Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

turn to harry markopolous, for starters. the hearings on the sec's madoff-related shenanigans is full of relevant insights about how we got to this point. for dealing with the privileged boy's club for so long, dude should get a medal and a high-ranking financial oversight post

"welcome to 2009"
http://www.sprott.com/pdf/marketsataglance/MAAG.pdf

Just fingering the yahoos and yelping at them is something a lot of people can do. If Harry Markopoulos can pump a trillion dollars into the economy in the next 10 months, or give people an alternative way to honor their contracts and debts that does not involve using money, then I would turn to him to get us out of this mess.

I got an email from a good friend at a hedge fund last week. He's a *very* moderate guy, and he had this to say:

"The one thing that I disagree on is that for all the talk of making Tarp II diff from Tarp I, I don't really see it happening. An aggregator bank still just takes bad assets from a bank in exchange for capital. If you pay market, the banks will be insolvent, so they won't participate. If you pay above market, you're basically just injecting capital in to the banks, which is what they did in Tarp I. Why are they scared of nationalizing? Citi is an insolvent bank - wipe the equity, take the company, remove the bad assets, put the remaining good company back in to the public markets, repeat for the next insolvent bank. If they try to let a Citi (or maybe evan a BofA) earn their way out of this we will end up with huge parts of the banking system in zombie mode, a la Japan. That would be very bad and will only prolong the pain."

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/jstreet/405216/will_geithner_and_summers_destroy_the_us_economy?

http://www.thenation.com/images/people/christopher_hayes.jpg

love that dude

Washington is a place with its own distinctive folkways, characteristics and worldviews. Herein we seek understanding.

There are moderate guys at hedge funds? (Honest question, I thought they were all 'screw the rules, we're special!' people.)

There are moderate guys at hedge funds? (Honest question, I thought they were all 'screw the rules, we're special!' people.)

you gotta pay the bills, man.

and my earlier criticism of TARP II still stands -- though whether we could've expected better at this juncture is a legitimate topic for debate IMHO.

Netflix CEO has the #1 priority right -- tax the rich:

Please Raise My Taxes

President Obama should celebrate our success, rather than trying to shame us or cap our pay. But he should also take half of our huge earnings in taxes, instead of the current one-third.

Then, the next time a chief executive earns an eye-popping amount of money, we can cheer that half of it is going to pay for our soldiers, schools and security. Higher taxes on huge pay days can finance opportunity for the next generation of Americans....

Of course, it’s galling when a chief executive fails and is still handsomely rewarded. But with the concept of “tax, not shame,” a shocking $20 million severance package would generate $10 million for the government. That’s a far better solution than what we have today, not least because it works with the market rather than against it.

Another advantage is that it would also cover the sometimes huge earnings of hedge fund managers, star athletes, stunning movie stars, venture capitalists and the chief executives of private companies. Surely there is no reason to focus only on executives at publicly traded companies.

warren buffett's been saying the same thing for decades ... and HE has president obama's ear, to boot.

former g n' r bassist has the #2 priority right --

http://www.playboy.com/blog/2009/02/appetite-for-investment-duffonomics-1.html

I have never been keen on executives getting golden parachutes; I’m more apt to give them a golden shower.

(adjusts crystal ball, peers at it myopically, clears throat)

Now that GM and Chrysler are on life-support and the Fed Funds rate is roughly 0.13% and unemployment is racing up at a zippy pace and US state governments are announcing huge revenue shortfalls and Citibank and Chase are basket cases and Wall Street has handed out its 18 billion in bonuses and the Republicans are comically slapping their heads, hooting and gesticulating at Obama for wanting to spend money fixing things, I thought it might be interesting to predict the Next Big Thing for the economy. Just for funsies.

I'm thinking the news media will soon be earnestly discussing the problem of "zombie banks" in a big way. And both small and large retailers will be closing up shop in droves, leaving lots of empty storefronts and big boxes to litter the landscape, naturally adding fuel to the unemployment wildfire.

By April (May at the latest) there will be articles on how tourism is flatlined and the airlines are backing their way into repeat bankruptcy. Someone will notice that Las Vegas has developed a bad limp and a worrisome cough. The stock market will enter a second capitulation and DJIA 8000 will no longer be the floor, but a happy memory.

Easiest prediction: the Republicans will blame Obama and demand huge tax cuts.

http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/joblosses26091.gif

(if you're squinting, the blue line is the 1990 recession, the red line is 2001, and the green line is the jobs already lost in the last 13 months.)

we gonna die

yikes! I think I'll stick to my wine, 30-Rock & sweet, sweet denial.

i guess i'll keep pretending i like my job

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

should just be in denial about the whole thing but it's hard. :-(

don't panic

There's always scrap metal theft to fall back on.

And the life of the roving vagabond is a bit unsung, I feel.

just interviewed w/ a place that takes incoming calls from bankrupt ppl who need attorneys

remember to take your last vacations for a decade this summer

IBM Offers to Send Laid-Off Staff to Other Countries
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/06/2010241

TheAmit writes to tell us that many recently laid off IBM employees have been offered jobs if they will only move somewhere it is cheap to employ them. IBM's new Project Match program offers some financial assistance for moving and immigration help for visas.

"However, the move has not gone well with the IBM staff union. Slamming the offer, a union spokesperson said that not only were jobs being shipped overseas, but Big Blue was trying to export the people for peanuts too. He added that at a time of rising unemployment IBM should be looking to keep both the work and the workers in the United States. "
Posted by ScuttleMonkey

Of course, IBM and many companies like them would remain profitable without doing this, just not as profitable as they would like.

I was reading the comments on the IBM piece at Slashdot and thinking "Is this place full of corporate apologists or something? WTF" and I got to this one and now it all makes sense:

by Daishiman (698845) on Friday February 06, @10:04PM (#26761227)

Honestly, having worked several years in outsourcing at IBM, our American customers were as full of shit as we were.
American IT workers have a sense of entitlement where they believe that the quality of their work is inherently superior simply because of their origin. Truth is, there's a lot of brilliant minds in the States, but like most places it is full of mediocre people.

i'm trying my best to stick fingers in my ears and sing ladeeda. instead my fingers keep going for my eyes.

(if you're squinting, the blue line is the 1990 recession, the red line is 2001, and the green line is the jobs already lost in the last 13 months.)

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Saturday, February 7, 2009 12:13 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Incorrect, and misleading. The green line is the RATE of job losses per month. What the graph shows is that we are shedding jobs much faster than we did during the other recessions and that the rate is still accelerating.

Well that's not at all comforting. Thanks.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 381.99 points points, or 4.6 percent, to close at 7,888.88. The Dow had fallen as much as 420 points in the last half hour of trading.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 4.9 percent or 42.73 points, to 827.16, its worst performance since a broad sell-off on Inauguration Day.

Despite the size and scope of the Obama administration’s plans, investors said Mr. Geithner’s proposal raised more questions than it answered. The way out of the financial crisis, analysts said, looked as murky as ever.

“We’re not impressed, and I don’t think the market’s impressed either,” said Ryan Larson, head equity trader at Voyageur Asset Management. “It’s clear the administration is still trying to work on something concrete. I think the market sensed that, too.”

http://www.piney.com/MolechFlame.jpg

YES. THE MARKET SENSES IT.

(xp) No, I'm not going to waste bandwidth on why I'm disgusted w/ a protégé of Screaming Lobster of Bosnia's treasury secretary signing up. And I'm not commenting on Team Hope's results til the 100 days are up. Ta ta!

It's hard to spend wise and spend fast

I love days when wall street seems to operate like a bitchy little girl. I'd be buying stocks today if I had any money.

yeah, the market is a technical analyst's (i.e., a day trader's) wet dream and a fundamental analyst's worst nightmare.

to correct the above: the way the market has been BEHAVING lately is a technical analyst's ...

yeah not that I'm an expert / want anything to do with the stock market, but lately all of these "wall street is mad about something and gonna prove a point!!!" days always seem to lead to a "oh shit what did I do yesterday" bounce the next day.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised but

http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/02/10/copy/caproos.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

Damned Austrians.

what the loyal opposition considers to be a response to a recent pro-stimulus AFSCME ad

we are gonna find out now what the effect of Bill Clinton shredding the safety net really is, right?

yep

but why bother with an ounce of prevention when you can lard on a few pounds of cure

Incorrect, and misleading. The green line is the RATE of job losses per month. What the graph shows is that we are shedding jobs much faster than we did during the other recessions and that the rate is still accelerating.

no, it's total job losses. the y-axis is job losses in thousands. what's somewhat misleading is that it's raw numbers instead of as a percentage of the workforce, which was smaller in 1990, and a bit smaller in 2001. something showing the rate would look really alarming, since something like half the total has been since october.

so anyway, how 'bout that geithner plan huh? my dad called me this morning yelling about what a bankers' tool geithner is...

and for the record, I am not tipsy's dad.

hahaha

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/11/henrietta.hughes/index.html

Median housing prices in the Fort Myers metropolitan area have plummeted from $322,000 in December 2005 to less than $107,000 in December 2008, the Obama administration notes.

holy shit