SAR #9157/ Weekender

Let’s make some more history.

Never Again: No bank should be allowed to pay back TARP without paying back all of the taxpayer money it received covertly through AIG and Bear Stearns. or what has been received through AIG and Bear Stearns. In that the prime motive for getting out of TARP seems to be so the executives can go back to the trough and escape adult supervision, no bank that has repaid TARP should ever - regardless of future circumstance - ever receive another dime of public money.

More Questions: Why is Wall Street so clueless? Why buy shares in companies whose executives are dumping the same stock as fast (and secretively) as they can? Are stocks a good long term investment? Where are the customer's yachts?

The Pay Off : US consumer credit fell by $15.7 billion in April, an annualized 7.4% rate, close to March's record $16.6 billion drop. Over the last six months consumer credit has dropped at a 6.6% pace. Consumer spending used to make up nearly 70% of the US economy.

Quoted: "Good news for a few of those men who are among the 9.4% 9.8% that are unemployed. Brothels -- battered by the weak economy and the slump in demand -- are hiring men, hoping to open up a new market among women clientèle."

No Comment: "Bank of America Wins Right To Seize Social Security Benefits To Pay Overdraft Fees"

Last Word #736: A physicist in Islamabad writes in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that in the next 5 years Pakistan will not break up, the military will not take over, sharia will not be proclaimed and its nukes will be perfectly safe. Others give it six months or so before anarchy or the Taliban - or first the one and then the other - take over. I dropped out of Political Science in grad school because it was not a science and the instructors were innocent of politics.

Birth/Death & Jobs: BLS data showed the US shed 345,000 jobs in May, way below the 520,000 expected numbers. April's report was revised to 504,000 jobs lost. The jobless rate rose to 9.4%. There are about 38 million unemployed, counted and uncounted (U-6). Jesse has a good discussion and some great charts.

Dueling Headlines: "Crude Oil Floating Storage Falls As Crude Rallies" vs. "Oil Stored On Tankers Is Up 71% Since April" Or "BlackRock’s Rice Says Oil Shares May Double as Crude Climbs" vs "Crude Oil May Fall as U.S. Fuel Demand Declines"

Roughly: The Cloud Appreciation Society reports finding a new type of cloud, Asperatus, a dramatic storm cloud formed from much condensed water vapor. The energies required to generate such clouds are thought to be the result of global warming. It looks, if you insist, somewhat like the surface of a choppy sea seen from below.

I Could'a Said: “The extent to which we are overextended is appalling. Under the best case scenario, the US can sustainably support less than 20% of our existing population." And that's if the remaining 20% would consume at less than 20% of our current standard of living.

Short Story: Big banks say they're profitable now. Changes to accounting rules and a flowering of rosy assumptions about the future are masking huge loan loses the banks will be forced to lie about in future quarters. Too bad the stress test didn't test for truthiness.

Yard Sale: The FDIC, in shuttering 37 banks so far this year, has ended up with a pantry full of questionable loans. In March they sold off $218 million worth at 46 cents on the dollar, in April they sold $177 million worth at 60 cents on the dollar.

Porn O'Graph: Continuing Unemployment and new claims.