If you are not getting yours, you are paying for theirs.
In the Mood: Moody's sees a global 15% default rate on all but the most highly rated bonds, rising to 19% in European bonds.
Home Grown: Every time you eat a tomato - especially that decorative bit of red on your hamburger - you have helped continue the virtual enslavement of the person who picked it. As usual, 'cheap and plentiful' - sneakers, dolls, clothing, tomatoes - has an unseen human cost.
Won't-drawal: In the next 19 months, American troops are withdrawing from Iraq. Except for the 50,000 that aren't. I've used the same approach to quitting smoking for the last 14 years.
OUCH! The US now acknowledges that 4Q08 GDP fell at an annual 6.2% rate, 60% worse than the initial guess of only 3.8%.
Sanity Patrol: The Administration intends to repeal the viciously silly Bush era rule that said the pharmacy clerk got to decide whether you could buy birth control pills or a condom.
Missing: Used house prices and sales are both falling, yet the inventory of existing houses on the market has also fallen. Part of this missing inventory may be REO houses banks are holding to auction off. The larger bunch must be folks who want to sell, but are holding on in hopes of higher prices. Wish 'em luck.
Contrarian: The economic slowdown is not reducing CO2 emissions. Even if the entire world's GDP fell by 7%, CO2 emissions would only decline about 0.24 ppm from the current nearly 3.0 ppm rate.
Circles: When (or more accurately, if) the global economy recovers, the demand for oil will increase and the oil supply will lag demand. This will cause the price of oil to rise sharply, which will increase the cost of goods and services, killing the revival. Repeat until exhausted.
Solidarity: The crowd chanted: "Government policy ... only burdens workers, the unemployed and the poor." This happened in: (a) Ireland, (b) Greece, (c) Latvia, (d) Detroit, or (e) all of the above.
Simple Subtraction: $162,000 - $125,000 = ?
No Better Time: It is always a good time to buy either real estate or equities, if you ask those in the business. Research analysts think S&P earnings growth will be over 20% in 2009. In that they also expect non-financials to tank 14% all the eggs seem to be in the basket labeled BofA, C, JPM & the like.
In Summation: From a Jimmy Rogers interview: ..We're going to have social unrest in much of the world. America won't be immune. ...in the past, when people have printed huge amounts of money or spent money they didn't have, it has led to higher inflation... that's certainly going to happen again this time.
Parking Problems: Toyota's distribution center for the Nordic countries is full, with 12,500 cars on hand. They've leased a ship and are parking 2,500 more on it, in hopes the Easter Bunny will buy them come spring.
Just In Time: A Shell oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico that was damaged by Hurricane Ike last year will resume operations in April, just in time for the 2009 hurricane season.
Porn O'Graph: What's happening in the margins?
4 comments:
Jim Rogers has it right. This doesn't end well. The regular folks will finally get how screwed they were when they need to bring a wheelbarrow to buy a loaf of bread. Then the phrase "There will be blood" will have a greater meaning than a movie title.
RBM
Thanks again for the good work on this. It is a daily read and I very much appreciate it.
I guess that I do take some issue with the "viciously silly" rule comment.
I will be first in line in the deprecation of the Bush administration. No hard task there.
But this is fairly straightforward. There is no constitutional requirement for you to sell something you do not wish to sell. That rule merely stated that a pharmacist who did not wish to sell birth control pills or condoms did not have to do so.
If the customer wished to buy such, they may simply go to another store. There are many other stores to fulfill these needs.
To insist a person sell something that is contrary to their beliefs is a serious infringement to their personal conscience.
I will however agree that that if they refuse to sell a specific drug and/or product it must be across the board with the same ban applied to all customers.
GDP Numbers and Such- That was no guess, everyone from Barry to Mish to Yyves commented on how those numbers 'didn't seem right' given the economic slaughter that preceeded. The great gubbmint statistics kitchen has been busy as ever trying to cover the real numbers. 15% unemployment and national bankruptcy make the electorate kinda cranky!!
Tulsa - When dealing with the government and given a choice between incompetence and conspiracy, I tend to go with incompetence.
ckm
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