no recovery without jobs. sorry. WTF do these idiots not get? we are still working through the housing bubble. no jobs, no housing recovery, no economic recovery.
Dave Altig, over 13% of mortgage holders are delinquent. How are we going to recover with those numbers.
Top executives pay should base pay and tied to stock holders dividend and time served.. Do a suck job you get little. No golden parachutes for failure. BOA Ken is not getting as much as Fanny Mae crook Franklin Reigns. Government does pay better and where was Obama on this one?
Ousted Fannie Mae execs' pay packages due review | The San Diego Union-Tribune
How many more "jobless" recoveries can one have until there are jobs to recover? Can we finally put that dawg of poor spin down?
I still think the phrase works for the peasants because they instinctively know that, it's only a jobless recovery because of the unemployed peasant's own failings. So, it's NOT that the jobs aren't there. It's THOSE LAZY PEOPLE NOT LOOKING FOR JOBS. GET A JOB YOU LAZY BUM!!!
We need lots and lots of good jobs not just jobs. 1990 was the peak US year for births. We need +250k/mo just for them. The problem we have this time is that make work infrastructure will cost the economy more than menial jobs can contribute.
What kings have done for millenia: start a war. And I mean a big one that requires the help of the peasants. Our mercenaries playing around in the desert don't count.
Agree. why not call it a statistical recovery. This whole jobless recovery is typical cnbc esque washington PR hack bullshit.
The us hasn't created a job in a decade (consult the statistics) so all this talk about jobs is about a decade late. And this mind you with the record low rates via Greenscam.
cramer is such a fuc$ing idiot - why aren;t people selling oil -- uh Jimbo check the dollar yeah you kinow the stuff equities are made of. Says something about the state of things that this moron is given a voice
Actually, the MIP answer is MI benefits only the mtgee insured,
not the borrower, except to the extent it gives the borrowers a chance
to get a loan. Those other things may contain valid arguments.
I think the situation is hopeless without purging the scum first, which is completely impossible as human behavior won't allow it. The king is clothed BY the peasants.
The problem is nobody know what to do with the AVERAGE people (the middle 70% who aren't that smart or dumb but are marks for the smart-amoral-scumbags). The society doesn't want to admit there are average people. The "isms" can't address the AVERAGE people.
I personally think universities and government agencies need to start offshoring econ PhDs to India and the Pac Rim. I think it's very important for them to do field research into the subject of jobless recoveries.
And if you were king of the world, what would you do to get
lots of good jobs?
Solar rooftops. CNG infrastructure. Domestic rare earth production. Spagetti on the wall basic R&D. Orphan drug grants. National resource survey. Coal gasification pilots. Commercializing xericrops.
It's so easy once you remove the assumption that existing political power structures are part of the program.
Drill baby drill. Green is still way to primitive and expensive. The next couple of years the gas motor will past Hybrids in fuel mileage. Hard work for many but good pay. When times are good then play with Green energy. We need a realistic direction now.
I'm coming to the conclusion that the bottom 95% don't really matter in the governance of the country anyway.
Which is why China is the correct model for our society. All the peasants need is food, TV, and patriotism. That's what the Chinese have figured out, and are desparately working toward.
You have that right. In the rural America I have seen, everything a person of modest faculties can do with his hands has been offshored to a factory in Singapore. There is no work and no prospect of work ever coming back again.
I think I missed my calling. I could have had real potential as a governmental obfuscationist, thinking up all sorts of Orwellian word combos that sound pleasing to the ear, but not really.
EHP, from earlier thread: So less than 3% of the world's oil is traded on NYMEX. on margins that are down to 5%.
Thanks for the response. This certainly suggests that a little speculation can go a long way driving up prices. Still, the other 97% to a large extent gets dragged up too, which is remarkable.
energyecon wrote: Something I've wondered about is whether any sovereign wealth funds are playing in that space, particularly those of countries with a significant interest in the price of oil since they happen to be selling tons of it...long oil, short the dollar...nah!
I'll go a step further. SWFs or other large investors looking at price/demand/inventories may also conclude that 1) Oil's in a speculative bubble, so get what you can now, and 2) when oil goes, the dollar will rise, and all those dollars they made off the dollar-is-dead-buy-commodities crowd will pop back up in value.
it doesn;t matter much what you call it or how you feel abiout tyhe middle 70%. It is an aside. The middle are going to get poorer with or without the banks. its like the zombie bank argument, The problem isnt zombie banks the problem is there are simply not enough high ROE investment opportunities to keep velocity at the necessarily level to support he infated GDP. If we had healthy banks they wouldn;t be lending today -- why would you with the capcity rampamnt around the world and advanatage periods severely truncating? You might get PIMCO new normal out of them but that is impossible without cleansing the debt throughout the economy either at the banks or at the governement or at the consumer.
Look past the talking heads and their straw man arguments - Hussman has a simply answer trim the bondholders and solve the problem of the bankrupt banks. But even if that happened it wouldn;t change a thing re the banks. Their earnings power without the marks would simply whiter owing to the new reality and thus you end up staring face to face with the reality that the sick bank arguments help mask.
Solar rooftops. CNG infrastructure. Domestic rare earth production. Spagetti on the wall basic R&D. Orphan drug grants. National resource survey. Coal gasification pilots. Commercializing xericrops.
It's so easy once you remove the assumption that existing political power structures are part of the program.
Rob, that's why you're my favorite consevertarian. We may disagree on the who or what. But the how is there.
Listening to "ism" people and the nobilty talking about this stuff I find disgusting now. The average jobs are gone. No realistic way to get them back. And, AND, the society itself has been conditioned to look down and despise the average people. And, all they want to do is work and live. The average people is almost everybody and SURELY everybody has SOME average kids. What the hell are THEY gonna do?
so we have a permanent underclass, increasingly desperate and embittered, living in our large cities with little chance to earn any income
what could go wrong?
Is this a riddle having to do with medical marijuana?
The cool part is that they all are very vertical in their job generation. Physicists extracting a few more percent from photovoltaics to roofers swabbing tarpaper in Phoenix 120 degree heat for $10/hr.
What we suffer from is not good ideas but a political system specifically designed to suck the life out of anything even remotely innovative.
I'm done being pissed off. I'm just trying to figure out how to reattach myself to the elite. Posting here isn't useful in that aim, but it is amusing.
The problem with all the innovation arguments is that there is inherent assumption in there that we are a constrained leviathonvs. the rest of the world. We aren't. All the arguments about the US vs. RoW are just not credible. We still have a conducive environement to capital formation and new idea generation - even if those businesses are bought up in seedco stage. The problem is the myth sold vs. the reality lived. And now that reality is bumping up againts billions of others wantingthe same thing.
Rob Dawg wrote:
What we suffer from is not good ideas but a political system specifically designed to suck the life out of anything even remotely innovative.
You mean that doesn't just apply to the school system?
Catch 'em early and the job's just all that much easier.
Drill baby drill. Green is still way to primitive and expensive. The next couple of years the gas motor will past Hybrids in fuel mileage. Hard work for many but good pay. When times are good then play with Green energy. We need a realistic direction now. "
Replace "drill baby drill" with "securitization"
"green" with "on-balance-sheet banking"
"When times are good then play with green energy" with "When times are good then bring in proper financial regulations"
And you've gone from energy crisis to financial crisis. Same playbook just different players trying for exactly the same result.
10% of America getting their food for free is the new normal.
10% of America never working again is the new normal.
10% of America owning 95% of everything is the new normal.
10% of America having more than a month's worth of savings is the new normal.
this is a drive by, but.............
semis were the first to break out, and now they are rolling over
look @ TQNT after the bell
RFMD a couple days ago
just sayin
North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $732.8 million in orders in September and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.17, according to SEMI's September book-to-bill report.
A book-to-bill of 1.17 means that $117 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month. The August book-to-bill ratio was 1.06.
The September bookings figure is 19.3% greater than the final August level of $614.5 million and 12.8% greater than the $649.9 million in orders posted in September 2008.
Meanwhile, billings in September were $624.6 million, a 7.7% improvement on the August level of $580 million but nearly 33% less than the August 2008 billings level of $927.3 million.
“Equipment bookings increased considerably throughout the third quarter as the semiconductor industry continued to improve overall," said Dan Tracy, senior director of industry research and statistics at SEMI, in a statement. “September 2009 is also the first time since May 2007 that year-over-year bookings have risen and is in-line with the gradually improving capital spending outlook for the remainder of this year and into next year.”
According to SEMI data, the book-to-bill ration has been on the rise since February when a book-to-bill ratio of 0.49 was reported following January's 0.47. The ratio climbed above parity for the first time since January 2007 in July.
There is however, stuff that stays the same for a while, sometimes
a long while, by human standards, which deceives us into thinking
that there is a normal.
Dawg
The problem with all the innovation arguments is that there is inherent assumption in there that we are a constrained leviathonvs.
When was the last mainstream certificated private plane marketed? Why not?
the rest of the world. We aren't. All the arguments about the US vs. RoW are just not credible. We still have a conducive environement to capital formation and new idea generation - even if those businesses are bought up in seedco stage.
That's kind of a problem not a solution isn't it?
The problem is the myth sold vs. the reality lived. And now that reality is bumping up againts billions of others wantingthe same thing.
We have a lot of complacency to shake off. We've let a lot of our competitive advantages be exported and or stolen with a wink and a nod to start down a long list of things that have to change.
When you are in trouble (which we are now and getting worse) a baseline needs to be made especially if it'is backwards to many. We know oil and have it. Green is like diving into a black hole that is not price acceptable for growth and jobs.
This helps explain the unemployment duration issue. People who are out of work now have on average been out of work for much longer than in past downturns. I know it is a subject that I have been harping on for months now, but it countinues to get worse. Mean duration now 26.2 weeks, median 17.3. Or by my favorite measure the ratio of short term to LT unemployed at 1.83, up from 1.65 in Aug and 0.71 a year ago. Prior to this downturn had never topped 0.80.
Demographics and peak gdp. Age 49-55 I believe is peak spending years for the US. It varies country by country. I believe it's Age 49-44 for Japan.
Peak spending per demographics occurred somewhere around 2004 thru 2007 and is now waning.
"McKinsey found that the Boomer spending accounted for an astonishing 78% GDP growth during the "bubble years" from 1995 to 2007. Much of that spending will disappear. The "generational crash" will be a drag on the economy for years to come.
"The generational crash is when there are too many older homeowners and not enough buyers," says Dowell Myers, a University of Southern California professor.
"This is like winter coming," adds Harry S. Dent, an author and consultant who says the U.S. is headed for a slump that will last until 2020. It will take that long for the financial wreckage from this boom-bust cycle to be cleared away, he says, and for the 79.4 million strong "Millennial Generation"—most of whom are still in high school or college—to enter adulthood and start buying homes, cars and gadgets of their own. "It happens once every 80 years," Mr. Dent says of this sort of demographics-driven economic cycle. "It's going to be difficult."
True. Increased productivity equals less labor to produce the same quantity of product. One can work less to maintain the same "standard of living" or work the same and increase "standard of living". The problem is that current measures can't really tell us what a real increase in standard of living is. Switching from a 2,000 sq ft house to a 4,000 sq ft house for a family with no change in size of household isn't necessarily a real increase in SOL ( )
The problem is in dividing up the fruits of increased productivity.
The problem is in dividing up the fruits of increased productivity.
Exactly.
That's what Dent's demographics do not factor in.
They're based on the demographic pyramid scheme and historical spending patterns.
It's possible to fix the system to a reasonable degree but it would require a lot of people to start thinking.
Not damn likely.
I was talking to my neighbors across the street. One has the old style 1950's lot which is a 1/2 acre here. He has a lot of mature oaks on it. He came home the other day and a couple with a kid were in it collecting acorns, cracking them, and feeding their kid. He asks them what they are doing? No speak English. They were hungry.
I'm looking for the Fed's and all other central money-changers' work to reach its finite end. Open-source code written once, replicated on a billion hard-drives. Think of the tip jar, bh.
According to Bill Moyers show on healthcare, in the '90's (?) insurancecompanies denied, and denied, and denied coverage for many proceedures for many reasons. It didn't work out so well, so they they switched to paying for just about anything for several years which increased premiums andprobably also increased profits.
Now I'm wondering whether they are trying to appear to the be honest, practical cost cutters. Probably they will continue to act that way until they get rid of the public option and all other proposed healthcare issues they oppose.
Or, finally, you have been permanently separated from your previous employer, who has no expectation of hiring you back.
The last category is the dominant reason for unemployment at this time. That might not seem surprising, but it actually is. Never, in the six recessions preceding the latest one, did permanent separations account for more than 45 percent of the unemployed. The current percentage stands at 56 percent as of September and appears to be still climbing...
My wife has had a number of layoffs where she works [four rounds I believe plus smaller 'stealth' events - the last group mostly senior mgrs.]... She got to talk w/ the HR people about it and one of things that struck her was that even if business rebounded they didn't plan to bring most of the laid off back UNLESS they were reapplying for an open position. No automatic rehires for anyone. As a result all were let go under the category 'permanent separation' even though on occasion the firm has rehired people who used to work there.
And it isn't like this company expects to never hire again - they just want the opportunity to 'test the market' each and every position.
Those of you already on my list should have gotten the October Strategy report yesterday. Anyone who is not on my list and would like to be shoot me an e-mail at dhvd_2004@yahoo.com and I will send you a copy and put you on the list for future editions.
Part of what's happening in IT is commodization except it's happening along lines of keywords, I think.
I thought it would be based more on more abstract skills but it's looking very vocational now.
they just want the opportunity to 'test the market' each and every position.
Half the positions in large corporations filled with cronies, skills don't matter that much.
And like they want to become even more efficient and lay themselves off?
I don't buy it, it's not what I see.
That may be the excuse but not the truth.
It's one reason small companies have always been able to run rings around big companies. The bigger the company the more closely it matches the social average. of the many small companies trying to complete with it, one will randomly have an above-average mix of people and win.
Edit: my zombie bank is about as average as you can get.
Solar rooftops. CNG infrastructure. Domestic rare earth production. Spagetti on the wall basic R&D. Orphan drug grants. National resource survey. Coal gasification pilots. Commercializing xericrops.
It's so easy once you remove the assumption that existing political power structures are part of the program.
First you'd have to turn the feedlots full of sacred cows into hamburger... recessions & creative destruction will do that... eventually.
For small companies, I agree. I used to argue with a former manager because he was always trying to "get the best" candidates and he couldn't seem to grasp that as the company and team got larger, it just wasn't possible.. or even desirable.
The United States may face a series of asset price bubbles and a rerun of the financial crisis unless it lets the dollar fall "at least" another 25 percent, economist Bernard Connolly said on Tuesday.
Because fierce international resistance will likely prevent such a large dollar devaluation, Connolly told Reuters the Federal Reserve may instead have to extend indefinitely its artificial support of a struggling U.S. economy by purchasing another $2 trillion in U.S. Treasuries and federal housing agency debt. ...
First you'd have to turn the feedlots full of sacred cows into hamburger
And we still haven't figure out how we're going to magically get rid of the smart-amoral-scumbag who will just start THEIR scams over again. Unless you are talking about LOTS of hamburger include the hamburger caused by a social melt-down.
If the smart-amoral-scumbag are still around, you're right back where you started from.
"'Historically, we have only ever got out of such situations with inflation. We can also get out with deflation, but it's much more painful politically, socially,' he said.
'How can we stop the depreciation against the euro, if not by creating euros? The result is that you create inflation.'
But 'if we lose control of inflation and there is hyperinflation, it's a catastrophe for everyone,' he added."
He is exactly right...global competitive devaluation would be a vicious cycle where all central banks get sucked in to prop up exports and the result would be hyperinflation globally. The only difference between hyper deflation and hyper inflation is that with deflation, the social pain is up front, where as with inflation the pain comes later when it takes a suitcase of cash to buy a loaf of bread.
or as was so eloquently put by "Lloyd Braun"..."Serenity now...insanity later".
Jeebus, you're so hungry you graze in other peoples yards for acorns and poison your only kid? That has to feel really good.- N
Well, they didn't know. And most likely, the kid didn't keep that stuff down for more than 5 seconds. It would be like eating wet oak shavings. Tannins taste bad!
extend indefinitely its artificial support of a struggling U.S. economy by purchasing another $2 trillion in U.S. Treasuries and federal housing agency debt
How does indefinitely continue after all the federal housing agency debt is then bought up? Then what?
"...a study by Purdue University researchers said the vaccinations will probably come too late to significantly reduce the number of infections. The study, published last week, predicted that infections would peak in late October and that by the end of the year, 63 percent of the U.S. population will have caught the [Swine Flu] virus."
Federal Reserve may instead have to extend indefinitely its artificial support of a struggling U.S. economy by purchasing another $2 trillion in U.S. Treasuries and federal housing agency debt. ...
ghostfaceinvestah called this roughly a month ago.
Not sure about the Ts, but I think the GSEs don't move if the Fed stops buying next March.
Rob Dawg wrote:
Solar rooftops. CNG infrastructure. Domestic rare earth production. Spagetti on the wall basic R&D. Orphan drug grants. National resource survey. Coal gasification pilots. Commercializing xericrops.
It's so easy once you remove the assumption that existing political power structures are part of the program.
First you'd have to turn the feedlots full of sacred cows into hamburger... recessions & creative destruction will do that... eventually.
I knew if anyone was going to get it you would. Pisses me off that so far we've had all the bad parts of of recession and none of the clearing events. We've put the cast on the wrong leg and wonder why it still hurts and we can't walk.
He said they left with 2 shopping bags full. I hope the kid puked it all up. - N
Had to be. No way someone could keep all that down, no matter how hungry they were. OTOH all you have to do is leach out the bad stuff, so if they cooked them, it should be o.k. Somewhere in the dim recesses of my brain is a memory of someone pounding acorns in a stone bowl. I'm not sure if I actually saw it, or if it was a film strip in school.
And from Russia:
To this end, the central bank has been regularly intervening in the currency market to keep the pace of rouble appreciation gradual, allowing the currency to firm by 5 kopecks against the basket for each $700 million of interventions.
."He came home the other day and a couple with a kid were in it collecting acorns, cracking them, and feeding their kid. He asks them what they are doing? No speak English. They were hungry."
Where I live, 2/3rds of indians diet for about 1,000 years, was acorns...
Poke salad is poisonous too, unless you cook it right. If I'm not mistaken, tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family, and I believe their flowers are quite poisonous. I think I've heard of Indians making bread with acorns pounded nito a meal, but not sure about it. It's be interesting to know if only to add it to the menu next to the squirrel-
I agree...it's like a giant game of chicken. It seems the issue is how long the EU can refuse to devalue...at some point the euro industrial sector gets hollowed out by the cheaper goods from Asia if they don't.
Since I believe I may have been the first to mention as a meal on this blog (over two years ago now, i think), or at least the first to post a recipe, here is a recipe for acorn flour.
The strange thing is that in those two years I'm not sure any large home builders have gone TU yet. Magic? I never shorted the homebuilders but I weep for those who did.
I come home to No. VA where a cheap townhouse is about 280k right now. You drive around and everything looks okay. Yet I got people living in tents in the woods down the road and people grazing on the neighbors lawn. Poisoning themselves as they do it.
We got 2 different realities happening in the same space. Michigan must be getting really strange.
Anyone every read East of Eden. There was a get rich quick scheme where you would have a contest to see who could collect the most acorns and the winner got a big prize. The acorns would be used to feed pigs, which would be worth a lot more than the big prize.
Sort of sounds like our current economy on a lot of levels.
Even in that fictional version, it didn't pan out.
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Executives at seven bailed-out companies including Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. will have their pay cut by an average of 50 percent after negotiations with Kenneth R. Feinberg, the U.S. special master on compensation, two people familiar with the matter said.
The cash portion of salaries for the 25 highest-paid employees will be slashed 90 percent, according to a person familiar with the plan who spoke anonymously because the details haven’t been announced. Some cash will be replaced by shares that employees will be restricted from selling immediately, the same person said. An announcement could come this week.
Sorry, but to me "jobless" means "no recovery". What recovers if there are no jobs? not housing; not manufacturing; not medical; not service industries. Banks? Well, banks aren't the country, now are they?
Pisses me off that so far we've had all the bad parts of of recession and none of the clearing events. We've put the cast on the wrong leg and wonder why it still hurts and we can't walk.
Stunning, isn't it? One wonders if the PTB will ever get it.
I was thinking this same thing today. My parents and I went to breakfast, everything seems so normal, but then my mom reading a story about triaging flu patients in Florida, two recent bank robberies in Boise (very rare) and yesterday a 16-y-o kid with FOUR outstanding warrants robbed a woman of her groceries.
I think it cratered because of the announcement of TARP pay limits.
I don't think this announcement, in itself, is that big of a deal. But it might signal that the cozy relationship between the White House and Wall Street (symbolized by Geithner) is coming to an end. The market has come to believe what's good for Goldman Sachs is good for the White House, because of all the market manipulation that Geithner and Bernanke have pulled with Wall Street's help, not just in this administration but also under Bush.
You could see it starting to fray in some of the news out of Washington, and maybe the backlash over Obama's cash-dip party in NYC this week pushed it over the edge.
Remember the market tanked on the day Obama was inaugurated and for two weeks after. He needed Wall Street's help to get some breathing room. But back a year ago, nobody on Wall St. was very crazy about Obama, and they probably won't be a year from now, either.
Do you remember during the bubble run up, Buyers would submit essays to the house seller trying to gain favor. Some would go on and on how they would love to feed the squirrels and such BS.
Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive.
Dumb is as dumb does.
But he has a point.
Even during the major recesson of the 70's we had excitable young dudes tinkering w/things in their garage.... like Billy the-drop-out- Gates
It is really weird. Even for me.I come home to No. VA where a cheap townhouse is about 280k right now. You drive around and everything looks okay. Yet I got people living in tents in the woods down the road and people grazing on the neighbors lawn. Poisoning themselves as they do it.
Living on the California coast I've seen this for years. Median housing price over $500K, and yet... lines of aged motorhomes, station wagons, and vans on the street in industrial neighborhoods at night, TVs blaring at night. Mentally disabled and addicts camping in the woods, camps up in the hills where transient dope dealers cook down heroin for sale, all this crap -- the weather's good, and no one tries to kill them. So they come.
That can't be true. Houses are very expensive there. It's just, uh... edgy. Or hip. Or something like that. I'll have to consult the MLS to be certain...
There's a circuit up and down the coast of tolerant communities where, a lot of the time, you can find places to squat nearby: Portland, Eugene, Arcata, Santa Cruz, Venice; I don't know about the Bay Area so much, nor about LA. Scone, yeah, we've had it since the '80s here, too, but after falling off a bit in the last ten years it's amping up again with a vengeance.
...after falling off a bit in the last ten years it's amping up again with a vengeance.- BD
That's what the food bank people say. I don't have any numbers, but I hear people talking about leaving Oregon to find work elsewhere. The trades are very hard-hit, and that was supposed to be an alternative to the timber jobs that were lost in the last crash.
That can't be true. Houses are very expensive there. It's, uh... edgy.
Edgy is when you are stopped at a traffic light on the main drag, and a filthy lunatic is pulling glass bottles out of a trash can and throwing them at cars.
I witnessed this last week. Fortunately he missed me. The quality of the meth must be getting worse.
You have that right. In the rural America I have seen, everything a person of modest faculties can do with his hands has been offshored to a factory in Singapore.
and IT related jobs are either being offshored entirely or are now performed by an H1B paid 30% of what a US employee would be paid.
Seeing more and more and more offshoring in the technology field.
~splat
Joblessness should/could have been a sign of the increasing affluence in our society. Seriously. More leisure time and an abundance of wealth is what economists and futurists of the mid 1950s envisioned. Wall St. lies and an untethered debt money system were amazingly successful at siphoning off the fruits of productive endeavors. Now most families need two earners just to keep a zero net worth, despite the fact that we have 19 million vacant homes and produce surplus food with only ~ 2% of the work force. Exactly what kind of system keeps housing prices high against a supply glut of houses? I'll spell out what kind of system it is for you - a rip-off system that won't let producers enjoy the fruits of their production! A system that would rather evict the producers in order to preserve the faux asset values of billionaires.
The cruelest part is that the bailouts were sold as a way to save jobs. In truth, the bailouts saved faux wealth and guaranteed debt peonage for the majority.
I think this administration is more about control and what better way the to make people desperately need the government. America drank the Kool Aid and this is what we get.
Where my wife works, biz with 3,500 are so people, the entire IT dept. is being shutdown, except for a handful. Servers are going to be centralized. Help desk will be phone and remote access.
Where my wife works, biz with 3,500 are so people, the entire IT dept. is being shutdown, except for a handful. Servers are going to be centralized. Help desk will be phone and remote access.
The Shark will have stories for years out of that one.
As one of the unemployed, I've decided to have a "bankless" and "corporationless" recovery of my own. No debt, no loans, no credit cards, I"m cashing in the 401K and buying gold and will pay cash only for everything else, I'll be supporting small home town businesses as much as possible. They can live without me and I can live without them. Yes, I can.
"Edgy is when you are stopped at a traffic light on the main drag, and a filthy lunatic is pulling glass bottles out of a trash can and throwing them at cars."
Nice. Saw a similar incident on Wilshire near downtown a while ago. Some nutcase was throwing chunks of broken masonry from a church into the street. Also edgy.
Why anyone would want to actually live in Venice is beyond me. Even the beaches pretty much suck.
“We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, who was a special adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said yesterday at a panel discussion at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Where my wife works, biz with 3,500 are so people, the entire IT dept. is being shutdown, except for a handful. Servers are going to be centralized. Help desk will be phone and remote access.
What could possibly go wrong?
It's not like any of those computer systems will ever need security updates or anything. And if someone, or some thing, breaks in, destroys all the backups, and wipes the servers, well, I am sure a business with 3,500 people can operate just fine with paper, pencil, and a solar calculator.
The last time I bought a Dell laptop, several years ago, I had a problem with the hard drive. I called Dell under warranty, was connected with someone in India, who for 2 hours had me on the phone with a screwdriver disassembling parts. Finally he said I needed a new hard drive and they would send me one.
Well, theres always a bull market somewhere.
The heroin business is rocking in Afghanistan, says the United Nations.
CNN) -- Afghan opium kills 100,000 people every year worldwide -- more than any other drug -- and the opiate heroin kills five times as many people in NATO countries each year than the eight-year total of NATO troops killed in Afghan combat, the United Nations said Wednesday.
RD,
I think this administration is more about control and what better way the to make people desperately need the government. America drank the Kool Aid and this is what we get.
Unfortunately I believe they look at that as just a fortuitous side benefit. Concerns me even more their lack of urgency. They don't seem to be performing critical reviews. They need 82 year olds to whisper in their ear, then shout in their faces and still they do not listen. They don't have any more time and everyone here sees that.
After talking to the dumb American, Roj later quit and while getting drunk with several of his friends, said, "I'm NEVER going to work for DELL again.... Or talk to another American either!"
{{Burp}}
Ah, THIS must be why the Dow cratered today.
we really need a better name than "jobless recovery". something with a little more
A jobless "recovery" is not a recovery.
very punny
and Nemo, the equity markets love job less recoveries
profits and jobs aren't always great bedfellows
"we really need a better name than "jobless recovery". something with a little more Dooooooooooooooom!!!"
Depression?
my new job: phase 3 of the equities collapse began today. Trend reversal. 100% short
Basel Too wrote:
How about a job-free recovery. Has some perkiness to it. Even a hopefulness to it.
cratered?- down 92 points
of course it is if you getting part of those billions in bonuses.
It is October, still.
crazyv wrote:
The doomers will take anything they can get right now! Anti-hopium.
This should be good for +700 on the dow tomorrow.
another useless economist.
no recovery without jobs. sorry. WTF do these idiots not get? we are still working through the housing bubble. no jobs, no housing recovery, no economic recovery.
Dave Altig, over 13% of mortgage holders are delinquent. How are we going to recover with those numbers.
dummy.
we are officially into the heart of when October surprises seem to happen, could it be about All Hallowed Eve? I'm not saying, I'm just asking.
Pig out,
Top executives pay should base pay and tied to stock holders dividend and time served.. Do a suck job you get little. No golden parachutes for failure. BOA Ken is not getting as much as Fanny Mae crook Franklin Reigns. Government does pay better and where was Obama on this one?
Ousted Fannie Mae execs' pay packages due review | The San Diego Union-Tribune
The super-wealthy are quite comfortable as are the politicians.. so the recession is over. Does it matter if the peons have jobs ?
~splat
Eric wrote:
of course, you could be right
or it could be 700 the other way
I'm not leaving the house tomorrow.
Why, how very populist of you, Ben.
How many more "jobless" recoveries can one have until there are jobs to recover? Can we finally put that dawg of poor spin down?
I'm not leaving the house tomorrow.
I'm not either, but I work from home.
mp says,
Conjure says,
@S,
Here is MBS link you wanted:
Agency Mortgage-Backed Securities Purchase Program - Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Eric wrote:
Interestingly enough, so do I.
How about permanent vacation ? Upbeat. Makes me think of summers on the beach.
why is this small fall so special.
I'm betting on October, but still.
yagij wrote:
I still think the phrase works for the peasants because they instinctively know that, it's only a jobless recovery because of the unemployed peasant's own failings. So, it's NOT that the jobs aren't there. It's THOSE LAZY PEOPLE NOT LOOKING FOR JOBS. GET A JOB YOU LAZY BUM!!!
sporkfed wrote:
how about: Good luck and thanks for all the widgets., as a literary allusion?
We need lots and lots of good jobs not just jobs. 1990 was the peak US year for births. We need +250k/mo just for them. The problem we have this time is that make work infrastructure will cost the economy more than menial jobs can contribute.
So great! Nobody has to work and the economy can recover. We'll all get rich without work. I like it!
Replace widgets with wedgies.
volker the viking wrote:
You both wonk from home.
"The growing case for a jobless recovery from the 2001 recession "
there. fixed that.
The improvement in quality of life gained by not driving 80 miles a day in Houston traffic, has so far been worth the loss of lots of income.
And if you were
king of the world, what would you do to get
lots of good jobs?
wake me when current household debt can be serviced by household income (without having to eat beanie weanies!)
lawyerliz wrote:
Hu?
Mr Slippery wrote:
hello, me
well, hello, yourself
What kings have done for millenia: start a war. And I mean a big one that requires the help of the peasants. Our mercenaries playing around in the desert don't count.
Liz, did you ever see my response about the foreclosure issue?
so we have a permanent underclass, increasingly desperate and embittered, living in our large cities with little chance to earn any income
what could go wrong?
ghost,
Agree. why not call it a statistical recovery. This whole jobless recovery is typical cnbc esque washington PR hack bullshit.
The us hasn't created a job in a decade (consult the statistics) so all this talk about jobs is about a decade late. And this mind you with the record low rates via Greenscam.
Mr Slippery wrote:
Wonk, or wank?
Dawg.
Or, anybody else.
cramer is such a fuc$ing idiot - why aren;t people selling oil -- uh Jimbo check the dollar yeah you kinow the stuff equities are made of. Says something about the state of things that this moron is given a voice
lawyerliz wrote:
do you realize what you just said?
Yes, you said to go ahead, right, not frivolous.
Actually, the MIP answer is MI benefits only the mtgee insured,
not the borrower, except to the extent it gives the borrowers a chance
to get a loan. Those other things may contain valid arguments.
And I thank CR and the commentariat.
S wrote:
If recovery is referenced to GDP, and a small group gets 90% of that, then you only need a recovery in that small group to have a recovery.
No.
I think the situation is hopeless without purging the scum first, which is completely impossible as human behavior won't allow it. The king is clothed BY the peasants.
The problem is nobody know what to do with the AVERAGE people (the middle 70% who aren't that smart or dumb but are marks for the smart-amoral-scumbags). The society doesn't want to admit there are average people. The "isms" can't address the AVERAGE people.
We're F***ED.
Famine Buffet = Jobless Recovery
lawyerliz wrote:
anyone?
And said recovery is meaningless.
The word implies that most or at least many share in it.
10% isn't many.
I'm coming to the conclusion that the bottom 95% don't really matter in the governance of the country anyway.
lawyerliz wrote:
that depends on the base number, doesn't it?
Another critter for the menagerie:
I personally think universities and government agencies need to start offshoring econ PhDs to India and the Pac Rim. I think it's very important for them to do field research into the subject of jobless recoveries.
lawyerliz wrote:
Solar rooftops. CNG infrastructure. Domestic rare earth production. Spagetti on the wall basic R&D. Orphan drug grants. National resource survey. Coal gasification pilots. Commercializing xericrops.
It's so easy once you remove the assumption that existing political power structures are part of the program.
So, the Fed somehow gets the info on why people lost their jobs? Do the employers tell the BLS this stuff? How does that work?
lawyerliz wrote:
Consider the perspective, if you're part of the 10%, it looks and feels like 100%.
"Moby Squid"?
Hurrah, ken!!
But. . .rolling over smiley?
LL,
Drill baby drill. Green is still way to primitive and expensive. The next couple of years the gas motor will past Hybrids in fuel mileage. Hard work for many but good pay. When times are good then play with Green energy. We need a realistic direction now.
Winston wrote:
Which is why China is the correct model for our society. All the peasants need is food, TV, and patriotism. That's what the Chinese have figured out, and are desparately working toward.
um, Obama?
One and done.
Margin Call gets busy with Mrs. Cthulhu...
Ahhhhhhh. That feels better.
NOTaREALmerican wrote:
You have that right. In the rural America I have seen, everything a person of modest faculties can do with his hands has been offshored to a factory in Singapore. There is no work and no prospect of work ever coming back again.
Hence, they start meth labs.
actually a lot of "menial" work could be created in the area of environmental remediation
but of course, we have to bail out
first
Ok, Dawg, I nominate you.
So...is Jeremy Rifkin right at last?
Test...
:darkhelmet:
Damn.
Hey, I tried that too - but by moving closer to the job!
I think I missed my calling. I could have had real potential as a governmental obfuscationist, thinking up all sorts of Orwellian word combos that sound pleasing to the ear, but not really.
So, how is America different?
EHP, from earlier thread:
So less than 3% of the world's oil is traded on NYMEX. on margins that are down to 5%.
Thanks for the response. This certainly suggests that a little speculation can go a long way driving up prices. Still, the other 97% to a large extent gets dragged up too, which is remarkable.
energyecon wrote:
Something I've wondered about is whether any sovereign wealth funds are playing in that space, particularly those of countries with a significant interest in the price of oil since they happen to be selling tons of it...long oil, short the dollar...nah!
I'll go a step further. SWFs or other large investors looking at price/demand/inventories may also conclude that 1) Oil's in a speculative bubble, so get what you can now, and 2) when oil goes, the dollar will rise, and all those dollars they made off the dollar-is-dead-buy-commodities crowd will pop back up in value.
it doesn;t matter much what you call it or how you feel abiout tyhe middle 70%. It is an aside. The middle are going to get poorer with or without the banks. its like the zombie bank argument, The problem isnt zombie banks the problem is there are simply not enough high ROE investment opportunities to keep velocity at the necessarily level to support he infated GDP. If we had healthy banks they wouldn;t be lending today -- why would you with the capcity rampamnt around the world and advanatage periods severely truncating? You might get PIMCO new normal out of them but that is impossible without cleansing the debt throughout the economy either at the banks or at the governement or at the consumer.
Look past the talking heads and their straw man arguments - Hussman has a simply answer trim the bondholders and solve the problem of the bankrupt banks. But even if that happened it wouldn;t change a thing re the banks. Their earnings power without the marks would simply whiter owing to the new reality and thus you end up staring face to face with the reality that the sick bank arguments help mask.
I thought you were.
Rob Dawg wrote:
It's so easy once you remove the assumption that existing political power structures are part of the program.
Rob, that's why you're my favorite consevertarian. We may disagree on the who or what. But the how is there.
Winston wrote:
I wonder which stage of grief that represents; the end of denial (entry to stage 2) or acceptance (stage 5)? Tell me, is it making you angry?
Maury the Credit Responsibility Panda wrote:
Listening to "ism" people and the nobilty talking about this stuff I find disgusting now. The average jobs are gone. No realistic way to get them back. And, AND, the society itself has been conditioned to look down and despise the average people. And, all they want to do is work and live. The average people is almost everybody and SURELY everybody has SOME average kids. What the hell are THEY gonna do?
So is
related to the Despair Squid?
Back to Reality (Red Dwarf) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Winston wrote:
It's not. If I were king that's that the model I'd be going for. Maybe "they" are.
Juvenal Delinquent wrote:
Jobless Recovery
a.k.a.
Jumbo Shrimp
Silent Whistle
Modern History
Until they do - which usually involves civil unrest of one form or another - viz the long hot summers...
Comrade Elmer Fudd wrote:
Is this a riddle having to do with medical marijuana?
lawyerliz wrote:
The cool part is that they all are very vertical in their job generation. Physicists extracting a few more percent from photovoltaics to roofers swabbing tarpaper in Phoenix 120 degree heat for $10/hr.
What we suffer from is not good ideas but a political system specifically designed to suck the life out of anything even remotely innovative.
I'm done being pissed off. I'm just trying to figure out how to reattach myself to the elite. Posting here isn't useful in that aim, but it is amusing.
Rob Dawg wrote:
Try 'gs' instead.
Conjure says,
National Journal Online - Green Shoots For GOP
Rob Dawg wrote:
You mean that doesn't just apply to the school system?
I'm just a rank amateur when it comes to really befuddling the great unwashed masses, compared to Big Gov obstructionists...
Yes, that is how I would play it...rinse and repeat (though the repeat might be some other real asset)
kcoop wrote:
Giant Squid? I'm not looking for evil, I'm thinking more a parody of evil.
Dawg
The problem with all the innovation arguments is that there is inherent assumption in there that we are a constrained leviathonvs. the rest of the world. We aren't. All the arguments about the US vs. RoW are just not credible. We still have a conducive environement to capital formation and new idea generation - even if those businesses are bought up in seedco stage. The problem is the myth sold vs. the reality lived. And now that reality is bumping up againts billions of others wantingthe same thing.
some investor guy wrote:
Catch 'em early and the job's just all that much easier.
I think he meant "Goldman Sachs".
economic infarction?
(infarction is the process of tissue death (necrosis) caused by blockage of the tissue's blood supply.)
" LL,
Drill baby drill. Green is still way to primitive and expensive. The next couple of years the gas motor will past Hybrids in fuel mileage. Hard work for many but good pay. When times are good then play with Green energy. We need a realistic direction now. "
Replace "drill baby drill" with "securitization"
"green" with "on-balance-sheet banking"
"When times are good then play with green energy" with "When times are good then bring in proper financial regulations"
And you've gone from energy crisis to financial crisis. Same playbook just different players trying for exactly the same result.
"Optimal" [as in tax rate] is pure nonsense. For whom, paid by whom?
Careful with that tax, Eugene...
Howzabout that squid superimposed on a human face, icon?
this is a drive by, but.............
semis were the first to break out, and now they are rolling over
look @ TQNT after the bell
RFMD a couple days ago
just sayin
Ink back at ya!
I saw an article on MSN about 10% UE being the new normal. I don't see how this country can sustain that level unless we extend UE benefits forever...
broward wrote:
Of course ken meant Goldman Sachs. It just thought the coincidence funny.
eric89074 wrote:
Just more people to despise, this society is good at that. We'll adjust.
what is it with the squids???
Hey, a sushi bar!
Not just a squid, but a vampire squid.
Squidward should be pleased.
10% of America getting their food for free is the new normal.
10% of America never working again is the new normal.
10% of America owning 95% of everything is the new normal.
10% of America having more than a month's worth of savings is the new normal.
Let's "hope" that's not correct because, if it is, Ben will have to raise rates sooner than he thinks.
OK on topic for a moment - let us superimpose the permanent separations data with EMRATIO - think about that a bit...
.
FRED data
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EMRATIO/
.
Year Over Year Change in EMRATIO (3 Month MA)
energyecon: EMRATIO - return to cliff diving?
Oooh I like. The evil influence of my 9 yr old son pokes through however and when I see that symbol for GS I call it squidworth.
EDIT
Just saw Liz's comment above. Squidward? Not squidworth? All this time I have been hearing the wrong name? Shame on me.
nullpointer wrote:
Funny thing is there are some solid
in the industry:
SEMI: Bookings rise y/y for first time since May 2007, industry continues to improve - 10/21/2009 - Electronic News
Crap, just called in to see if it is busy at work and my coworker is sick as hell. What are the odds I get whatever she has? GRRRRRRR
A new toy!!
And, let me say it again.
There is no normal.
there is no GD recovery!!!
There never has been. [a normal]
Probably Swine Flu. Just tell 'em you can't touch anything she touched.
After another 10 years, ken will have re-created. . .
. . . . .
hieroglyphics.
Yes there is. Last year I was broke.
This year I'm almost broke.
Agreed!!
Comrade Kristina wrote:
Depends on how your constituency votes.
There is however, stuff that stays the same for a while, sometimes
a long while, by human standards, which deceives us into thinking
that there is a normal.
real estate, for example, always goes. . .up.
lawyerliz wrote:
True.
It either goes up in price or up in # of parcels for sale.
Hu Jintao president of China.
When someone worries if a nation's sovereign debt is good, the question always comes up: "Hu's their daddy?"
Lets say that things blew up real good financially, a clustermess of unimaginable proportions?
Would possession is 9/10's of the law be good enough?
mail???
Just playing with the icons. Don't think I've ever seen
used.
JD
Only if you can back up possesion with a 357.
josap wrote:
Is 357 an IRS form?
Sure.
where's Nova? He'd know.
Liz, great minds think alike.
Remember a couple of weeks ago a health insurance company denying a baby coverage due to being overweight.
No problem, now they're denying a baby coverage for being underweight.
Too small for insurance - Yahoo! News
S wrote:
When was the last mainstream certificated private plane marketed? Why not?
That's kind of a problem not a solution isn't it?
We have a lot of complacency to shake off. We've let a lot of our competitive advantages be exported and or stolen with a wink and a nod to start down a long list of things that have to change.
poic wrote:
How about we all stop paying our underwater mortgages and health insurance.
Live in the house for free and go to the emergency room as needed.
How far do they get to push us before we push back?
poic,
When you are in trouble (which we are now and getting worse) a baseline needs to be made especially if it'is backwards to many. We know oil and have it. Green is like diving into a black hole that is not price acceptable for growth and jobs.
As to mtges, I'm doing my part.
And the son went to the VA er.
And what about kind who are the children of Little People? Are they born small?
Any pygmies live in the USA? No insurance for them.
Bob Dobbs wrote:
Careful. You'll be drawn over to the dark side yet. :darkhelmet:
josap wrote:
What's this "we" and "they"?
As near as I can tell, the insurance company is trying to boost the price of your 401K plan.
What about premies, they are really small.
maybe they shouldn't get medical care due to being born too early.
Cuidado - recall which way the original :darkhelmet: ended up going...
Since all these people won't be driving to work, can they claim a pollution reduction tax credit?
Rob Dawg wrote:
rob, i do appreciate you bringing in demographics. it's helpful.
This helps explain the unemployment duration issue. People who are out of work now have on average been out of work for much longer than in past downturns. I know it is a subject that I have been harping on for months now, but it countinues to get worse. Mean duration now 26.2 weeks, median 17.3. Or by my favorite measure the ratio of short term to LT unemployed at 1.83, up from 1.65 in Aug and 0.71 a year ago. Prior to this downturn had never topped 0.80.
Wuz that 13% mtg delinquency rate for real? Isn't that like 10 times what is
was in past times?
lawyerliz wrote:
Being a midget is now a lifestyle choice.
Christopher Whalen has a new piece over at Institutional Risk Analytics:
Are the Fed, the Congress and the Primary Dealers an Alliance of Convenience?
And what about kind who are the children of Little People? Are they born small?
Not necessarily. The family from "Little People, Big World" is a good example. They live a few miles from me:
Roloff Farms Matt Amy Roloff Little People Big World
Yeah, those useless premies use up more resources than they will ever
create in their entire adult lives.
Off with their heads!
I prefer "recovery-less recovery".
chillin recovery
Cinco-X wrote:
I do all three, work, wonk and wank at home
It's "pick on the insurance companies with an outrageous [possibly true] anecdote" time. Lobbyists should approve of the methods, as do I.
Work is finite and shrinks over time if productivity really increases.
You can prove with equations, you can see empirically, you can show it historically.
Why is it so hard to accept?
this is not true with either gardening or housework, Broward.
Hey you two, get a roomba.
lawyerliz wrote:
sure it is Liz, think robotics. also, consider all of the jobs a thriving consumer robotics industry could create....
I have hinted for a roomba.
No roomba yet.
lawyerliz wrote:
Bu twe still had hope during the other downturns....
Housework expands to fill the time allowed. And the more gizmos and potions you buy to clean, the more stuff you buy that needs cleaning.
Yeah, Heinlein really screwed up in the Door into Summer book.
He had much more in mind that a roomba! Actually what we need is a "scurry" robot.
One that puts things back after being taught where they belong.
1 currency now -yogi wrote:
See?
Not even housework is safe.
lawyerliz wrote:
But once they become sentient, you'll never be able to find a thing-
And something that deals with cat hair.
Demographics and peak gdp. Age 49-55 I believe is peak spending years for the US. It varies country by country. I believe it's Age 49-44 for Japan.
Peak spending per demographics occurred somewhere around 2004 thru 2007 and is now waning.
"McKinsey found that the Boomer spending accounted for an astonishing 78% GDP growth during the "bubble years" from 1995 to 2007. Much of that spending will disappear. The "generational crash" will be a drag on the economy for years to come.
"The generational crash is when there are too many older homeowners and not enough buyers," says Dowell Myers, a University of Southern California professor.
"This is like winter coming," adds Harry S. Dent, an author and consultant who says the U.S. is headed for a slump that will last until 2020. It will take that long for the financial wreckage from this boom-bust cycle to be cleared away, he says, and for the 79.4 million strong "Millennial Generation"—most of whom are still in high school or college—to enter adulthood and start buying homes, cars and gadgets of their own. "It happens once every 80 years," Mr. Dent says of this sort of demographics-driven economic cycle. "It's going to be difficult."
"
I have that already.
It's called a back yard.
True. Increased productivity equals less labor to produce the same quantity of product. One can work less to maintain the same "standard of living" or work the same and increase "standard of living". The problem is that current measures can't really tell us what a real increase in standard of living is. Switching from a 2,000 sq ft house to a 4,000 sq ft house for a family with no change in size of household isn't necessarily a real increase in SOL (
)
The problem is in dividing up the fruits of increased productivity.
We need to investigate Bhupal's Gross National Happiness figures.
Deserted shopping mall bleak symbol of Fed bailout
| Reuters
rosethorn wrote:
Exactly.
That's what Dent's demographics do not factor in.
They're based on the demographic pyramid scheme and historical spending patterns.
It's possible to fix the system to a reasonable degree but it would require a lot of people to start thinking.
Not damn likely.
I have that too. They call them dogs.
Not to B confused w/Rob
See? No more cathair!
I was talking to my neighbors across the street. One has the old style 1950's lot which is a 1/2 acre here. He has a lot of mature oaks on it. He came home the other day and a couple with a kid were in it collecting acorns, cracking them, and feeding their kid. He asks them what they are doing? No speak English. They were hungry.
I'm looking for the Fed's and all other central money-changers' work to reach its finite end. Open-source code written once, replicated on a billion hard-drives. Think of the tip jar, bh.
Maybe the productivity numbers keep going up because people are being forced to do a full-time job on part-time pay.
You'd be surprised. When cats and dogs live together the cats often
end up top beast. Cats give no quarter.
out in cali the indians had to leach the tannins out of the acorns before they were edible
lawyerliz wrote:
Old skool analysis, you'd never take a second look at a bank with more than 1.05% of total assets nonperforming.
a kid were in it collecting acorns, cracking them, and feeding their kid.
Shit! I hope he gave them money-- acorns are poisonous unless they're processed to leach out the toxins.
According to Bill Moyers show on healthcare, in the '90's (?) insurancecompanies denied, and denied, and denied coverage for many proceedures for many reasons. It didn't work out so well, so they they switched to paying for just about anything for several years which increased premiums andprobably also increased profits.
Now I'm wondering whether they are trying to appear to the be honest, practical cost cutters. Probably they will continue to act that way until they get rid of the public option and all other proposed healthcare issues they oppose.
volker the viking wrote:
Interestingly enough, so do I.
I am retired from home. Does that count?
JIm
I understand there is the rare tree with tasty sweet acorns. But they live too
long to select for that trait and breed the trees.
And yeah, there's preparation work for eating acorns. don't know what it is, but
those kids might end up with tummy aches.
Well, I'm off.
He said they were only eating the dark ones and not the light colored ones. I never thought about them being bad for you.
i hear there is a rare tree whose acorns taste like squirrel
From the Macro Blog link...
My wife has had a number of layoffs where she works [four rounds I believe plus smaller 'stealth' events - the last group mostly senior mgrs.]... She got to talk w/ the HR people about it and one of things that struck her was that even if business rebounded they didn't plan to bring most of the laid off back UNLESS they were reapplying for an open position. No automatic rehires for anyone. As a result all were let go under the category 'permanent separation' even though on occasion the firm has rehired people who used to work there.
And it isn't like this company expects to never hire again - they just want the opportunity to 'test the market' each and every position.
I think that is what we are seeing more and more.
Those of you already on my list should have gotten the October Strategy report yesterday. Anyone who is not on my list and would like to be shoot me an e-mail at dhvd_2004@yahoo.com and I will send you a copy and put you on the list for future editions.
Part of what's happening in IT is commodization except it's happening along lines of keywords, I think.
I thought it would be based more on more abstract skills but it's looking very vocational now.
He asked us if we knew what the difference was. I told him the dark acorns were probably ripe.
Dude, acorns are poisonous!
acorn poisoning - Google Search
scone wrote:
That's one way to solve a problem, I suppose.
Agreed!
dryfly wrote:
Half the positions in large corporations filled with cronies, skills don't matter that much.
And like they want to become even more efficient and lay themselves off?
I don't buy it, it's not what I see.
That may be the excuse but not the truth.
Aw shit. They were Asian. Probably never seen an acorn before. Damn.
ahhhh.... BOOM.
Maybe they'll be Darwin Award winners.
broward wrote:
It's one reason small companies have always been able to run rings around big companies. The bigger the company the more closely it matches the social average. of the many small companies trying to complete with it, one will randomly have an above-average mix of people and win.
Edit: my zombie bank is about as average as you can get.
French official says U.S. trying to inflate away debt - Forbes.com
Start a war?
Mr Slippery wrote:
Those darn French. Don't they know this is a secret!
Who requested the ripped out penis icon?
You can eat them if they are prepared, in acorn mash or acorn meal. But I haven't heard of anyone really doing that in 50 years.
Rob Dawg wrote:
First you'd have to turn the feedlots full of sacred cows into hamburger... recessions & creative destruction will do that... eventually.
NOTaREALmerican wrote:
The French always call us out on our monetary mischief.
For small companies, I agree. I used to argue with a former manager because he was always trying to "get the best" candidates and he couldn't seem to grasp that as the company and team got larger, it just wasn't possible.. or even desirable.
Jeebus, you're so hungry you graze in other peoples yards for acorns and poison your only kid? That has to feel really good.
Without dollar fall, U.S. will repeat crisis: Connolly
| Reuters
The United States may face a series of asset price bubbles and a rerun of the financial crisis unless it lets the dollar fall "at least" another 25 percent, economist Bernard Connolly said on Tuesday.
Because fierce international resistance will likely prevent such a large dollar devaluation, Connolly told Reuters the Federal Reserve may instead have to extend indefinitely its artificial support of a struggling U.S. economy by purchasing another $2 trillion in U.S. Treasuries and federal housing agency debt. ...
dryfly wrote:
And we still haven't figure out how we're going to magically get rid of the smart-amoral-scumbag who will just start THEIR scams over again. Unless you are talking about LOTS of hamburger include the hamburger caused by a social melt-down.
If the smart-amoral-scumbag are still around, you're right back where you started from.
What's a xericrop? Is that some kind of edible acorn/squirrel hybrid?
Quote from that French official:
"'Historically, we have only ever got out of such situations with inflation. We can also get out with deflation, but it's much more painful politically, socially,' he said.
'How can we stop the depreciation against the euro, if not by creating euros? The result is that you create inflation.'
But 'if we lose control of inflation and there is hyperinflation, it's a catastrophe for everyone,' he added."
He is exactly right...global competitive devaluation would be a vicious cycle where all central banks get sucked in to prop up exports and the result would be hyperinflation globally. The only difference between hyper deflation and hyper inflation is that with deflation, the social pain is up front, where as with inflation the pain comes later when it takes a suitcase of cash to buy a loaf of bread.
or as was so eloquently put by "Lloyd Braun"..."Serenity now...insanity later".
No hamburger for you! Oxtail soup!
callous wrote:
No, it's a BDSM sex toy.
callous wrote:
Jeebus, you're so hungry you graze in other peoples yards for acorns and poison your only kid? That has to feel really good.- N
Well, they didn't know. And most likely, the kid didn't keep that stuff down for more than 5 seconds. It would be like eating wet oak shavings. Tannins taste bad!
RE wrote:
How does indefinitely continue after all the federal housing agency debt is then bought up? Then what?
"...a study by Purdue University researchers said the vaccinations will probably come too late to significantly reduce the number of infections. The study, published last week, predicted that infections would peak in late October and that by the end of the year, 63 percent of the U.S. population will have caught the [Swine Flu] virus."
-- Associated Press
RE wrote:
ghostfaceinvestah called this roughly a month ago.
Not sure about the Ts, but I think the GSEs don't move if the Fed stops buying next March.
scone,
He said they left with 2 shopping bags full. I hope the kid puked it all up.
nova wrote:
Nova immortalized as The Mean Old Man forever.
The opposition will play this quote over and over again when you run for mayor.
dryfly wrote:
I knew if anyone was going to get it you would. Pisses me off that so far we've had all the bad parts of of recession and none of the clearing events. We've put the cast on the wrong leg and wonder why it still hurts and we can't walk.
"French official says U.S. trying to inflate away debt - Forbes.com"
Weimar did it.
Thank goodness we still have the Amero on the back burner.
Where I live, 2/3rds of indians diet for about 1,000 years, was acorns...
"He said they left with 2 shopping bags full. I hope the kid puked it all up. "
This is happening in the USA? What is wrong with us?
He said they left with 2 shopping bags full. I hope the kid puked it all up. - N
Had to be. No way someone could keep all that down, no matter how hungry they were. OTOH all you have to do is leach out the bad stuff, so if they cooked them, it should be o.k. Somewhere in the dim recesses of my brain is a memory of someone pounding acorns in a stone bowl. I'm not sure if I actually saw it, or if it was a film strip in school.
rosethorn wrote:
Oh, it is well under way:
HKMA sells HK$1.938 bln to keep HK dlr in trading band - Forbes.com
And from Russia:
To this end, the central bank has been regularly intervening in the currency market to keep the pace of rouble appreciation gradual, allowing the currency to firm by 5 kopecks against the basket for each $700 million of interventions.
On Tuesday, it purchased $1.5 billion, the central bank's First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said.
WRAPUP 1-Russia growth outlook brightens, rouble key risk - Forbes.com
yeah, and look how that turned out for them.
broward wrote:
Jackpot!
."He came home the other day and a couple with a kid were in it collecting acorns, cracking them, and feeding their kid. He asks them what they are doing? No speak English. They were hungry."
They have to be processed.
Juvenal Delinquent wrote:
Poke salad is poisonous too, unless you cook it right. If I'm not mistaken, tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family, and I believe their flowers are quite poisonous. I think I've heard of Indians making bread with acorns pounded nito a meal, but not sure about it. It's be interesting to know if only to add it to the menu next to the squirrel-
pig = acorn processing unit
"pig = acorn processing unit"
Acorns and other tree nuts - as pig fodder called 'mast.' European peasants let their pigs out into the forests to feed on mast.
Wiki says Asians use acorns as a starch, so maybe they'll be o.k. with it:
Acorn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I agree...it's like a giant game of chicken. It seems the issue is how long the EU can refuse to devalue...at some point the euro industrial sector gets hollowed out by the cheaper goods from Asia if they don't.
feralpig wrote:
Fraud Mississippi style.
Jackson Jambalaya: Tempest in a teapot or record-breaking fraud? Mississippi Valley Title sues Evans brothers alleging fraud.
Nova's writing is like tax filing...pure fiction. and no Squirells were harmed.
Since I believe I may have been the first to mention
as a meal on this blog (over two years ago now, i think), or at least the first to post a recipe, here is a recipe for acorn flour.
Wild Food - Acorn Flour
The strange thing is that in those two years I'm not sure any large home builders have gone TU yet. Magic? I never shorted the homebuilders but I weep for those who did.
It is really weird. Even for me.
I come home to No. VA where a cheap townhouse is about 280k right now. You drive around and everything looks okay. Yet I got people living in tents in the woods down the road and people grazing on the neighbors lawn. Poisoning themselves as they do it.
We got 2 different realities happening in the same space. Michigan must be getting really strange.
Anyone every read East of Eden. There was a get rich quick scheme where you would have a contest to see who could collect the most acorns and the winner got a big prize. The acorns would be used to feed pigs, which would be worth a lot more than the big prize.
Sort of sounds like our current economy on a lot of levels.
Even in that fictional version, it didn't pan out.
nova wrote:
Your first clue would be that the squirrels left the acorns laying there on the ground.
I sure hope that the kid is OK.
Oh. That was true by the way.
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Executives at seven bailed-out companies including Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. will have their pay cut by an average of 50 percent after negotiations with Kenneth R. Feinberg, the U.S. special master on compensation, two people familiar with the matter said.
The cash portion of salaries for the 25 highest-paid employees will be slashed 90 percent, according to a person familiar with the plan who spoke anonymously because the details haven’t been announced. Some cash will be replaced by shares that employees will be restricted from selling immediately, the same person said. An announcement could come this week.
Sorry, but to me "jobless" means "no recovery". What recovers if there are no jobs? not housing; not manufacturing; not medical; not service industries. Banks? Well, banks aren't the country, now are they?
Rob Dawg wrote:
Stunning, isn't it? One wonders if the PTB will ever get it.
I was thinking this same thing today. My parents and I went to breakfast, everything seems so normal, but then my mom reading a story about triaging flu patients in Florida, two recent bank robberies in Boise (very rare) and yesterday a 16-y-o kid with FOUR outstanding warrants robbed a woman of her groceries.
Damn, that's just wrong.
Nemo wrote:
I think it cratered because of the announcement of TARP pay limits.
I don't think this announcement, in itself, is that big of a deal. But it might signal that the cozy relationship between the White House and Wall Street (symbolized by Geithner) is coming to an end. The market has come to believe what's good for Goldman Sachs is good for the White House, because of all the market manipulation that Geithner and Bernanke have pulled with Wall Street's help, not just in this administration but also under Bush.
You could see it starting to fray in some of the news out of Washington, and maybe the backlash over Obama's cash-dip party in NYC this week pushed it over the edge.
Remember the market tanked on the day Obama was inaugurated and for two weeks after. He needed Wall Street's help to get some breathing room. But back a year ago, nobody on Wall St. was very crazy about Obama, and they probably won't be a year from now, either.
sm_landlord wrote:
there's a reason you've had none of the clearing events.
nobody here could handle them.
I vote for: "recovery ex recovery"
wally
sorry but yes they are the country
12th Percentile,
Do you remember during the bubble run up, Buyers would submit essays to the house seller trying to gain favor. Some would go on and on how they would love to feed the squirrels and such BS.
Tom Friedman says the unemployed just need some imagination.
OP-ED COLUMNIST; The New Untouchables - NY Times
Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive.
FOREX New Regs, in case anyone wants to trade on margin.
A pretty significant jump in my opinion.
EUR/USD....from 2.5-$16??
Now that the horses are out of the barn....
USD/JPY AUD/USD (most USD based pairs) $2.50 $10
EUR/USD EUR/JPY (most EUR based pairs) $2.50 $16
GBP/USD GBP/JPY (most GBP based pairs) $2.50 $17
EXOTIC PAIRS VARIABLE BY PAIR VARIABLE BY PAIR
Jeez, hard to believe they pay that guy to write anything. He is dumber than Maureen Dowd.
As a side note: having no jobs here guarantees that we won't be bringing any army home.
"He needed Wall Street's help to get some breathing room."
Sounds plausible - but who knows what goes on?
Yancey Ward wrote:
Richer, too; I think his wife keeps him. So he can write this crap.
Dumb is as dumb does.
But he has a point.
Even during the major recesson of the 70's we had excitable young dudes tinkering w/things in their garage.... like Billy the-drop-out- Gates
Updated BLS unemployment map:
http://www.bls.gov/lau/maps/twmcort.pdf
Jobless recovery?
How about recoveryless recovery?
Or crashless crash?
nova wrote:
Living on the California coast I've seen this for years. Median housing price over $500K, and yet... lines of aged motorhomes, station wagons, and vans on the street in industrial neighborhoods at night, TVs blaring at night. Mentally disabled and addicts camping in the woods, camps up in the hills where transient dope dealers cook down heroin for sale, all this crap -- the weather's good, and no one tries to kill them. So they come.
Santa Cruz to rest of US -- welcome to our world.
A lot of that in my area, too, but it's been that way more or less since the '80's.
Thought you were describing Venice there, Bob.
El Lurko wrote:
Venice is as bad or worse. And dirtier.
"Venice is as bad or worse. And dirtier."
That can't be true. Houses are very expensive there. It's just, uh... edgy. Or hip. Or something like that. I'll have to consult the MLS to be certain...
El Lurko wrote:
There's a circuit up and down the coast of tolerant communities where, a lot of the time, you can find places to squat nearby: Portland, Eugene, Arcata, Santa Cruz, Venice; I don't know about the Bay Area so much, nor about LA. Scone, yeah, we've had it since the '80s here, too, but after falling off a bit in the last ten years it's amping up again with a vengeance.
...after falling off a bit in the last ten years it's amping up again with a vengeance.- BD
That's what the food bank people say. I don't have any numbers, but I hear people talking about leaving Oregon to find work elsewhere. The trades are very hard-hit, and that was supposed to be an alternative to the timber jobs that were lost in the last crash.
JBR wrote:
Edgy is when you are stopped at a traffic light on the main drag, and a filthy lunatic is pulling glass bottles out of a trash can and throwing them at cars.
I witnessed this last week. Fortunately he missed me. The quality of the meth must be getting worse.
and IT related jobs are either being offshored entirely or are now performed by an H1B paid 30% of what a US employee would be paid.
Seeing more and more and more offshoring in the technology field.
~splat
Joblessness should/could have been a sign of the increasing affluence in our society. Seriously. More leisure time and an abundance of wealth is what economists and futurists of the mid 1950s envisioned. Wall St. lies and an untethered debt money system were amazingly successful at siphoning off the fruits of productive endeavors. Now most families need two earners just to keep a zero net worth, despite the fact that we have 19 million vacant homes and produce surplus food with only ~ 2% of the work force. Exactly what kind of system keeps housing prices high against a supply glut of houses? I'll spell out what kind of system it is for you - a rip-off system that won't let producers enjoy the fruits of their production! A system that would rather evict the producers in order to preserve the faux asset values of billionaires.
The cruelest part is that the bailouts were sold as a way to save jobs. In truth, the bailouts saved faux wealth and guaranteed debt peonage for the majority.
Enjoy the fruits of your bailout America.
RD,
I think this administration is more about control and what better way the to make people desperately need the government. America drank the Kool Aid and this is what we get.
Where my wife works, biz with 3,500 are so people, the entire IT dept. is being shutdown, except for a handful. Servers are going to be centralized. Help desk will be phone and remote access.
Most of the IT staff were contractors...they are going to be cut loose.
nova wrote:
Boy oh girl, there's a productivity bonanza coming at that company.
Not.
nova wrote:
The Shark will have stories for years out of that one.
What were you driving Sm, a BMW convertable with "I Love Bankers" Logos?
There's going to be a big cost savings bonus for the CIO ! "Who cares if it screws our IT needs, it costs less !"
~splat
As one of the unemployed, I've decided to have a "bankless" and "corporationless" recovery of my own. No debt, no loans, no credit cards, I"m cashing in the 401K and buying gold and will pay cash only for everything else, I'll be supporting small home town businesses as much as possible. They can live without me and I can live without them. Yes, I can.
Nice. Saw a similar incident on Wilshire near downtown a while ago. Some nutcase was throwing chunks of broken masonry from a church into the street. Also edgy.
Why anyone would want to actually live in Venice is beyond me. Even the beaches pretty much suck.
Banker bonuses are good for you. Love, Goldman.
Goldman Sachs’s Griffiths Says Inequality Helps All (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
“We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, who was a special adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said yesterday at a panel discussion at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Blackwaterwannabe wrote:
Heh. I was driving a 1994 Lincoln Mk VIII.
I think the car he hit was Beemer, though. I didn't wait around to check it out after the light changed.
nova wrote:
What could possibly go wrong?
It's not like any of those computer systems will ever need security updates or anything. And if someone, or some thing, breaks in, destroys all the backups, and wipes the servers, well, I am sure a business with 3,500 people can operate just fine with paper, pencil, and a solar calculator.
Mr Slippery wrote:
That's when they'll hire back the contractors - but at $350/hour this time.
The last time I bought a Dell laptop, several years ago, I had a problem with the hard drive. I called Dell under warranty, was connected with someone in India, who for 2 hours had me on the phone with a screwdriver disassembling parts. Finally he said I needed a new hard drive and they would send me one.
I never bought another Dell. Never will, either.
Well, theres always a bull market somewhere.
The heroin business is rocking in Afghanistan, says the United Nations.
CNN) -- Afghan opium kills 100,000 people every year worldwide -- more than any other drug -- and the opiate heroin kills five times as many people in NATO countries each year than the eight-year total of NATO troops killed in Afghan combat, the United Nations said Wednesday.
Lobbyist Ben Dover wrote:
Unfortunately I believe they look at that as just a fortuitous side benefit. Concerns me even more their lack of urgency. They don't seem to be performing critical reviews. They need 82 year olds to whisper in their ear, then shout in their faces and still they do not listen. They don't have any more time and everyone here sees that.
“We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,”
This is right out of Animal Farm.
Next they'll be telling us that "the beatings will CONtinue until morale improves". The sheeple have been falling for that one for centuries.
I have been in IT since mainframes. I retrain, almost completely, every 5 years, with minor retooling in the middle. Every time it gets tougher.
Would those fall under service/entertainment industry jobs ?
~splat
DELL is a company, I think, that has lost it's way. They want to be IBM now
Greenshoots, I hope your plan becomes a societal trend.
After talking to the dumb American, Roj later quit and while getting drunk with several of his friends, said, "I'm NEVER going to work for DELL again.... Or talk to another American either!"
{{Burp}}