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The situation is fueling concerns that property developers won't be able to refinance roughly $400 billion in commercial real estate debt coming due this year. Property values have plunged about 24% since their peak in 2007...
American International Group Inc., the insurer bailed our four times by the government, will likely have no valule left for private shareholders after repaying the US, Citigroup Inc. said. "Our valuation includes a 70 percent chance
He likened the first $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress to "half a tablet of Viagra and then having also a bunch of candy mixed in --- it doesn't have really quite the wallop."
But now, it has passed its spending peak. This occurred in 2005-06, at the very top of the housing bubble. The average age of the baby-boomer demographic cohort was then 50, which is the age of top spending.
Legendary investor Warren Buffett said unemployment could hit 11% and a second stimulus package might be needed as the economy struggles to recover from recession.
Buffett, the billionaire founder of Berkshire Hathaway, said Americans suffered "a shock to the system" from the economic difficulties in the final quarter of last year but had started to rebound.
Households and businesses around the Valley filed 2,294 bankruptcy applications last month, up 105 percent from June 2008 and the highest count so far this year.
The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending June 27 was 6,883,000, an increase of 159,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 6,724,000.
Walmart stopped reporting their numbers. Gee, do you have to wonder why? They've got one of the best internal systems in existence for tracking who's spending and how much on what.
Almost four months after it was first announced, the Treasury
Department late Wednesday rolled out a scaled-back version of its
long-awaited plan to purchase jointly with the private sector bad
mortgage-based assets plaguing the nation's banks.
The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits last week fell to lowest level since early January, largely due to changes in the timing of auto industry layoffs. Continuing claims, meanwhile, unexpectedly jumped to a record-high. While layoffs are slowing, unemployed workers are having a difficult time finding new jobs.
What's the best way to express just how bad the job market is? You could look at the soaring unemployment rate, or perhaps the ever-shortening work week. How about this: Total nonfarm payrolls, notes economist James Hamilton, are now back to where they were in mid 2000
The Obama administration on Wednesday said it strongly opposed
legislation in the U.S. Congress that would restrict its ability to
respond to future financial crises through the International Monetary
Fund.
While this is all happening, the reality of prime mortgages going under water and defaulting as a business decision is been slowly rammed home. I posted six months ago that this must not happen. The sub prime disaster has over loaded the housing market and destroyed bank capital curtailing their ability to lend. The only solution is to make that inventory disappear and abruptly shrink the market. Because it is now devaluing housing backed by prime mortgages and giving the owners a business decision.
[E]veryone — employers, employees, and
consumers — was benefitting, which is what a free market is all about.
Then, along comes the federal government and accomplishes what it is
best at: destruction, misery, and suffering.
Now, wasn’t that a wonderful result?
Think about it: Here’s a company that ostensibly is privately owned.
Its money supposedly belongs to it. It decides to use its own money to
hire people who are willing to work there. Both the employer and the
employees benefit from the exchange. We know this to be true because
otherwise they wouldn’t have both entered into the deal. The company
serves consumers by providing them with meat products that they’re
willing to pay for.
Like I say, destruction, misery, and
suffering — it ought to be imprinted as a motto on business cards carried by federal officials.
Cashin reiterated his belief that another government stimulus package would be useless — because the first package was "part illusion, part hoax." And now that the economy's problems seem to be continuing," he said
Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale.
By adding these folks back in, John William's SGS-Alternate Unemployment Measure rose to a jaw-dropping 20.6%. Separately, the Center for Labor Market Studies in Boston puts U.S. unemployment at 18.2%
California "IOU" recipients can turn to credit unions and check-cashing
storefronts if a state budget deal does not appear by Friday and if
three major banks refuse to accepting the notes beyond Friday as
planned, analysts said on Tuesday.
July 7 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. should consider drafting a second stimulus package focusing on infrastructure projects because the $787 billion approved in February was “a bit too small,” said Laura Tyson, an outside adviser to President Barack Obama.
The current plan “will have a positive effect, but the real economy is a sicker patient,” Tyson said in a speech in Singapore today. The package will have a more pronounced impact in the third and fourth quarters, she added, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not the administration.
Tyson’s comments contrast with remarks made two days ago by Vice President Joe Biden and fellow Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee, who said it was premature to discuss crafting another stimulus because the current measures have yet to fully take effect. The government is facing criticism that the first package was rolled out too slowly and failed to stop unemployment from soaring to the highest in almost 26 years.
May be an enjoyable workout, might also catch on as people continue to believe the economy is sinking and they can't do anything about it. Too bad they are wrong! The American economy is strong, the American worker is a hard worker that t
Read Letter
I don't see the leverage coming back, and I don't see the consumption of good and services coming back. Bryan Marsal, CEO of Lehman Brothers Holdings. This CNBC interview gets interesting at the 18 min. mark...
“We need to be open to whether or not we need additional action” to stimulate the U.S. economy, House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer told reporters today in Washington.
“The number one driver of delinquencies is job losses, which we’ve seen build and build,” James Chessen, of the American Bankers Association.
Soaring U.S. unemployment and a shrinking economy drove delinquencies on credit card debt and home equity loans to all-time highs in the first quarter as a record number of cash-strapped consumers fell behind on their bills.
Delinquencies on the value of all card debt soared to a record 6.60 percent from 5.52 percent in the fourth quarter as more cardholders relied on plastic to meet day-to-day expenses, the American Bankers Association said.
Three part video series from youtube user pensacotti describing the Federal Reserve, the increase in money supply, and a history of past inflationary countries.
"People will finally accept that the unemployment rates will have to keep rising, that productivity will have to keep falling," he added. That in turn will make earnings expectations "fall through the floor."
Global warming is based 100% on junk science. The most vocal promoters
are not interested in the details of physical science. They are
interested in two things: political control over the general public and
the establishment of international socialism.
The dollar and U.S. Treasuries are both likely to slide as soaring government debt in the world’s biggest economy undermines confidence in its assets, according to Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings.
“The government is printing lots of money and borrowing even more; that’s not the basis for a sound currency,” he said in a telephone interview today from Singapore. “The idea that anybody would lend money to the U.S. government for 30 years at 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 percent interest is mind-boggling to me.”
When the TARP money finally runs out and bank failures actually accelerate, it will be difficult or even impossible to convince the American public to fund another massive bailout party.
The group of banks included Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., among others.
