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Archive for December 1st, 2009
Gallup Throws Cold Water On The Pumpers
December 1st, 2009 | 
Author: I thought that “per-person” spending was down, but traffic was way up, and on balance Black Friday was reasonably good….. if so, what’s this?
Gallup’s Thanksgiving week results tend to confirm fears of a weak holiday sales season as consumer spending was unchanged from the prior week, even though it included Friday and Saturday of the Black Friday weekend. At the same time, Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index and its Job Creation Index were essentially unchanged from the prior week. A rather gloomy consumer mood and consumer spending — trailing last year’s financial crisis-depressed comparables by 25% — may not be unexpected, but are surely a disappointing way to start the Christmas sales season for the nation’s retailers.
What?
I thought spending was only down 1/2%?
Twenty five percent below last year?!
The other thing that’s particularly ugly here is that Black Friday was essentially a zero in terms of additive to consumer spend .vs. the previous week.
And if you believe the CNBS pumpers on the economy, you’re in the minority:
Americans’ views of the economy going forward showed virtually no change, with 59% saying the economy is “getting worse,” compared to 60% the previous week. Thirty-five percent of Americans described the economy as “getting better,” versus 34% the prior week. Consumer assessments of the current economy were also not much different from the previous week, with 47% rating the economy “poor” and 12% rating it “excellent” or “good,” compared to 48% and 11%, respectively, the prior week.
Looks like the real economy trumps the pump, even though Obama is bloviating as I write this about having experienced (past tense) the worst economic downturn since the Depression.
Past tense eh? Not according to most Americans.
The jobs situation remains bleak — better than earlier this year, but no better than a year ago, and with a 10.2% unemployment rate. In turn, this may help to explain, at least in part, why consumer spending continues to significantly trail last year’s levels.
No kidding? 
Posted in 
North Korea and Currency Devaluations
Here’s what just happened over in North Korea:
TOKYO — Chaos reportedly erupted in North Korea on Tuesday after the government of Kim Jong Il revalued the country’s currency, sharply restricting the amount of old bills that could be traded for new and wiping out personal savings.
…
The revaluation replaces 1,000 won notes with 10 won notes, but strictly limits the amount of old currency that can be exchanged, news reports said.
100:1.
You had $100,000, you now have $1,000.
You had $100,000,000 (one hundred million), you now have one million.
Oh, and if you tried to cheat by taking it out of the system, only $40 of it is exchangeable – the rest is worth nothing.
Yes, this is North Korea, and Kim Jung-Il isn’t exactly a nice guy.
Now let’s ask the question nobody wants to ask:
Is America proceeding inexorably down a path where “the wise guys” – that would be Bernanke, Obama, Geithner – have such a plan “in their back pocket” if the dollar should happen to decline precipitously? If the market refuses to buy bonds and they can’t finance spending $1.5 trillion more than they take in via taxes?
Remember, Henry Paulson had drawn up the “TARP/EESA” plan in his back pocket six months before he locked Congress in a room one dark September night in 2008 and used it to extort $700 billion of taxpayer money to bail out the banksters on Wall Street, coordinating that with $11 trillion more of Fed and Treasury “commitments.” He lied about it being a “necessary immediate response” to an ”unforeseen” circumstance - the truth is that he drew up his evil plan and then waited for an appropriate time when he could ramrod it through Congress under threat of martial law.
I’m sure you think it won’t happen again, right? We got “change” in November of 2008, yes?
ARE YOU SURE, CONSIDERING THAT YOU ARE ON THE HOOK FOR THE $12 TRILLION THAT THEY MANAGED TO STEAL THE FIRST TIME?
If such a plan was in place the winning strategy would be to take every possible dollar in credit you could – all of it – and intentionally default. If they do something like this you win huge.
If you don’t do it – even if you’re nominally rich right now – you’re broke.
Given how obstructionist, intentionally deceitful and opaque The Federal Reserve and Treasury have been up until now, how certain are you they wouldn’t try something like this?
Something to think about, and for those who say that no government would do something like that, remember this: In North Korea, they just did.
PS: No, gold won’t save you if that sort of thing happens.
Martin Armstrong – The Sum of All Fears, A Great Depression…
This paper was written before Thanksgiving and a handwritten note from Martin to Kris (who publishes his papers on Scribd), tells her of his learning that he was to be transferred. Thank goodness we stopped that. I now understand that he has written a thank-you note to all of us for helping as he is most appreciative… I’ll post that once I get it.
In this paper, Martin lays out his case that Depressions are complex beasts that you cannot measure just in stock market movement. He correctly points out that equity markets tend to recover long before the real economy, and his prediction is that we will go on to see new overall highs in our markets and that 2007 was not the final high in this bull market.
That one statement opposes the Elliott Wave experts I follow, I’ll just leave that there. While Martin talks about the complexities of international trade, he does not tell us what even the largest considerations are and thus we are left to guess at what he means. He is absolutely correct that there are many myths such as interest rates going down means stocks go up, etc. As he has pointed out before, it is the flow of capital that one must consider. For example, as interest rates rise, money flows away from bonds and will wind up going somewhere else in the short term, that somewhere can be equities.
What leaves me somewhat empty from this conversation is the role that debt and our current money system play in it. Our money now comes into existence as a debt bearing instrument. We had more than two times the per capita debt as compared to the Great Depression going into this one, and that ratio is not substantially improving, while governmental debt is in an exponential growth phase. We also now have a shadow banking world and terrible statistics to consider. While I can see monetizing forcing the price of equities higher, the prospect of creating enough money along with the accompanying debt sounds daunting to say the least. He talks of how a new money system shifted a cycle, well, I see a new system coming as the current one is not mathematically destined to remain much longer. That is not opinion, I can prove the math at least 3 different ways. No currency has been invented yet that repeals the laws of math.
I enjoy Martin’s writing for the mental processes it creates, and hope you will use it to strengthen your conceptual base… By the way, I would love to see some real science done on the economy as Martin suggests, I do believe that certain modeling is possible and would be very beneficial to our conceptual understanding.
GM's Fritz Henderson Stepping Down
Talk about a brief tenure. Guess today’s GM numbers were not all that hot after all. Is Steve Rattner the replacement? Or maybe the President himself can put in some private sector time (oh wait GM is publicly owned now too, nevermind).
More news: AP reported that CEO “Fritz” Henderson will resign and that board chairman Ed Whitacre will take over on an interim basis.Earlier this afternoon,
Someone’s Gonna Get Murdered
We’ve featured sex here at LOLFed, and drugs, and booze, and today we’re completing the great circle with guns: Goldman Sachs employees have taken to arming themselves against possible populist uprisings.
“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.
Yes, this is what it has come to. Bankers are so hated that some are carrying guns in case they find themselves on the street and it starts to go down. This is actually kind of confusing because, you know, in New York it’s kind of hard to get a concealed carry permit, which means that for this to work the angry mob would have to either follow bankers to their homes or appear en masse at GS HQ, stop at the security desk and ask which office their intended target is in…the whole thing would look a lot like the end of The Blues Brothers, honestly.
Goldman employees…think about this for a moment. You work for one of the nation’s most hated institutions. You’re pretty unpopular already. But one of the few things Goldman has not yet been accused of is actually killing someone. Do you really want to be the one to break that long and storied tradition of not killing someone? That’s a guaranteed way to get your bonus chopped down to five figures, mister.
And everyone else…look. It’s okay to quietly taunt Goldman employees from a respectable distance, it’s maybe even okay to leave angry notes taped to the front door. But don’t go threatening them, they were once human beings and there may yet be a little of that goodness still inside them. You’ve already made some of them go out and buy pistols that they have NO idea how to handle, and they’re just going to shoot their boys off the first time they go to pull it out of their waistbands. We’d say that’s more than enough damage.
Where's The Breaking Point?
Where’s The Breaking Point?
This is a serious question to all readers of The Market Ticker.
Where is your personal breaking point?
No, I’m not asking how far you have to be pushed before you “go postal” and commit random acts of violence. That’s not a question to ask in polite company, even though for virtually everyone, there is such a point.
No, I’m asking how much abuse you have to have personally served upon you by the banksters and other scam artists in this country before you have had enough, and start doing unto the other guy – because he has done you.
Banks no longer even pretendThe one silver lining is that the public is finally seeing how devious and untrustworthy credit card lenders truly are. When issuers limited themselves to beating up on folks with bad credit, it was too easy for the rest of us to dismiss their foul tactics as business as usual. Now that the schoolyard bullies are going after everyone, the need for putting restraints on the industry is ever more obvious.
Really?
We tried asking the government – that is, the law – to intervene. The Fed was supposed to be the guardian of the system, remember? The government and Fed both refused, bowing instead to the den of vipers and thieves.
It is therefore up to us as citizens to make a decision on our own as to whether we will allow such conduct to stand.
How many of you will, in response to “rate jack” letter announcing your credit card now carries a 29.9% interest rate, when you are not a deadbeat, choose to intentionally charge that card up to the rafters and then mail the bank a picture of your middle finger instead of a check?
How many of you will, when given a “trial” modification on your mortgage that the bank refuses to convert in good faith to a REAL modification plan, will simply stop paying entirely, but NOT leave the house – force ‘em to file the foreclosure and eviction notice, and live for free in your home until they do? You will probably be able to stay in your house FOR A YEAR OR MORE, since the bank doesn’t want to ADMIT to the extent of THEIR loss!
How many?
Is this sort of action, if you choose to engage in it, ”honest and fair dealing”? Hell no. It might even expose you to a lawsuit, although it’s damn hard to get blood from a stone and when you’re unemployed exactly who do they think they’re trying to fool with their threats of suing to collect their debt?
Is rate-jacking millions of credit card customers in bad faith knowing full well that the law is changing in February “honest and fair dealing”? No.
Is refusing to process your HAMP modification – and don’t tell me they lost your paperwork when it was disclosed yesterday that not one permanent modification has been completed - “honest and fair dealing”? Hell no.
So explain this to me America.
Why are you dealing in good faith – and honestly – with a group of thugs who have demonstrated time and time again that they will screw you at every opportunity?
Why should you act with honor and integrity when they will not?
This isn’t just my opinion. It’s the opinion of a judge in NY too:
Inequitable. Unconscionable. Vexatious. Opprobrious.
These are just a few of the choice words a New York state judge used to describe the behavior of Indymac in a decision in which he wiped out the $292,500 sub-prime mortgage owed by a homeowner to the bank.
What are you afraid of? Being foreclosed on? You’re already going to lose your house. May as well make the best of it while you can – why give them what you can, when you know where it ends? These people have proved they are dealing in bad faith to my satisfaction – have they not proved it to yours?
Yes, you should get accounting and legal advice before you do things like this. There can be consequences, even if only a ruined credit rating and pestering phone calls. In some cases, especially if you have lots of assets you haven’t and can’t shield, the risks could be material. So get that advice and figure out exactly how far you can go and what the consequences might be for you, in your personal situation.
The fact is that I can no longer, with a straight face, tell people they should “live to their obligations if they are able.”
Not any more.
That implied part of the social contract only works when both sides of the bargain are acting in good faith in the main, and it is the rare exception to the rule when someone is behaving badly.
When you have a group of corporate oligarchs that will bankrupt you with wild abandon, selling you whatever they can get you to buy even though they know you can’t possibly pay, then screw you in every possible way even when ordered not to by the government (while the government refuses to step up and start prosecuting these clowns, insisting instead that you just bend over and take it) it is my considered opinion that your obligation to behave honorably has been rendered void.
I’ll change my opinion when the bankster executives have their bonuses clawed back all the way to 2003, they are locked up, and their businesses have been dispersed and closed.
Some sins, such as Catholic Priests playing “hide the sausage” with little boys in the Rectory, are in my opinion unforgivable.
What has gone on over the last several years when it comes to consumer abuse by financial institutions, and their utter refusal to repent and stop it, places them in this category.
As such The Market Ticker will no longer advocate that you do the honorable thing, as there is no honor among thieves.
It is my considered opinion from this day forward that you should therefore exploit every lawful and stretchy-lawful means at your disposal to screw any financial institution to the maximum lawful extent.
To do otherwise is to consent to their repetitive acts of violation, and I cannot call what I’ve seen over the last two years “financial sex”.
I am compelled to call it what it is: financial rape.
proudly supports:
Bill Still For President
for Congress
Michigan 11th District
By Bill Still
There is only one answer for the world economic situation; monetary reform.
1. No More National Debt
2. No More Fractional Lending
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