aldol

Nine Indicators of a Second Wave in Economic Slump

would you care to substantiate your forecast?


On Dec 21 12:23 PM Stone Fox Capital wrote:

> 2011 earnings are expected to hit $95 or a 11 PE on the SP500. Stocks
> are cheap based on PE

Recovery on Track: Buy Equities, Sell Bonds

too much coolaid?

Obama's Brilliant 'Jobs Summit' Move

you may be surprised to see that over the . next few months your straight line fitting your data becomes a reverse U .
cool aid anyone?

Why the Stock Market Should Crash

musical chairs anyone?


On Nov 16 01:55 PM dhjoe wrote:

> Question is "do you want to be right or do you want to make money?"
> - I chose the latter.

What if U.S. Social Fabric Tears?

In a socialist society the bottom 20% become the bottom 95%, if you get my meaning


On Nov 09 12:12 PM ChickenLips wrote:

> Human history tells us this: the world is run by the rich for the
> rich. What else is new? The rich have all their wealth tied up in
> corporations. Corporations don't pay taxes because they get to deduct
> everything as an operating expense. Congress made that possible.
>
>
> I don't see the argument that we live in a socialist economy. If
> we did, we wouldn't have the widespread misery that we encounter
> on a daily basis. Massive unemployment, declining wages and benefits:
> these don't usually go hand in hand with socialism. But they do go
> in hand with a capitalist economy run amock.
>
> We need to make sure that EVERYBODY pays their fair share of taxes.
> You can't maintain a high standard of living if we keep issuing tax
> cuts while shifting jobs overseas. We are starting to feel the results
> of these bad fiscal policies, tax revenues to maintain our roads
> and schools are gone.

Cap and Trade Would Sink the U.S. Economy

personal attacks are a sure way to lose credibility


On Oct 29 09:32 AM CoolChapRaghu wrote:

> you are a f***ing ba@#$%d ... ever gave a thought about the carbon
> that america puts into mother nature's atmosphere?? ... ever tried
> to read about global warming ??? first give a thought and read about
> them and later we will listen to your obama hatred and republican
> brand trumpeting

GDP Is 'Better'

Data from this blog are pretty compelling. This administration may end up contributing to a crisis of major proportions.
I am hopeful that, in the final analysis, the result of the crisis will ultimately be the cleaning up of corruption within the political class and the re-dimensioning of the relative weights of the rent exacting sectors of the economy versus the sectors that add true value.
Although cleaning up corruption seems to be a task of unimaginable complexity, it may be, in fact relatively easy.
Perhaps simple solutions such as a corruption czar and a line item veto, can accomplish the unthinkable.
Let's see what the Va and NJ races will tell us about voters sentiment .

House Prices Declined 'Unexpectedly' in August

The Christian Science Monitor is, in my view, way better than most European trashy sheets

V-Shaped Recovery? Try M-Shaped Meltdown

I moved myself my family and my factory out of NYS and to Fl in 1994.
NYS was already a royal mess then under Cuomo.
i know because I had volunteered for the Unpaid job as CEO of the association of small manufacturers for 14 counties upstate NY. As such i had regular meetings with State bureaucrats , including the Governor himself, almost weekly. Those meetings convinced me to move, convinced me that things would only get worse, much worse.
When i got the first power bill for my Florida factory i was pleasantly surprised by the fact that while in NY, as an industrial user of large amounts of electric power i was paying $0.174 /kw-hr to Niagara Mohawk Power Co., in Florida my bill was for $0.035 $/kw-hr to then Florida Power Co.

mind you NYS even had its own energy dept NYSERDA as if the Fed's Dept of Energy were not enough. My guess is that someone had to pay for the State payroll, which had ballooned under Cuomo's two terms from 25,000 to over 120,000 employees.

Bottom line, in the fall of 1994, when we moved our factory from NY to Florida, within the spam of a month another 3,000 manufacturing jobs left the two counties of Saratoga and Schenectady. GE moved the small motor dept from Schenectady in part to New Hampshire and in part to North Carolina. Namic a medical manufacturer moved to Arizona , US Glove instead closed its doors for good and, as for us, we moved to sunny Florida.
Want to know about real estate prices in rural NYS?
they are low because of lack of demand ( read population) but property taxes are certainly not. We have employees that moved with the company from NY to Fl and have family left in NY.
they are telling stories of paying $4,000/year in property taxes in Olean NY on a house that had recently been bought for $40,000.


On Aug 17 10:24 AM Mike Kane wrote:

> Tony, yes, very well said as a business owner there is no incentive
> to hire anyone. My business is located in New York City. What incentive
> does anyone have to start a business here? All your money goes to
> the city, state, and federal government, and it is almost impossible
> to hire anyone with all the regulation.

The U.S. Economy Doesn't Look Too Bright

Many are asking when will America acknowledge that the emperor has no clothes?
Indications are that more and more people are willing to stick their neck out and say so.
I made the prediction at the end of February 2009, when Obama had been in the job for about a month, that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank and Dodd were the best possible help that the GOP could ever hope for.
I do also agree with the comments by Jackson relative to the IQ of the competition.
In fact, last February i added that, given the low intellectual horse power and the high level of arrogance of this administration, Obama would likely end up being the end of affirmative action as we know it and the end of the democratic party stronghold on key voting groups as we know it to be as of recent times.


On Aug 17 02:23 PM The Geoffster wrote:

> I live in a majority African American city where the politicians
> deem any criticism of their policies to be racist. Most of the criticism
> is grounded in anti corruption and anti socialism but politicians
> will use any disingenuous argument at their disposal. The debate
> should be centered on the merits of the proposal, of course, but
> it shall never be thus. The problem with capitalism is the losers
> it leaves behind. The problem with socialism is it makes us all losers.

Despite What Cramer Said, Housing Has Not Bottomed

i share Karl's view on this matter. In my opinion hard data point to a very different outcome than the one is spun daily by Washington and by the media with increasingly shrilling tones.
What i find to be bizarre is that they make projections that are likely to blow up on their face in the very short term. I am inclined to think that these folks, who make such absurd short term forecasts, do in fact believe their own BS. It must be a product of either sheer incompetence or of bad faith. Neither one would surprise me coming out of Washington, but hearing it on a major national network is disturbing.

CNBC's Taleb: We Aren’t Heading in the Right Direction

i share your views, as i am numbers man. in my opinion numbers point to a very different outcome than what is spun by Washington and by the media with increasingly shrilling tones.
what i find bizarre is that the house of cards cannot but collapse in the very short term. therefore i am inclined to think that these folks, who make such absurd forecasts, do in fact believe their own BS. if that is the case the level of incompetence in the financial industry has got to a sad new height,

Why GDP Stats Are Still Ugly

i think that banks are in the long process of writing off bad assets.
This process is likely to take a long time, as the market price of the assets will come down to the level of their true " economic value".
The fact that the current book values of so many assets, are still so far off their economic values, for both stocks , residential and commercial real estate, makes me believe that the price adjustment process needs to be somewhat slowed down. From a precipitous rate to a manageable rate of decline, in order to avoid a snowballing effect for bankruptcies within both the financial industry as well as main stream commerce.
Mind you the scenario that we are experiencing in the US is repeated in Europe as well as in Asia. In fact there it is compounded by the loss of the biggest customer for their goods , the American consumer.
As for predictions of when this economic retrenchment will end. I can only suggest that all those who make predictions relative to this unprecedented crisis, are not to be taken too seriously.
As the retrenchment becomes chronic, behaviors will change and predictions will become even more difficult.

Why House Prices Will Resume Their Fall

this reality would have been obvious to any one who wanted to recognize it.
as housing cost is a large contributor to the cpi the low published cpi data conflicted with the rising housing costs

U.S. Economic Woes Are Home Grown: Just Ask Arnold

stimulus packages simply shifts money from private industry to public finances.
hitherto results in chocking the economy and delaying the recovery