You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone
For example, the bubble in technology stocks in the late 1990s was not fueled by a feedback loop between bank lending and rising equity values... This is one of the key reasons that the bursting of the bubble was followed by a relatively mild recession.
That's one possibility.
Another is that the Fed left interest rates so damn low that the tech bubble was replaced by the housing bubble. But hey, Mishkin's the economist, so he must be right.
At this point I think it's difficult to establish where the bubble ends and the parallel universe begins. Things have been so out of whack for so long. When is the last time we didn't have a "bubble?" Early 90's? That's an entire generation or two of working adults since then. Would one recognize normal if they saw it? Probably not if you're under 30.
This does agree with research I have seen that bubbles involving substantial leverage are more damaging.
Makes sense, doesn't it? If the only money you can bet at the casino is your own, all you can do is go broke. But if your buddies loan you a bunch of their money to gamble with, you can take them down with you.
Mishkin's full of she-it. It's incredibly difficult to trace investment flows; just because equities are rising doesn't mean that there isn't substantial leverage in the system.
I'm willing to believe that leverage moderates the extent and danger of a bubble, but I don't think you can easily measure leverage. So the comment remains academic, especially if the central bank has no interest in limiting leverage even if it were excessive.
If anyone is interested I wrote some more of my ongoing serial novel today. I think I have written over 600 pages at this point.
A sample:
We pulled into a town, that based on what we had been told had a Saturday Market. We would, on occasion, meet other travelers and exchange gossip. If it was group that was a lot smaller than us they would usually shy away. Sometimes they would pull off, an away from us, and send someone to talk. We would meet them halfway, and maybe do some trading. If the group was our size or a little bigger they would generally stop and talk. Having the Freylings buzzing around on their bikes helped. It gave us a kinder, softer image. That's how we had found out about it.
The bursting of the tech-bubble (irrational exuberance) which then lead to the housing bubble (irrational exuberance) has had no effect on the economy. Gotcha.
Yay! People are home more, keeping us all safe and enjoying their families. That and there's nothing left worth stealing Besides on the TeeVee they tell me that the Economy is growing again and that the employment picture is getting worse more slowly .
Barfly--I understand your point. I cannot afford a house, even at the conservative 3 times income hahaha.I do believe though that even if i could afford to buy I wouldnt. Owning to me equals being owned and chained. Odd? yes i admit it. I moved alot as a child, then moved alot in the army, then just kept on moving. I try to understand that others do not liek to move, that others would think it paradise to own one place always, many times I forget though. ah well, never said I wasnt flawed
Where i rent is income based, sliding scale so I pay far less than market and the landlord I had before that i was a tennant for 4 years, they liked me and charged a very reasonable rent and provided very good service. It also helps to be a month and half ahead on rent.
It is ok, everyone can sleep well now. This is all part of a master plan to rid the planet of the evil infecting our neighborhoods. We have everything under control now.
This does agree with research I have seen that bubbles involving substantial leverage are more damaging.
This is one of the first massive pump-and-dump operations in stock market history in which the "professionals" are providing the liquidity for J6Ps to dump at the peak, not the other way round. The ultimate bagholders at the top this time will be leveraged institutions that are using Fed liquidity and cheap money to pump up stocks, especially the most speculative and over-valued. Consistently and steadily all year, retail investors have been saying "thank you, thank you" and cashing out, clawing back some of their losses. Nobody who works hard for their money and wants to retire with a little coin and dignity really trusts this market, not after two big wipe-outs in the last 10 years and a decade of zero stock market growth.
@ AlleyCat (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Mon, 11/9/2009 - 7:52 pm
km4, My dad served in the 11th Airborne Division with Rod Serling in WWII. You either liked the show or the quote.
That's awesome and liked both the show and the quote i.e. think opening narration from season 4 & 5 was the best !
If you look at the housing charts, the housing upswing started prior to the tech bubble in stocks crashing. I've often wondered if the lavish stock options and easy money in stocks started fueling home improvements, move up buyers, and second/vacation homes prior to it being cool to do so. Hard thing to prove or disprove however.
Add low interest rates and bubble bubble toil and trouble...
So at $26 million a ton, CEF alone will eat the remaining gold off of comex for delivery. Hence nothing left but a paper market here.
Um, and CEF takes delivery, no matter how long it takes- sooooo, this is really bad for those who are serious about taking delivery, thus the market will rise sufficient for Comex and London to have enough gold to guarantee delivery. There was a similar situation a couple of years ago with nickel, which shot up 6x the previous five years average to new highs before crashing when the markets fell apart.
If you look at the housing charts, the housing upswing started prior to the tech bubble in stocks crashing. I've often wondered if the lavish stock options and easy money in stocks started fueling home improvements, move up buyers, and second/vacation homes prior to it being cool to do so.
No word on exact numbers or where the layoffs will be coming from, but our source stated “15%-20%. I would guess 1500+” From what we have heard, layoffs are coming across the board, from every studio, in every department.
Wow..... when the #1 gaming company cuts this deep you know things are FUBAR
Mishkin outlines two different types of bubbles, and argues a "credit boom bubble" poses a risk to the economy, but a "pure irrational exuberance bubble" does not.
Wow - I should have got a PhD in Boomology - I could have worked at the Fed.
As I stated, there are "jobs" in both the public and private sector. However, the first exists solely because of the second, and not the other way around. No "real" jobs, no taxes; No taxes, no government jobs. Doesn't get much simpler.
i like ya hommie and respect much of what youve said
but his time gotta disagree
you got it backwards
no civil society
no enforceable contracts
no law
no police
no courts
no highways, no fda, interstate commerce, currency,
roving bands of tribal raiding parties
stability that lets people settle down grow food create art and make music
Several of the J6Ps I know have jumped back into the market now that it's at 10k again and seeming fairly stable.
This does happen. But for the week of 10/28, according to ici.org, $2.558 billion of net cash flowed out of domestic equity mutual funds. In any given week, you can figure that about $2 billion of cash automatically flows into domestic equity mutual funds based on pure inertia, mainly dividend reinvestment and retirement plan contributions. So, this means that about $4 billion or more flowed out based on active J6P investor decisions. And it's become a consistent pattern, week-in-week-out, for the first time in decades.
This doesn't count equity outflows from variable insurance products, where J6P also was heavily invested, and which are pretty much slowly imploding.
Mishkin outlines two different types of bubbles, and argues a "credit boom bubble" poses a risk to the economy, but a "pure irrational exuberance bubble" does not.
Please excuse me while I bang my head on the table.
Come on, you just listed a number of potential employment opportunities that would exist without the oppressive hand of government.
Tribal Raider
Warlord
Pirate
Bandit
Pimp (well, you didn't list one, but prostitution and pimping function in every society)
Clergy (as with prostitution, religion also caters to basic human needs and survives anarchy well)
I've been following the attorney cuts. I seem to remember that the Friday before Easter(?) there were brutal layoffs. My next door neighbor is a lawyer. Business is terrible. No one can even afford to get divorced. My niece is in her second year of law school at Colombia. Even though the big NYC firms are pretending that everything will be fine, very few have taken on second year interns. My BIL is a utilities specialist and his business is doing great.
"This does happen. But for the week of 10/28, according to ici.org, $2.558 billion of net cash flowed out of domestic equity mutual funds. In any given week, you can figure that about $2 billion of cash automatically flows into domestic equity mutual funds based on pure inertia, mainly dividend reinvestment and retirement plan contributions. So, this means that about $4 billion or more flowed out based on active J6P investor decisions. And it's become a consistent pattern, week-in-week-out, for the first time in decades.
This doesn't count equity outflows from variable insurance products, where J6P also was heavily invested, and which are pretty much slowly imploding. "
But money is flowing into overseas funds big-time isn't it? Looks more like dumb money rotating from speculative into truly speculative.
Soooo.... was anyone doing business in Deadwood before they had a sheriff, mayor and tax collector? Again (for the umpteenth time) I'm not talking modern, civilized commerce here, just absolute basics. That's all I was saying.
Alleycat and tim, I was at work last week and died laughing at a commercial.
a man waking up to a scary, snoring, ugly snugglebunny. Obviously the morning after a one too many bootyfest. Sneaking away quietly, getting dressed silently so as not to wake her up, trotting down the stairs to the doors out out and away when what stops him in his tracks? A wedding picture. Him and the woman upstairs. His shoulders sag, he turns around, and goes back upstairs while the voice over says
"When divorce is not an option...Ashleymadison.com"
So this marketing cmpany needs a bonus, a raise and an award because I remembered the name of the site and I had to look it up to KNOW. Whatinell is ashleymadison? Marriage counselor? Wife killer for insurance? nope.
It is a discreet dating service, because sometimes you just need an affair. hahahahahaha.
So it has hit mainstream, not being able to afford a divorce and a division of assets and debts. snicker Hit it hard enough that an ad campaign designed around despair and poverty and slogging it out and fantasy sex notonly works, but is a very funny campaign to boot.
*Do you mean to imply that they actually pay interns up in New York? *
OkieLawyer,
I'm not positive, but I actually think the second year interns are paid. She spent the summer after her first year working for a judge, but she didn't get paid. She's been volunteering for the NLRB out of personal interest since her first year. She said the other students are so desperate that some of them are volunteering there, too.
Not all credit bubbles are the same...savings & loan crisis vs. today's credit RE/CRE credit bubble...
It's easy to forget it's takes two to tango...buyers got suckered...voters got suckered...without the public participation in the bubble or Change Now campaign...we wouldn't have Crash and no cash......
Remember when Nader was warning that the two-party system is ONE party that sucks...and he tried to Crash the Party...Ross Perot tried to crash the Party...all the voters who voted for Dubya *twice...and Bill-O (the deregulator) twice and Obama once after numerous warnings that disaster would follow...the Partisan spin blinds both sides to the regulatory and monetary capture...The People were complicit in their demise...hard lessons were ignored...
Barfly,
What percentage of housing is rental ? All markets will eventually level out between supply and demand. That, in theory, sets the
price. Not the greedy landlord.
On the other hand, nobody really leverage up on Beanie babies.
Houses, tulips, anything a bank will lend against, well that is a candidate for leverage, and risk to the economy.
So, if we can get a hand on leverage, including equity and bond leverage, we can finally begin to muddle through.
Meanwhile, we still have to keep propping everything up. Faugh.
This is going to take years, and now we have more immense damage to go.
But, I bought a pair of signed Pena prints from 1989 and 1990 in huge framed matted format for a grand total of $60.
The framing cost more than that for just one of these prints! Plus the large format prints have been sold out for a long time (limited gallery editions, hand signed by artist).
Either that, or the Holiday Inn Express kicked his sorry arse to the curb last night. Gramlich, God rest his soul, must be rolling over in his grave.
I'm willing to grant his point that the amount of collateral damage caused by bubbles on the rest of the economy is variable. I don't at all believe that he's got the right metrics selected; why not, for example, the size of the bubble, or the size of the market in which the bubble exists?
The distinction between rises in a specific sector's valuation and the health of the banking sector is not an enormously important one today, though. Credit is extremely fluid with an (ahem) "robust" financial system like ours. Money created in one sector -- or created for one sector -- will inevitably leak. Even better, banks are encouraged to be as thinly capitalized as possible, made possible with some assistance from Basel II's disastrous, pro-cyclical, cockamamy rules, and the U.S.G.'s inability to even enforce those.
I think they're deliberately building economic models and policy based on what they believe is easy for them(read, the Fed) to control. But thus nothing is grounded in empirical reality, and they're not so dumb as to lock themselves into that groupthink prison. Right? Right, guys?
I don't know, rsj, what kind of channels do you watch? Just teasing. I'm pretty sure I already told you I love you on another thread. Thanks you for sharing that! I'm still laughing too much.
One or two of the arms of the Squid is the compliant public who buys the products & services of the squid...it's an organic whole...all parts must function together for the whole ECONomy to work...as it works in a toxic way...belief and participation in the system is part of the wheel that turns the Big (global) Wheel...Nader did have the two-party ruse figured out...
I'm really leaning away from the groupthink conclusion here. I think this is outright mendacity. They are not this stupid.
At some point, if it were all sneaky liars, wouldn't somebody rat another out if they saw they weren't getting their fair share of the pie? If this is the Mafia, the only true Don is nothing but money.
At some point, if it were all sneaky liars, wouldn't somebody rat another out if they saw they weren't getting their fair share of the pie? If this is the Mafia, the only true Don is nothing but money.
I don't even want to think about our Glorious Leaders playing real life Prisoner's Dilemma with our country. Sorry. Not enough beer in the world for that one.
They've just focused on what they touch and what they control. Blind men, elephant, that sort of thing. It's the only reasonable conclusion I can reach.
They other thing Mishkin totally misses on this is the context in which bubbles occur and deflate. Yes, there was a relatively mild recession in 2001...but gee, did you stop to think that when that irrational exuberance bubble burst we were already in the midst of an underlying credit bubble inflation? But it's not just that. He brings in the 87 crash...well, that was a crash on top of a mostly normal economy, so still, it's not a fair comparison. If you put a bubble crash on top of an economy like the one we have now, you can bet your butt there are going to be massive unforeseen complications as already weakened and in denial players fall by the wayside. This guy really does the profession a huge disservice. But then again, he's not really in the profession anymore, since he's been co-opted by the Fed and had the working part of his brain removed.
I have no need for this type of person, or his "analyses". Go away Tool.
I knew there was going to be trouble after the stolen election in 2000 where a full recount was not allowed by the Supreme Court...the system was hijacked then...for some reason Dubya had to get in...even IF he didn't really win...why?
They've just focused on what they touch and what they control. Blind men, elephant, that sort of thing. It's the only reasonable conclusion I can reach.
I'm just reminded of the memorable Johnny Carson skit with him as Ronald Reagan as a criminal mastermind. Highly improbable.
This does agree with research I have seen that bubbles involving substantial leverage are more damaging.
Well yeah, but how can a bubble even imagine forming in our heavily financialized economy without leverage? People can't buy fricking food for their families without borrowing. We have leveraged ETF's on basic materials, for goodness' sake.
I'm perfectly fine if he wants to draw the lines based on market or bubble size. That makes sense. But to picture an America where there is no leverage or transmission is absolutely fricking batshat nutso.
Oh the stories I can tell like how one woman's alimony and child support will be less 'cause her man bred with another woman and got hit with wage garnishments for child support. The youngest child of his marriage is 9. The wage garnishment baby is 4.
this bubble grew bigger than any other bubble before...
The bubble to replace all bubbles?
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Seriously as this saga continues, how far back are we setting ourselves? 29 > 55 (57?) was the last round. Will this round but even longer? Will children and young workers not know of CoLA or having 3 different gaming systems in which to play games?
i've heard about some grads who are working as paralegals with JD, but these were typically smaller firms. at BigLaw, the summer associates programs are mostly paid recruiting visits and a chance to get some experience. right now these guys are in extend and pretend mode, basically paying their potential associates a $70K stipend to work elsewhere, preferably public interest.
But to picture an America where there is no leverage or transmission is absolutely fricking batshat nutso.
Especially when the correlation between asset valuations is currently near 1, and the last 2 years have been one giant fun ride through interconnectedness and "too big to fail."
I'm sorry. This one really angers me. It's so intellectually dishonest.
*jeebus none of these morons EVER get it right - there is no fucking way the world is running out of oil - what is at risk is the inability to raise the rate of production, which occurs somewhere in the ballpark of 50% reserves depletion...IT'S. ABOUT. RATE. /Rant off *
If only. Insanity can be defined as "doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result"... but Mishkin's stance? That sounds a lot more like "doing the same thing over and over again, all the while taking pains to explain that it's really not the same thing this time."
i've heard about some grads who are working as paralegals with JD, but these were typically smaller firms. at BigLaw..are in extend and pretend mode
I have a gleefully evil place in my heart for BigLaw's suffering--a far 2nd place from Higher Ed.'s spot--and the fact that BigLaw finds themselves unwilling/unable to hire JDs as paralegals blows my mind. Granted, I'm not in BigLaw and will never place in BigLaw, but it seems just so gosh-darn tempting to me seeing these starving JDs with 5-6 digit student loans to fill and no where to go--even in the public sector.
I can't tell you how many women I have known who have dated and married men they knew weren't paying child support. Then when they had children together and got divorced, couldn't believe the man wasn't paying them child support. I would hate to be a family attorney.
If you could pin this bubble on one event (besides the Bill Clinton repeal of the 1934 banking reform act)...it would be...911.
That's why this bubble is different than any other prior bubble...the aftermath of 911 sparked a 'home ownership' political campaign and a massive consumer spending & borrowing push...and easy lending followed...along with securitization, derivatives, faulty 'asset' ratings, etc.
That's why this bubble is different than any other prior bubble...the aftermath of 911 sparked a 'home ownership' political campaign and a massive consumer spending & borrowing push...and easy lending followed...along with securitization, derivatives, faulty 'asset' ratings, etc.
It was also a flight to safety into something "tangible" after the dot-com crash. After all, real estate wasn't as sexy, but it always went up in value. Amirite?
Poic & others,
Yes, cash is flowing into emerging markets, commodities,gold. And big time into bond funds. J6P is now diversifying hugely into a bond allocation. Short-term, while deflation rules, this is a good decision. If and when inflation hits or bond yields rise, not so good. I began this a few years ago, as I neared the 1/2 century. Now I'm rethinking the allocation strategy, based on the principle if everyone else is doing it, it can't end well--usually within a 2-3 year period.
" So, this means that about $4 billion or more flowed out based on active J6P investor decisions. And it's become a consistent pattern, week-in-week-out, for the first time in decades.
This doesn't count equity outflows from variable insurance products, where J6P also was heavily invested, and which are pretty much slowly imploding. "
But money is flowing into overseas funds big-time isn't it? Looks more like dumb money rotating from speculative into truly speculative. "
Then when they had children together and got divorced, couldn't believe the man wasn't paying them child support. I would hate to be a family attorney.
HA! Delusional Optimism isn't just for politicians and Wall^Street. It will always be different with them, and 95x out of 100 it isn't.
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It isn't so bad. I mean sure you have to deal with mothers who can't not be self-obsessed, and husbands who treat sexual harassment suits like badges of honor. Unfortunately with the current economic situation, those sorts of people are finding themselves fast-tracked to lower-middle class and beyond if they don't have one helluva lily pad to leap. For men, it is usually , and for women, it mostly depends if they can land a replacement whale. If not, they go too.
....speaking of bubbles,.........are equities exploding because of the lessening of the dollar? (It takes more worthless dollars to buy a share of XXX?)
In some of the articles I've read, the big firms are paying people not to come to work. You're right.
BigLaw is playing the confidence game like Wall^Street and the Fed. There are things that just "aren't done" in the field of BigLaw, and once they broach those taboos, they are marked for death. Clients will avoid them. The good partners will bail, and good associates leave with them. All you have left are the C partnership and the C- associates. From there, dissolution isn't far away.
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The fact that they are paying for their associates is more of a way to stave off being the first round in that cycle, and I'm willing to hazard a guess that January 2010 and May 2010 will start seeing another round of Easter Day axes if not actual partnerships dissolving into the annuals of history.
....speaking of bubbles,.........are equities exploding because of the lessening of the dollar? (It takes more worthless dollars to buy a share of XXX?)
I think that is part of it - how big a part, not sure. Funny Mishkin doesn't worry as much about THOSE types of bubbles.
We only have 20 channels here at work, it was a regular channel. it was tbs or tnt or usa. so like i said, mainstream advertising is using mainstream media to float campaigns for computerized affair matchup using the spectre of being too poor to divorce and getting priced in as the club to beat the consumer with. The tagline voiceover is grrreat. "when divorce is not an option..." hehehehehe
BSR, yes, to an extent; a chart of the S&P priced in oil or gold or euros looks very different from the chart in dollars.
I think Jesse had some charts up recently; also the Automatic Earth and perhaps one of our dear comrades here has a link to such a chart handy ... hint, hint.
...seeing these starving JDs with 5-6 digit student loans to fill and no where to go--even in the public sector.
The debt levels of all university graduates -- but especially lawyers -- is getting too big for the potential income that they can earn upon graduation. One of the draws in the past has been the "incredible" salaries you are supposed to earn. Now imagine graduating from law school with easily a six-figure debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy and unable to find meaningful employment to pay it back.
HA! Delusional Optimism isn't just for politicians and Wall^Street.
So true. My felines are reminding me that this isn't a legal blog and it's about darn time they get petted. Good night. I am not a lawyer. I was just passing on my personal experience related to the economic link regarding attorney layoffs.
cannot be discharged in bankruptcy and unable to find meaningful employment to pay it back.
The grad you hire: Used HELoCs to fund school while providing housing
The grad you avoid: Used cheap student loans to provide housing while attending school
Now imagine graduating from law school with easily a six-figure debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy and unable to find meaningful employment to pay it back.
That part is gonna change once millions of 'regular folks' find themselves in that boat.
and who suffers the most? The grandkids. Many, many grandparents are willingly picking up the slack.
Oh yes. The dying Greatest Generation who is the only safety net for the majority of people today. While the year 2030 will not be Mad Max, it will be interesting to see who can and will take care of that generation's latchkey kids.
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In all honesty, it is that generation who is usually paying for our clients' divorces. Guarantors who reluctantly sign off on their child's employment agreement because even they understand how risky their children are as AR on the firm's book of business.
RockyR,
Just looking at the incredible chain of events that would make this Bubble the Biggest Of AllTime...
Seriously you don't think there was election capture or funny stuff in Florida on the refusal of a recount (a recount was done later apparently as an 'investigative' newpaper 'recount' and Gore won when all the Florida votes were recounted).
This stuff isn't tinfoil...it's U.S. history now...as I said after the 2000 election, things started getting weird with the New Project for the American Century stuff and the 'pre-emptive' strike policy against the 'axis of evil'...you can minimize these events...but a lot of these Neo-Con policies and WMD information, etc. has been discredited now...which is a big reason Obama won...because he promised Change Now from the prior fiasco...
Actually, even charts depicting S&P in gold, for instance, are co-mingling multiple variables. What we really need is a link to a chart of the S&P covering, say, 1999 - present in constant 2000 dollars. Thus "deflating" the index for the dollar decline. Really, it is just an admission that the "ruler" has gotten smaller while we were doing our measuring.
That part is gonna change once millions of 'regular folks' find themselves in that boat.
NaRM's been beating this drum for a while, but the volume of student loans is exploding, a significant amount borrowed by people who would otherwise be unemployed. quite the system we've got. Find yourself unemployed, or harassed by student loan debt collectors? then go back to school, and accumulate more student loan debt. if we get enough of the unemployed back into school, we might actually get under 10.2%!! gonna suck when they graduate though...
NaRM's been beating this drum for a while, but the volume of student loans is exploding, a significant amount borrowed by people who would otherwise be unemployed.
I believe he has stated multiple times that this area is still strongly securitizing, and the government is paying up as much paper as possible to get these people off of the government's back for however long as possible. We have no idea what we will do when that blows, but it is kicking the can so what harm is there?
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One thing that catches my mind's attention is: What will happen to Higher Ed's credibility once their bubble pops and students realize that they are taking on horrific amounts of loans that will barely--if ever--pay off over their lifetime as a worker? Will people still push their children to go to college--along with high schools and community colleges--if it is seen as a net-loss?
i was just giving you a little bit of sh*t you have valid points. i'm not sure how well orchestrated it's all been, but then again, i'm not so sure it hasn't been. the r's and d's are certainly two very slightly different shades of black.
Mishkin outlines two different types of bubbles, and argues a "credit boom bubble" poses a risk to the economy, but a "pure irrational exuberance bubble" does not.
I think he meant to say that if a bubble left the Wall Street and the Banks holding the bag, then it poses a risk to the economy. But if the bag holders are J6P, then, no, it does not pose a threat.
mock,
Bill-o signed it but I was just mentioning Presidents on both sides of the same Party...Congress is another unit that operates on both sides of the aisle for the back door Banking Party. So yes good to fill in the details...if the glass steagall had been violated so much why remove it then? I'm not picking on Bill because he's proved to be a One Party dude much of the time...but there's tons of one-party critters...the Partisan thing...
I had to get over it...because it will make you crazy because nothing makes sense if you believe the two parties really work against each other (instaed of for the back Door banking party)...
When you listen to what Nader was saying...things start making sense in that the two parties work as ONE on issues of the eCON-omy and expensive Endless War and militarization issues...the Big Issues!
And after putting their Hopes in Obama, many O supporters are now feeling they got suckered IMO...
I have a question...I received a package by USPS containing a book on Qualitiative Analysis, and red ink stamped on the outside of the package is the following, "Opened for Inspection by USPS"...am I in trouble?
barfly (profile) wrote on Mon, 11/9/2009 - 9:13 pm
* reply
* Ignore user
"re-liquifying" - more Greenspan crypto-double-speak, meant only for deep insiders. This guy needs to be silenced.
There is no accountability at the Fed. This man vaporized the economy and now again bold enough to go on speaking engagements. There is no accountability , no shame.
.....well, at least there's not the problem with "gridlock" anymore........remember the sweet days of nothing being accomplished?........oh wait.....there are still a few pesky Repubs and/or Blue Dog Demos carousing around the 274 acres of Capitol Hill.
It's OK Rocky...any of this stuff can be researched now thanks to (Al Gore's) internet invention...which makes it easy to go back and see what was done or said...the red flags...the whistleblowers...the failed policies...the repeated failed policies...this tinfoil stuff is what you don't want to waste time on...much of it based on shoddy research, dead ends, or long ago discredited 'conspiracy theories' that are bunk...it's a distraction from good resources and research that can easily be found on the internet...
yagij wrote: What will happen to Higher Ed's credibility once their bubble pops and students realize that they are taking on horrific amounts of loans that will barely--if ever--pay off over their lifetime as a worker? Will people still push their children to go to college--along with high schools and community colleges--if it is seen as a net-loss?
The lower echelons of higher education are unlikely to get caught in the student loan bubble to the extent that State U Law schools may. A great many of my former students in community college were either paying their way while working, on the G.I. bill, on Pell grants, or some combination thereof. Unpayable 6 figure loans are incurred by those in the "professions" -- a loud and self-important, but numerically small group compared to the nation's student population at large. Kind of like women who are sufficiently well-set up that they can land another whale..... upper middle class comments' sections are overloaded with readers who can envision such creatures (having known a few, Biblically) but in the real world, apartment complexes like mine are loaded with women who will be lucky to snag a mental stable porpoise.
It was probably inspected because it was shipped by Media Mail, which is a lower priced class of postal service reserved for certain types of media (books are allowed, magazines are not). Lots of media mail fraud with people trying to ship all kinds of crap on the cheap.
From the USPS: DMM 473 Media Mail Rates and Eligibility for Discount Parcels Media Mail is not sealed against postal inspection. Regardless of physical closure, the mailing of articles at Media Mail prices constitutes consent by the mailer to postal inspection of the contents.
you and i agree that when it comes to the world of the banksta oligarchy
there is only one party
i just hate to see bill get all thee credit,,uh i mean blame
cause actually i thought he was a half good president
and like barfly said...we shoudnt deprive newt and his pals who controlled congress from 94 to2004 of their due respect and ownership for all the success of late now should we
maybe i over reacted because im a recovering democrat
No, the lede for the article started wih "the world is even closer to running out of oil..."
.
I've been posting for the past twelve months about the implications of the higher decline rate in last year's World Energy Outllok from IEA (more like 6%-7% than the previously posited 4% or so as a result of IEA making a ground up supply forecast for the first time) and Fatih Birol saying we need to find and bring on production 4 as yet undiscovered Saudi Arabia's to forecast energy demand growth...and that turns out to be the soft pedaled version (alleged in article)...hoocoodanode
Thanks Basel Too'
Never received a comment from the USPS before...I have applied for govt jobs, and thought this was part of the security/background check...
No central banker will ever admit that the bubble being blown on his watch exists, is growing if it did exist, and is dangerous even if it exists and is growing.
Bill made 'friends' with the wrong person...he also made the mistake of trying to redefine what 'sex' is...and should have kept his 'cigar' in his pocket...but the bigger issue is politician capture, election capture, judicial capture, monetary capture, etc...
“We don’t have a rollout date set, because the president has yet to make the decision,” Ben Rhodes, National Security Council director for strategic communications, told reporters today on a conference call to preview the trip to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea.
In an interview with ABC News today, Obama said his extensive and expansive strategy-review meetings have given him greater confidence in whatever his final decision will be.
“I have gained confidence that there’s not an important question out there that has not been asked, and that we haven’t asked -- that we haven’t answered to the best of our abilities,” Obama said."
You can't make this stuff up. It's getting hard to tell the parodies from the realities. Obama and Mishkin should trade notes.
Life on Severance: Comfort, Then Crisis - WSJ.com Paul Joegriner hasn't worked since March 2008, when he was laid off from his $200,000-a-year job as chief executive officer of a small bank. But you wouldn't know it by appearances.
His wife, Marzena, shuttles their two young children to private school every morning. The family recently vacationed in Virginia Beach, Va., and likes to dine on Porterhouse steaks. Since losing his job, Mr. Joegriner, 44 years old, has had several offers. He's turned each down in hopes of landing a position comparable to what he held before.
The family's lifestyle over the past year and a half has been propped up by a $200,000 severance package and another $100,000 in savings -- funds the family has burned through rapidly. By Mr. Joegriner's own calculations, the family will be out of money in six months if he doesn't find work.
Somewhat confirmed by the 5 day wait for a wildlife guy to come out, and the confirmation by the company that "the animals are going nuts right now...".
Top three fave rat cities, New York, Atlanta and Houston.
rich, why is politics so important to you, since you'll make money no matter who's in office? I can imagine you gripeing just as much as if McPain were running the show.
Since losing his job, Mr. Joegriner, 44 years old, has had several offers. He's turned each down in hopes of landing a position comparable to what he held before.
An example of getting screwed over by your own optimism?
First, surely you are not saying that because the fiscal neglect has been rampant at all levels for decades now, that therefore somehow justifies a continuance of same. Second, as for any alleged decline in debt, the only decline in debt that I am aware of is the involuntarily reduction of private debt via foreclosures. So, private debt might be decreasing (or at least slowing), albeit very modestly. However, more importantly, governmental debt is skyrocketing.
brianinboise: I am saying that just like every smart agent preparing for default, draw down all open lines of credit first. To your second point, household + nonfinancial corporate credit is plummeting. Relatively. It was growing at double digit rates for the past decade, and it took $4 borrowed to add $1 to GDP before it started contracting. Having government, and government guaranteed debt skyrocket is exactly the point. That is how you stave off deflation by being the lender of last resort.
When I say they should leave the money with the citizens who earned it, then it isn't an of my business or worry how it gets spent.
kidbuck: You are incorrectly assuming that taxation and federal government spending are directly linked, and that any austerity now will pay off in future. How much did your taxes go up in the past year compared to the spending increases, including unfunded future obligations? How about the last 5 years? Last 30 years? You're about 20 years too late to the prudence party
'Saintly bankers'
This 'God's work' statement from GS head sounds deliberately provocative plus it gets the conversation going maybe back to religion rather than government supported profits from trading strategies and the fact that this 'investment' bank needs to be broken into pieces for God's sake...
In 2006 Mishkin got paid over $100k to tell the world all was well in Iceland.
From Wikipedia: In 2006, Mishkin co-authored a report called "Financial Stability in Iceland". The report maintained that Iceland's economic fundamentals were strong. The report was commissioned by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce in response to critical coverage of the Icelandic economy and certain Icelandic companies in the international business media.
Iceland subsequently experienced a spectacular collapse within a year of Mishkin's good report.
The family's lifestyle over the past year and a half has been propped up by a $200,000 severance package and another $100,000 in savings -- funds the family has burned through rapidly. By Mr. Joegriner's own calculations, the family will be out of money in six months if he doesn't find work.
To whichever small bank fired the guy: Your BoD made a good decision.
thats kind of my point....but it is not confined to the economic sphere. The people that blew it on the foreign policy front continue to be trotted out as if they had some kind of clue.
I know you have talked about the implications of the decline rate. Form my perspective what is so significant about the article is that the IEA was pressured and then complied in overstating possible production as well as reserves.
Since the IEA figures were the just about universally accepted standard, this could obviously have huge implications for the oil market. The trust in the IEA is now gone and this could turn into an awfully wild ride at an interesting time.
Well, the allegation is that the IEA caved to US pressure...and we will see what the impact is on the IEA credibility is in more than a single news cycle. If the IEA was a complete tool, they would not have undertaken the supply forecast last year IMNSHO...
"The family's lifestyle over the past year and a half has been propped up by a $200,000 severance package and another $100,000 in savings -- funds the family has burned through rapidly. ........the family will be out of money in six months if he doesn't find work."
....by my estimation, they have about $75K left........too little left to do anything substantiative with, but maybe enough blown to have learned a lesson.
.....at MY "burn rate", that (the $75K) would last me another 8-years.......but then most think I'm one cheap scot......have a fine evening, All
'cause we got no alternative - and anyone who is into these numbers knows that the allocation mechanism for OPEC is reserves, which is a self-reported number...
If the IEA was a complete tool, they would not have undertaken the supply forecast last year IMNSHO...
The Guardian is a pretty solid news source IMO. The fact that they got the essence of the story confirmed by a second source says it all:
... A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added. ...
These statements indicate that the situation is considerably worse than what the IEA stated last year.
Since the IEA figures were the just about universally accepted standard, this could obviously have huge implications for the oil market. The trust in the IEA is now gone and this could turn into an awfully wild ride at an interesting time.
There's no way a price shock in oil could affect inflation or interest rates right?
energyecon
not looking to make a change now, but what are you general views on the future for the geophysics/reservoir discovery/mapping side of the oil+gas biz? simplification to drilling tech is fine. almost did a summer of non-destructive testing for pipelines. if supply becomes binding sooner rather than later it might be a nice opportunity to settle into a 20 year career (practically a lifetime for the younger end of the workforce where you're headhunted today, rightsized tomorrow)
This Orszag/Icelandic 'link' may be a case of the internet stories that are weak on substantiation...but spread anyway...there's tons of internet claims...checking on it...
it might be a nice opportunity to settle into a 20 year career
From everything I've read the opportunities are definitely going to be there. All the existing workforce is old and nearing retirement, with little following in behind. Undoubtedly future exploration & drilling will be much more -- shall we say "complicated" -- thus requiring a lot more work all the way around.
This is a story that has been playing out for decades, if we go back to M. King Hubbert's initial work in the 1950's...and the idea that things are worse than the IEA has been saying is also not a new story line for anyone who has been into the numbers in any meaningful way. Having that storyline move into the MSM would be a big change, and credibly portraying the IEA as a puppet for American interests would also be a big change...I will watch the story unfold with interest, but I want so see more before uncritically accepting the Guardian story or predicting the demise of the IEA
Sure we do, it's just not been in our interest to press the point.
The fact is that I'm certain that the U.S. has an excellent idea of Saudi Reserves. There are many U.S. petroleum engineers and geologists working at EXPEC in ARAMCO. I know, I worked there for a while in the 80s.
All the existing workforce is old and nearing retirement, with little following in behind.
Ah, but the smart companies have been putting some of those 'old buffers' to good use... pushing the limits of horizontal drilling and state of the art completions.
puhleeeeze - you gonna man up and tell the Saudis they need to come clean or we aren't going to buy their oil (and those Treasury thingies are in the mix somewhere) - reserves are national security issues for the ME countries, you're talking out your ass on this one
I don't think so. The Fed and Obama Administration have developed the same MO. They throw out some rumor or float some theory to buy time and see what sticks. Team Obama didn't leak the size of the to-be-announced troop build-up in Afghanistan? Of course they did. The Fed didn't trot Mishken out to see if this belief in the healing power of bubbles will fly?
It's just that the amount of rumor-fishing they're doing seems increasingly desperate and wacky, in both cases. And it substitutes for making the really hard decisions that need to be made now.
It was probably inspected because it was shipped by Media Mail, which is a lower priced class of postal service reserved for certain types of media (books are allowed, magazines are not). Lots of media mail fraud with people trying to ship all kinds of crap on the cheap.
I once shipped a 1000-lb Rock-Ola 1428 Juke Box in the mail (a six-foot high container) as "pre-printed advertising material" to save on shipping...
The future of American energy will be sun-based. Nuclear will fill the gap until then. Oil is dead. Coal is even more dead. We are killing ourselves until we go to sun-based. Call me crazy.
Well the challenge for the large oil companies is becoming access to the resources, with the national oil companies as the gatekeepers...on a reserves basis XOM is something like #14 (though some of those reserve estimates are a tad sketchy as outlined above). The geosciences will continue to be active, typical new hires are MS and out of school for the large companies (some of which seem to still have their eye on the ball with respect to the demographics of the industry)...though right now the industry is slow walking projects and cutting capital budgets or at best keeping them flat. It's tough to say, getting the first position with a producer is the trick, once you have gotten on with one it seems a heckuva lot easier to get on with another one, we'll see if the bloodletting of the past is repeated this cycle.
Ok, I was curious to look at some of the US estimates of oil production, that we're presumably using as an input to energy policy... Check the following chart. Is it missing the words 'and a miracle occurs here', or is it just me being cynical.
IMO it's a little soon. I expect they'll drop back down pretty soon, stay flat for a while, then start a slow but inexorable climb skyward after that. We still have some more demand destruction ahead, but inevitably the loss of existing capacity will close the gap.
the thing is we all know what those numbers are, especially the reservoir engineering folks like RE...and the Saudis are never going to publicly cop to the fact that Ghawar is capable of cratering ala Simmons (got an autographed copy of Twilight in the Desert) until it is flat undeniable...we are in agreement except I am saying that the politics of the situation will continue to dominate and we'll never get a straightforward declaration like "yep, we tip over the edge in two years then it's devil take the hindmost"
'Retirement in the Nordic Countries, Prospects a & Proposals for Reform'
In this research paper, there are six Peter Orszag references from 1999-2000 concerning Flaxible Funding Pension Reform, Pension Taxes, Wage Subsidies vs. Employment Vouchers, etc. http://www.ioes.hi.is/publications/cseries/NordicReport.pdf
~There's a bunch of internet links that claim Orszag advised Iceland but it is apparently referenced links to Orszag's research concerning pension reform that come up on a search...so one has to be careful about internet claims that Orszag's advice (among other advice) somehow lead to Iceland's demise...it's a classic example of how tinfoil does get going on the internet...and maybe some questionable sources are intentionally spreading misinformation...internet readers beware!
Opportunity is an auspicious state of affairs or a suitable time: "If you prepare yourself . . . you will be able to grasp opportunity for broader experience when it appears" Eleanor Roosevelt.
Is it missing the words 'and a miracle occurs here', or is it just me being cynical.
I imagine it is the product of a technocrat using stats to project the future based on an accepted formula ... but probably no more accurate than what a toddler could do with a crayon.
especially the reservoir engineering folks like RE
I just wanted to say that I am not a reservoir engineer. I provided software engineering for the research and budget folks as well as general computing related consulting to EXPEC.
Commercial real estate sales are off a staggering 82% in 2009, compared with 2008, and last year was worse than ’07.
What do you do if, as Andy thinks is the case, 85-90% of the entire commercial real estate market is under water relative to its financing?
Andy looked at just the part of Phoenix where his firm does business and found 90 vacant big box stores, with an aggregate floor space of 8 million square feet.
inevitably the loss of existing capacity will close the gap.
yep - and investments needed to slow that decline are not occurring, or less of them and investments in new production are not happening as much...if we are ballparking production at 85 million barrels equivalent or so per day, and the decline rate globally is something like 7%, then 6 milion barrels a day of new production has to be added each year just to stay at 85 million barrels a day...
PC processor-unit shipments rose 23% compared with the second quarter of this year, while the revenue went up by 14% quarter over quarter, recording an impressive US$7.4 billion. Meanwhile, the report also indicates that Intel continued to lead the market, having managed to earn an 81.1% share of the worldwide PC processor market, gaining 2.2% over AMD
» note the discrepancy between processor units and revenue. Intel's cheap/low power/mobile Atom processor used in netbooks was behind the surge, which led to a 7% erosion in average processor price paid during the quarter. all in all the number of processors shipped in 2009 are expected to be 1.5% above 2008 levels, but at much lower prices
If The WSJ.com Says Goodbye To Google, It Will Also Say Goodbye To 25 Percent Of Its Traffic
» the advantage of the web is the low marginal cost, I am doubtful that the WSJ produces enough content-value to warrant their shift to a subscriber only model. Their one saving grace is they have a lot of business subscribers with expense accounts to burn, and great institutional inertia. How closing off access to non-subscribers will boost their revenues without a fee hike I do not know
I tried to find anonymity from my Silicon Investor handle ages ago when CR started to veer off in the blog direction. It was silly as I chose my initials. However, I hate to change handles...
Again good find. Read the implode-o-meter fully: They were aquired. Waterfield bank is on CR's unofficial list. I don't know for sure that it's the same one, but it certainly points that way.
Edit: Basel II is faster than me.
It also points to why the CEO was fired: He was unable to adapt to the changing environment. By the time the BoD realized that they had to ditch the bank, he might well have thought that he would not come out on top for an acquisition (a good guess if their books sucked.)
You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone
the beanie baby bubble nearly put one of my mother's friends into BK. (well, that and a divorce)
Bubbles don't kill economies.
Central banks kill economies.
but they rhyme
For example, the bubble in technology stocks in the late 1990s was not fueled by a feedback loop between bank lending and rising equity values... This is one of the key reasons that the bursting of the bubble was followed by a relatively mild recession.
That's one possibility.
Another is that the Fed left interest rates so damn low that the tech bubble was replaced by the housing bubble. But hey, Mishkin's the economist, so he must be right.
Thank God the bubbles being blown today don't involve borrowing a weakening currency. That could be a disaster.
This does agree with research I have seen that bubbles involving substantial leverage are more damaging.
Isn't a bubble caused by the Fed holding interest rates at zero a dangerous credit bubble almost by definition?
This man is quite possibly insane.
At this point I think it's difficult to establish where the bubble ends and the parallel universe begins. Things have been so out of whack for so long. When is the last time we didn't have a "bubble?" Early 90's? That's an entire generation or two of working adults since then. Would one recognize normal if they saw it? Probably not if you're under 30.
but a "pure irrational exuberance bubble" does not.
I am slow. Is that like saying "shooting yourself with a .22 is a good idea because you didn't use the .45?
All bubbles are the same in one key sense: any bubble at all keeps the economy floating on air. I love bubbles! Never bet against the bubbles.
is he related to Prince Mishkin?
some investor guy wrote:
Makes sense, doesn't it? If the only money you can bet at the casino is your own, all you can do is go broke. But if your buddies loan you a bunch of their money to gamble with, you can take them down with you.
Just remember:
It's different this time. 
What's the difference?
We are in an irrational credit-driven mania bubble now
nova wrote:
EXACTLY like that!
he's basically saying bubbles that don't screw over banks are OK.
US lawyer job cuts worse for 30 years - Law Central - Times Online - WBLG
Mishkin's full of she-it. It's incredibly difficult to trace investment flows; just because equities are rising doesn't mean that there isn't substantial leverage in the system.
I'm willing to believe that leverage moderates the extent and danger of a bubble, but I don't think you can easily measure leverage. So the comment remains academic, especially if the central bank has no interest in limiting leverage even if it were excessive.
so that NASD thing in 2000 didnt do any damage? Whew....THAT's good to know!
If anyone is interested I wrote some more of my ongoing serial novel today. I think I have written over 600 pages at this point.
A sample:
We pulled into a town, that based on what we had been told had a Saturday Market. We would, on occasion, meet other travelers and exchange gossip. If it was group that was a lot smaller than us they would usually shy away. Sometimes they would pull off, an away from us, and send someone to talk. We would meet them halfway, and maybe do some trading. If the group was our size or a little bigger they would generally stop and talk. Having the Freylings buzzing around on their bikes helped. It gave us a kinder, softer image. That's how we had found out about it.
more? American Apocalypse
The bursting of the tech-bubble (irrational exuberance) which then lead to the housing bubble (irrational exuberance) has had no effect on the economy. Gotcha.
They'll come up with all sorts of tortured rationales to maintain ZIRP. There's really no alternative.
Recession's good news: Cities see burglaries fall - Yahoo! News
"With a lot more unemployed people, a lot more people are staying home, and they see more in their neighborhood," said Sgt. Thomas
nova,
Thanks for sharing the adventures of Gardener et. al. with us - enjoying the
!
nova,
I read that, like, well over 2 hours ago. Get some new material please!
The Beany Baby bubble seems oh so quaint now.
Pass the Doom Loops.
Yay! People are home more, keeping us all safe and enjoying their families.
That and there's nothing left worth stealing 
Besides on the TeeVee they tell me that the Economy is growing again 
and that the employment picture is getting worse more slowly 
.
The headline vs the comment is just too funny for words.
Thank you. What is scary is that in my mind they have really taken on life. I am possesed. Thank glod it wasn't the Baptists this time.
One gets this kind of analysis when there is no accountability.
omfg! i lost brain cells reading that post.
Winston wrote:
Embrace your inner minimalist.
km4,
Well said.
TJ
There is new. It just didn't have any parts I felt would post well here.
Dr. Zirplove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love (Some) Bubbles.
nova wrote:
Really?!? WOW, I gotta go look!!!
Rich I've pretty much concluded that the 'Twilight Zone' is the most accurate characterization of US economy today.
I got piggedy pigged here is a repsonse barfly
Barfly--I understand your point. I cannot afford a house, even at the conservative 3 times income hahaha.I do believe though that even if i could afford to buy I wouldnt. Owning to me equals being owned and chained. Odd? yes i admit it. I moved alot as a child, then moved alot in the army, then just kept on moving. I try to understand that others do not liek to move, that others would think it paradise to own one place always, many times I forget though. ah well, never said I wasnt flawed
Where i rent is income based, sliding scale so I pay far less than market and the landlord I had before that i was a tennant for 4 years, they liked me and charged a very reasonable rent and provided very good service. It also helps to be a month and half ahead on rent.
YouTube - Steve Reich: Different trains (part I)
@BSR -
Beware of free or almost free Michigan land; TPTB will want to collect the back taxes from you...
It is ok, everyone can sleep well now. This is all part of a master plan to rid the planet of the evil infecting our neighborhoods. We have everything under control now.
Benny B
Crime Down Due To Recession
km4,
My dad served in the 11th Airborne Division with Rod Serling in WWII. You either liked the show or the quote.
This is one of the first massive pump-and-dump operations in stock market history in which the "professionals" are providing the liquidity for J6Ps to dump at the peak, not the other way round. The ultimate bagholders at the top this time will be leveraged institutions that are using Fed liquidity and cheap money to pump up stocks, especially the most speculative and over-valued. Consistently and steadily all year, retail investors have been saying "thank you, thank you" and cashing out, clawing back some of their losses. Nobody who works hard for their money and wants to retire with a little coin and dignity really trusts this market, not after two big wipe-outs in the last 10 years and a decade of zero stock market growth.
That's awesome and liked both the show and the quote i.e. think opening narration from season 4 & 5 was the best !
He is not insane. He is an apologist for the Fed.
Boy, that would be poetic justice. I sure hope you're right.
I don't know... Several of the J6Ps I know have jumped back into the market now that it's at 10k again and seeming fairly stable.
If you look at the housing charts, the housing upswing started prior to the tech bubble in stocks crashing. I've often wondered if the lavish stock options and easy money in stocks started fueling home improvements, move up buyers, and second/vacation homes prior to it being cool to do so. Hard thing to prove or disprove however.
Add low interest rates and bubble bubble toil and trouble...
that jibes with what i've heard, too. the rest of the fools will break against the rocks of the next crash. drunken sailors the entire lot of them.
for this is real_folks
continued here due to the pig:
As gold vaults are being emptied by investors, is the market reaching breaking point? - Business Intelligence Middle East - bi-me.com - News, analysis, reports
The money part is that there is only 66 tons of gold available for delivery against all those paper contracts.
So at $26 million a ton, CEF alone will eat the remaining gold off of comex for delivery. Hence nothing left but a paper market here.
Um, and CEF takes delivery, no matter how long it takes- sooooo, this is really bad for those who are serious about taking delivery, thus the market will rise sufficient for Comex and London to have enough gold to guarantee delivery. There was a similar situation a couple of years ago with nickel, which shot up 6x the previous five years average to new highs before crashing when the markets fell apart.
Someday this war's gonna end...
Yeah, but you resurrected that great language, that is so apt.
CaptainMorgan wrote:
i agree.
CaptainMorgan wrote:
Kindling for the fire, just as with the late 90's tax changes.
Citizen Allen,
This war will not be over until Cramer is off the air. that is when the sirens screaming bomb threats will be turned off.
Massive layoffs looming over EA « Icrontic Gaming
No word on exact numbers or where the layoffs will be coming from, but our source stated “15%-20%. I would guess 1500+” From what we have heard, layoffs are coming across the board, from every studio, in every department.
Wow..... when the #1 gaming company cuts this deep you know things are FUBAR
AllenM, rich,
Sure, that'll leave a mark on the gold market, but what about silver??? Seems this'll have a much greater impact there.
I'd love to hear both of your thoughts...
how many people can notice the $50 difference between Madden 2090 and 2010, especially when you can download rosters?
Citizen AllenM wrote:
They will invest according to their usual allocation, which is about 50/50 Gold/Silver. The impact on silver could be far larger.
CR sez...
Wow - I should have got a PhD in Boomology - I could have worked at the Fed.
tj said
As I stated, there are "jobs" in both the public and private sector. However, the first exists solely because of the second, and not the other way around. No "real" jobs, no taxes; No taxes, no government jobs. Doesn't get much simpler.
i like ya hommie and respect much of what youve said
but his time gotta disagree
you got it backwards
no civil society
no enforceable contracts
no law
no police
no courts
no highways, no fda, interstate commerce, currency,
roving bands of tribal raiding parties
stability that lets people settle down grow food create art and make music
This does happen. But for the week of 10/28, according to ici.org, $2.558 billion of net cash flowed out of domestic equity mutual funds. In any given week, you can figure that about $2 billion of cash automatically flows into domestic equity mutual funds based on pure inertia, mainly dividend reinvestment and retirement plan contributions. So, this means that about $4 billion or more flowed out based on active J6P investor decisions. And it's become a consistent pattern, week-in-week-out, for the first time in decades.
This doesn't count equity outflows from variable insurance products, where J6P also was heavily invested, and which are pretty much slowly imploding.
Mock Turtle:
You and I think a lot alike.
I believe in gold up to $1,200. I believe in silver up to $20 or maybe a little more.
Silver is thinner and more manipulated and the price has been manipulated too low for too long by shorts.
Please excuse me while I bang my head on the table.
Come on, you just listed a number of potential employment opportunities that would exist without the oppressive hand of government.
Tribal Raider
Warlord
Pirate
Bandit
Pimp (well, you didn't list one, but prostitution and pimping function in every society)
Clergy (as with prostitution, religion also caters to basic human needs and survives anarchy well)
Tim,
I've been following the attorney cuts. I seem to remember that the Friday before Easter(?) there were brutal layoffs. My next door neighbor is a lawyer. Business is terrible. No one can even afford to get divorced. My niece is in her second year of law school at Colombia. Even though the big NYC firms are pretending that everything will be fine, very few have taken on second year interns. My BIL is a utilities specialist and his business is doing great.
"This does happen. But for the week of 10/28, according to ici.org, $2.558 billion of net cash flowed out of domestic equity mutual funds. In any given week, you can figure that about $2 billion of cash automatically flows into domestic equity mutual funds based on pure inertia, mainly dividend reinvestment and retirement plan contributions. So, this means that about $4 billion or more flowed out based on active J6P investor decisions. And it's become a consistent pattern, week-in-week-out, for the first time in decades.
This doesn't count equity outflows from variable insurance products, where J6P also was heavily invested, and which are pretty much slowly imploding. "
But money is flowing into overseas funds big-time isn't it? Looks more like dumb money rotating from speculative into truly speculative.
km4 wrote:
They've got MW2 coming out, so their work is done and they can sit back with minimum staffing.
I've got friends that do game programming and there are always layoffs after a game is completed. This time I'm sure it's worse, though.
AlleyCat wrote:
AlleyCat
Divorce rates are in fact down.
So a psycho killer stabbing someone once in a while is on the road to recovery... Not all of them died so he must be getting better
I used to be a heroin addict. Now I am a methadone addict.
More
!!!
"My dad served in the 11th Airborne Division with Rod Serling in WWII. You either liked the show or the quote. "
No Sh**t? I love the twilight zone. I betcha Rod told some great war stories.
Alleycat:
Even though the big NYC firms are pretending that everything will be fine, very few have taken on second year interns.
Do you mean to imply that they actually pay interns up in New York?
Obama Adviser Dismisses Reports of Afghanistan Troop Decision - Bloomberg.com
This is a done deal. IMO.
mock turtle wrote:
Soooo.... was anyone doing business in Deadwood before they had a sheriff, mayor and tax collector? Again (for the umpteenth time) I'm not talking modern, civilized commerce here, just absolute basics. That's all I was saying.
OkieLawyer
yep
and you and i ...
appreciate a well reasoned argument thats different from
what we believe
i very much value the people who tell me im wrong
and do it with smarts
CR - hoodoodanode...dogs and cats living together
whoowoodathunkit
mp wrote:
There are currently 65 users and 371 guests online... and banging their heads on the table.
Sure, and a bunch of them stayed forever in Boot Hill.
No. way.to. keep. up... The raygunites win...
Alleycat and tim, I was at work last week and died laughing at a commercial.
a man waking up to a scary, snoring, ugly snugglebunny. Obviously the morning after a one too many bootyfest. Sneaking away quietly, getting dressed silently so as not to wake her up, trotting down the stairs to the doors out out and away when what stops him in his tracks? A wedding picture. Him and the woman upstairs. His shoulders sag, he turns around, and goes back upstairs while the voice over says
"When divorce is not an option...Ashleymadison.com"
So this marketing cmpany needs a bonus, a raise and an award because I remembered the name of the site and I had to look it up to KNOW. Whatinell is ashleymadison? Marriage counselor? Wife killer for insurance? nope.
It is a discreet dating service, because sometimes you just need an affair. hahahahahaha.
So it has hit mainstream, not being able to afford a divorce and a division of assets and debts. snicker Hit it hard enough that an ad campaign designed around despair and poverty and slogging it out and fantasy sex notonly works, but is a very funny campaign to boot.
OkieLawyer,
I'm not positive, but I actually think the second year interns are paid. She spent the summer after her first year working for a judge, but she didn't get paid. She's been volunteering for the NLRB out of personal interest since her first year. She said the other students are so desperate that some of them are volunteering there, too.
Not all credit bubbles are the same...savings & loan crisis vs. today's credit RE/CRE credit bubble...
It's easy to forget it's takes two to tango...buyers got suckered...voters got suckered...without the public participation in the bubble or Change Now campaign...we wouldn't have Crash and no cash......
Remember when Nader was warning that the two-party system is ONE party that sucks...and he tried to Crash the Party...Ross Perot tried to crash the Party...all the voters who voted for Dubya *twice...and Bill-O (the deregulator) twice and Obama once after numerous warnings that disaster would follow...the Partisan spin blinds both sides to the regulatory and monetary capture...The People were complicit in their demise...hard lessons were ignored...
Barfly,
What percentage of housing is rental ? All markets will eventually level out between supply and demand. That, in theory, sets the
price. Not the greedy landlord.
Well, surprise surprise, I disagree with Mishkin.
On the other hand, nobody really leverage up on Beanie babies.
Houses, tulips, anything a bank will lend against, well that is a candidate for leverage, and risk to the economy.
So, if we can get a hand on leverage, including equity and bond leverage, we can finally begin to muddle through.
Meanwhile, we still have to keep propping everything up. Faugh.
This is going to take years, and now we have more immense damage to go.
But, I bought a pair of signed Pena prints from 1989 and 1990 in huge framed matted format for a grand total of $60.
The framing cost more than that for just one of these prints! Plus the large format prints have been sold out for a long time (limited gallery editions, hand signed by artist).
I love the deflation in things we don't need.
Someday this war's gonna end...
Nemo wrote:
Either that, or the Holiday Inn Express kicked his sorry arse to the curb last night. Gramlich, God rest his soul, must be rolling over in his grave.
I'm willing to grant his point that the amount of collateral damage caused by bubbles on the rest of the economy is variable. I don't at all believe that he's got the right metrics selected; why not, for example, the size of the bubble, or the size of the market in which the bubble exists?
The distinction between rises in a specific sector's valuation and the health of the banking sector is not an enormously important one today, though. Credit is extremely fluid with an (ahem) "robust" financial system like ours. Money created in one sector -- or created for one sector -- will inevitably leak. Even better, banks are encouraged to be as thinly capitalized as possible, made possible with some assistance from Basel II's disastrous, pro-cyclical, cockamamy rules, and the U.S.G.'s inability to even enforce those.
I think they're deliberately building economic models and policy based on what they believe is easy for them(read, the Fed) to control. But thus nothing is grounded in empirical reality, and they're not so dumb as to lock themselves into that groupthink prison. Right? Right, guys?
To paraphrase Spunkmeyer ("they take turns not paying the mortgage") and Rumsfeld ("you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want"):
The bubble you have is the one you don't pop.
Back when I was in law school, you were expected to "volunteer." Free cheap labor ... and too many lawyers already!
All markets will eventually level out between supply and demand. That, in theory, sets the
price.
competition amongst the rentiers sets the price.
I don't know, rsj, what kind of channels do you watch? Just teasing. I'm pretty sure I already told you I love you on another thread. Thanks you for sharing that! I'm still laughing too much.
most 1L and 2L law clerks are now paying position...
One or two of the arms of the Squid is the compliant public who buys the products & services of the squid...it's an organic whole...all parts must function together for the whole ECONomy to work...as it works in a toxic way...belief and participation in the system is part of the wheel that turns the Big (global) Wheel...Nader did have the two-party ruse figured out...
Basel Too wrote:
Can they stay that way FOREVER? As opposed to being unemployed law school grads? Just askin'...
ndk wrote:
At some point, if it were all sneaky liars, wouldn't somebody rat another out if they saw they weren't getting their fair share of the pie? If this is the Mafia, the only true Don is nothing but money.
AlleyCat wrote:
You can always afford to get divorced. Anyone saying otherwise is just dumping irrational fear into the market!
Spunkmeyer wrote:
But in the mob the talkers swim with the fishies...
yagij wrote:
Divorce now or be priced out forever.
Spunkmeyer wrote:
I don't even want to think about our Glorious Leaders playing real life Prisoner's Dilemma with our country. Sorry. Not enough beer in the world for that one.
They've just focused on what they touch and what they control. Blind men, elephant, that sort of thing. It's the only reasonable conclusion I can reach.
They other thing Mishkin totally misses on this is the context in which bubbles occur and deflate. Yes, there was a relatively mild recession in 2001...but gee, did you stop to think that when that irrational exuberance bubble burst we were already in the midst of an underlying credit bubble inflation? But it's not just that. He brings in the 87 crash...well, that was a crash on top of a mostly normal economy, so still, it's not a fair comparison. If you put a bubble crash on top of an economy like the one we have now, you can bet your butt there are going to be massive unforeseen complications as already weakened and in denial players fall by the wayside. This guy really does the profession a huge disservice. But then again, he's not really in the profession anymore, since he's been co-opted by the Fed and had the working part of his brain removed.
I have no need for this type of person, or his "analyses". Go away Tool.
I knew there was going to be trouble after the stolen election in 2000 where a full recount was not allowed by the Supreme Court...the system was hijacked then...for some reason Dubya had to get in...even IF he didn't really win...why?
ndk wrote:
I'm just reminded of the memorable Johnny Carson skit with him as Ronald Reagan as a criminal mastermind. Highly improbable.
some investor guy wrote:
Well yeah, but how can a bubble even imagine forming in our heavily financialized economy without leverage? People can't buy fricking food for their families without borrowing. We have leveraged ETF's on basic materials, for goodness' sake.
I'm perfectly fine if he wants to draw the lines based on market or bubble size. That makes sense. But to picture an America where there is no leverage or transmission is absolutely fricking batshat nutso.
Spunkmeyer wrote:
Oh the stories I can tell like how one woman's alimony and child support will be less 'cause her man bred with another woman and got hit with wage garnishments for child support. The youngest child of his marriage is 9. The wage garnishment baby is 4.
now that CR is gone and we can talk about him behind his back;
CR asked for permission.
*excerpted with permission
thats three, Im saving my comments for friday.
There were reasons why this bubble grew bigger than any other bubble before...dereg, reg capture, election capture, etc.
merchants of fear wrote:
The bubble to replace all bubbles?
.
Seriously as this saga continues, how far back are we setting ourselves? 29 > 55 (57?) was the last round. Will this round but even longer? Will children and young workers not know of CoLA or having 3 different gaming systems in which to play games?
i've heard about some grads who are working as paralegals with JD, but these were typically smaller firms. at BigLaw, the summer associates programs are mostly paid recruiting visits and a chance to get some experience. right now these guys are in extend and pretend mode, basically paying their potential associates a $70K stipend to work elsewhere, preferably public interest.
ndk wrote:
Especially when the correlation between asset valuations is currently near 1, and the last 2 years have been one giant fun ride through interconnectedness and "too big to fail."
I'm sorry. This one really angers me. It's so intellectually dishonest.
energyecon,
*jeebus none of these morons EVER get it right - there is no fucking way the world is running out of oil - what is at risk is the inability to raise the rate of production, which occurs somewhere in the ballpark of 50% reserves depletion...IT'S. ABOUT. RATE. /Rant off *
I understand but aren't you missing the point?
more brain cells lost
If only. Insanity can be defined as "doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result"... but Mishkin's stance? That sounds a lot more like "doing the same thing over and over again, all the while taking pains to explain that it's really not the same thing this time."
I'm not sure "insanity" is a rich enough word.
Basel Too wrote:
I have a gleefully evil place in my heart for BigLaw's suffering--a far 2nd place from Higher Ed.'s spot--and the fact that BigLaw finds themselves unwilling/unable to hire JDs as paralegals blows my mind. Granted, I'm not in BigLaw and will never place in BigLaw, but it seems just so gosh-darn tempting to me seeing these starving JDs with 5-6 digit student loans to fill and no where to go--even in the public sector.
banksy, if you have something to say, spit it out, even if it's incomprehensible to us white boys.
yagij,
I can't tell you how many women I have known who have dated and married men they knew weren't paying child support. Then when they had children together and got divorced, couldn't believe the man wasn't paying them child support. I would hate to be a family attorney.
And now the ad at the bottom of this comment form is:
"FOR SALE: $ INVESTMENT PROPERTY $"
"Did you know that there is a system
that finds and flips houses for you?!"
Bolding theirs. I can't take more of this right now. I'm going to go sit downtown for awhile and watch the people go by. Back later.
If you could pin this bubble on one event (besides the Bill Clinton repeal of the 1934 banking reform act)...it would be...911.
That's why this bubble is different than any other prior bubble...the aftermath of 911 sparked a 'home ownership' political campaign and a massive consumer spending & borrowing push...and easy lending followed...along with securitization, derivatives, faulty 'asset' ratings, etc.
here, merchants. you dropped this
merchants of fear wrote:
It was also a flight to safety into something "tangible" after the dot-com crash. After all, real estate wasn't as sexy, but it always went up in value. Amirite?
yagij: aren't you in the shadows of Vandy?
Basel Too,
In some of the articles I've read, the big firms are paying people not to come to work. You're right.
Poic & others,
Yes, cash is flowing into emerging markets, commodities,gold. And big time into bond funds. J6P is now diversifying hugely into a bond allocation. Short-term, while deflation rules, this is a good decision. If and when inflation hits or bond yields rise, not so good. I began this a few years ago, as I neared the 1/2 century. Now I'm rethinking the allocation strategy, based on the principle if everyone else is doing it, it can't end well--usually within a 2-3 year period.
" So, this means that about $4 billion or more flowed out based on active J6P investor decisions. And it's become a consistent pattern, week-in-week-out, for the first time in decades.
This doesn't count equity outflows from variable insurance products, where J6P also was heavily invested, and which are pretty much slowly imploding. "
But money is flowing into overseas funds big-time isn't it? Looks more like dumb money rotating from speculative into truly speculative. "
oh.... i lived under that shadow for years... nice to be free.
AlleyCat wrote:
HA! Delusional Optimism isn't just for politicians and Wall^Street. It will always be different with them, and 95x out of 100 it isn't.
, and for women, it mostly depends if they can land a replacement whale. If not, they go 
too.
.
It isn't so bad. I mean sure you have to deal with mothers who can't not be self-obsessed, and husbands who treat sexual harassment suits like badges of honor. Unfortunately with the current economic situation, those sorts of people are finding themselves fast-tracked to lower-middle class and beyond if they don't have one helluva lily pad to leap. For men, it is usually
Basel Too wrote:
I'm SE US, and yes, Vandy is in the recruiting zone. Why?
....speaking of bubbles,.........are equities exploding because of the lessening of the dollar? (It takes more worthless dollars to buy a share of XXX?)
oh. i thought ya'll were talking about debt.
AlleyCat wrote:
BigLaw is playing the confidence game like Wall^Street and the Fed. There are things that just "aren't done" in the field of BigLaw, and once they broach those taboos, they are marked for death. Clients will avoid them. The good partners will bail, and good associates leave with them. All you have left are the C partnership and the C- associates. From there, dissolution isn't far away.
.
The fact that they are paying for their associates is more of a way to stave off being the first round in that cycle, and I'm willing to hazard a guess that January 2010 and May 2010 will start seeing another round of Easter Day axes if not actual partnerships dissolving into the annuals of history.
I like the Scrubbing Bubbles by SC Johnson, a family company. They're cute and they work hard.
Black Star Ranch wrote:
I think that is part of it - how big a part, not sure. Funny Mishkin doesn't worry as much about THOSE types of bubbles.
We only have 20 channels here at work, it was a regular channel. it was tbs or tnt or usa. so like i said, mainstream advertising is using mainstream media to float campaigns for computerized affair matchup using the spectre of being too poor to divorce and getting priced in as the club to beat the consumer with. The tagline voiceover is grrreat. "when divorce is not an option..." hehehehehe
BSR, yes, to an extent; a chart of the S&P priced in oil or gold or euros looks very different from the chart in dollars.
I think Jesse had some charts up recently; also the Automatic Earth and perhaps one of our dear comrades here has a link to such a chart handy ... hint, hint.
...seeing these starving JDs with 5-6 digit student loans to fill and no where to go--even in the public sector.
The debt levels of all university graduates -- but especially lawyers -- is getting too big for the potential income that they can earn upon graduation. One of the draws in the past has been the "incredible" salaries you are supposed to earn. Now imagine graduating from law school with easily a six-figure debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy and unable to find meaningful employment to pay it back.
yagij wrote:
So true. My felines are reminding me that this isn't a legal blog and it's about darn time they get petted. Good night. I am not a lawyer. I was just passing on my personal experience related to the economic link regarding attorney layoffs.
OkieLawyer wrote:
The grad you hire: Used HELoCs to fund school while providing housing
The grad you avoid: Used cheap student loans to provide housing while attending school
OkieLawyer wrote:
That part is gonna change once millions of 'regular folks' find themselves in that boat.
For men, it is usually(boom!) , and for women, it mostly depends if they can land a replacement whale. If not, they go(boom!) too.
and who suffers the most? The grandkids. Many, many grandparents are willingly picking up the slack.
barfly wrote:
Oh yes. The dying Greatest Generation who is the only safety net for the majority of people today. While the year 2030 will not be Mad Max, it will be interesting to see who can and will take care of that generation's latchkey kids.
.
In all honesty, it is that generation who is usually paying for our clients' divorces. Guarantors who reluctantly sign off on their child's employment agreement because even they understand how risky their children are as AR on the firm's book of business.
RockyR,
Just looking at the incredible chain of events that would make this Bubble the Biggest Of AllTime...
Seriously you don't think there was election capture or funny stuff in Florida on the refusal of a recount (a recount was done later apparently as an 'investigative' newpaper 'recount' and Gore won when all the Florida votes were recounted).
This stuff isn't tinfoil...it's U.S. history now...as I said after the 2000 election, things started getting weird with the New Project for the American Century stuff and the 'pre-emptive' strike policy against the 'axis of evil'...you can minimize these events...but a lot of these Neo-Con policies and WMD information, etc. has been discredited now...which is a big reason Obama won...because he promised Change Now from the prior fiasco...
merchants of fear wrote on Mon, 11/9/2009 - 8:42 pm
If you could pin this bubble on one event (besides the Bill Clinton repeal of the 1934 banking reform act)...it would be...911.
its so kind of you to give bill clinton the credit
especially since the glass steagal act had been violated for years before clinton signed gramm leach bliley
oh
by the way
the senate vote overturning glass steagal, was 92 to 2 with 6 abstaining
uh this was around the time clinton was being tried by the senate on charges of impeachment for lying about a stain on a blue dress
but .hey its ok to give all the credit to bill
i have no great love for him any way
but please...remember the travelers citi merger...BEFORE GLASS STEAGAL.. the law was dead before it hit the ground thanks to greenspan
and all the i hate regulation crowd...clinton couldnt have done it alone...even with his big d...i meana a ....member
remember phill and windy gramm...the banksta whores who brought this to our doorstep
im ok with you blaming bill clinton...i do too... for a lot
but you do him too much honor to give him so much credit
Oh dryfly many are going to learn that student loans are 4evah! <3 xoxo They last longer than genital herpes
rsj wrote:
And those payments will always flair up on a monthly basis...
Actually, even charts depicting S&P in gold, for instance, are co-mingling multiple variables. What we really need is a link to a chart of the S&P covering, say, 1999 - present in constant 2000 dollars. Thus "deflating" the index for the dollar decline. Really, it is just an admission that the "ruler" has gotten smaller while we were doing our measuring.
That part is gonna change once millions of 'regular folks' find themselves in that boat.
NaRM's been beating this drum for a while, but the volume of student loans is exploding, a significant amount borrowed by people who would otherwise be unemployed. quite the system we've got. Find yourself unemployed, or harassed by student loan debt collectors? then go back to school, and accumulate more student loan debt. if we get enough of the unemployed back into school, we might actually get under 10.2%!! gonna suck when they graduate though...
but .hey its ok to give all the credit to [b]ill
keep in mind, though, the R's controlled both houses of congress from 1996 on.
There is nothing wrong with Bubbles the Clown that reincarnation couldn't cure.
Basel Too wrote:
I believe he has stated multiple times that this area is still strongly securitizing, and the government is paying up as much paper as possible to get these people off of the government's back for however long as possible. We have no idea what we will do when that
blows, but it is kicking the can so what harm is there?
.
One thing that catches my mind's attention is: What will happen to Higher Ed's credibility once their bubble pops and students realize that they are taking on horrific amounts of loans that will barely--if ever--pay off over their lifetime as a worker? Will people still push their children to go to college--along with high schools and community colleges--if it is seen as a net-loss?
my bad if repost...
Greenspan Says Stock Market Rally ‘Re-liquifying’ U.S. Economy - Bloomberg.com
well shiver me timbers
merchants:
i was just giving you a little bit of sh*t
you have valid points. i'm not sure how well orchestrated it's all been, but then again, i'm not so sure it hasn't been. the r's and d's are certainly two very slightly different shades of black.
CR sez...
Mishkin outlines two different types of bubbles, and argues a "credit boom bubble" poses a risk to the economy, but a "pure irrational exuberance bubble" does not.
I think he meant to say that if a bubble left the Wall Street and the Banks holding the bag, then it poses a risk to the economy. But if the bag holders are J6P, then, no, it does not pose a threat.
mock,
Bill-o signed it but I was just mentioning Presidents on both sides of the same Party...Congress is another unit that operates on both sides of the aisle for the back door Banking Party. So yes good to fill in the details...if the glass steagall had been violated so much why remove it then? I'm not picking on Bill because he's proved to be a One Party dude much of the time...but there's tons of one-party critters...the Partisan thing...
I had to get over it...because it will make you crazy because nothing makes sense if you believe the two parties really work against each other (instaed of for the back Door banking party)...
When you listen to what Nader was saying...things start making sense in that the two parties work as ONE on issues of the eCON-omy and expensive Endless War and militarization issues...the Big Issues!
And after putting their Hopes in Obama, many O supporters are now feeling they got suckered IMO...
"re-liquifying" - more Greenspan crypto-double-speak, meant only for deep insiders. This guy needs to be silenced.
I have a question...I received a package by USPS containing a book on Qualitiative Analysis, and red ink stamped on the outside of the package is the following, "Opened for Inspection by USPS"...am I in trouble?
There is no accountability at the Fed. This man vaporized the economy and now again bold enough to go on speaking engagements. There is no accountability , no shame.
.....well, at least there's not the problem with "gridlock" anymore........remember the sweet days of nothing being accomplished?........oh wait.....there are still a few pesky Repubs and/or Blue Dog Demos carousing around the 274 acres of Capitol Hill.
It's OK Rocky...any of this stuff can be researched now thanks to (Al Gore's) internet invention...which makes it easy to go back and see what was done or said...the red flags...the whistleblowers...the failed policies...the repeated failed policies...this tinfoil stuff is what you don't want to waste time on...much of it based on shoddy research, dead ends, or long ago discredited 'conspiracy theories' that are bunk...it's a distraction from good resources and research that can easily be found on the internet...
yagij wrote:
What will happen to Higher Ed's credibility once their bubble pops and students realize that they are taking on horrific amounts of loans that will barely--if ever--pay off over their lifetime as a worker? Will people still push their children to go to college--along with high schools and community colleges--if it is seen as a net-loss?
The lower echelons of higher education are unlikely to get caught in the student loan bubble to the extent that State U Law schools may. A great many of my former students in community college were either paying their way while working, on the G.I. bill, on Pell grants, or some combination thereof. Unpayable 6 figure loans are incurred by those in the "professions" -- a loud and self-important, but numerically small group compared to the nation's student population at large. Kind of like women who are sufficiently well-set up that they can land another whale..... upper middle class comments' sections are overloaded with readers who can envision such creatures (having known a few, Biblically) but in the real world, apartment complexes like mine are loaded with women who will be lucky to snag a mental stable porpoise.
Saw Frontline: the Warning about Brooksley Born on CBC tonight.
Interesting lady.
"...am I in trouble?
no, otherwise the FBI would have delivered the package themselves.
It was probably inspected because it was shipped by Media Mail, which is a lower priced class of postal service reserved for certain types of media (books are allowed, magazines are not). Lots of media mail fraud with people trying to ship all kinds of crap on the cheap.
From the USPS: DMM 473 Media Mail Rates and Eligibility for Discount Parcels
Media Mail is not sealed against postal inspection. Regardless of physical closure, the mailing of articles at Media Mail prices constitutes consent by the mailer to postal inspection of the contents.
merchants of fear
you and i agree that when it comes to the world of the banksta oligarchy
there is only one party
i just hate to see bill get all thee credit,,uh i mean blame
cause actually i thought he was a half good president
and like barfly said...we shoudnt deprive newt and his pals who controlled congress from 94 to2004 of their due respect and ownership for all the success of late now should we
maybe i over reacted because im a recovering democrat
Obama May Raise Tibet, Rights Issues Directly With Hu (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
"oh btw before I leave..." - BHO
I said 1996, and it was actually 1994? I stand corrected.
Alright, I searched and couldn't find a link, my apologies if this is already noted, but if not, you folks are gonna looove this:
Saintly bankers
bold enough to charge 25K or more per speaking engagement..fixed it 4 ya...
re-liquifying..... glossary alert......no such term on google...new addition...
No, the lede for the article started wih "the world is even closer to running out of oil..."
.
I've been posting for the past twelve months about the implications of the higher decline rate in last year's World Energy Outllok from IEA (more like 6%-7% than the previously posited 4% or so as a result of IEA making a ground up supply forecast for the first time) and Fatih Birol saying we need to find and bring on production 4 as yet undiscovered Saudi Arabia's to forecast energy demand growth...and that turns out to be the soft pedaled version (alleged in article)...hoocoodanode
bwhahahaha! sheah, right. good luck there, 0.
Citizen AllenM wrote:
Credit cards?
Thanks Basel Too'
Never received a comment from the USPS before...I have applied for govt jobs, and thought this was part of the security/background check...
Mishkin is full of shit.
No central banker will ever admit that the bubble being blown on his watch exists, is growing if it did exist, and is dangerous even if it exists and is growing.
Bill made 'friends' with the wrong person...he also made the mistake of trying to redefine what 'sex' is...and should have kept his 'cigar' in his pocket...but the bigger issue is politician capture, election capture, judicial capture, monetary capture, etc...
In an interview with ABC News today, Obama said his extensive and expansive strategy-review meetings have given him greater confidence in whatever his final decision will be.
“I have gained confidence that there’s not an important question out there that has not been asked, and that we haven’t asked -- that we haven’t answered to the best of our abilities,” Obama said."
You can't make this stuff up. It's getting hard to tell the parodies from the realities. Obama and Mishkin should trade notes.
Life on Severance: Comfort, Then Crisis - WSJ.com
Paul Joegriner hasn't worked since March 2008, when he was laid off from his $200,000-a-year job as chief executive officer of a small bank. But you wouldn't know it by appearances.
His wife, Marzena, shuttles their two young children to private school every morning. The family recently vacationed in Virginia Beach, Va., and likes to dine on Porterhouse steaks. Since losing his job, Mr. Joegriner, 44 years old, has had several offers. He's turned each down in hopes of landing a position comparable to what he held before.
The family's lifestyle over the past year and a half has been propped up by a $200,000 severance package and another $100,000 in savings -- funds the family has burned through rapidly. By Mr. Joegriner's own calculations, the family will be out of money in six months if he doesn't find work.
In support of my rat problems the other week.
New Study Says American Cities Are on the Verge of a Rat Invasion - ABC News
Somewhat confirmed by the 5 day wait for a wildlife guy to come out, and the confirmation by the company that "the animals are going nuts right now...".
Top three fave rat cities, New York, Atlanta and Houston.
No, fund flows into foreign equity are flat to up a bit. Nothing really going on with foreign equity flows one way or another.
....rats don't like the desert............except for the two-legged variety.......
rich, why is politics so important to you, since you'll make money no matter who's in office? I can imagine you gripeing just as much as if McPain were running the show.
Man, CR is really throwing bloodied chum into the chark-infested waters with this posting...
the world will never run out of oil
it will just have
.........................less
and..........................less
and.................................less
and.........................................less
and.................................................less
and it will cost
more...and more...and more....and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more
more...and more...and more....and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more
more...and more...and more....and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more
more...and more...and more....and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...and more...weeeeeeeeeee
DCRogers wrote:
Sharks gotta eat too...
and that is before you consider any currency effects - whoohoo!
chark-infested
I think you mean snark-infested...
Basel Too wrote:
An example of getting screwed over by your own optimism?
re: previous thread
brianinboise: I am saying that just like every smart agent preparing for default, draw down all open lines of credit first. To your second point, household + nonfinancial corporate credit is plummeting. Relatively. It was growing at double digit rates for the past decade, and it took $4 borrowed to add $1 to GDP before it started contracting. Having government, and government guaranteed debt skyrocket is exactly the point. That is how you stave off deflation by being the lender of last resort.
kidbuck: You are incorrectly assuming that taxation and federal government spending are directly linked, and that any austerity now will pay off in future. How much did your taxes go up in the past year compared to the spending increases, including unfunded future obligations? How about the last 5 years? Last 30 years? You're about 20 years too late to the prudence party
'Saintly bankers'
This 'God's work' statement from GS head sounds deliberately provocative plus it gets the conversation going maybe back to religion rather than government supported profits from trading strategies and the fact that this 'investment' bank needs to be broken into pieces for God's sake...
In 2006 Mishkin got paid over $100k to tell the world all was well in Iceland.
From Wikipedia: In 2006, Mishkin co-authored a report called "Financial Stability in Iceland". The report maintained that Iceland's economic fundamentals were strong. The report was commissioned by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce in response to critical coverage of the Icelandic economy and certain Icelandic companies in the international business media.
Iceland subsequently experienced a spectacular collapse within a year of Mishkin's good report.
Here's a link to the report: http://www.vi.is/files/555877819Financial%20Stability%20in%20Iceland%20Screen%20Version.pdf
just another example of getting it wrong wrong wrong over and over and over, and still being looked at like you are some kind of expert.
Dont we EVER get to throw the bums out????
No problem. Our central bank can print whatever we need to buy that more scarce oil, Mock.
Basel Too wrote:
To whichever small bank fired the guy: Your BoD made a good decision.
Jonathan wrote:
Pfft. We've already been overrun with them here in DC.
GDD9000 wrote:
Are we talking about Mishkin or... Krugman or Greenspan or Paulson or Summers or Geithner??? I'm soooo confused.
thats kind of my point....but it is not confined to the economic sphere. The people that blew it on the foreign policy front continue to be trotted out as if they had some kind of clue.
All of the above is the correct answer.
Winston wrote:
Until it's not.
burn rate of $12k per month
JP,
I was thinking the exact same thing. We should find that board and put them in charge of Treasury and the Fed.
Yancey Ward wrote:
So, Oil is a limited resource and the Dollar is not? Hoocoodanodde?
mock,
Did you ever hear that the Peak Oil Theory was first initiated and promoted by Big OIL companies to justify raising prices?
I know you have talked about the implications of the decline rate. Form my perspective what is so significant about the article is that the IEA was pressured and then complied in overstating possible production as well as reserves.
Since the IEA figures were the just about universally accepted standard, this could obviously have huge implications for the oil market. The trust in the IEA is now gone and this could turn into an awfully wild ride at an interesting time.
Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower |
Environment |
The Guardian
funny that biglaw layoffs came up, looked at that earlier today. serendipity now!
» Layoff Tracker | Law Shucks
has plenty of charts
and a blog I think I have looked at in the past, Above The Law
edit: also THE LAYOFF LIST
The 'digital' printing & govt. over-spending has consequences for currency devaluation.
Google financial currency crisis research...
we've been having rat problems in dfw, as well.
Some people around here really need to re-examine their notions of "public/private sector", taxes, government jobs, "free-market".
Ronald Reagan is long gone, and he wasn't very smart.
rich wrote:
Tomato/Tomato. Don't know how to do the umlaut and the curvy thing...
Wouldn't surprise me to know that the US has been pressuring the IEA. Heck, why else would we blithely accept Saudi's fantasyland reserve numbers?
a bunch more BigLaw firings as all the bar exam results are released... met a Yale Law grad who failed the NY bar twice; very perplexing.
Ronald Reagan is long gone, and he wasn't very smart.
but, damn, he wuz shur gud lookin'...
it is Yale after all
barfly wrote:
Gave a great speech, too. Oh shit, we just described Obama!
Well, the allegation is that the IEA caved to US pressure...and we will see what the impact is on the IEA credibility is in more than a single news cycle. If the IEA was a complete tool, they would not have undertaken the supply forecast last year IMNSHO...
that seems a bit excessive.
....by my estimation, they have about $75K left........too little left to do anything substantiative with, but maybe enough blown to have learned a lesson.
.....at MY "burn rate", that (the $75K) would last me another 8-years.......but then most think I'm one cheap scot......have a fine evening, All
'cause we got no alternative - and anyone who is into these numbers knows that the allocation mechanism for OPEC is reserves, which is a self-reported number...
deficits don't matter,
Did the budget czar Peter Orszag through his company Sebago Associates give any 'advice' to Iceland?
Barfly, some excellent posts on earlier threads.
energyecon wrote:
The Guardian is a pretty solid news source IMO. The fact that they got the essence of the story confirmed by a second source says it all:
... A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added. ...
These statements indicate that the situation is considerably worse than what the IEA stated last year.
energyecon wrote:
Sure we do, it's just not been in our interest to press the point.
[Who knows? Maybe they have privately supplied us with detailed info.
]
thanks, yogi. I try.
RE wrote:
There's no way a price shock in oil could affect inflation or interest rates right?
energyecon
not looking to make a change now, but what are you general views on the future for the geophysics/reservoir discovery/mapping side of the oil+gas biz? simplification to drilling tech is fine. almost did a summer of non-destructive testing for pipelines. if supply becomes binding sooner rather than later it might be a nice opportunity to settle into a 20 year career (practically a lifetime for the younger end of the workforce where you're headhunted today, rightsized tomorrow)
This Orszag/Icelandic 'link' may be a case of the internet stories that are weak on substantiation...but spread anyway...there's tons of internet claims...checking on it...
EvilHenryPaulson wrote:
From everything I've read the opportunities are definitely going to be there. All the existing workforce is old and nearing retirement, with little following in behind. Undoubtedly future exploration & drilling will be much more -- shall we say "complicated" -- thus requiring a lot more work all the way around.
This is a story that has been playing out for decades, if we go back to M. King Hubbert's initial work in the 1950's...and the idea that things are worse than the IEA has been saying is also not a new story line for anyone who has been into the numbers in any meaningful way. Having that storyline move into the MSM would be a big change, and credibly portraying the IEA as a puppet for American interests would also be a big change...I will watch the story unfold with interest, but I want so see more before uncritically accepting the Guardian story or predicting the demise of the IEA
TJ and The Bear wrote:
The fact is that I'm certain that the U.S. has an excellent idea of Saudi Reserves. There are many U.S. petroleum engineers and geologists working at EXPEC in ARAMCO. I know, I worked there for a while in the 80s.
hasta manana
Ah, but the smart companies have been putting some of those 'old buffers' to good use... pushing the limits of horizontal drilling and state of the art completions.
BP NSI | Wytch Farm
All in an idyllic setting, with plenty of nursing homes locally!
puhleeeeze - you gonna man up and tell the Saudis they need to come clean or we aren't going to buy their oil (and those Treasury thingies are in the mix somewhere) - reserves are national security issues for the ME countries, you're talking out your ass on this one
RE wrote:
Which served as the basis for Simmon's work, too.
I don't think so. The Fed and Obama Administration have developed the same MO. They throw out some rumor or float some theory to buy time and see what sticks. Team Obama didn't leak the size of the to-be-announced troop build-up in Afghanistan? Of course they did. The Fed didn't trot Mishken out to see if this belief in the healing power of bubbles will fly?
It's just that the amount of rumor-fishing they're doing seems increasingly desperate and wacky, in both cases. And it substitutes for making the really hard decisions that need to be made now.
energyecon wrote:
No, I'm agreeing with you. We've been allowing them to publish fictitious numbers for far too long to push it off on simply "dependence".
Basel Too wrote:
I once shipped a 1000-lb Rock-Ola 1428 Juke Box in the mail (a six-foot high container) as "pre-printed advertising material" to save on shipping...
energyecon wrote:
Mathew Simmons would concur.
The future of American energy will be sun-based. Nuclear will fill the gap until then. Oil is dead. Coal is even more dead. We are killing ourselves until we go to sun-based. Call me crazy.
"Confessions of an Economic Hitman" is a worthwhile read as is "The Economics of Innocent Fraud"
Well the challenge for the large oil companies is becoming access to the resources, with the national oil companies as the gatekeepers...on a reserves basis XOM is something like #14 (though some of those reserve estimates are a tad sketchy as outlined above). The geosciences will continue to be active, typical new hires are MS and out of school for the large companies (some of which seem to still have their eye on the ball with respect to the demographics of the industry)...though right now the industry is slow walking projects and cutting capital budgets or at best keeping them flat. It's tough to say, getting the first position with a producer is the trick, once you have gotten on with one it seems a heckuva lot easier to get on with another one, we'll see if the bloodletting of the past is repeated this cycle.
So are we due for another run up of oil prices?
barfly wrote:
Not crazy. To have that huge generator up there radiating energy at us every day and flatly ignore it would be crazy.
Definitely a "Star Trek" feel to it, though.
Ok, I was curious to look at some of the US estimates of oil production, that we're presumably using as an input to energy policy... Check the following chart. Is it missing the words 'and a miracle occurs here', or is it just me being cynical.
us oil production Pictures, us oil production Images, us oil production Photos, us oil production Videos - Image - TinyPic - Free Image Hosting, Photo Sharing & Video Hosting
Sourced from:
Annual Energy Outlook 2009 with Projections to 2030-Graphic Data
Bubblisimo Gerkinov wrote:
IMO it's a little soon. I expect they'll drop back down pretty soon, stay flat for a while, then start a slow but inexorable climb skyward after that. We still have some more demand destruction ahead, but inevitably the loss of existing capacity will close the gap.
the thing is we all know what those numbers are, especially the reservoir engineering folks like RE...and the Saudis are never going to publicly cop to the fact that Ghawar is capable of cratering ala Simmons (got an autographed copy of Twilight in the Desert) until it is flat undeniable...we are in agreement except I am saying that the politics of the situation will continue to dominate and we'll never get a straightforward declaration like "yep, we tip over the edge in two years then it's devil take the hindmost"
Funny thing: The past of American energy is also sun based.
The sooner folks realize that there is an energy balance equation, the better.
JP wrote:
Wait for American Partners Bank to appear on a BFF.
'Retirement in the Nordic Countries, Prospects a & Proposals for Reform'
In this research paper, there are six Peter Orszag references from 1999-2000 concerning Flaxible Funding Pension Reform, Pension Taxes, Wage Subsidies vs. Employment Vouchers, etc.
http://www.ioes.hi.is/publications/cseries/NordicReport.pdf
~There's a bunch of internet links that claim Orszag advised Iceland but it is apparently referenced links to Orszag's research concerning pension reform that come up on a search...so one has to be careful about internet claims that Orszag's advice (among other advice) somehow lead to Iceland's demise...it's a classic example of how tinfoil does get going on the internet...and maybe some questionable sources are intentionally spreading misinformation...internet readers beware!
YouTube - Interview - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - Part I
NKorea cargo ship arrives in SKorea after skirmish - Yahoo! News
Can't let Hugo grab all the attention, now can we?
Don't forget earth-based energy (not fossil fuels). Life on this planet exists because of the sun and the heat/energy of the center of the earth.
Nice find. I note that American Partners Bank isn't on surferdude's/CR's list.
someone puked a whole lot of pounds.
wow, this guy is a rocket surgeon. from his blog entry, dated October 7, 2008.
BANKING - FINANCE - MONEY: The Current Economy and Opportunity
Two weeks ago, I said that now is the the time to be buying. Some are calling this a recession, others are afraid that it might become a depression. I call it OPPORTUNITY!
Opportunity is an auspicious state of affairs or a suitable time: "If you prepare yourself . . . you will be able to grasp opportunity for broader experience when it appears" Eleanor Roosevelt.
Jonathan wrote:
I imagine it is the product of a technocrat using stats to project the future based on an accepted formula ... but probably no more accurate than what a toddler could do with a crayon.
a run-up like today seems to be destined to be followed by "profit-takers" ~
energyecon wrote:
I just wanted to say that I am not a reservoir engineer. I provided software engineering for the research and budget folks as well as general computing related consulting to EXPEC.
Guest Post: If You Thought The Housing Meltdown Was Bad... | zero hedge
Three quotes:
Commercial real estate sales are off a staggering 82% in 2009, compared with 2008, and last year was worse than ’07.
What do you do if, as Andy thinks is the case, 85-90% of the entire commercial real estate market is under water relative to its financing?
Andy looked at just the part of Phoenix where his firm does business and found 90 vacant big box stores, with an aggregate floor space of 8 million square feet.
TJ and The Bear wrote:
yep - and investments needed to slow that decline are not occurring, or less of them and investments in new production are not happening as much...if we are ballparking production at 85 million barrels equivalent or so per day, and the decline rate globally is something like 7%, then 6 milion barrels a day of new production has to be added each year just to stay at 85 million barrels a day...
It's been educational as usual.
JP wrote:
They have appeared on the Implode-O-Meter, however. Guess their business model has been re-tweeked.
hah what comes from assuming - so what does RE stand for?
Intel Gains More Market Share from AMD in 3Q09, According to IDC - While worldwide PC-processor unit shipments grow 23% - Softpedia
» note the discrepancy between processor units and revenue. Intel's cheap/low power/mobile Atom processor used in netbooks was behind the surge, which led to a 7% erosion in average processor price paid during the quarter. all in all the number of processors shipped in 2009 are expected to be 1.5% above 2008 levels, but at much lower prices
If The WSJ.com Says Goodbye To Google, It Will Also Say Goodbye To 25 Percent Of Its Traffic
» the advantage of the web is the low marginal cost, I am doubtful that the WSJ produces enough content-value to warrant their shift to a subscriber only model. Their one saving grace is they have a lot of business subscribers with expense accounts to burn, and great institutional inertia. How closing off access to non-subscribers will boost their revenues without a fee hike I do not know
From the FDIC:
American Partners Bank (FDIC Cert: 34976) changed its name and is currently doing business as Waterfield Bank.
Waterfield Bank is on the Problem Bank List with a C+D.
Good update from the European CDC of their risk analysis of the H1N1 pandemic:
http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/healthtopics/Documents/0908_Influenza_AH1N1_Risk_Assessment.pdf
I tried to find anonymity from my Silicon Investor handle ages ago when CR started to veer off in the blog direction. It was silly as I chose my initials. However, I hate to change handles...
DCRogers wrote:
Again good find. Read the implode-o-meter fully: They were aquired. Waterfield bank is on CR's unofficial list. I don't know for sure that it's the same one, but it certainly points that way.
Edit: Basel II is faster than me.
It also points to why the CEO was fired: He was unable to adapt to the changing environment. By the time the BoD realized that they had to ditch the bank, he might well have thought that he would not come out on top for an acquisition (a good guess if their books sucked.)
Thanks RE - I know what you mean about changing handles...