could be a Ludlum novel or something. (must return colander to kitchen now)

naw Chainsaw, the NW sat-article seems to be a setup for a rouge trader coming outa Glodman.

I think by "social dumping" he means socializing losses (after or while privatizing profits), but I could be mistaken, and apparently am.

Working on a skill set requires education. Education cost money. And maybe years of time.

Many people out of work have no money for rent let alone education. A Pell Grant will not suport you and your family. If you are 50+ how many years will you spend to work for another 10 to 15 yrs?

Limited options come with unemployment.

Everyone misread the economy? I don't think so....

"People want to call this the second stimulus plan but it would be in fact be the third."

It's all a continous blurr.

We are really on like the 40th banking stimulus plan.

Everyone misread the economy? I don't think so....

Biden probably meant to say "Everyone I talk to about the economy misread it".
He apparently does not talk to right people

I just drove from the Woodside area to the Auburn area using highways 92, 680 and 80. How does the 40 to 50 mile long traffic jam through Sacramento to Cordilia Junction happen in a crappy economy? A lot of people had money to buy gas to get to and come home from the Sierras. Is the SF Bay Area escaping from the down turn? My eyeball data point using highway traffic doesn't seem useful.

Maybe we crossed each other's paths in perfect perpendicularity, then, because I just drove from the rural area in woodland to another rural area in Dixon, crossing over the very same jam on a back road overpass. My eyeball datapoint is a little different from yours. Where I went was a country road leading to a large bridge which goes precisely nowhere. It leads across the water and to 10 further feet of paved road which then sinks into a swamp. I saw people living in an encampment on the river, and a bifurcated little village of pallet houses assembled in the trees and some distance on top of a demolished farm processing complex, 20 miles in the middle of nowhere, but on a scummy, fast moving body of water which might have been a river or a huge agricultural aquaduct. I was trying to figure out how the hell they got there without a car, or how food and supplies got in and out. I think the river water was moving too swiftly for them to ferry items in and out by boat, and the terrain is too rough for them to be hiding a vehicle. Roughly 8 people were spotted, but more were undoubtedly there, given the number and quality of makeshift structures. I explored the area away from the community a bit on foot, until I heard the report of a firearm far away, but in the direction of their encampment, at which point I withdrew. I saw an unusual amount of traffic on this road to nowhere. There must be a hidden outlet where vehicles and other supplies are hidden in one of the handfull of inhabited, ramshackle properties down that way with very agressive "NO TRESPASSING PRIVATE ROAD" signs. Buildings with intact walls and a roof were the exception in this area.

We are really on like the 40th banking stimulus plan.

The entire economy is one long, protracted banking stimulus plan.

Agreed that Keynes is nuanced and voluminous to the point of being misunderstood or misquoted. I think were he presented with a debt funded stimulus plan 1/3rd GDP in the face of debt nearing 1 GDP he'd not only balk but point to the debt and say "there's your problem right there. You're out of bullets and never thought to reload in the good times."

Krugman, however, has clearly had the roast beef and probably a kool-aid chaser. He's lost track of so many inviolable rules it is hard to know where to start. Politics is the art of the possible for one. Unsustainable processes never fail elegantly or predictably. Government spending is not stimulus unless it produces multiplier effects. It is this last that I wish to address now. The City of Oxnard is applying for stimulus funds. Excellent proposal. A sophisticated water reclamation plant. A paltry $10m. Problem is, the facility was completed last year.

This is endemic in the entire "stimulus" plan. It isn't stimulus, it is ongoing government expenditures. The Highway Trust Fund is fully funded for all projects with current revenue projections. Too bad we siphon off tens of billions for transit. Now maybe that is the political will but understand transit is an operational sinkhole that at the end of the day leaves behind no new capacity or capabilities. If Krugman wants to claim that California's $70b HSR is a shovel ready project that sends new money coursing through a moribund economy despite not a single passenger boarding for 7 years then fine. Rather than fight about the rail issues, put together a project in the desert a circular track two miles across where they track is laid and following along behind are a crack team of nature restoration experts undoing the same track. None of the problems and all of the benefits supposedly coming in a timely manner.

I think Krugman has been good about acknowledging the info he gets from CR. Most of us are cranky about him because we disagree with his politics, and he brings his politics with him everywhere, so you can't ignore it.

. Unsustainable processes never fail elegantly or predictably

True but we haven't reached "unsustainability" yet because... it's still working.

I guess this is where I point out that unemployment will continue to deteriorate beyond "normal expectations" and that this will have an "unprecedented" consequence on the economy--in fact, unforseeable. Negative feedbacklooops are a b*tch.

geesh.

--bh

I forgot they do not read blogs

Blogs only matter when they are needed to get you elected, but after that they turn into nuisance
Even in the O administration blogs are for the little people

They've finally realized they have to start backing away from their position on the stimulus otherwise California et al will make liars out of them in a dramatic fashion.

rb (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 5:04 pm
It's important to recognize that letting the money centers fail was never considered. And never will be under the current political system.

Yep, too big to fail. Their bank accounts are too big to touch.

Ours are too small to matter.

"The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy."

Say it ain't so Joe!

Didn't Joe get the Green Shoots meme?

What will be the event horizon?
Can "they" stop it?
What will happen if "they" can't?
What will be the new normal if we have the event, don't have the event?

This sounds like a great made for TV movie. I just don't like being part of the extra casting. You know, all those people who don't make it to the high ground before the giant wave crashes on them. Or will we be able to make it to the end of the movie and smile at each other as the sun rises?

Hoops,

That was interesting. Imagine trying to police that area. It is already a no-go unless a 911 call comes in is my guess.

They will discover that all that money is just an illusion.
This sounds like philosophical baloney, but while it's not
moving or being spent or loaned or stimulating something, it's
just electrons on a balance sheet. In other words, actually, nothing.

Many times zero is zero.

There he goes again, sorta telling the truth.

i wouldn't mind preserving the rights of the money centers' bond and equity holders, just as long as someone canned Dimon and the rest of the gang.

racial...you have to remember, when TIMMAY said that "this plan will work" he wasnt refering to what you think he was. His goal was from day 1, to save the banking status quo. Worked just fine, to our detriment.

nova,

I'm sure a 911 call would bring in police, but who out there has a phone to call? I doubt there's a working telephone within 10 miles of that place.

The fact that I could get killed and dumped in the river while I was exploring was definitely on my mind. I was, in fact, thinking of your american apocalypse series and wondering whether you had written in any river people yet.

Upon reflection, I figured out how the residents get calories - fishing. I noted a lot of fishing gear, old poles on top of very sophisticated makeshift stick-struts for manning multiple lines, in my little excursion.

Liz, you are right. It isn't even printed dollar bills, it is just numbers sent over by computer.

I never thought of it that way. But those computer bites are not moving and so are of no use to anyone. Except the banks because we have all agreed that thoses comoputer zeros have an exchangeable value, maybe, someday.

At the very least it takes time to see any results. Romer's own research contradicts what they say about the effects of stimulus in recession. They've just now passed the point of having everything under contract, which is why they keep trumpeting about how now we are going to see the effects.

I actually do not think unemployment is their worst call. Their worst call is going to be how quickly the states run through this money and then start undoing all progress.

Just where should they be looking?

Into the windows of unattended chevy suburbans, after 11 p.m. or so. They can do it earlier, but only if they fake an emergency call in the next patrol zone over so that two units have to respond. Two units will have to respond, you see, because two officers must respond to all calls, and staffing one officer per car was the first step in a series of budget cuts...

I know people who are trying really hard to find a job and not succeeding.

Just where should they be looking?

I have no doubt a lot of people are sending out a lot of resumes. Getting a few more months of paid resume sending doesn't seem to be a good solution.

Working on adding skills or finding a job in other parts of the country where their skills are needed. That seems like a better plan than hitting SEND on yet another resume. And I think that is where the administration should focus their efforts.

Looking for a job? In your field? At the same salary level?

I don't know about anyone else here. I am over 50, IT, and I know I am never going to see the same salary again if I get "downsized."

....if the light at the end of the tunnel was in fact a freight train at 80mph barreling down on you, and the FedGov knew it, what would they do?

......same as they're doing. They'll keep you busy with "rah-rah" stuff and talk of the approaching "light at the end of the tunnel" until the crash. Prior to impact, they'll allow insider looting. They surely wouldn't tell you the truth - thereby guaranteeing panic.

This group has been "misreading the economy" quite a bit considering they have access to the brightest economists and "thinkers" in the world. At every turn, the proletariat here outplay the "professionals" in DC incident after incident, time after time.

What other part of the country? What skills?

How many people got fired during the dot.com bubble and used equity to fund or cushion the blow? Started their own small shops? A lot I think.

Well, it is very complicated to figure out which of the unemployed is in a position to move to a new location for a job. What about a currently working spouse, kids in school, a mortgage to try to pay for, an elderly family member to deal with.

No way could I just up and move to a new state. And my lic is state specific anyway.

I'm not unemployed, but tried to put those shoes on and look at your solution.

"What does Sarkozy mean by 'social dumping?'"

He may mean: Letting the lower social classes take all the punishment. Letting them fall out of the official economy. Off-loading them onto social welfare and lower.

OT: Liz? Was your Heinlein book Methusaleh's Children? I recall a very strong critique of materialism in it.

"Social dumping is labor arbitrage within the ECM."

Sounds about right, Basel Too.

Nope. burnside, don't think so. That was Lazarus Long and his family, right?
And it wasn't door into Summer. It has to do with a mathematician and his businessman
friend, and it had genetic engineering--if you wanted it. And a system of courtesie and
wearing a brassard.

Basel Too
"The dot.com bubble ushered the boom in franchises ("businesses in a box"), as many laid off peeps decided to be their own bosses. I know four of these types, and they are all hurting. These are going to start blowing up soon..."

Yep I know of some too. There goes their savings.

Thats another part of the undercounted unemployment. There is a lot of self employed stuff out there that is basically hanging by a thread. How long they can hang is debatable, but my guess is this downturn can outlast them.

Effective Demand has found the real cause of this slump. Everyone is stupid and isn't trying hard enough. Shame on you, everyone.

Yeah, that is exactly what I was saying. Way to pay attention.

Dude, I am giving 110% percent. There' s no "I" in team though, so it's not working out so well.

You taking beginning chem, hoops?

broward,

"pull yourself by your bootstraps" does not get it. I agree with you, and I have a masters and a ph.d. This whole liquidation meme is pre1920s.

Typing from my iPhone

lawyerliz, that's correct -- To be totally precise, I'm posting here instead of doing my homework.

College has changed since I've gone. There's a digital revolution. Now instead of taking my tuition dollars and paying a professor to grade my homework, they farm the homework portion of my class out to a third party company, who runs a website where I input answers to my homework and it is automatically graded for me. Of course, I the student pay $45 for this lovely "service" which relieves my professor of the job I paid him to do.

"So gentlemen, I'd like to take this moment to thank you for your kind attention. Incoming economic teams are very busy and I hope i've covered all the points in the limited time we have together. Yes. Timmay? No, you don't have to raise your hand, just ask." "Well.. sir? sir, you said we essentially had a choice between saving the world economy or the banking system." "Yes, that's about it. Do you have a question?" "Well, ummm... you see. Well that isn't our choice to make you see. Do you have a scenario that doesn't involve bothering the banking system with the silly details about the world economy? They're very bust and said not to disturb them even if the fate of the world depended upon it."

communiste, traître

barfly, stop readin my stuff.....

Hi all!

"The Obama administration underestimated the rise in unemployment (so did I last year), so the question is"

If we go back in the comments I said that CA would reach 8.6% min and 16.5% max and nationally we will level out at 11-12%....sure I got some jeers but I stand by these nums. We are not sinking into a black hole but it vey dark days ahead.

barfly (profile) wrote on Sun, 7/5/2009 - 5:46 pm

...rouge trader ...
- I do not think that word means what you think it does.

Maybe some of the lipstick from the pig rubbed off over their long weekend in the Hamptons?

I think the key to this whole situation right now is the tide has turned. Even the most optimistic of my acquaintances are looking at the sky now and waiting for the other shoe to drop. No one believes we are in 'pre-recovery', and the slack given to the new administration is being reeled in fast. Of course some will say that means we have bottomed, I just don't see it yet. We are all jumpy steers in a thunderstorm waiting for that one lightning bolt to send us stampeding. We have to move past the fear before we get to recovery. Just my two cents.

It's that there aren't jobs out there because there's a massively contracting economy.

But just getting unemployment and sending out more resumes isn't the answer to that problem you pose either.

Like I said, I think paying people to gain more skills or relocation for places where there skills are used is doing something rather than nothing. Which as far as I can tell is what you are proposing. Status quo.

I still haven't heard you actually give an opinion on a solution, just your problems with mine.

I think repeated bailouts are now integrated into business plans. The only reason any entity will repay is so the BoDs will have free reign over their golf buddies' compensation.

Unemployment got you down?

Become a mechanical Turk.

Or... I'd pay $100 per cord for a couple of cords of split wood.

But I respectfully suggest, major, I respectfully suggest they have responsibilities slightly above your pay grade -- slightly above your pay grade -- to decide whether or not to take the nation to war alone or to take the nation to war part-way, or to take the nation to war half-way. That's a real tough decision. That's why they get paid the big bucks. That's why they get the limos and you don't.

Biden explaining to a UN weapons inspector why the Senators would find the WMD in Iraq that the inspector did believe was there.

Biden couldn't see the economic decline because he was too busy talking to limo riders.

NW

Apropos Sarkozy's quote - this one is from Frank Rich in today's NYTimes
The estimated $65 billion involved in Madoff’s flimflam is dwarfed by the more than $2.5 trillion paid so far by American taxpayers to bail out those masters of Wall Street’s universe. A.I.G. alone has already left us on the hook for $180 billion. It’s hard for those who didn’t have money with Madoff to get worked up about him when so many of the era’s real culprits have slipped away scot-free. Already some of those same players are up to similarly greedy shenanigans again now that the coast seems to be clear.
...
In 2009, too many who worked hard and played by the rules are still suffering, while too many who bent or broke the rules with little or no accountability are back reaping a disproportionate share of what scant prosperity there is. The tepid national satisfaction taken in Bernie Madoff’s terminal prison sentence should be a warning to the White House. In the most devastating economic catastrophe since Dillinger’s time, many Americans know all too well that justice has yet to be served.

I'm going to create "The U12". Last year I billed about 12 more hours per week than is happening this year. Even we lucky fully employed are having hours, pay and benefits cut.

I believe mr market and bucky are in the channel.

the Yen is Real.
big straddle on the Pound and Krone.....

What will be the event horizon?

One way to look at it is, nearly every action taken since August, 2007 has only served to build an ever more tightly-coupled system with a single point of failure.

They've bound everything to the fate of the treasury market.

"We have to move past the fear before we get to recovery. We have to move past the fear before we get to recovery. We have to move past the fear before we get to recovery. We have to move past the fear before we get to recovery........Ommmmmmmmmmm (In deepest nasal tone while clicking heels together three times - while saying, "There's no place like Ommmm, there's no place like Ommmm)

Main question in my mind is why they burned Biden so early? This is more than a misspeak and at least taking one for the team. It sets up weeks and months of plays from within the admin, let alone within congress and from the right.

Still, not a bad way to announce at the same time a total volte face in Iraq. From, if it's bloody we surge you, to if it's bloody we surge home.

C

krugman's got another post on the battle over the stimulus's effect, or lack thereof. And WaPo is running an article of Biden's "misread" comments. Looks like this is going to be the political topic of this week (unless some other celebrity else dies).

Hoops, If that is really the future than I am way understocked on ammo

Nova - the perfect 4th of July - catching up on American Apocalypse making cheddar cheese - thanks!

Story is still great!

I am a "River Person", but does it count if you own a large stretch of river* and boucoup acres, or do you have to be homeless, to qualify?

• Riparian Rights included

I heard the second stimulus plan is being sponsored by Enzyte.

Knew the Canal Dreams would return.

If the Freeway Median Strips do as well, then there's cause for alarm.

Wonder what Asia's up to.

C

"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." Ludwig von Mises

We are witnessing the monaterist version in real time of the GDii.

Bucky lives

"College has changed since I've gone. There's a digital revolution."

Hoopajoops, no offense intended, but so-called "e-learning" is just another goddamned scam.

It's a cheap and quick way to turn out cookie-cutters.

I can remember when the so-called educational community pooh-poohed "correspondence schools," saying there was insufficient interaction between student and teacher.

What's the difference now, aside from the fact that they make more money faster?

Dont worry, be happy - here's the answer as to the future job skills required...

The official Dilbert website with Scott Adams' color comic strips, animation, mashups and more!

SoylentGreenIsPeople is ahead of the game...

Hoops,

I need more socks also...

mp - big on the no offense intended today. Didn't know you were baitable.

Finally found the Krugie apotheosis of gloat: Nov 22, NYT: The Grown-ups Are Coming. Some of the comments are priceless. In a morbid kind of way, of course.

The grownups are coming - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

C

The way things are going, we wont have to go abroad to visit a 3rd world nation... But to be fair, the tent city along the American River in Sacramento has pretty much been there since GD1, and also Stockton, Modesto, etc... There were not so many vagrants in the south before the supremes overturned the vagrancy laws though... I think they all went to Stockton, Modesto, Sacramento...

"BOOTSTRAPS"

Well this is the best forum out there I've found. I've spent weeks trying to understand what's next.

This may not be the right place to ask, but: what is the advice? Buy real property, buy gold, treasuries? Flee?

If you're on your last chance and out of work, what is the strategy to throw long?

FJ2

California is in the process of choosing a crash site. Federal flight control has denied them priority landing and has suggested they try to get by with the fuel on board.

Last week $24b. this week $27.3b. These are not projections, we've generally lost track of how much would be owed if we had any intention of paying. And that's when Barry blinks. California "not paying" ruins his grander plan. If not in deed then by example.

So California is America's first Jingle State?

"mp - big on the no offense intended today. Didn't know you were baitable."

Counterpointer, I'm feeling opinionated today.

And massively pissed-off.

So, I'm compensating.

They cant really be that self destructive, can they?

they can be and they are.

then they will be reelected.

ssssshhhhh.

How about you are understocked on ammo and can't find your pony.

That would get some interesting responces, no?

Not a bad solution. Kill off a celeb every few days until California is solvent.

Good plan Asterisk. And it would probably work.

Uh oh, nikkei.com recycling headlines from Thursday and Friday, here's today - Stocks : Down Amid Lack of Cues. 1% off in 90 minutes. Nice work before morning tea.

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/e/fr/tnks/marketlive.aspx

Taiex, ASX and NZX all down. ASX futures were down 0.63% and blew through that pdq.

Wonder where those cues went to? Doesn't glodman's have a local branch? Or are they sending out cues by hand like on Thursday's close?

C

So California is America's first Jingle State?

Repossessed and short sold to mexico.

This may not be the right place to ask, but: what is the advice? Buy real property, buy gold, treasuries? Flee?

To answer this more seriously, do a thought experiment. Try to think of which industries have been propped up to unhealthy and unsustainable levels by federal or banking subsidies. Avoid those. Try to think of which industries have a cache of being easy and/or high money jobs, like banking, real estate, lawyer, doctor, pharmacist, environmentalist, pharmacy rep. Avoid those. Next, try to think of which assets or industries are directly or indirectly supported by an influx of cheap money and credit. Cars, houses built far away from city centers or jobs, malls, travel agencies... avoid those too.

Now, try to think of all of those jobs you know to be essential, but, for some reason, you associate, subconsciously, through cultural osmosis or otherwise, with being shitty, "below you" or otherwise undesirable for reasons of cache. Bonus points if these occupations have really hit the shitter in the last thirty years for some unexplainable reason, despite somehow magically being a profession on which one could make a living wage 50 years ago.

Waste management, agriculture, plumber, electrician, carpenter, machinist, school teacher, trash hauler, brewer, baker, postal worker, are some examples. Choose two. You'll be doing those.

mp - fair enough. Curmudgeonly rigor is a good antidote for hopium.

C

Hi HG,

Hmm, 6.75 + 3.25 = 9.99 in BoA math. Very nice.

Asterisk
That's my mistake
Should be 6.74

I think what Effective Demand, Hoop, josap and Lawyerliz are missing here (from different sides, mind you) is the social consequences with people having to trade down jobs. I can see both sides of this argument; ED has a point that UI cannot go on ad infinitum, these people NEED to figure out how to be productive members of society again. While I definitely side with LL on the wish not to allow people to starve (even if they do deserve it).

I've got a brother-in-law with a More Bad Advice (MBA) Degree who was a VP in insurance. He made a retrospectively bad jump to CountryWide 12-18 months before they went tits-up to help them start a new insurance section. BofA comes in and (intelligently) kills the section because it wasn't part of the core of the business. So here he sits, out on his ass since August '08. My sister (the wife) works locally as a CPA and is (hopefully) secure in her position. Bills are pretty much in order (partly thanks to a signing bonus at CW) but the mortgage is still there and they're good with money, if a bit more willing to go into debt then the little brother. So... they can't move thanks to the wife's position and the mortgage. What is he to do?

Now... ED I agree he needs to find a productive way to contribute to society again and should do some "retraining", but I watch my father go through something similar thanks to dot.bomb and it's devastating to the individual. It's hard to recover from that mentally that you were once a high-powered important person in a early-mid six-figure salary and now if you could just land that cashier job at the local supermarket for $15 and hour with benefits we could eat something other then hamburger helper again. Saying nothing of the 2-3 vacations they used to take a year now gone.

But, I'm not saying to cry for them (Argentina), just that what happens when this is going on en-mass? Where do we end up? The political fallout of this is HUGE. Anyway... thought that was missing from the discussion... so just my 2c

Cn

Aggressive taxation of entrepreneurial enterprises is bullish for the economy, right?

Yup. If they are foreigners competing with the locals, who vote.

Question Mark and the Mysterians - 96 Tears

QUOTEs that sum up the economic mood
We must overhaul everything. We cannot have a system of rentiers and social dumping under globalisation. Either we have justice or we will have violence. It is a chimera to think that this crisis is just a footnote and that we can carry on as before." Nicholas Sarkozy.

NOTE: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing for the Telegraph, connects the dots (like a global guerrilla) between the collapse of the debt-fueled economic system and widespread social fragmentation/disorder. Employment, incomes, time worked, are all tanking. Choice quote:

The Centre for Labour Market Studies (CLMS) in Boston says US unemployment is now 18.2 %, counting the old-fashioned way. The reason why this does not "feel" like the 1930s is that we tend to compress the chronology of the Depression. It takes time for people to deplete their savings and sink into destitution. Perhaps our greater cushion of wealth today will prevent another Grapes of Wrath, but 20m US homeowners are already in negative equity (zillow.com data). Evictions are running at a terrifying pace.

Global Guerrillas
Yes indeed John Robb 'really 'gets it'

if you had any idea how much effort it takes to go out

I do have an idea, but you never know how desperate some one is until you throw out a starting point. For you I'd pay $120.

BTW, this isn't rhetorical. I need firewood

More good Cali news

In California, the Canary is Dead | Newgeography.com

mp,

schism or just a general slide into squalor. I go with the slide theory myself. The percentage that can weather the storm are to insignificant of a number.

Still no offering of solutions hoop? You have a problem with having people trying something other than continued long term unemployment entitlements. Whats your solution?

Best game in town fallacy. I don't need to provide a sack of diamonds alternative to demonstrate that your sack is full of shit. Which I did. And others did too. Bait some more, Regeanite, or keep urging us to cut off unemployment benefits and tug on those bootstraps Carradined around our collective testicles and neck.

The one good thing I see to your alternative is that it will shock us out of complaisance and onto the streets, with bats, fire, and solidarity.

Juvenal - you may get Mysterons instead... YouTube - Portishead - Mysterons

C

km4- "NOTE: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing for the Telegraph, connects the dots (like a global guerrilla) between the collapse of the debt-fueled economic system and widespread social fragmentation/disorder. Employment, incomes, time worked, are all tanking."

"social fragmentation/disorder" = schism

Nova, I would argue that schisms are what cause the "slide" to which you refer.

There are Iphones in hell?

Lawyerliz...clearly. And theyve got a direct line to Treasury.

we already made all the bad choices. Malinvestment on a grand scale.

The shovel ready project we invested in with our stimulus dollars was to put concrete traffic baffles on a road in our town to make it all curvy and hard to navigate, so people slow down. Yesterday, we built dams that I can still walk across. Today, we spend our stimulus dollars to fuck up a perfectly good road, because it gets us the dollar wages we want quicker. If this isn't a symbol for how we're managing this crisis, I don't know what is.

I don't see solidarity in the streets. I see competing factions carving fat off the American goose.

I am reading a book about how the police were flipped to the right in a european country. What levers were used. How the justice system was perverted due to a "threat."

There will be another savior. Then another. Then regional ones. Then serious craziness...

Yes, but you can't call out.

Who the hell calls these days? Can you text out? I wonder what the GPS coordinates for hell are?

Blew by Yu

Linda Ronstdat is 6 degrees of yuTube seperation from the Mysterians.

Roger that barfly. I'll give her a big hug for you the next time I see her.

I wasn't expecting a sack full of diamonds, I was expecting anything other than the status quo (which doesn't seem to working so well). But you can't provide anything other than sniping at others.

My alternative is that you don't get unemployment for sending out more resumes after doing so for up to a year. You have to demonstrate doing something else. I'm fine with the government providing additional funds for these alternative plans and payments while doing them. But to just keep out sending resume after resume seems like a pretty stupid "solution".

As Sartre said, hell is other iPhones.

And being followed around all the time by a lobster.

C

Link to the Toxic Equity Trading Article I mentioned above. Really worth reading if you haven't.

Toxic Equity Trading Order Flow On Wall Street | zero hedge

"Buy and hold" is dead in an era when the SPARCStations are colo'd on the NYSE and NASDAQ floors and are making fractions of pennies on millions of transactions.

This is what capitalism has become? Are we living in a science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut? Our market has enough processing power thrown at it to become sentient, and as its first conscious act it decides to jerk itself off at the speed of light until it dies?

I would think hell would have pay as you UnVirgin mobile....

OT : NYTimes with a swing and a miss on oil :

Volatile Swings For Price of Oil Hobble Industry - NY Times

Dont even bother mentioning why China might be stockpiling oil as a resource currency.

And no real mention of speculation's part in the massive runup last year - just that there was an unsettled debate. Unsettled, huh?

I mean, really, why bother? This is what bugs me so much...the stories are always the mainstream junk. We listen to the same people who give us the same hoocoodanode, or whocoodafigerreditout,...the same experts who know nothing, are proven wrong, and then are trotted out for more non explanations.

Gawd...someone just shoot the grey lady and get it over with.

" As Sartre said, hell is other iPhones.

And being followed around all the time by a lobster."

Counterpointed, you are cultivated and creative. A sense of humor is also an adornment of the cultivated mind.

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227th comment ignores 6

Why does Lawyer Liz sometimes comment about "money losing meaning"?

The solution..stop doing the dumb sh*t, find a bottom, and stop digging. Start putting money toward productive uses. Yes, rebuilding infrastructure is necessary, but this isnt the way we should have gone about it.

I agree completely. I just think the productive use of more unemployment after up to a year of the same is marginal, the money spent going forward on a person who has taken unemployment for a year should be directing them down a different path than they are currently on.

Education would have been a good use for money, but now, we are making it harder for people to finance an education.

If college was as expensive as it was today when I went to college I probably wouldn't have bothered going. I don't think people are well served by taking on massive amount of debt for what for many won't be nearly the explosive wage growth that they were expecting. 4 year degrees have a lot of noise in them, which are great for making you a good jeopardy contestant but usually not so great at whatever profession you choose. The more targetted trade schools are frowned upon and many are very expensive. The system isn't geared properly for retraining masses of people. But that problem is mostly bureaucratic.

Thanks for the reply Basel.

I can see a day where people using high dollar personal electronics on the street are shot for it. Not to steal them. Out of class envy and rage.

liz you are hear,

thought you were putting books away, and getting ready to head into town for a week at the palace.

Emmylou Harris, till I gain.

pavel - once you've rent your vestments in rage and frustration, humor may be the only adornment left.

And they don't let you on the Metro wearing but a dried-gourd sheath.

C

Kind of surprised no one's talking about the Goldman Sachs thing here? At least it would be great fodder for some tinfoil hattery...

LL,

Death stare is soooo 50's. Get a taser. Better yet. Get a death star.

In this, the age of teleconferencing, when do public schools become obsolete? The cost is immense, it is duplicated thousands of times in thousands of locations and might be considered a luxury in the near future. It can be replicated in front of a computer screen in your livingroom with very few instructors. No need for the actual school either.

BSR,

Going be tough to get a hookup that way

We've talked GS to death, we're talking about something else.

Yow.

I was without the intertubes for a whole weekend, and look what I find when I get back...way too much to comment on, though I find Sarko compelling - a first for me. The French do know a little something about social revolution and Ancien Regimes, though.

I have been pre-occupied with some exciting personal news: the specuvestor who thought she'd wring a few bucks out of me over a parcel I needed to fill an inside straight has capitulated - really capitulated - and told me she's getting ready to walk away. She called to try to get one last offer out of me (no way) and I jokingly told her I really didn't expect to do more about it until it hit the trustee's sale. She said she was seriously considering that - offering up that she had an interest only loan - so the balance is more now than when she started. I told her she might ask her lender if they're open to a short sale, otherwise I'd continue watching for the trustee's sale...it was weirdly cordial and friendly, for this kind of conversation. She is calling the Trustee (loan officer) tomorrow about the short sale..life is surreal. She paid $140k...I'm thinking not a penny over $80k, and that seems...too expensive. Yay...it's been a long three years to keep the faith on this thing. Hell, now I'm not even sure why - I've been trying to set myself up on this hillside for going on 20 years - and now...I'm not even sure I want it.

josap,

Somehow I can't see LL pulling out anything other than an American Express.

Gordon Brown Sounds "Second-wake up call for the world economy"

I got mad at American Express years ago, they are scum.

And I am clueless about what fAILURE means.

Up to the next thread.

They've bound everything to the fate of the treasury market.( Maury the Credit Responsibility Panda)

Funding my peeps. Funding the treas. Timmay will be looking down a heap load of abandoned wells to pull up liquidity for the beltway idiots.