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•• Treasury Yield Curve thru Aug 15th ••
U.S. Treasuries
3-Month .15%
6-Month .18%
12-Month .23%
2-Year .53%
3-Year .80%
5-Year 1.45%
7-Year 2.06%
10-Year 2.67%
30-Year 3.86%
Inflation Indexed Treasury
5-Year .06%
10-Year .98%
20-Year 1.59%
30-Year 1.78%
National Municipal Bond Yields
2-Year 0.33%
5-Year 1.25%
7-Year 1.92%
10-Year 2.66%
15-Year 3.65%
20-Year 4.02%
30-Year 4.31%
•• National Mortgage Rates thru Aug 15th ••
30 Yr Fixed 4.52%
15 Yr Fixed 3.95%
30 Yr Fixed Jumbo 5.39%
15 Yr Fixed Jumbo 4.94%
3/1 ARM 4.41%
5/1 ARM 3.51%
7/1 ARM 3.71%
10/1 ARM 4.05%
3/1 ARM (I/O) 4.75%
5/1 ARM (I/O) 3.53%
7/1 ARM (I/O) 3.95%
•• Business Closings (~133) Aug 1st thru Aug 15th ••
August 15 , 2010
Ashley Furniture Home Store in Bozeman Montana
Norma’s North Star Cafe IL
2
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August 14 , 2010
A to Z market in Hurricane
Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum Closing Temp?
The Music Room
PW Markets Closing its 7 Stores
Priority Care facility in Quentin Circle PA
Frogtown Books in Toledo Ohio
Tri-County Counseling Center in Jerseyville IL
Rice Community Center in KS
The XL Beef plant in Moose Jaw ( International )
9
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August 13 , 2010
Update: Great Outdoor Clothing Co. in Downtown Steamboat Springs
Bargain Box in Downtown Freeport
Wild Violets , Pride of Nations and Beyond Lighting
Pizza Factory in Yerington NV?
Professional Veterinary Products Ltd plans to Close York County Location
Americké Listy, a leading Czech-language newspaper in the United States
Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co Closing 25 Stores
Update: Target Closing all 262 Garden Centers Nationwide
The Salvation Army thrift store and warehouse in Cheyenne WY
Perfect Fit Industries Closing Loogootee Indiana Plant -95 Jobs Lost
Allenfall Clothing Store in Downtown Duluth
Thermo Fisher Scientific Closing Rhode Island Facility
Wyoming Children’s Museum and Nature Center
Sparrows Point steel mill in Baltimore County Up for Sale, Plan to Idle Operations
Loblaw Companies Ltd to Close Halifax Distribution ( International ) - 115 Jobs Lost
Century 21 Closing its Door in Dixon
Parker Paint in Port Angeles WA
17
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August 12, 2010
Three part-time satellite courthouses on the Big Island Hawaii
Blue Moon Market on Clifford Street in Exeter NH
A Michelin Aircraft Tire Co. facility in Kansas City - 75 Jobs Lost
Update: 13 out of 15 tourist information centers in Illinois
Shade Clothing in Utah
Tate-Porter GM Dealership in Ripley WV - 35 Jobs Lost
Going Hardware in Holiday Island Arkansas
Chain Link Addiction, a Goth and rock clothing store in Lakewood Ohio
Pizza Hut in Parma ?
Denim brand Evisu Shutting down NY Office, Back to Hong Kong
Special Days Cards and Gifts ( International )
Silvert's Furniture in Freehold NJ
Treasures 4 Teachers to Close Supply Center
Rockin’ Ham Bar & Grille in Davenport IA Closing Becoming a Parking Lot
Luke's Record Exchange in Pawtucket RI
The Learning Tree Academy child care center in Arvada CO
Z Galleries on Pine Avenue in Long Beach CA
Baja 600 at 600 Ward Parkway
Tattoo Charlie’s of Kentucky Closing Berry Boulevard Store
19
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August 11, 2010
Smead Manufacturing announced plans to close its McGregor facility - 139 Jobs Lost
The Roasted Bean in Santa Ynez CA
HL2 Ad Agency
The Save-A-Lot store at 15265 S. Dixie Hwy. in Monroe Township MI
Randy’s Quilt Shop in Greensboro NC
Update: Quad Graphics in Dyersburg to Close in Nov, Vs Feb 2011
Benton County to Close Special Divorce Court
The Safeway warehouse in South Burnaby ( International )
E.E. Forbes Piano Company
Forty Winks Sleep Shoppe and Furniture in Olathe
Artifacts Fine Furniture in Hyannis
The Colony Beach & Tennis Resort in FL
12
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August 10 , 2010
S.M. Whitney Co in Augusta Georgia
Clothes2Work
Plymouth builder Jim Pankow Inc
Dean Foods Closing PET Diary Plant in Florence
Rosauers Supermarkets, Inc in Deer Park Washington
Northern Pipe Products Closing Facility in Hampton - 8 Jobs Lost
The Boat Doctor, at 708 S.W. Boulevard in Vineland NJ
Continental Structural Plastics in North Balitmore
Cabrillo Lanes Bowling Alley in Watsonville CA
FWC Trucking company in Campbell VA - 75 Jobs
LostKiss My Bundt Bakery in LA CA
The Anchorage Centre on St Cuthbert’s Lane in Anchorage ( International )
The Chelsea Art Museum in New York may close
13
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August 9 , 2010
Fortune Cat Games Studio ( International )
Norfolk-based Joint Forces Command JFCOM - Possibly Closing - 5,000 Jobs at risk
China Closes 2,000 Factories in Crackdown on Energy Use
Bob Evans Farms to Close its food production facility in Galva
Superpetz is closing 2 Alabama Stores
Cold War Shooters gun shop in El Paso Texas
Mr. Ritts bakery in Millville NJ - Closing Retail Location, Going Online
All But 3 Baltimore Pools to Close
8
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August 8 , 2010
0
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August 7 , 2010
More Orange Beach Alabama Businesses to Close??
Piccadilly Cafeteria at Merritt Square Mall.
The pool at Mt. Pisgah State Park to Close for Year, due to Budget Constrains
Chrysler Group's Kenosha factory - 575 Jobs Lost
Portsmouth Ohio 17th Street Fire Department
5
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August 6 , 2010
The Seekonk Showcase Theater in Seekonk Mass.
Anne Klein is closing its only Hawaii store at the Waikele Premium Outlets
A&H Building Materials
Best Sellers BookStore in Palos Heights
Twisted Martini is closing at The Jacksonville Landing on Saturday
Update: LifeWise Health Plans of Oregon Closing Bend Oregon Office - 11 Jobs Lost
Saltus Press Worchester Print Shop
Cafe Zao in Downtown Pittsburgh
Connecticut Memories Store in CT
St. Robert’s Catholic Church in Chittenden VT
Camden NJ Considering Closing all 3 Libraries
Carson RV
12
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August 5 , 2010
Ruby Tuesday in Bloomington
Update: The Ingersoll Rand plant in northeast Bradford County
New York City’s Off-Track Betting Corp to Close 11 Parlors
Made in Windsor on Ottawa Street ( International )
Lexington Slone's Signature Market
Vanity Fair Brands LP Closing 1 warehouses in Monroeville Alabama - 68 Jobs Lost
Power Products Systems Closing Hagerstown Factory on Oct 31
Cappiello Brothers Jewelers Inc in Ridgefield CT
Hilton Hotels will close its Hemet reservations center
9
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August 4 , 2010
Boodles Restaurant in Wilmington NC
Wi-Fi in Kirksville MO Closed?
B&W Food Farm in Chester MT
Avoyelles Café in Louisiana
CEP Miller, ALA Bartram, ALA Hunting Park, ALA South Philadelphia Schools in Philadelphia
Tool Time Paint & Hardware in Fargo ND
The Wyndham Garden Hotel and Baymont Inn and Suites on Piedmont Avenue in Atlanta GA
Stallions Steakhouse in Opelousas
The Fazoli's restaurant in Winter Haven FL
La Pizza House in Des Monies IA - 40 Jobs Lost
Warehouse Video in Big Bear City CA
Garden City Cinemas ( International )
Whidbey Island Volkswagen Mazda in Oak Harbor
Helser Chevrolet in Red Bluff CA
Children’s Closet Family Consignment in the Columbia
15
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August 3 , 2010
Shirley's Soul Food Dine in St Petersburg FL
Talbots Closing Spokane Location
Alcan Cable manufacturing plant in Roseburg, Ore
Essential Therapy on West End Tenn.
Northrop Grumman Corp. will close its Tallulah shipyard - 95 Jobs Lost
Muddy Creek Wine Company in North Coralville
The Micco Volunteer Fire Department FL
Premier Bank has closed its Denver headquarters
Kinks, Quirks and Caffeine, a coffee shop and art gallery in James City
Fiskars Brands Inc Closing Wausau Milwaukee Facility - 51 Jobs Lost
Country Hearth Inn & Suites in Memphis Tenn.
Wilbun's Supermarket in Appomattox VA
12
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August 2 , 2010
Ivy H. Smith Co. LLC Closing 2 Facilities - 107 Jobs Lost
Artemis Restaurant
The Melting Pot Restaurant in Idaho
3r Living in Maplewood
Zimbrick of Rockford
5
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August 1 , 2010
Funk's Farm Market in Lancaster PA
Prehistoric Forest Amusement Park in / Marblehead Port Clinton Ohio
Update: The Showcase and The Quarry in Port Angeles WA
Update: Seattle Homeless Shelter Network closing 11 Shelters by end of next week
ShenSpa in Woodstock
5
•• Bankruptcy (~26) Aug 1st thru Aug 15th ••
August 15 , 2010
0
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August 14 , 2010
Gracious Home
1
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August 13 , 2010
Caribbean Petroleum Corp
1
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August 12, 2010
Albright Trailer Manufacturing LLC
Carroll Properties
Shoreline Grill
Envirologic - Chapter 7
4
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August 11, 2010
Sea Island Co
The Colony Beach & Tennis Club, Ltd
Minigoo Fisheries ( International )
ISE Limited - Chapter 11
4
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August 10 , 2010
Sicel Technologies
1
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August 9 , 2010
Music Service Playlist dot com
The Apple Crate Crafts and Gifts Inc
EMAK Worldwide, Inc
3
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August 8 , 2010
0
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August 7 , 2010
0
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August 6 , 2010
Commonwealth Commons LLC - Chapter 11
Fourth Quarter Properties 166 LLC
2
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August 5 , 2010
Freedom Communications USA - Chapter 11
E-Brands Restaurants LLC
Quality Sign Co
Helser Chevrolet - Chapter 7
4
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August 4 , 2010
FGIC Corp
1
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August 3 , 2010
Mexicana de Aviacion
Arizona Heart Institute
2
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August 2 , 2010
Crossroads Ford Inc
Kolorfusion International, Inc
Park Place Inc - Chapter 11
Vreba-Hoff Dairy
3
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August 1 , 2010
0
•• Layoffs (~137) Aug 1st thru Aug 15th ••
August 15 , 2010
Tucson Unified School District - More Layoffs Possible
New Jersey Legal Services System - 100
Village of Pine Prairie - PD Layoffs
3
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August 14 , 2010
A Washington State University - 3 VP Positions
Trenton NJ - up to 400 Layoffs Coming
Update: The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co - Store Closing will = up to 2,000 Layoffs
Town of Colorado City Texas - 3 or 4
4
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August 13 , 2010
Albion Public Schools Michigan - 6
Update: Teleperformance - 120
PowerTech Corp. ( International ) - Halting some operations, and some layoffs
Moll Industries, Inc in Seagrove NC - 86
APB Developer Realtime World - Layoffs?
Calypso Medical Technologies - 15% of Workforce
Time Warner Cable in Fayetteville - 8
Mars Chocolate North America in Hackettstown - Layoffs, no Number
Birmingham School District - 21
El Camino Hospital - 140
10
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August 12, 2010
Gannett Wisconsin Media in Green Bay - 37
Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione - 18
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire - Warns of Layoffs in all State Agencies
The Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services - 26
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina - 80 to 90
GE Healthcare ( International ) - 150 over Next 3 Years
Update: Barclays Capital - 400 Worldwide
University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s Memphis campus - 33
Golden Harvest Food Bank - 5
The University of Texas - Budget Cuts could = 600 Layoffs
Penta. will cut Thousands of Jobs, Says Gates
Queens NY Libraries - Union Nixes Concessions, Layoffs now Possible
Aviat Networks - Job Cuts , Unknown Number
Suffolk Downs in MA - Job Cuts Possible
City of Hazlet NJ - 3
The Teleperformance customer service call center in Abilene - Job Cuts Expected Friday
Kansas City School District - 175
Buffalo NY Schools - $8 Million in Aid, Might not be Enough to Prevent Layoffs
Grambling State University - Furloughs / Reduced Hours
Callaway Golf Corporation in Chicopee - Cuts in Work Force Coming
The city of Fort Worth's Texas - More Layoffs Coming
20
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August 11, 2010
New Britain Connecticut Schools - 100
Credit Suisse Group AG ( International ) - 75
Riddell Inc. San Antonio Campus - 75
Baptist General Convention of Texas - 6 , and Reduced Hours for others
Eli Lilly in Indianapolis - Planning New Cuts
Energy Conversion Devices - 140
Borders Group HQ - More Layoffs?
Update: NYC MTA - 202 on Friday, and close 44 Token Booths
Eli Lilly and Co Indianapolis - Recent Job Cuts are permanent
Hinds County Mississippi - Considering Employee Furloughs
Update: City of Camden PA - Layoffs Very Likely
Barclay's Capital - Hundreds of Layoffs Coming?
12
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August 10 , 2010
Georgia's Colleges, Universities - More Cuts Coming?
Diversified Information Technologies Inc. - Job Cuts , Unknown Number
CareFusion Corp. - 700
Glatfelter to Outsource 50 Jobs
City of Wichita - 65
Wake County school NC - 9 Possible
President Container Group - 234
International - 15,000 Jobs at risk in Justice Cuts
Quest Aircraft Co - 65
Mary Lanning Memorial Hospital - 37
Buffalo NY School Teachers - 44
Sicel Technologies - Some Job Cuts, No Number
The Longaberger Co - 35 Last Week
Movie Gallery in Tenn. - 483 from May 1 - July 31
Expedia - 167 in Arlington and 129 at Dallas Texas Office
15
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August 9 , 2010
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - 30 Likely
Newport Beach Ca - Layoffs Possible
City of Akron Ohio - up to 218
Update: Gov. Rendell State of PA - Layoffs Could be Less Than 200
Update: City of Neosho Missouri - Job Cuts Likely
New Leaf Tea - Cuts 1/3 of Workforce
Jersey City Free Public Library NJ - Layoffs , and Possible Closures Coming
Little Relief Seen For State and Local Layoffs
Update: Chicago Public Schools - New Budget Includes 1,700 Job Cuts
Tucson Medical Center - Small Number of Layoffs
10
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August 8 , 2010
Chesilhurst NJ - Officer Layoffs Possible
Polk County - 44
The Ocala Domestic Violence Center - 3 Positions
3
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August 7 , 2010
Exel Inc Hershey Distribution Center - 100+
Berkshire County Sheriff's Office MA - 7
Port St Lucie FL - 10 Civilian Workers
3
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August 6 , 2010
Houston's Department of Housing and Community Development - 29
North San Diego County's umbrella tourism group - Layoffs, Unknown Number
WellCare Health Plans Tampa FL - 87
Durand Area Schools - 11
City of Neosho MO - up to 22
El Mirage AZ - 6 Firefighters
Quad Graphics - 2,200 Layoffs and Closing 5 Plants
Ikanos Communications Inc - 115 to 120
City of Romulus MI - 32
Schott Solar - 40 Possible
City of Dallas TX - 500 Layoff Notice Friday
11
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August 5 , 2010
Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield Mass. - 124
Update: Hoboken NJ - 36
The city of Marshall Texas - 15
Lyods ( International ) - Warns of More Job Cuts
Carrollton Texas - 40
Alcoa Inc Ohio Plant - 71
The state Department of Mental Health Boston - Planning to cut 100 Beds, and Significant Layoffs
Borders will outsource work at a customer call center in Rutherford County - 100
Alameda-Contra Costa Transit CA - More Jon Cuts Possible
Nonprofit BETA Center in FL - 11
Smith County Texas - at least 30 Layoffs Possible
11
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August 4 , 2010
NewPage Corporation - Layoffs Likely
High Voltage Software - Reported at least 20, but Unconfirmed
Core-Mark Midcontinent Inc - 104 in Johnstown NY
Update: BAE Systems - 1,000+ at Sealy Location
Ikanos Communications Inc - 20% of Staff
UniCredit SpA Italy Biggest bank - 4,700 Over Next 3 Years
Subprime lender Fremont General Corp - 20 Possible
Saint Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick NJ - 200
Cypress Bioscience Inc - 86% of Workforce or 123 jobs
Siemens Germany - 2,000 IT Positions
Mount Laurel NJ - 14
The Cape Henlopen School District DE - Warns of 22 Possible Job Cuts
Plainridge Racecourse - 160
13
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August 3 , 2010
Huntington Beach CA - 22
City of Grapevine TX - Layoff Possible
Update: QinetiQ Group ( International ) - 325
Sea Ray Boats - 18
Rhode Island's T.F. Green Airport - 22
PSL North America - 300
Cinram Manufacturing Inc in Olyphant PA - 310
Thomas Built Buses - 219 Temp. Layoffs
Gudebrod Inc - Layoffs entire Staff 60-65 , Hopefully its only Temp.
Boeing - 800 in Long Beach
Update: Santa Cruz County CA - 100 Layoffs Likely Friday
APAC Customer Services’ Corpus Christi call center - Major Layoffs Possible
Minnesota State University-Mankato - 12
13
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August 2 , 2010
Applica - 59
Enterprise Leasing Co. of Florida - 67
Lodi NJ - Eliminating Traffic Unit
Camden PA - Layoffs for Officers Possible
Allied Irish Banks Plc ( International ) - up to 2,000
5
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August 1 , 2010
Update: Kane County Health Department - 62 Possible
Springfield Hospital - 6 to 7 RN's
Connecticut Hospitals - More Layoffs Possible in the coming months
Triton Boats - Sold, now 135 Possible Layoffs
4
We are creatures of habit and most people wait until the last minute or until it is too late to do anything about certain situations. History is bound to repeat and Bernanke who is a student of the Great Depression is not following his own depiction of history. Sooner or later banks will most likely close or go bankrupt (at the rate we are going) dollars won't buy you much of anything and millions are out of work. Anarchy is just around the corner.
Causes and Effects of the Great Depression
by Colin S in History
October 19, 2008
The Great Depression started on October 29th 1929, otherwise known as Black Tuesday. It sent the world spiraling down in the world’s largest economic crash ever.
The Great Depression was a time in America when the stock market crashed and banks closed. Lots of people’s life savings were lost and they were left without money or a job. People stood in line for hours just for a little bit of soup to feed their families. what caused all this to happen? That question will be answered in the next few paragraphs.
The first cause of the Great Depression was trickle down economics. The idea of trickle down economics is that the more money you give rich people the more money poor people will get because the rich person would start a company with the money and hire poor people to work it. What happened instead was that rich people either kept all the money given to them or they started a company and instead bought a bunch of machines to work instead of people. Either way, it didn’t work.
The second cause of the Great Depression was stock market speculation. This was when everyone wanted to have a part of the stock market but didn’t have the money to. So they borrowed the money and bought overpriced stocks that were really worth nothing so they lost all their money. The people who lent them the money also lost because nobody could pay them back. This made lots of people lose everything they had to pay back for their borrowed money.
The third cause of the Great Depression was bank closings. When all the investors couldn’t pay the banks back they just had no money left and everyone lost all of their money they had in the bank. Everybody came to get their money though and when the banks didn’t have it the people started breaking up the bank’s windows and furniture. I think that over a thousand banks closed in a single year during the Great Depression.
The fourth cause of the great depression was overproduction. Companies could make things really fast now, so fast that there were too many products and not enough people to buy them. The companies kept on making a product that nobody was buying so they were still spending money on materials but not receiving any money from the product.
The first effect of the Great Depression was unemployment. With all of the factories closing from overproduction lots of people lost their jobs. Thirty-four million Americans had no source of income in 1933.
The second effect of the Great Depression was massive poverty. All of the 34 million people with no source of income were now really poor and living off of soup kitchens. That was more than 60% of people officially considered living in poverty.
The third effect of the Great Depression was homelessness. Two million people with no home basically walked around looking for work. Towns put up signs telling these people to go away. These homeless people weren’t just adults, they were also children.
The fourth effect of the great depression was devastation on American Farms. Farmers weren’t making any money on their crops, instead they were losing more than $1.50 per acre of land they planted. Plus there were giant dust storms that destroyed lots of fields leaving the farmers with no money at all and lots of them ended up losing their farms.
The Great Depression ended during World War II. What ended it was all the new jobs created for building weapons and all the soldiers that needed to go and fight. At the end of World War II the United States was the most powerful country in the world because we had nuclear missiles.
http://socyberty.com/history/causes-and-effects-of-the-great-depression/
OT- Targeting Iran: Is the US Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust?
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
August 9, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20536
BP's Insidious Coverup and Propaganda Campaign: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
by Dahr Jamail
Global Research
August 9, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20543
SUPERPOWER: See the not-to-be-missed documentary
Available from Global Research
Global Research, August 13, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20420
Is Obama Playing with Nuclear Fire in Iran and Korea?
by Shamus Cooke
Global Research
August 13, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20602
Nuke blast giving peace sign
MORE articles on this subject and other worldly events
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=home
Oil Falls for Second Day as China Output Growth, U.S. Productivity Slow
By Grant Smith and Yee Kai Pin
Aug 11, 2010 4:30 AM PT
Crude oil fell for a second day as a demand outlook from the International Energy Agency coupled with data from the U.S. and China reinforced concerns that the recovery is faltering.
The IEA, an adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, raised its 2011 demand forecast by 50,000 barrels a day while noting “significant downside risks” to consumption. Oil slipped after China’s industrial output grew the least in 11 months and U.S. data showed worker productivity dropped in the second quarter. The Energy Department will release its weekly report today.
“The economic signals are pretty mixed,” David Fyfe, head of the IEA’s oil industry and markets unit, said by phone from Paris. “We’ve seen weaker industrial production in the OECD, slightly weaker indications for China. We see relatively robust oil demand growth this year but we can’t rule out completely some of the concern in the market about economic growth.”
Crude for September delivery fell as much as 99 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $79.26 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $79.46 at 12:24 p.m. London time. Brent crude for September settlement fell 73 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $78.87 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe Exchange.
Global crude demand will average 87.9 million barrels a day in 2011, the IEA said in its monthly oil market report today.
“In fundamental terms, the oil market is showing signs of getting a bit weaker over the next couple of years,” Simon Wardell, energy research manager at IHS Global Insight, said in a Bloomberg television interview.
China Growth Slows
Oil dropped 1.5 percent in New York yesterday to $80.25, the lowest settlement since July 30, as the Labor Department’s measure of employee output per hour decreased at a 0.9 percent annual rate, the first drop since the end of 2008.
China’s year-on-year industrial production growth slowed to 13.4 percent in July, the fourth month of deceleration, as the government cracked down on real-estate speculation, curbed credit and closed factories to meet energy-efficiency targets.
China’s daily crude processing fell 3 percent last month from a record in June as the economy cooled.
Oil processing reached 35.28 million metric tons in July, or about 8.34 million barrels a day, compared with 8.64 million barrels in June, data released by China Mainland Marketing Research Co. showed today. Volumes rose 6.7 percent from a year earlier, the slowest pace since April 2009, according to the research company that compiles data for the government.
U.S. Inventories
U.S. crude stockpiles fell 2.2 million barrels to 352.7 million in the week ended Aug. 6, the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute said yesterday. An Energy Department report today may show inventories dropped 2 million barrels, based on the median estimate from 18 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Gasoline supplies declined 1.5 million barrels to 223.5 million, the API said. The Energy Department report may show stockpiles rose 250,000 barrels, the Bloomberg News poll shows.
Distillate fuel inventories, including heating oil and diesel, gained 2.3 million barrels to 165.7 million, according to the API. That’s the fifth weekly increase and the highest level since the week ended Jan. 8. The Energy Department report may show an increase of 1.75 million, according to the Bloomberg News survey.
To contact the reporters on this story: Yee Kai Pin in Singapore at kyee13@bloomberg.net Grant Smith in London at gsmith52@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/crude-falls-for-second-day-on-iea-outlook-economic-data-from-china-u-s-.html
Foreclosure Activity Increases 4 Percent in July
By RealtyTrac Staff
Aug. 12, 2010
Conflicting Trends Continue: Fewer Initial Defaults, More Bank Repossessions
IRVINE, Calif. – Aug. 12, 2010 — RealtyTrac® (http://www.realtytrac.com/), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™ for July 2010, which shows that foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 325,229 properties in July, a nearly 4 percent increase from the previous month but a nearly 10 percent decrease from July 2009. One in every 397 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing during the month.
“July marked the 17th consecutive month with a foreclosure activity total exceeding 300,000,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “Declines in new default notices, which were down on a year-over-year basis for the sixth straight month in July, have been offset by near-record levels of bank repossessions, which increased on a year-over-year basis for the eighth straight month.”
Foreclosure Activity by Type
A total of 97,123 U.S. properties received default notices (NOD, LIS) in July, a 1 percent increase from the previous month but a 28 percent decrease from July 2009. Default notices in July were down 32 percent from their peak of 142,064 in April 2009.
Foreclosure auctions (NTS, NFS) were scheduled for the first time on a total of 135,248 U.S. properties in July, an increase of 2 percent from the previous month but a decrease of 2 percent from July 2009. Scheduled auctions in July were down 14 percent from their peak of 158,105 in March 2010.
Lenders foreclosed on 92,858 U.S. properties in July, a 9 percent increase from the previous month and a 6 percent increase from July 2009. July’s bank repossession (REO) total was the second highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began tracking REO activity in April 2005 and was 1 percent below the monthly REO activity peak of 93,777 in May 2010.
Nevada, Arizona, Florida post top state foreclosure rates in July
With one in every 82 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing in July, Nevada continued to document the nation’s highest foreclosure rate for the 43rd straight month. A total of 13,727 Nevada properties received a foreclosure filing in July, a nearly 7 percent increase from the previous month but a nearly 30 percent decrease from July 2009. July was the 10th straight month where overall Nevada foreclosure activity decreased on a year-over-year basis.
Arizona foreclosure activity decreased on a year-over-year basis for the sixth straight month, but the state still posted the nation’s second highest state foreclosure rate. One in every 167 Arizona housing units received a foreclosure filing during the month — more than twice the national average.
One in every 171 Florida housing units received a foreclosure filing in July, the nation’s third highest foreclosure rate, and one in every 200 California housing units received a foreclosure filing in July, the fourth highest state foreclosure rate.
Foreclosure activity in Idaho increased nearly 19 percent from the previous month, boosting the state’s foreclosure rate to fifth highest among all the states. One in every 240 Idaho housing units received a foreclosure filing in July.
Other states with foreclosure rates ranking among the top 10 in July were Michigan, Utah, Illinois, Georgia and Maryland.
Five states account for more than 50 percent of national total
California alone accounted for 21 percent of the national total in July, with 66,910 properties receiving a foreclosure filing during the month — down 3 percent from the previous month and down 38 percent from July 2009.
With 51,557 properties receiving a foreclosure filing during the month, Florida accounted for 16 percent of the national total in July despite a nearly 9 percent decrease in foreclosure activity from July 2009.
Illinois foreclosure activity increased 33 percent from the previous month — the biggest monthly increase among states with top 10 foreclosure rates. A total of 19,602 Illinois properties received a foreclosure filing in July, the third highest state total and accounting for 6 percent of the national total.
Michigan accounted for just under 6 percent of the national total, with 18,833 properties receiving a foreclosure filing in July, and Arizona accounted for 5 percent of the national total, with 16,298 properties receiving a foreclosure filing in July.
Other states with foreclosure activity totals among the nation’s 10 highest in July were Nevada (13,727), Ohio (13,511), Georgia (12,577), Texas (11,727) and Maryland (6,961).
Metro foreclosure hot spots show bumpy downward trend
All 10 metro areas with the nation’s highest foreclosure rates in July posted year-over-year decreases in foreclosure activity, but five of the top 10 posted increases from the previous month. The two biggest monthly increases were in No. 2 Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., where foreclosure activity was up 21 percent from the previous month, and in No. 9 Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz., where foreclosure activity was up 19 percent from the previous month.
Foreclosure activity increased nearly 9 percent from the previous month in the Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev., metro area, which registered the highest foreclosure rate among metropolitan areas with a population of 200,000 or more. One in every 71 Las Vegas housing units received a foreclosure filing in July, more than five times the national average.
Other metro foreclosure rates in the top 10 were Modesto, Calif., at No. 3 (one in every 102 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing); Merced, Calif., at No. 4 (one in every 111); Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif., at No. 5 (one in 112); Stockton, Calif., at No. 6 (one in 115); Bakersfield, Calif., at No. 7 (one in 118); Orlando-Kissimmee, Fla., at No. 8 (one in 129); and Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif., at No. 10 (one in 136).
Report methodology
The RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market Report provides a count of the total number of properties with at least one foreclosure filing entered into the RealtyTrac database during the month — broken out by type of filing. Some foreclosure filings entered into the database during the month may have been recorded in previous months. Data is collected from more than 2,200 counties nationwide, and those counties account for more than 90 percent of the U.S. population. RealtyTrac’s report incorporates documents filed in all three phases of foreclosure: Default — Notice of Default (NOD) and Lis Pendens (LIS); Auction — Notice of Trustee Sale and Notice of Foreclosure Sale (NTS and NFS); and Real Estate Owned, or REO properties (that have been foreclosed on and repurchased by a bank). The report does not count a property again if it receives the same type of foreclosure filing multiple times within the estimated foreclosure timeframe for the state where the property is located.
http://www.realtytrac.com/content/press-releases/foreclosure-activity-increases-4-percent-in-july-5946
U.S Building Market Intelligence
John Burns Real Estate Consulting, Inc.
July 2010
62% Homeownership on the Horizon
Our recent experiences in D.C. confirm that homeownership is clearly a value that is promoted by most politicians. They are in for a rude awakening, however, and a legacy that they will not be proud of.
8 million homeowners are currently not paying their mortgage, and we believe 6 million of them will lose their home to the bank in the next 2 years. This will reduce the homeownership rate to 62%, as follows:
According to a recent study, another 5% of all households which roughly equals 5 million additional homeowners have no equity in their home. This suggests only 57% of U.S. households own a home with equity value. If you believe that many will strategically default, this will push homeownership even lower.
Here are the many variables that will affect homeownership over the coming years.
Factors Pushing Homeownership Up
Aging Demographics - If we built a fence around the U.S. and did not let immigrants in, homeownership would go up due mostly to the fact that homeownership rises as you age.
New Households - Every year, millions of young people reach the age where they leave their parents and go out on their own. This far exceeds the households lost to death. The actual numbers cycle with the economy, however, as they won't leave if they can't find a job or can't afford housing.
Great Affordability - Approximately 58% of homeowners can afford the median priced home vs. 45% historically (assuming a 31% front-end DTI ratio and a 95% LTV). Affordable housing and generous mortgage terms impact housing greatly.
Social Policy - Elected officials seem to be very much in favor of high homeownership because it builds equity and provides neighborhood stability. While that's correct in theory, they need to balance that goal with the fiscal reality that not everyone is financially responsible enough to save some money for a down payment and to make their mortgage payment every month!
Factors Pushing Homeownership Down
Immigration - Immigrants tend to rent first before buying. A rule of thumb is that immigrants average 7 years as a renter before becoming a buyer. The higher the immigration, the lower the homeownership rate.
Lending Policies Tightening - Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA have tightened standards, but it is still much easier than usual to get a mortgage. For most of the last 50 years, 20% down payments or 10% down payments with mortgage insurance, 32% front-end and 40% back-end debt to income ratios were the norms. Fannie and Freddie will still buy loans in some states over $700,000. Fifteen years ago, the maximum was only $203,000. Thanks to government mandates to get more aggressive, mortgages have become much easier to obtain, with default risks borne by the taxpayer.
Defaults - As mentioned above, 8 million homeowners are not paying their mortgage, and this number grows every day. The loan modifications have little prayer of helping, primarily because so many of these consumers have too much additional debt. As an example, the homeowners who have received permanent modification pay more than 30% of their income to service debt that is not their mortgage.
Today, the official homeownership rate stands at 67.1% - back to a level consistent with early 2001. Now that the economy has slowed much more than expected, consumers have moved back to the sidelines (despite the fantastic interest rates and affordability). Adults with incomes can afford to buy homes, and we have 7.4 million fewer adults with incomes today than we did at the peak in 2007.
Economic Growth............................................................................D+
The economic growth data improved slightly this month, although we are seeing signs that the economy is slowing, which will show up in the data releases in July and August. Retail sales and personal income growth continued to increase on a year-over-year basis, and year-over-year job losses continued to ease. Q1 Real GDP grew 2.7%, which is down from 5.6% last quarter. The unemployment rate decreased this month to 9.5%, and the broader measure of unemployment, the U-6, decreased to 16.5%. The length of unemployment in the labor force increased to 34.4 weeks this month, which is a new record high since the BLS began tracking the statistic in 1948. Personal income growth improved for the fifth consecutive time since December 2008, increasing by 1.6%. The CPI (all items) decreased to 2.0% from 2.2% last month, while the Core CPI (minus food and energy) held steady at 0.9% compared to last month.
Leading Indicators...........................................................................C
The ECRI Leading Index - an indicator of future U.S. growth - decreased this month compared to the previous month, and the yearly growth rate remains positive but has slowed to 7.9% year-over-year growth. Stocks declined this month, with the S&P 500 down 5.4%. All four major indices have still experienced large positive year-over-year growth, ranging from +12% to +16%. The S&P Homebuilding Index got hammered this month, declining 18%, as weaker than expected home builder orders and CEO commentary made investors quite skittish. The spread between corporate bonds and the 10-year treasury narrowed this month, decreasing to 167 bps and is well below the peak of nearly 270 bps in March 2009 as Wall Street has become less worried about businesses failing over the past year. Business credit availability remains poor overall, but conditions are slowly improving.
Affordability......................................................................................C-
Affordability continues to be excellent as mortgage rates and median home prices throughout the country remain extremely low. Our housing-cost-to-income ratio ticked up just slightly to 26.2%, but housing affordability remains excellent compared to history. Affordability is so good that owning the median-price home is only $64 more expensive than renting the average apartment. Household income has fallen 3.6% year-over-year to $53,678 as a result of large job losses and government furloughs. The median-home-price-to-income ratio ticked up to 3.3 and is now equal to the historical average. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate decreased to 4.69% this month, while adjustable mortgage fell to 3.77%. The Fed's overnight lending target rate remained at a range of 0.00% to 0.25%, which is the lowest level on record. The share of ARM applications decreased to 4.9% this month, but is still significantly less than the peak level of 35% of total applications in early 2005.
Consumer Behavior..........................................................................D+
Consumer behavior improved slightly this month as several metrics trended upward. Consumer sentiment increased slightly to 76.0 but remains well below the historical average. The Consumer Confidence Index decreased to 52.9, and is still at a very, very low level. The credit outstanding per household has fallen 9.9% over the last year to $7,498 per household. The personal savings rate ticked up to 4.0%, but is still down from the recent peak of 6.9% in May 2009. The Misery Index decreased this month, falling to 11.7 from 12.1 the previous month. This was the result of a slight decrease in both the unemployment rate and the inflation rate.
Existing Home Market.......................................................................D+
The existing home market worsened slightly this month as sales volume and purchase mortgage applications declined now that the federal tax credit has expired. The seasonally adjusted annual resale activity dropped to 5.66 million homes this month, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), but has still increased 19% year-over-year, albeit from low levels. On a rolling 12-month basis sales have improved for twelve consecutive months, increasing 0.7% compared to the previous month and 16% year-over-year. The national median price of an existing single-family home ticked up to $179,400 currently from $172,500 the previous month, and the median price has increased 2.7% year-over-year. The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index improved drastically, and has returned to positive territory this quarter for the first time since late 2006, increasing 2.0% year-over-year. The number of unsold homes decreased slightly to 8.3 months of supply, which is above the historical average. Pending home sales decreased sharply this month to the lowest level on record due to the expired tax credit. Approximately 24% of all homes with a mortgage throughout the U.S. were worth less than the balance of the mortgage.
New Home Market..............................................................................C-
Overall, the new home market worsened this month as sales activity decreased sharply. Builder confidence declined to 17 from 22 last month, which is due in part to a decrease in sales as a result of the expired federal tax credit. The seasonally adjusted new home sales volume has fallen 19% year-over-year to 300,000 transactions, which is the lowest level on record dating back to 1963. However, the sample size used by the Census Bureau to calculate this metric is extremely small and the confidence interval is quite large. The rolling 12-month total still climbed this month to 384,000 transactions, but remains near historically low levels. The median single-family new home price decreased to $200,900, and has dropped 9.6% year-over-year. The inventory of unsold homes increased sharply this month to 8.0 months of supply, but the volume of new homes for sale dropped slightly to 213,000 homes.
Repairs and Remodeling....................................................................C-
Conditions for residential repairs and remodeling are slightly better this month, with multiple metrics improving recently. Homeowner improvement activity declined 6.7% year-over-year. The Remodeling Market Index increased sharply this quarter to 47.0 from 36.4 the previous quarter. In addition, the index has ticked up just above the historical average of 46.6. Private residential construction has increased year-over-year for the third time since June 2006 this month, increasing 11.2%.
Housing Supply...................................................................................F
Housing supply worsened slightly this month, as new home completions, starts, and permits all decreased. Total completions declined to 687,000 units this month, as builders have reduced construction activity now that the federal tax credit deadline has passed. Seasonally adjusted new home starts also decreased this month, due to a decrease in single-family starts. Seasonally adjusted total permits decreased to 574,000 this month, which is a 6% month-over-month drop, but permits have still increased 4% year-over-year. Although vacancy rates in the U.S. have improved in recent quarters, the majority of the U.S. remains oversupplied compared to history. Just five states in the U.S. are currently undersupplied - Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana and Alaska. The homeowner vacancy rate decreased this quarter to 2.6%, which is down from 2.7% last quarter.
http://www.realestateconsulting.com/search/node/U.S.%20Building%20Market%20Intelligence%202010
CEO Confidence Index July 2010
Chief Executive magazine
CEO Confidence Falls Dramatically
Chief Executive magazine’s CEO Confidence Index, the nation’s only monthly CEO Confidence Index, fell one-third (33.2%) in July, to 79.8.
All five components of the index fell significantly, with the Current Confidence Index showing the largest percentage decrease of 60.4% -- dropping to 52.0. One CEO stated, “Not much confidence anywhere right now... most people are in a "hunker-down" mode”. Wayne Gorel, CEO, Gorell Enterprises, blames the media for contributing to the continued economic woes, “The media is saying how terrible things are, and the consumer is starting to believe them again. Things were starting to improve until this blitz about how we may be going into a double dip recession or even a depression like one headline story [stated] this week. The economy is growing at 3-4%, not great, but much better than last year. I just wish the media would get out of the way.”
The Investment Confidence Index fell by 40.8% to 79.0. Fully 24% more CEOs rated investment opportunities as “bad” in July than in June. One CEO lamented, “New ventures and new venture funding are basically non-existent”.
The Business Condition Index lost 31.9%, falling to 83.5.
The Employment Confidence Index dropped 26.4% to 76.6. Job creation remains a significant hurdle to economic recovery. The Obama Administration has proposed tax credits for companies that hire workers that have been out of work for twelve months or longer. Not all CEOs see the value of these tax credits. A CEO stated to Chief Executive, “Our hiring is increasing due to improved business conditions, not because of the current administrations so-called stimulus spending”. Stated another, “We don't hire to get tax credits, we hire to do work”! Jim Schwarz, President/CEO, Able Mfg & Assembly added, “The plan to hire must be justified with an actual need. The cost of non-productive workers is not justified by the small tax benefit”. CEO sentiment was summarized by one CEO who told us, “Tax credits will not increase employment, improvement in business will increase employment. No one is going to hire people to get a tax credit when they have nothing for the new hire to do”.
The Future Confidence Index declined to 98.5, a loss of 23.7%. Many CEOs are taking a wait-and-see approach. “Uncertainty is the watch word,” commented a CEO. Another added, “My prediction has not changed – a double dip recession when the tax increases kick in”.
There may be a glimmer of hope on the horizon. In a series of surveys conducted by Chief Executive magazine in June, 2009, December 2009 and July 2010, companies have reported changes in their hiring plans. In all three surveys, 46% of companies reported hiring freezes. The glimmer of hope lies in the 12% that have changed from reducing headcount to hiring.
The CEO Confidence Index measures the confidence that CEOs have in the economy as well as their future business plans, and is unique both in its focus and survey base. The survey also includes a provocative "bonus question" created by Chief Executive's editorial team. Each month the e-mail survey is sent to a rotating list of Chief Executive subscribers. Survey results are posted on our website, covered in the pages of Chief Executive Magazine.
CEO Confidence Index, July, 2010
Respondents: 132
http://tinyurl.com/2dj5g4v
Convoluted Economy Makes Maze of Markets
By: Dock Treece | Thu, Aug 12, 2010
Both leading up to and in the wake of the Federal Reserve meeting on Wednesday, there has been a greatly deal of fear among investors that the market may be headed for a bout with either deflation or a wave of inflation. These suspicions have lead to a wave of irrational fear, and resulted in increased market volatility as investors grow skittish.
First, to clarify: fears that deflation may be on the way are essentially unfounded. Not that deflation is impossible, but simply because it is unlikely going forward. It is particularly unlikely because the US has been experiencing deflation (defined as a decrease in the money supply) for the last nine months.
What is especially interesting about the growing fear of deflation is that it seems to be coming just as money supply numbers - namely M3 - appears to be bottoming (NowAndFutures.com). Although the Federal Reserve stopped reporting M3 several years ago, its components are still published. Different groups of economists have used those components to recreate an accurate picture of M3, which can be found at websites like www.nowandfutures.com and www.shadowstats.com.
Much of this fear is focused on US savings. After all, since 2007 many Americans have seen their net worth cut by half or more and many failed to take advantage of the 2009 rebound. People have been wanting, wishing, even praying to see their portfolios return to post-crash levels.
Years ago Americans lamented at their inability to buy affordable homes at low interest rates. They failed to understand why their parents could buy homes at reasonable prices with mortgage rates around 6.5%. Now Americans can buy homes that are, in many cases, half their prices from two years ago, and at rates below what their parents paid (as low as 4.5% for a 30-year mortgage). Unfortunately, most are missing out on abundant opportunities in housing because they are focused on stock prices and economic phenomena like credit deflation or oil futures contango.
The reactions of most market participants to 2008 have been completely counterintuitive. Investors ought to have learned from that experience that the financial markets are indeed capable of declining on a broad basis, and diversified portfolios are quite capable of seeing substantial losses. Incredibly, investors have become convinced that they weren't sufficiently diversified, and have begun spreading money not just across securities, but across asset classes, many of which they fail to understand.
Instead, investors would have done well to change their logic and realize that diversification as a theory is flawed, and adjusted their investment style accordingly.
Few people, even business school graduates, fail to understand that diversification hinders returns. The primary objective of modern portfolio theory is not to show gains, but to protect investors against losses. In other words, it is meant to maintain portfolio stability - in modern portfolio theory, "risk" is not defined by loss, but by volatility. In keeping with this theory, diversification serves to slow portfolio movement in EITHER direction. In guarding against losses, it also limits gains.
We'll wrap up this week with an economic update. At this point we are thoroughly convinced that Washington is only thing holding the US economy back. Unemployment numbers, which have received far too much attention, remain high, in our opinion, mostly because the government is continuing to pay people NOT to work. However, at the same time many companies have admittedly been unwilling to take on additional employees because they are unsure whether their already-high costs will remain stable (Why I'm Not Hiring, Michael P. Fleischer). This does not excuse the fact that there is substantial demand for products that corporations aren't willing to meet through expanded production (Dealers Beg for Cars as Automakers' New Discipline Curbs Sales, Theo Keith).
As we've discussed repeatedly in previous articles, much of this stagnation on the part of business, their hesitation about expanding, is due to uncertainty about what new regulations Washington will heap upon their shoulders. For the most part, business in the US can be equated to a horse chomping at the bit, ready to break out of the gate. Unfortunately, they can do little until Washington gets out of the way.
http://www.safehaven.com/article/17811/convoluted-economy-makes-maze-of-markets
Jim Rogers says leave the market alone, abolish the Fed and cut spending
Source: BI-ME , Author: BI-ME staff
Posted: Fri August 13, 2010 12:44 am
INTERNATIONAL. Legendary global investor and chairman of Singapore-based Rogers Holdings, Jim Rogers believes the US is driving business away to creditor nations in Asia by over interfering in the market.
In a recent interview with Campaign for Liberty, Rogers said: " There's a transition now from the US to Asia in the financial world and the economic world.
"Ten years ago, most of the large IPOs in the world were done in New York," Rogers said, adding "now very few of them are. America's driving the business out in many, many ways, and that's going to continue."
Explaining the reasons this is happening, Rogers said: "In America, the government and the central bank especially, have interfered with the market several times".
Rogers insinuated that countries that are doing better than the US are leaving the market alone.
"Rather than letting the market do what the market's supposed to do, which is let bankrupts go bankrupt, clean out the system, start over, Greenspan stepped in and said, 'No, no, no, we don't want the market to work. We want to determine who wins, who loses, and what's going to happen in the world.' He bailed out the market when long-term capital management came. he bailed out after the dot-com."
"Unfortunately, we are all now paying the price. Bernanke is of the same yolk, he's been doing the same sorts of things," Rogers added.
Asked what he would do if the was President, the legendary investor said: I would abolish the Federal Reserve. I would cut taxes. I would cut spending in a draconian manner. A very draconian manner. The idea that you can solve a problem of too much debt and too much consumption, with more debt and more consumption, defies comprehension".
Stressing the depth of the debt crisis and putting a timeline on its effect, Rogers told Campaign for Liberty: "Oh, our poor grandchildren! Look at all this debt!" No, no, no, it's not our poor grandchildren, it's us!"
"This is a current problem! This is a problem, even our parents, if they're still alive, forget our grandchildren; our parents are going to be suffering, and our grandparents if they're still alive," he added.
This is a current disaster for all of us, Rogers stressed.
What should investors do in order to protect their financial assets?
"Throughout history, when people have printed money, it's led to debasing of currencies. And the way to protect yourself and even to make money has always been that you'll use real assets," Rogers said.
"Whether that's silver, or natural gas, or cotton, or rice".
And the dollar?
"As you know, more countries are worried about the dollar. More countries are starting to use other things to settle their debts. This is a process which is underway and will continue, there's no question," the legendary investor said.
"The US is not just the larger debtor nation in the world, it's the largest debtor nation in the history of the world".
Rogers expects the staggering amount of printed money will eventually lead to serious problems down the road.
In some of his recent most memorable 'rants' he was quoted as saying:"How can the solution for debt and consumption be more debt and more consumption? How can that be the solution to our problems?"
"What we're doing now is we're taking the assets away from the competent people and giving them to incompetent people and telling them 'now you can compete with competent people with their money."
"We're going to have zombie capitalism for the next 15-20 years. How long are you going to let the bureaucrats run the thing so we can't have a clean system?"
Rogers has spent a career being one step ahead of mainstream investment thinking. He rose to fame after co-founding the now-closed Quantum Fund with George Soros nearly four decades ago. During his ten years with the fund, the portfolio gained more than 4,000%, while the S&P rose less than 50%
The Quantum Fund shot to fame after making more than US$1 billion betting against the British Pound in early 1990s.
http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?id=47784&t=1&c=62&cg=4&mset=1021
Gold Rises Further as Fed Extends QE
Written by Gillian Campbell
2010 Aug 13
From the GoldMoney Dealing Desk --
Concerns over the US economy were re-ignited this week after the US Federal Reserve (Fed) announced further quantitative easing (QE). On Tuesday evening the Fed kept interest rates at the record low of 0-0.25%, but what the markets were really interested in was the extension of QE. In the accompanying statement the Fed announced that it would use cash from maturing mortgage bonds to buy government debt. Up until recently policy makers have been discussing the timing of pulling out of QE, so naturally this news has reminded people that the US economy is not out of the woods yet.
The Fed extending QE would usually be supportive for gold, but gains were initially capped as the dollar rose. As the week progressed, however, the strong dollar was no longer enough to keep gold down as weaker than expected US unemployment data was announced. This further boosted gold's safe haven appeal and early on Friday gold rose to a 4-week high of $1,217/oz.
Many analysts now expect the gold price to stabilize higher as we are moving towards a seasonally strong period. In September and October traders become more active after the quiet summer period and the Indian festivals begin in late August, making it a traditionally positive time for gold. Analysts say that during these months the price has risen an average of about 15% in the past ten years.
The gold/silver ratio moved up to 67 this week as silver's industrial uses dragged it down. Silver fell to under $18.00/oz on Wednesday, on the back of fears over macro economic recovery, but it did manage to rally slightly into Friday up at around $18.15.
The PGMs (platinum group metals) were down this week after renewed concerns over economic growth knocked expectations for car production. Platinum was trading at $1,535/oz on Friday morning against $1,563 at opening Monday. Palladium was at $470/oz on Friday against $490 at the start of the week.
All data and quotes sourced from Reuters.
Published by GoldMoney
Copyright © 2010. All rights reserved.
Written by Gillian Campbell
Stocks head for lower opening after sales report
Joyce M. Rosenberg, AP Business Writer,
On Friday August 13, 2010, 8:53 am
Stocks look to extend losses after July retail sales report falls short of economist forecast
NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks appear headed to a slightly lower opening after the latest consumer spending number fell just short of expectations.
The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.4 percent in July. That was an improvement after two months of sales declines. It was just below economists' forecast of a gain of 0.5 percent. The report did show strength in auto sales.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported that the Consumer Price Index rose 0.3 percent last month. The gain, slightly above forecasts, was due to higher energy costs.
Stock index futures regained some ground after the reports, but are still lower. Dow Jones industrial average futures are down 4, or 0.04 percent, at 10,267. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures are down 0.50, or 0.05 percent, at 1,076.70. Nasdaq 100 futures are down 6, or 0.3 percent, at 1,821.25.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks appeared headed for their fourth straight day of losses Friday as investors waited for the latest readings on consumers and how confident they feel about spending.
The Commerce Department will release its report on July retail sales. Economists are expecting that sales rose 0.5 percent after dropping in June. The report is due at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. Last week, retailers reported sales for the month that were modest overall.
Later in the morning, the University of Michigan/Reuters survey of consumer sentiment in August will be released.
Consumer spending has remained weak along with the labor market. And there are no signs that employers are ready to start hiring at a pace to help lift the economy. On Thursday, the Labor Department said the number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time rose last week.
Stocks have been falling as investors' take on the economic recovery grows more and more pessimistic. The Dow Jones industrial average has lost 380 points over the past three days. Analysts say many traders are on vacation or just not willing to make any big moves on stocks. That has led to lower trading volume and some skewing of price changes.
Dow futures are down 21, or 0.2 percent, at 10,250. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures are down 3.10, or 0.3 percent, at 1,076.10. Nasdaq 100 futures are down 8.75, or 0.5 percent, at 1,818.50.
Interest rates fell in the Treasury market as investors awaited the retail sales report and the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index for July. Inflation was expected to tick slightly higher during the month. In its assessment of the economy earlier this week, the Federal Reserve noted that inflation remains in check.
The yield on the Treasury's 10-year note, which is used to set rates on consumer loans including mortgages, was 2.72 percent, down from late Wednesday's 2.75 percent. Yields fall as prices rise. Treasury prices have risen sharply this week as investors -- worried about the economy and watching stocks fall -- sought a safer place for their money.
Overseas markets were down. London's FTSE-100 index was down 0.6 percent, while Germany's DAX fell 0.7 percent and the CAC-40 index in Paris fell 1 percent.
Investors in Europe were more concerned with signs of slowing growth in the U.S. than in their own economies. They shrugged off news that the European economy had grown 1 percent during the second quarter.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Stocks-head-for-lower-opening-apf-1555068206.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=
Sounds to me like the healthcare industry put this out to keep people from seeking cheaper medical procedures overseas, much the same way the pharma industry cautioned people from buying their meds thru the EU, Canada and Mexico.
Has Obama Run Out of Economic Options?
by Michael Hirsh
August 09, 2010
Obama returned to the White House on Friday after touring a local factory where
he discussed job creation.
As the grim jobs news continues, and with no hope for more government stimulus, the president finds himself without a solution.
Since he first came from nowhere to outmaneuver Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama has been deemed brilliant at political chess. Like any grandmaster, Obama can think several moves ahead, and he knows when to concede a tactical setback, as he’s already done by indicating that the GOP is going to show strong in the upcoming congressional election. So it wouldn’t be surprising if Obama were starting to worry about what lies even further down the board. So bleak is the economic outlook that the president may find himself running out of moves—perhaps even in danger of being checkmated—as he faces reelection in 2012.
That was the unspoken subtext Friday as President Obama put the best possible face on a grim jobs report for July and an ever-darkening economic outlook—not just for the rest of 2010, but for 2011 as well. He talked up the “183,000 jobs” added by the manufacturing sector this year—and alluded hopefully to a USA Today story that suggested some plants are returning to the U.S. “for the first time”—as well as new legislation that will aid the states. What was left unsaid was that Obama may have already politically maneuvered himself out of the only major remedy that could bring unemployment down and growth up enough to assure his reelection: another giant fiscal stimulus. After engendering Tea Party and centrist-Democratic resistance to more government spending by pushing his health-care plan—and losing altitude rapidly in the polls—Obama no longer seems to have the political capital he may well need, in the end, to save his presidency.
Most economists would say it’s far too early to declare that we’re in an economic endgame. “There’s a long time between now and the next presidential election and lot of economic uncertainty,” says Harvard’s Lawrence Katz, the former chief economist for the Department of Labor during the Clinton administration. “There are many policies the administration could adopt between now and then.” Among them: a payroll-tax holiday, targeted tax cuts for the middle class, and further extensions of unemployment compensation. “Historical evidence suggests incumbent parties do well if growth is rapid even if unemployment is high,” Katz adds.
But Katz, like other economists, says it’s almost impossible to imagine growth or unemployment numbers getting anywhere close to where they were in 2007, before the financial crisis, by 2012. It now appears that the spurt of new jobs seen earlier in year—most notably, the 241,000 jobs created in April—was not the start of a new trend of higher growth but a misleading aberration. The loss of 131,000 jobs and the anemic addition of just 71,000 private sector jobs in July, both far worse than the forecasts, amounted to a devastating blow to recovery. Last week Goldman Sachs forecast less than 2 percent growth for 2011, and the unemployment rate seems stuck at 9.5 percent or higher, with the possibility that it could tip back over 10 percent. With interest rates still close to zero, monetary policy can do little more (though the Fed will debate new measures at its meeting Aug. 10, when it is expected to downgrade its economic outlook as well). And political discontent over government spending is such that a much larger fiscal stimulus—urged on Obama at the start of his presidency by such economists as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz—has now become out of the question. “This town has given up on that completely,” says Heidi Shierholz of the left-leaninig Economic Policy Institute. “He doesn’t have anything big to hang his hat on.”
It is further evidence that, facing a historic economic crisis and the prosecution of two ongoing wars, Obama may have been playing some bad political chess when he decided to make health-care reform his first-year priority. As it turned out, health care was the trigger for a popular reaction against “too much government.” Shierholz says, “The health-care bill was a hugely important foundation for big change. But the way it worked out, we didn’t get a real discussion about another huge stimulus package.” Now, with his support so thin on Capitol Hill, Obama will have trouble getting any major new measure passed. “There is nothing inconsistent in having a long-run focus on the deficit and a short-run focus on economic growth,” Katz says. But the political atmosphere is so angry and mistrustful that all the issues that should be responsibly divided up are instead thrown together in a toxic stew. Neither a stimulus nor revenue-generating ideas like carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, or value-added taxes are on the table. The GOP can’t move beyond supply-side tax cuts for the rich; the Democratic leadership is terrified of the party’s own fiscal conservatives. The intellectually shallow state of debate recently provoked columnist Krugman into calling Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP’s leading policy voice on cutting the deficit, a “flim-flam man.”
This policy paralysis is almost certainly the backstory behind the disintegration of Obama’s economic team this summer. Last week a second senior member of Obama’s economic team, Christina Romer, chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, announced she was leaving, only a few weeks after the resignation of budget chief Peter Orszag. Romer was criticized for overestimating the impact of the nearly $800 billion stimulus, saying it would bring unemployment down to 8 percent from 10 percent. It’s somewhat ironic, however, that Romer should be the one to go when she had pushed for a larger stimulus than chief economic adviser Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who are staying on.
The truth is that Romer and just about everyone else underestimated the headwinds that continue to beat the economy down: state and local budget crises, European austerity, consumer and housing anemia, and a political debate that is still tethered to the somehow-not-debunked idea that deficit cutting should be priority one, despite the dangers of deflation and double-dip recession. “No one had any idea of the depths of the recession we were in for,” says Shierholz. Nor does anyone have a good idea for how to get out of it, beyond a lot more government spending that the government itself has declared a political nonstarter.
Michael Hirsh is also the author of At War with Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/09/has-obama-run-out-of-economic-options.html
U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It
By Laurence Kotlikoff
Aug 10, 2010 6:00 PM PT
Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.
What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”
But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”
The fiscal gap is the value today (the present value) of the difference between projected spending (including servicing official debt) and projected revenue in all future years.
Double Our Taxes
To put 14 percent of gross domestic product in perspective, current federal revenue totals 14.9 percent of GDP. So the IMF is saying that closing the U.S. fiscal gap, from the revenue side, requires, roughly speaking, an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll levy set down in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act.
Such a tax hike would leave the U.S. running a surplus equal to 5 percent of GDP this year, rather than a 9 percent deficit. So the IMF is really saying the U.S. needs to run a huge surplus now and for many years to come to pay for the spending that is scheduled. It’s also saying the longer the country waits to make tough fiscal adjustments, the more painful they will be.
Is the IMF bonkers?
No. It has done its homework. So has the Congressional Budget Office whose Long-Term Budget Outlook, released in June, shows an even larger problem.
‘Unofficial’ Liabilities
Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt. This gargantuan discrepancy between our “official” debt and our actual net indebtedness isn’t surprising. It reflects what economists call the labeling problem. Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities “unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.
For example, our Social Security FICA contributions are called taxes and our future Social Security benefits are called transfer payments. The government could equally well have labeled our contributions “loans” and called our future benefits “repayment of these loans less an old age tax,” with the old age tax making up for any difference between the benefits promised and principal plus interest on the contributions.
The fiscal gap isn’t affected by fiscal labeling. It’s the only theoretically correct measure of our long-run fiscal condition because it considers all spending, no matter how labeled, and incorporates long-term and short-term policy.
$4 Trillion Bill
How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?
Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.
This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.
Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.
And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.
Worse Than Greece
Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.
Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run.
This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance.
Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue.
My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain “solutions.”
(Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University and author of “Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking.” The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Laurence Kotlikoff at kotlikoff@bu.edu
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html
hey there gm, check this out:
http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364proj/sprg_97/hurley/index.htm
I've posted this link before, but it's worth posting again.
PS- Thanks for the CPI inflation link.
Yep, a lot of people dis the Bradley, but I have been following it for years and when it gets into a groove it can be a very useful tool, especially when used with T/A.
Yep, have done it myself while playing cards.
So the Gov't comes out with a coin that is the same size as SBA, but golden in color (Sacagawea Dollar) expecting better results.
That doesn't work so they put past Presidents on it thinking it would be more acceptable.
3 strikes and yur outta there...
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." --Albert Einstein
I could be wrong, but I believe people would be more likely to use (and collect) a bigger dollar like the Eisenhower dollar. Other than the dime, all US coins' value are tied to the size of the currency. People do not want a dollar that is the same size as the quarter, the 2 are easily confused as one or the other.
Having said that, nobody wants to carry a pocket full of change no matter what size.. paper will always be preferred over coins.
Just my .02c
And to think if we double dip, housing still has a ways to fall.
Housing Inventory Grows
By Nick Timiraos
August 6, 2010, 10:18 AM ET
Is this what the beginning of a double-dip feels like?
The number of homes listed for sale grew in many U.S. cities in July, a month when inventory typically declines.
The supply of homes available for sale in 26 major metropolitan areas at the end of July increased 2.6% from one month earlier, the seventh straight month-over-month jump, according to figures compiled by ZipRealty Inc., a real-estate brokerage firm based in Emeryville, Calif. The figures include all single-family homes, condominiums and townhouses listed on local multiple-listing services in markets where the firm operates. See the data.
Nationally, inventories typically decline in July as the big spring sales months give way to a more sluggish summer. Zelman & Associates, a research firm, says July listings have typically fallen by 0.8% from June over the past 28 years.
Compared to one year ago, the July inventory in the 26 markets covered by ZipRealty was up 7%.
Western markets continued to see the largest monthly increases in inventory, led by a 9.6% gain for Las Vegas, 7.9% for Orange County, Calif., and increases of 6.3% in San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Markets with an increase in inventory also saw declines in list prices. Median list prices fell by 3.6% in Phoenix and San Francisco, and by 3.3% in Las Vegas, from the previous month.
“We just don’t have as many people out actively transacting,” says Pat Lashinsky, chief executive of ZipRealty. “They’re waiting, they’re looking, they’re seeing homes, but they’re not buying.”
California cities also had the largest annual increases in housing inventory: San Diego (53%), Orange County (32%), and San Francisco (28%).
Compared with the previous month, inventory fell in just two markets—Boston and Charlotte, N.C.
Many housing markets face the prospect of additional inventory as banks repossess homes through foreclosure and list them for sale. Meanwhile, housing markets that have seen steady home price recoveries may have more “pent up” sellers who have decided to test the market after sitting on the sidelines for years.
http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2010/08/06/up-up-and-away-housing-inventory-grows-in-western-markets/
Reagan Insider: 'GOP Destroyed U.S. Economy'
by Paul B. Farrell
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline
"How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."
Get it? Not "destroying." The GOP has already "destroyed" the U.S. economy, setting up an "American Apocalypse."
Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider -- someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology -- says about America, helps all of us better understand how America's toxic partisan-politics "holy war" is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.
But why focus on Stockman's message? It's already lost in the 24/7 news cycle. Why? We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened?
We've arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.
Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely:
Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy
Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation's public debt ... will soon reach $18 trillion." It screams "out for austerity and sacrifice." But instead, the GOP insists "that the nation's wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase."
In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: "Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts -- in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too."
No more. Today there's a "new catechism" that's "little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes" making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in "serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy." Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.
Stockman's indictment warns that the Republican party's "new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:"
Stage 1. Nixon irresponsible, dumps gold, U.S starts spending binge
Richard Nixon's gold policies get Stockman's first assault, for defaulting "on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world." So for the past 40 years, America's been living "beyond our means as a nation" on "borrowed prosperity on an epic scale ... an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves."
Remember Friedman: "Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct." Friedman was wrong by trillions. And unfortunately "once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors."
And without discipline America was also encouraging "global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve." Yes, the road to the coming apocalypse began with a Republican president listening to a misguided Nobel economist's advice.
Stage 2. Crushing debts from domestic excesses, war mongering
Stockman says "the second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40% of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970." Who's to blame? Not big-spending Dems, says Stockman, but "from the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."
Back "in 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts," but Stockman makes clear, they had to be "matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration's hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces -- the welfare state and the warfare state -- that drive the federal spending machine."
OK, stop a minute. As you absorb Stockman's indictment of how his Republican party has "destroyed the U.S. economy," you're probably asking yourself why anyone should believe a traitor to the Reagan legacy. I believe party affiliation is irrelevant here. This is a crucial subject that must be explored because it further exposes a dangerous historical trend where politics is so partisan it's having huge negative consequences.
Yes, the GOP does have a welfare-warfare state: Stockman says "the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending, exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget -- entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans' fiscal religion."
When Fed chief Paul Volcker "crushed inflation" in the '80s we got a "solid economic rebound." But then "the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts." By 2009, they "reduced federal revenues to 15% of gross domestic product," lowest since the 1940s. Still today they're irrationally demanding an extension of those "unaffordable Bush tax cuts [that] would amount to a bankruptcy filing."
Recently Bush made matters far worse by "rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures." Bush also gave in "on domestic spending cuts, signing into law $420 billion in nondefense appropriations, a 65% percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy." Takes two to tango.
Stage 3. Wall Street's deadly 'vast, unproductive expansion'
Stockman continues pounding away: "The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector." He warns that "Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation." Wrong, not oblivious. Self-interested Republican loyalists like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner knew exactly what they were doing.
They wanted the economy, markets and the government to be under the absolute control of Wall Street's too-greedy-to-fail banks. They conned Congress and the Fed into bailing out an estimated $23.7 trillion debt. Worse, they have since destroyed meaningful financial reforms. So Wall Street is now back to business as usual blowing another bigger bubble/bust cycle that will culminate in the coming "American Apocalypse."
Stockman refers to Wall Street's surviving banks as "wards of the state." Wrong, the opposite is true. Wall Street now controls Washington, and its "unproductive" trading is "extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives." Wall Street banks like Goldman were virtually bankrupt, would have never survived without government-guaranteed deposits and "virtually free money from the Fed's discount window to cover their bad bets."
Stage 4. New American Revolution class warfare coming soon
Finally, thanks to Republican policies that let us "live beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore," while at home "high-value jobs in goods production ... trade, transportation, information technology and the professions shrunk by 12% to 68 million from 77 million."
As the apocalypse draws near, Stockman sees a class-rebellion, a new revolution, a war against greed and the wealthy. Soon. The trigger will be the growing gap between economic classes: No wonder "that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1% of Americans -- paid mainly from the Wall Street casino -- received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90% -- mainly dependent on Main Street's shrinking economy -- got only 12%. This growing wealth gap is not the market's fault. It's the decaying fruit of bad economic policy."
Get it? The decaying fruit of the GOP's bad economic policies is destroying our economy.
Warning: This black swan won't be pretty, will shock, soon
His bottom line: "The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing ... it's a pity that the modern Republican party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach -- balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline -- is needed more than ever."
Wrong: There are far bigger things to "pity."
First, that most Americans, 300 million, are helpless, will do nothing, sit in the bleachers passively watching this deadly partisan game like it's just another TV reality show.
Second, that, unfortunately, politicians are so deep-in-the-pockets of the Wall Street conspiracy that controls Washington they are helpless and blind.
And third, there's a depressing sense that Stockman will be dismissed as a traitor, his message lost in the 24/7 news cycle ... until the final apocalyptic event, an unpredictable black swan triggers another, bigger global meltdown, followed by a long Great Depression II and a historic class war.
So be prepared, it will hit soon, when you least expect.
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/110297/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy?sec=topStories&pos=5&asset=&ccode=
Gas Prices Slowly Rise
By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.Com
August 6, 2010
Some of the season's heaviest driving may lie ahead
With the summer driving season in its final weeks, the price of gas continues to rise, albeit, slowly.
The national average price of self-serve regular is $2.767 a gallon, up about two and a half cents from last Friday, according to AAA's Fuel Gauge Survey. A month ago, gas was about four cents cheaper.
The average price of diesel fuel is $2.965 a gallon, compared with $2.951 a week ago.
Even though demand is slack, gas prices are being pushed higher with rising crude oil prices. This week the price of oil went over $80 a barrel for the first time in nearly three months.
According to the Federal Highway Administration's vehicle miles traveled (VMT) data, July and August historically are the months in which Americans drive the most miles. Fuel demand during these two months provides the support for higher fuel prices in the summer. The Labor Day travel holiday period, considered the "unofficial" end of summer, is about five weeks away. Labor Day weekend also signals the end of the summer driving season.
"Over the next four weeks, motorists may experience the high end of fuel prices for the remainder of 2010 as fuel prices tend to decline sharply during the months of September and October," said Andrew Delmege, AAA's manager of regulatory affairs. "Of course, this depends on a lack of major tropical storm activity in the Gulf Coast region, easing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, and financial data (a stronger dollar) keeping the price of crude oil stable."
The states with the most expensive gasoline today are:
Alaska ($3.528)
Hawaii ($3.494)
California ($3.155)
Washington ($3.107)
Oregon ($3.018)
Nevada ($2.950)
Idaho ($2.928)
Utah ($2.892)
New York ($2.890)
Connecticut ($2.885)
The states with the least expensive gasoline today are:
South Carolina ($2.551)
Missouri ($2.573)
New Jersey ($2.594)
Mississippi ($2.597)
Tennessee ($2.601)
Alabama ($2.606)
Virginia ($2.614)
Texas ($2.622)
Louisiana ($2.631)
Georgia ($2.637)
Foreclosure Reduces Home's Value Average 27 Percent
By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.Com
August 9, 2010
Values of homes next to foreclosed property fall, too
Maybe you aren't in danger of foreclosure, but what about your neighbor? If the house next door goes into foreclosure, it could bring down property values throughout the neighborhood.
How much? Perhaps as much as one percent, if the house happens to be within 250 feet of the foreclosed property. As for the foreclosed home, it's value could plummet an average of 27 percent.
Those are the findings of economists at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who scoured records pertaining to 1.83 million Massachusetts home sales from 1987 to 2009. Their research, forthcoming in the journal American Economic Review, is one of the most rigorous and comprehensive analyses to date of the losses sustained on foreclosed properties.
"The losses on foreclosed homes proved to be much larger than we had expected," said lead author John Y. Campbell, the Morton L. and Carole S. Olshan Professor of Economics at Harvard. "If anything, these results may underestimate losses on foreclosed properties nationwide, since Massachusetts has not experienced a housing boom and bust as pronounced as that seen in many other parts of the country in recent years."
Campbell and his co-authors, Harvard's Stefano Giglio and MIT's Parag Pathak, found that other types of forced sales also reduce home prices, but by smaller amounts. When a house is sold after the death of an owner, they found, the price sinks five to seven percent on average. When an owner declares bankruptcy, the value falls by an average three percent.
Death discount
The researchers write that death-related discounts may result from poor home maintenance by older sellers, while foreclosure discounts appear rooted in the greater likelihood of deterioration among foreclosed homes, and specifically the threat of vandalism. They note that the percentage loss on foreclosed properties is greater, on average, in less safe neighborhoods, where risks of damage to vacant homes may be higher.
"Banks know it's bad to hold an asset that's susceptible to damage, and want to unload such assets quickly," Campbell said. "Also, the costs to maintain a house are fixed, but those fixed costs eat up more of the price of a cheap house -- making lenders even more eager to dispose of foreclosed cheaper homes."
Campbell and his colleagues found that prices of other homes fall by about one percent if within roughly 250 feet of a foreclosed property -- an effect that fades away for homes 500 or more feet from a foreclosure. What's more, these "contagion" effects appear to be cumulative, meaning that multiple foreclosed homes in close proximity can depress the value of other nearby properties by several percentage points.
The researchers say their results indicate that public policy should aim to minimize foreclosures, which appear broadly harmful.
"Our work provides evidence of genuine social harm arising from foreclosures," Campbell says. "Public policy should discourage reliance on foreclosure as a means of protecting lenders. While foreclosure may rescue lenders, it damages the rest of society."
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2010/08/foreclosure_prop_value.html
Gold Seizure Mechanism in Place
By David L. Ganz, Numismatic News
August 05, 2010
It’s not the dog days of summer, but rather the economy that’s causing a number of people to query my law office about gold seizure scenarios that they believe might take place, what they can do to prevent it, and what they might be able to do about it.
These inquiries come from sincere believers not in conspiracy theories, but rather in the staying power of gold in both the short term and the long run. Their inquiries are genuine, the concerns expressed real – these are hard money strategists, not people who go off with half-baked ideas.
I have no great insight to offer as to whether or not gold seizure is in the offing, but there are some interesting reasons cited by many as to why the government of the United States – and maybe the world as well – needs to nationalize gold, if only for the purpose of making sure that governments, not citizens, remain in control of the economy.
In talking with many of the people, they question how the government could possibly enforce a gold seizure and go on to tell me that no power on earth could make them give up their gold. My rejoinder is that some of the best literature has been written by authors from prison, to which they often sublimely respond that the government lacked the resources to prosecute people – and that even in the old days, that wasn’t something that the government did (prosecute people for declining to turn in their gold.
Let’s clear up some misconceptions as to what happened in 1933-1934; what legal authority the President has to order the seizure of gold (or other precious metal); what evidence of compulsion was used before (and what could be used now), and just what is so magical about this metal that makes some individuals covet it, and makes governments fear it.
Let’s start with the premise that there is no element of compulsion that can be employed to make a citizen turn in gold coin or bullion, especially if the coin is legal tender. The premise is absolutely wrong.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (using the “Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917”) issued an executive order on April 5 requiring that less than a month later on or before May 1, 1933, all persons in possession or control of gold coin, gold bullion, and Gold Certificates (i.e., paper currency redeemable in gold coin of the United States) to turn them in to any Federal Reserve bank or any “member bank” of the Federal Reserve system.
(The “Trading with the Enemy Act” is still around; it was last amended by Congress a couple of years ago and the general consensus in the legal community is that it could happen again. Want proof? Try Professor Hank Holzer’s article in the 1973 Brooklyn Law Review: “How Americans lost their right to own gold and became criminals in the process”).
Can the government grab all of the gold? Probably not, at least not without paying just compensation – which is a small solace. But what happened in 1933 is that gold (valued at $20.67 an ounce) was turned in and paid at face value – a double eagle or $20 gold piece received 20 bucks from Uncle Sam in paper, or coin – but not gold.
When all of the gold that was going to be got was turned in, FDR devalued the dollar 59 percent – from $20.67 an ounce to $35 an ounce. (In 1971, Nixon raised it to $38 an ounce, and in 1973 it was raised to $42.22 an ounce. The entire American gold reserve of $11 billion is figured on that artificially low figure (i.e., if Fort Knox were emptied with other storage sites, the government would really have about 30 times the figures quoted today as being part of the reserve.
That means over $400 billion in gold is presently in government hands. Billions of dollars more in gold now in the hands of the people would move to the government. Once in hand, the gold’s official dollar price could be revalued or left on its own. Either way, though, the average citizen now, as then, would lose out.
There were exceptions then. Treasury Secretary William Woodin, himself a coin collector (and originator of Adams-Woodin pattern coinage citators, allowed everyday people to keep $100 in gold coin (it was the Depression, after all) and also allowed retention of “rare and unusual coins” having a “recognized special value to collectors.”
Those who did not want to turn it in (the current argument is that the government lacks the resources to make it mandatory): the executive order provided for Draconian criminal penalties for non-compliance: a $10,000 fine or 10 years imprisonment, or both. You have to be really unafraid or believe that the government would not prosecute.
Some said that the government only tried to capture a single 1933 $20 gold piece. Not true. They went after all 1933 double eagles – they sued or were sued by collectors who sought to retain the rarity. James A. Stack was involved in lawsuits in federal and state court; Barnard, in Tennessee, was, too. Both lost, even though they had paid a lot for the coin which was both rare and unusual.
But there were other cases, too. A sampling going back to the Civil War, when the Act of July 13th, 1861, allowed Treasury Regulation, No. 22, forbidding all transportation of coin or bullion to any State or section declared by the President’s proclamation to be in insurrection (a Supreme Court case affirmed that right); in 1969, an airman was sentenced to seven years at hard labor for possession and hoarding of gold coin and bullion (U.S. v. Whitfield, 1969 WL 6253 AFCMR, 1969).
In another case, “An indictment against Gus Farber, a diamond and jewelry merchant of San Francisco, charged ... that on or about Feb. 21, 1939, he willfully, unlawfully, and knowingly acquired 13 genuine $20 gold coins of the United States without a license in accordance with the President’s Order No. 6260, as amended, 12 U.S.C.A. 95 note”, (Farber v. U.S., 114 F.2d 5 , C.A.9, 1940). He was convicted.
In another instance, a 206-troy-ounce gold rooster was forfeited to the United States: “Richard L. Graves ... was the owner of certain properties in Sparks, Nev. Included in these properties was the ‘Dick Graves Nugget Casino’. As part of the operation of that establishment, Graves ran a dining room in which the specialty was fried chicken. This room was known as the ‘Golden Rooster Room’. For various reasons, including, among others, the advancement of the interests of his business establishment, Graves developed the idea of acquiring, and showing, a solid gold rooster as a main object of attraction in this room.” (U.S. v. One Solid Gold Object in Form of a Rooster, 208 F.Supp. 99, D.C.Nev. 1962.)
In sum, there’s ample authority – and many cases – allowing for seizure of gold coins and bullion. What of the exemptions? I’ll take that up next column.
http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=12872
Iran to expunge 'dirty' dollar and euro reserves
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI (AP) – 22 hours ago
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran announced plans Monday to get rid of its dollar and euro reserves in response to the latest U.N. sanctions over its contested nuclear program.
The U.N. Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran in June because of its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. Tougher unilateral U.S. and European Union sanctions followed in July.
"To fight sanctions, we will remove the dollar and euro from our foreign exchange basket and will replace them with (the Iranian) rial and the currency of any country cooperating with us," Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency. "We consider these currencies (dollar and euro) dirty and won't sell oil in dollar and euro," he added.
The United States and its allies are concerned Iran's continued uranium enrichment could ultimately produce a nuclear weapon. Iran denies this, saying it only seeks nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Rahimi said sanctions won't deter Iran from continuing its nuclear program, and instead they are only helping it achieve technological self-sufficiency in various industries.
Rahimi also attacked South Korea, saying Seoul needs to be punished for joining the global coalition of countries sanctioning Iran.
"The Koreans also need to be slapped," he was quoted by Fars as saying.
Ahmadinejad's government has opened Iran's doors to imports in recent years to keep consumer prices low at the expense protecting of domestic industry, but Rahimi said the government is now planning to increase tariffs on imports.
"We will increase tariffs by 200 percent. We will hike it so much so that no one will be able to buy foreign goods. We should not buy the products of our enemies," he said. "Students can force their parents not to buy foreign goods."
Rahimi also called Australians "a bunch of cattlemen." Australia joined the 27-member European Union in imposing additional sanctions against Iran.
While Iranian economists acknowledge that sanctions are biting and have harmed Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted this week that sanctions will instead serve to eradicate the domination of the dollar in global markets
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hEhR845G1QgnUehgXPZUpQtPwK_QD9HG5R284
Why the US keeps minting coins people hate and won't use
By Daniel Nasaw BBC News, Washington
10 August 2010 Last updated at 02:35 ET
Use of the $1 coin instead of a note could
save the US $700m per year, but Americans
won't carry it
In hidden vaults across the country, the US government is building a stockpile of $1 coins. The hoard has topped $1.1bn - imagine a stack of coins reaching almost seven times higher than the International Space Station - and the piles have grown so large the US Federal Reserve is running out of storage space.
Americans won't use the coins, preferring $1 notes. But the US keeps minting them anyway, and the Fed estimates it already has enough $1 coins to last the next 10 years.
And at the current rate, the inventory will grow to $2bn (£1.3bn) by 2016, the Fed estimates.
The coins began to pile up in 2007 when a law went into effect creating a new series of $1 coins commemorating dead US presidents.
Already stamped into millions of pieces of eight-gram, manganese-brass alloy are presidents no-one even remembers anymore, like Franklin Pierce, and ineffectual executives like James Buchanan, whose incompetence historians say helped lead the US to civil war.
'Public resistance'
Congress passed the law creating the coins despite evidence that Americans never liked the $1 coin in the past.
In a 2002 report, for instance, the investigative arm of Congress described "public resistance to begin using the dollar coin" despite a three-year, $67m (£42m) effort to promote the previous series.
Since the presidential coin programme began, the US government has spent an additional $30m to promote them but they still have not taken hold.
"We have tried every major idea that we can come up with, with limited success," US Mint Director Edmund Moy told a congressional panel last month.
US officials say a peculiar set of factors have hindered public acceptance of the $1 coin.
"Americans are creatures of habit," Mr Moy told Congress. "They are very used to using the bill. They're not used to using coins in regular retail transactions."
The US Mint has also identified an economic "awkward moment" in retail transactions involving the $1 coin. The buyer is afraid the cashier will reject the coin and cashiers are afraid buyers won't accept them in change, so both are disinclined to try.
Mint and Fed officials have also identified a vicious cycle.
Retailers will not stock the coins because they do not see consumers using them, while consumers will not use the coins because retailers do not stock them.
Storage costs
Armoured car carriers and banks will not stock the coins until they are in greater use; banks still see the coins as collectors' items, not money that consumers will use.
And even some coin collectors dislike them.
"We've had any number of people over the years complain about receiving a dollar coin," says Tom DeLorey, a Chicago coin dealer.
Yet the piles have continued to grow because the law requires the US Mint to issue four new presidential coins each year even if most of the previous year's coins remain in government vaults.
In addition to the millions spent to promote the coins, shipping, storing and guarding the excess inventory costs money, though how much is unclear.
Congressman Melvin Watt, a North Carolina Democrat who chairs a subcommittee with jurisdiction on the issue, said Mint and Fed officials had yet to respond to his requests for a detailed accounting.
The US Mint declined to make officials available for an interview.
The Fed has warned Congress of rising storage costs but declined to provide detailed figures to the BBC.
Replacing paper money
US officials and coin experts note that Australia, Britain, Canada and Japan have successfully introduced coins in similar denominations, but only after phasing out paper notes.
Most countries in the G8 have ceased to circulate a note in their base unit of currency.
Because a coin can last four decades while a note lasts only a few years, replacing the dollar bill with the coin could save the US $500m to $700m per year in printing and paper costs.
Only an act of Congress could slow or halt the coins' pile-up, either by phasing out the $1 note or halting the minting of the coins. Neither is likely to happen soon in today's polarised, bitterly partisan political environment, though some in Congress are clearly frustrated.
"We shouldn't continue to push a coin that isn't going anywhere," Mr Watt tells the BBC.
No legislation has been introduced to remedy the problem, though Mr Watt says he anticipates taking action next year.
At least one congressman has called for legislation to phase out the $1 note, noting the declining purchasing power of a single dollar.
"I don't see why we need to have the federal government go through the expense of making and replacing paper money for an amount of value that has traditionally in this country been represented by a coin," Congressman Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, said last month.
Until the US phases out the $1 note or stops minting the coins, they will keep piling up in the vaults.
"People will grumble and [the coins] will be unpopular for a few months but then they'll get used to it," says David Lange, director of research for the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation, a service for coin collectors.
"It's that simple."
Or, in the bureaucratic language of Congress' investigative arm: "The most substantial barrier is the current widespread use of the dollar bill in everyday transactions."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10783019
Using Volume by Price Indicator
Courtesy of: Chris Vermeulen
August 08, 2010
Price and volume are the two most important aspects of trading in my opinion. While news and geopolitical events cause daily blips and in rare occasions change the overall trend of an investment, more times than not it's better to just trade the underlying trend. Most news and events cannot be predicted so focusing on the price action and volume helps tell us if investors are bullish or bearish for any given investment.
I believe it's always important to track the volume no matter which time frame you are trading simply because it tells you how much interest there is for that investment at that given time and price level. If you use volume and understand how to read it when located at the bottom of the chart (which is the standard way of reading it), then you're well ahead of many traders and just may find this little volume indicator helpful.
Below are a few charts showing the volume by price indicator in use. Reading this indicator is simple, the longer the blue bars the more volume had traded at that point. High volume levels become key support and resistance levels.
S&P 500:
As you can see on the chart below and I have pointed out key support and resistance levels using the volume by price indicator. The thin red resistance levels would be areas which I would be tightening my stops and or pulling some money off the table.
The SP500 is currently trading at the apex of this wedge. The market internals as of Friday were still giving a bullish bias, which should bring the index up to resistance once more on Monday or Tuesday. From there we will have to see if we get another wave of heavy selling or a breakout to the upside.
SPY Daily Chart
Gold:
Gold has the opposite volume to price action as the SP500. We are seeing a lot more overhead resistance and that's going to make it tough for gold to make a new high any time soon.
GLD Daily Chart
Crude Oil:
Crude oil broke out of is rising wedge last week and has started to drift back down as traders take profits. Many times after a breakout we will see prices dip down and test that breakout level before continuing in the trend of the breakout. I should point out that there is a large gap to be filled from last Monday's pop in price and we all know most gaps tend to get filled.
USO Daily Chart
Dollar:
The dollar has been sliding the past 2 months and it's now trading at the bottom of a major support level. If the dollar starts to bounce it will put some downward pressure on stocks and commodities.
UUP Daily Chart
In short, I feel the market has a little more life left in it. I'm expecting 1-2 more days of bullish/sideways price action, after that we could see the market roll over hard. It's very likely the US dollar starts a significant rally, which will pull stocks and commodities down.
With the major indices and gold trading at key resistance levels, traders/investors ready to hit the sell button, and the dollar at a key support level I think its only a matter of time before we see a sharp snapback. That being said there is one scenario that is bullish and could still play out. That would be if the US dollar starts to flag and drift sideways for a week or so, and for stocks and commodities to also move sideways before taking another run higher. Watching the intraday price and volume action will help us figure out if buyers are sellers are in control this week.
http://www.bigtrends.com/articles/dailytrendwatch/13523-using-volume-by-price-indicator.html
Global warming raises water shortage risks in one-third of U.S. counties
USA Today
Jul 20, 2010 03:45 PM
More than 1,100 counties -- one-third of those in the continental United States -- will face higher risks of water shortages by midcentury as the result of global warming and more than 400 of these counties will face extremely high risks, reports a study today.
Fourteen states face an extreme risk to water sustainability or will likely see limitations on water availability as demand exceeds supply by 2050, according to an analysis by consulting firm Tetra Tech for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group.
High-risk areas include parts of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
The rising risk results from decreases in precipitation, based on 16 leading climate models, and increases in water demand, based on current growth trends. The report says water
demand is projected to increase by as much as 12.3% between 2000 and 2050.
"This analysis shows climate change will take a serious toll on water supplies throughout the country in the coming decades," said Dan Lashof, director of NRDC's Climate Center, adding that the only real solution is "meaningful legislation" by Congress to reduce global warming. The report says:
In particular, counties at extreme risk for water shortages are most prevalent in the Great Plains and Southwest U.S. However, none of the 48 states analyzed are unaffected. Counties throughout the Midwest and South—particularly Florida—are found to face moderate to extremely high risk of water shortages. A relatively low number of counties in the Northeast and the Northwest are at risk
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/07/global-warming-raises-water-shortage-risks-in-one-third-of-us-counties/1
Water Shortage!
the economic collapse blog.com
Jul 22, 2010
Ever since the beginning of this nation, Americans have always been able to take for granted that there would always be plenty of fresh water. But unfortunately that is rapidly changing. Due to pollution, corruption, inefficiency and the never ending greed of the global elite, the United States (and the entire world) is heading for a very serious water shortage. Already, there are some areas of the United States where water is the number one local political issue. In fact, water is becoming so scarce in certain areas that some states are actually battling in court over it. Unfortunately, there is every indication that the worldwide water crisis is about to get a lot worse.
According to a new report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council, more than one-third of all counties in the lower 48 states will likely be facing very serious water shortages by 2050. That is just 40 years away. As water becomes more scarce and as big global corporations lock up available supplies, the price of water is almost certainly going to skyrocket. This will put even more economic pressure on average Americans.
And Americans certainly do use a lot of water. According to CBS News, the average American uses 150 gallons of water per day, while residents of the U.K. only use 40 gallons per day and residents of China use just 22 gallons per day.
In fact, a five minute shower by an American uses more water than a typical person living in poverty in a developing country uses in an entire day.
For hundreds of years, North America has been blessed with an overabundance of fresh water, but those supplies are quickly running dry.
In fact, there are some scientists who are now wondering if we might actually see a return of the "Dust Bowl" days. The Ogallala Aquifer, a massive underground lake that stretches from southern South Dakota to northern Texas, is being drained at a staggering pace, and that means that the Great Plains could soon turn into the Great American Desert.
If the breadbasket of America were to dry up, what would that mean for the future of this nation?
But it is not just the Great Plains that is on the verge of a major water crisis.
The following is an excerpt from an article that I authored recently for another website....
-----
*The number of states facing a water crisis is now far greater than the number of states without one. In fact, a total of 36 states face severe water shortages in the next three years.
*A federal judge recently ruled that Georgia has few legal rights to Lake Lanier - the main water supply for Atlanta. With 2 million more residents expected to move into Atlanta over the next couple of decades, officials there are scrambling to try to figure out how in the world everyone is going to be able to have enough water.
*In Texas, farmers and ranchers were absolutely devastated in 2009 as the ongoing drought cost the agricultural sector billions of dollars.
*Every single day Arizona and parts of New Mexico use 300 million gallons more water than they get in renewable supply.
*Lake Mead is the primary supply of water for the city of Las Vegas. But since 1998, Lake Mead's capacity has plunged by more than 50 percent- down 5.6 trillion gallons. Nobody is quite sure how Las Vegas is going to continue to have enough water.
*The water crisis became so serious in California this past year that Barack Obama actually requested that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger call state lawmakers into a special session just to deal with the situation.
*Other states are so concerned about the national water crisis that they are determined to hold on to the supplies that they have. In fact, 8 states surrounding the Great Lakes have signed a pact banning the export of water to outsiders - even to other U.S. states.
-----
The truth is that fresh water is very rapidly becoming one of the most valuable commodities in the world. All over the globe, big global corporations are gobbling up water rights as fast as they can.
Why?
Well, the truth is that the world is on the verge of a water shortage of unprecedented magnitude....
*Worldwide demand for fresh water tripled during the last century, and is now doubling every 21 years.
*According to USAID, one-third of all humans will face severe or chronic water shortages by the year 2025.
*Of the 60 million people added to the world’s cities every year, the vast majority of them live in impoverished slums and shanty-towns with no sanitation facilities whatsoever.
*It is estimated that 75 percent of India's surface water is now contaminated by human and agricultural waste.
*Not only that, but according to a UN study on sanitation, far more people in India have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet.
*In northern China, the water table is dropping one meter per year due to overpumping.
*But there are few places where the water shortage is as severe as it is in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia had been producing enough wheat to be self-sufficient for most of the past 30 years, but in 2008 authorities there realized that the non-replenishable aquifer they had been pumping for irrigation purposes was nearly depleted. So in response Saudi Arabia made the decision to reduce their wheat harvest by one-eighth every year thereafter. Wheat production in Saudi Arabia is scheduled to cease entirely in 2016.
The truth is that it would be very difficult to understate just how bad the world water crisis is becoming.
The following is a list of mind blowing facts about the world's water crisis that respected water expert Maude Barlow shares during her presentations....
-Every eight seconds a child dies from drinking dirty water.
-A new desert the size of Rhode Island is created in China because of drought every single year.
-In the developing world, 90% of waste water is discharged completely untreated into local rivers.
-By the year 2050, 1.7 billion people will live in "dire water poverty" and will be forced to relocate.
-Half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by people who have contracted waterborne diseases.
-The World Health Organization says contaminated water is the cause of 80% of all sickness and disease worldwide.
-In China, 80% of the major rivers are so polluted they don't support aquatic life at all.
-The women of South Africa collectively walk the equivalent distance to the moon and back 16 times a day for water.
Without fresh water we cannot live, and global supplies are rapidly being depleted.
Meanwhile, the global elite are running around and are gobbling up the rights to as much of the water around the world as they can.
When you put all the facts above together, it all adds up to one very troubling picture.
Right now it is more imperative than ever to make certain that you and your family have a reliable source of clean water for the times that are coming. Clean, fresh water is something that none of us can take for granted any longer.
So what do you think of the coming global water shortage? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion....
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/water-shortage
The Coming Global Food Shortage
Emergency Food Supply.com
Apr 20, 2010
While you will never hear about it on the mainstream news, and while we can all walk into supermarkets and buy as much food as we want right now, the truth is that a massive global food shortage is coming. In fact, many scientists are now convinced that a horrific world famine is absolutely inevitable. Why? Well, as we will see below, it is a combination of things. World population is exploding at the same time that overfarming, overfishing and environmental degradation are all starting to catch up with us. The truth is that now is the time to start preparing. Now is the time to build up an emergency food supply. Now is the time to begin storing up food. Because a food shortage that is so horrible that most of us cannot even imagine it is on the way, and when it hits it is going to be incredibly painful.
It is now being projected that global demand for food will more than double over the next 50 years. Right now there are over 6 billion people on earth. Around 2040 or so there will be 9 billion people on earth. By the 2060s, there would be over 11 billion people on earth. So where in the world are we going to get the food to feed all of those people?
A global food shortage is coming. There is no possible way that the world can produce enough food for that many people under the current system.
Already 1 billion people in the world go to bed hungry every single night.
Already somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds and 3/4 of them are children under the age of 5.
Already approximately a third of all children in the world under the age of five suffer from serious malnutrition.
And the bad news is that the world simply does not have enough water to grow much more food.
Just consider the following quote from IWMI director general Colin Chartres....
"Current estimates indicate that we will not have enough water to feed ourselves in 25 years time, by when the current food crisis may turn into a perpetual crisis."
Not only that, but because of overfarming and pollution, we are rapidly losing farm land. Today almost 25% of the world’s farm land is affected by serious environmental degradation. That is up from 15% two decades ago.
In some of the biggest countries in the world the environmental situation is absolutely nightmarish.
For example, it is estimated by authorities that 75 percent of India's surface water is contaminated by human and agricultural waste. The truth is that there is over a billion people in India, but sanitation is still only just starting to be developed in many areas. So many people there just "use the toilet" wherever they can. In fact, according to a UN study on sanitation, far more people in India have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet.
But it just isn't places like India where rampant environmental degradation is a problem.
It is happening in the United States too.
It turns out that many big American cattle farms actually feed chicken manure to cattle because it is so inexpensive and because we produce far too much of it to properly dispose of as fertilizer.
So are you eating beef that is from cattle that were fed chicken manure every day?
How would you know?
Not only that, but the world cannot get much more food out of the oceans either. 29 percent of world fisheries are in a state of collapse according to Canadian scientist Boris Worm, and in the years ahead the world fishing industry may actually produce less food rather than more food.
But much more food will be needed in the years ahead.
The really sad thing is that we waste so much food right now. In developed countries we throw away anywhere from one-third to one-half of all food produced.
Considering the fact that so many people in the world are suffering from a lack of food, that is absolutely criminal.
In the years ahead we won't be wasting that much food. That is for certain. We will look back on these days when there was plenty of food with longing. These are still good times. Even though the world economy is starting to spin out of control, the truth is that we haven't seen anything yet. A devastating world economic collapse is on the way, and a global food shortage will follow shortly thereafter.
Are you ready?
http://theemergencyfoodsupply.com/archives/the-coming-global-food-shortage
Food inflation is a rumble that won't go away
By Garry White
Published: 7:26PM BST 08 Aug 2010
Is the era of cheap food coming to an end? With wheat prices jumping 20pc last week after the failure of the Russian harvest, fears of an imminent food shock have once again emerged.
Things aren't as bad as they seem. The current steep jump in prices is likely to be temporary - but the long-term outlook looks very different.
A number of fundamental things are happening that means in the long term, food prices are almost guaranteed to rise. The number of mouths that need feeding is rapidly increasing – and the regions with a booming population are where arable land is scarce.
The failure of the Russian wheat harvest has caused a temporary spike in prices, but these high prices won't last for long because of excess production in China and the US.
"Global wheat ending stocks are forecast to decline from 193m tonnes in 2009-10 to 178.8m tonnes in 2010-11," says Luke Chandler, an agriculture analyst at Rabobank. "The relative small decline in global ending stocks is due primarily to a 6.9m tonne surplus in Chinese wheat production and higher-than-expected US production."
This means that the global stocks/use ratio, which measures the proportion of a year's wheat consumption that is in storage, is forecast to be 23pc at the end of the current year, says Mr Chandler. This is well above the 18pc seen in 2006-07 and 17pc in 2007-08.
Current supplies, therefore, look sufficient to meet the Russian shortfall – with US farmers gaining from Russia's woes.
Another reason that prices won't stay high for too long is that farmers can easily rotate to different crops.
It takes years to discover and mine a new source of gold or nickel, but a farmer can plant different seeds and boost supply in just one growing season. If the price of wheat remains high, this will prompt farmers to plant more lucrative crops and supply will increase. This will lead to lower prices.
So, the current price spike should not be a cause of great concern. But looking further ahead, there are reasons to worry. Global fundamentals are supportive of a long-term rise in the price of food.
At the moment there are just under 7bn mouths to feed around the world. The United Nations (UN) believes there will be more than 9bn people by 2050. In fact, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) forecasts that total world demand for agricultural products will jump 60pc between now and 2030 – rising much more rapidly than the population.
This rapid increase is because the areas of the world where the population is rising the fastest are also the areas of the world that are moving out of poverty.
Demand for grains in emerging markets increases more than the population because of one simple fact – richer people eat more meat. This increases demand for grain feeds for livestock over and above that used for human consumption.
The areas of the world that are expected to have the largest increases in population in the next two decades are Asia and the Middle East.
According to Standard Chartered, Asia is the world's largest food supplier – but the possibility of dramatic increases in supply may be limited. That's because there is little land to spare and production is already quite intensive, with good yields.
Things are worse in the Middle East. Studies by the FAO have shown that the region imports more than 50pc of its consumed calories every year. This proportion is expected to increase substantially as its population rises.
According to the CIA World Factbook, a staggering 38pc of people in Saudi Arabia are under the age of 14, compared with just 16.5pc in the UK. This difference in demographics between the region and the West is why the population is rising faster. In the UK, the population growth rate is just 0.28pc, compared with 3.56pc in the United Arab Emirates, 3.5pc in Kuwait and 2.71pc in Yemen.
The reason that the Middle East has to import half of its food from abroad is because of its lack of water.
One tonne of grain requires 1,000 tonnes of water and, according to Standard Chartered's analysis, with agricultural production currently consuming 70pc of all freshwater available globally.
The Middle East may have a lot of oil – but it does not have much water. Recent price spikes have raised concerns about food inflation in the short term. It's likely that prices will ease because global stocks of wheat are not as tight as the recent jump in futures contracts would imply.
However, the fear of food shortages has emerged for good reason – you should expect prices to be on a slow trend upward for many years to come. But the real concern should be for those living in rapidly gentrifying areas of Asia and the Middle East.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/7933390/Food-inflation-is-a-rumble-that-wont-go-away.html
Consumers cut back on credit cards again in June
Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer,
On Friday August 6, 2010, 5:00 pm EDT
Consumer borrowing falls in June for fifth straight month as credit card use declines again
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumer borrowing fell in June for a fifth straight month as households keep cutting back on credit card use.
Borrowing dropped at an annual rate of $1.3 billion in June, the Federal Reserve reported Friday. That marked the 16th drop in overall credit in the past 17 months.
Americans backed away from swiping their credit cards for the 21st straight month. That offset a rise in the number of auto loans.
Households are borrowing less and saving more, and that has dragged on the overall economy by lowering consumer spending.
The $1.3 billion June drop in borrowing was much smaller than the $5 billion decline that economists had expected. The government also revised the May decline to show a smaller drop of $5.3 billion rather than the initial $9.2 billion decrease.
While a smaller decline could signal the long slide on consumer credit is leveling off, economists cautioned against getting too optimistic given continued lackluster job growth and tight credit standards.
"As long as income and employment do not show marked improvements, consumers will avoid taking on new debt," said Gregory Daco, senior economist at IHS Global Insight. "Consumers remain bound by a weak labor market ... high debt levels and a fragile housing market."
In a separate report Friday, the Labor Department said the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5 percent and private employers added only a net 71,000 jobs in July. That is far below the 200,000 or more jobs that are needed each month to make a significant dent in the jobless rate.
Overall credit dropped 0.7 percent in June. It was the smallest decline since credit increased 1.8 percent in January, the only rise since the beginning of 2009. The decrease left consumer credit at an annual rate of $2.42 trillion.
The category that includes auto loans rose 2.4 percent in June following a 1.4 percent increase in May. Analysts are predicting another increase in July after auto sales posted solid gains.
Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR Inc., said consumer credit has fallen by $163 billion since hitting a peak in July 2008 as households have struggled to repair their balance sheets in the midst of a deep recession.
But he said that household net worth is down by more than $11 trillion since hitting a peak in the spring of 2007, indicating that many households probably still feel under pressure to get their borrowing under better control.
"While off to a good start, household sector deleveraging still has considerably further to go," he said in a note to clients.
The Fed's credit report covers credit card debt, auto loans and other debt not secured by real estate. It does not cover home mortgages or home equity lines of credit.
Earlier this week, the Commerce Department reported that the personal savings rate climbed to 6.4 percent of after-tax incomes in June. It was the highest reading in nearly a year and three times the 2.1 percent average for all of 2007, before the recession began.
For years, economists worried that the savings rate had fallen too low. But now the concern is that consumers aren't spending enough to help strengthen the recovery. Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of total economic activity.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Consumers-cut-back-on-credit-apf-555521528.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
22 Ways To Fight Rising Food Prices
by Lisa Smith
Food, clothing and shelter generally top the list of basic human needs. While shopping at a discount store instead of the mall generally takes care of the clothing issue, and living in a small apartment instead of a McMansion can address your housing situation, rising world food prices can lead to some significant challenges in the food department. Everything from rising transportation costs to the development of biofuels, such as biodiesel, push up the cost of food and put a pinch on consumers' wallets.
While the need to eat isn't something you can avoid, there are some steps you can take to keep the costs in check.
1. Eat at Home
Dining out is an expensive proposition. Just about any nutritious meal that you buy in a formal restaurant can be made at home for a fraction of the price. Even good coffee is cheaper to make if you do it yourself. Fast food is excluded from the category, as high-calorie, low-quality food can be had a bargain price, but the impact on your long-term health overrides the benefit of short-term savings. (If you love restaurants, try investing in them instead of eating at them. To learn more, see (Sinking Your Teeth Into Restaurant Stocks.)
2. Shop With a Plan
If you stumble around the grocery store and fill your cart with everything that catches your eye, chances are you will spend a lot more money that you needed to spend. To minimize your cash outlay, prepare a shopping list before you leave home. Plan your meals for the week ahead, and make careful note of what you need to buy in order to prepare those meals. Once the list is made, purchase only the items on the list, and avoid impulse buys. (Learn how to create a budget. See The Beauty Of Budgeting and Get Your Budget In Fighting Shape.)
3. Put on Blinders
Grocery stores are designed to make you go through a maze to get to the most basic items you need in the hope that you will make a few impulse buys along the way. If you keep to your planned list of needed foods, you won't be tempted when you get forced down the junk food aisle to get at the milk. Because most necessities and basic cooking items are found along the outside perimeter of the store, start there and work your way around the edge of the store, only stepping into the maze to grab any leftover items on your list.
4. Eat Before You Shop
When you are hungry and you walk into a building full of food, there's a high likelihood that you are going to fill you cart with unnecessary and expensive purchases that appeal to your taste buds. To keep your costs down, eat first and shop on a full stomach.
5. Avoid Prepared Foods
Our fast-paced society encourages convenience, and the grocery store has capitalized on this trend. Ready-made meals are easy to buy, but come with a premium price tag. Instead of putting that rotisserie chicken and macaroni salad in you cart, buy the ingredients and prepare the meal yourself. The same concept applies to frozen entrées, baked goods and any other food that has been prepared in some way for added convenience.
6. Skip the Bottled Water
If you don't like the water that comes out of the tap, buy a water filter. The per-gallon cost is significantly less than the cost of bottled water - and without all the plastic bottles to discard, it's a lot easier on the environment. (To invest in water, read Water: The Ultimate Commodity.)
7. Shop Without the Kids
Hungry, tired, cranky kids increase the amount of time it takes to get your shopping done. Every extra minute that you spend in the grocery store increases the likelihood of extra items finding their way into your cart, including toys and snacks designed to keep the kids quiet while you try to focus on finding a few bargains.
8. Buy in Bulk
Bulk buying can save you a significant amount of money. Pay attention to the prices and pick up the family size package if the per-unit cost is lower and you have a place to store it. Shopping at big-box bulk retailers like Sam's Club and Costco can also save on your bill if you shop there frequently enough to cover the cost of membership, but pay careful attention to your spending habits. The big boxes are often no bargain at all when compared to sales prices and coupon savings at other stores. In addition, they may encourage you to buy more than you need, driving up your grocery bill.(Bulk purchases aren't for everyone. To learn more, check out The Dark Side Of Bulk Buying.)
9. Use Store Reward Cards
If the store that you visit most frequently has a reward card, be sure to sign up. In some cases, stores raise their prices when they offer reward cards, and without the card your bill will certainly be higher. If the reward card offers other benefits, such as a ham for the holidays or a discount on gasoline, be sure to maximize your benefits by paying attention to the cutoff dates and cashing in your points before they expire.
10. Use Coupons
Coupons provide an easy way to save money. Clip them and cash them in, paying particular attention to stores that double the value of manufacturers' coupons. A number of websites also offer coupons exclusively, and they are a great place to search for discounts on the items you have on your list. If you frequent a website of your favorite brands, they will often offer discounts to their faithful public. A few minutes of surfing online can make a difference at the till.
11. Buy Locally
Locally grown or produced food is often available at a cheaper price because you don't pay for long transportation costs. Farmer's markets, fairs, and the local aisle at your grocery store are all game for deals on tasty and fresh food.
12. Look Down
Stores often place the most expensive items at eye-level. To find less expensive items, look down. Also, looking around your brand-name food can find you a cheaper generic alternative. Generic label products are often nearly identical to name-brand goods (in fact, they're often produced in the same factory), so don't pay for packaging when what you really want is the food inside. (For more insight, see Sneaky Strategies That Fuel Overspending.)
13. Avoid the End Caps and Checkout Temptations
Those displays placed at the end of each aisle often feature premium brands. Rather than grabbing those high-priced batteries or that extra box of cereal, walk down the aisle. Chances are good that walking a few extra feet will reward you with a less expensive option.
Many grocery stores now offer checkout lines that don't feature candy. Using these lanes not only helps you avoid the temptation to spend your money on sweets, but it also encourages a healthier lifestyle.
14. Compare Prices and Stores
Some consumers have trouble calculating the cost per unit in their heads, but it's something that gets a lot easier with practice. You can even carry a calculator. Looking at the brands and comparing prices is an easy way to shave a few cents off most purchases.
The store that features the lowest average prices in your area is often the best place for routine shopping, but the higher-priced competitor may run sales on specific items that undercut the cost at your most frequented venue. Watch for these sales and take advantage of them when possible.
15. Shop for Sales
As mentioned above, sales can be a great incentive to switch stores – but only if you need the items on sale. Pay attention to sales on necessity items and stock up on non-perishables and freezer goods. Keep an eye on the prices so that you know when a sale price is merely a small savings or when it is a significant discount to the normal price.
16. Watch "Best Before" or "Sell By" Dates
As the "sell by" or "best before" date approaches, you are virtually guaranteed a discount. For example, grocery stores lower prices as meat ages. Ask the butcher when the meats get marked down. Most stores have a fairly regular schedule that you can learn and follow. When you get a good deal, stock your freezer so you can avoid buying when the price is high. And if you plan on freezing the food, "best before" dates shouldn't worry you; the product will stay fresh until you thaw and cook it.
17. Substitute Recipe Items
If you have a higher-priced item that reoccurs in your favorite recipes, it may be time to shake up your taste buds. Often a lower-priced alternative can be found. For instance, if you consistently bake with olive oil and you see that the price has skyrocketed, a simple switch to applesauce (something that you might even be able to make if you have an apple tree) is a great cheap and low-fat substitution for many recipes. To help decide on a cheaper substitution, see The Cooking Thesaurus.
18. Keep Your Kitchen Stocked
A well-stocked kitchen means that you won't run out of staple items and need to buy them on the spur or the moment. Knowing what you have in the cabinet means that you can wait to make your purchases until items are on sale.
19. Shop Infrequently
Reducing the number of trips that you make to the store each week or month reduces the odds of unnecessary purchases, and minimizes the amount of gasoline spent getting there.
20. Pay Attention To Time
Weekly sales often run from mid-week to mid-week. Hold off on your shopping until after you've had a chance to clip coupons from the Sunday paper and you'll not only enjoy the sales prices but you might also get a coupon. Shopping during the evening or early morning also helps you avoid the crowds and spend less time in the store.
21. Pay In Cash
When you put groceries on your credit card and don't pay off the card in full each month, you pay interest on the purchase. To avoid this extra cost, pay in cash when you shop and keep necessities off your credit cards. (If you want to learn how to manage your credit card debt, read Take Control Of Your Credit Cards.)
22. Check Your Bill
Electronic scanners make the shopping experience faster and more convenient, but scanners aren't perfect. Be sure to take a look at the receipt to make sure your coupons and discounts were taken into account.
Shop Smart
Food is one of those purchases that you just can't avoid, but careful shoppers can minimize the amount spent on this necessary purchase. All it takes is a little time, patience and effort.
To learn more on saving money, see Squeeze A Greenback Out Of Your Latte.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/fight-food-costs.asp
5 Generic Products That Are Just as Good
by Amy Bell
Sunday, August 1, 2010
In today's tough economy, consumers are pinching pennies by choosing generic over big name brands in their supermarket aisles. From chips and dips to pain relievers and peanut butter, there's a cheaper generic version of almost every product.
Of course, some of these no-name products are second-rate. For example, if you've ever bought generic diapers, you probably ended up dealing with a messy leak the size of Old Faithful. Generic diapers can certainly save you a bundle, and some even offer the same absorbency as the big name brands - but in my experience, they simply don't fit your baby's bottom as well. And all parents know that an ill-fitting diaper is a recipe for disaster.
[Click here to check savings products and rates in your area.]
Another product you probably don't want to skimp on? Toilet paper. Most generic paper products are less absorbent, so you can end up using more. But unlike diapers and toilet paper (not to mention cheese, ketchup and soy sauce, if you want my opinion), there are a few generic products that take the cake. Here are five generics that are just as good as the real thing.
1. Cereal
Okay, so the generic brand cereal may have a sillier name (Krispy Krunchies) and a lesser known character on the box (Leon the Lion). Still, many consumers find that generic cereals taste just as good as their brand name counterparts. A 14-ounce box of brand name corn flakes will run you about $2.99, while generic corn flakes generally cost a mere 99 cents! Now, that's some serious savings.
If you're still in doubt, conduct a cross check of the brand name and generic cereal ingredients. You'll probably discover the ingredients are exactly the same. In other words, you're paying an extra two bucks for a picture of a corporate mascot.
2. Prescription Drugs
While you may be willing to give up your brand name corn flakes for their generic replica, would you ever consider buying generic prescription drugs? If you want to save huge amounts of money you would. Prescription generics typically cost between 20-80% less than their brand name counterparts. In 2008, the average retail price of a brand name prescription was $137.90 as compared to the average generic prescription price of $35.22. Just think of all the generic cereal you could buy with that extra hundred bucks!
Many consumers worry that the generic prescriptions aren't as safe as the original drugs. However, pharmaceutical companies are required to use the same active ingredients in generic drugs as the brand name version, and generic prescriptions must meet the same quality and safety standards.
3. Over-the-Counter Meds
Just like prescription drugs, you can save some serious coin on over-the-counter meds, too. While you may be tempted to reach for the trusty Tylenol, Nyquil or Zantac, there are usually much cheaper versions of these popular over-the-counter meds on your pharmacy's shelves. The generic versions of these OTC meds contain the same active ingredients, and like their brand-name equivalents, these products must be approved by the FDA. Depending on the item, you could save tons of cash on generic meds.
4. Basic Baking Products
When you're ready to stock up the pantry with some baking basics, reach for the generic version. From all-purpose flour and butter to spices, salt and sugar, these generic baking staples are pretty much the same as the real thing with a much smaller price tag. The companies that produce these generic single-ingredient items are required to follow the same production and storage regulations as the brand name folks.
5. Fresh Fruits and Veggies
You may have the Chiquita banana song stuck in your head, but don't let that catchy melody entice you to overpay in the produce section. Fruits and vegetables from lesser-known growers are just as good - sometimes even better, especially if the produce was grown locally.
When you hand-pick your fruits and vegetables, don't just go for the label you recognize. Your stomach (and your bank account) will be happier if you go for the label-free produce that looks fresh and smells scrumptious.
Go Generic and Save Thousands
Still hesitant to go generic? Chew on this: Research suggests the average consumer can save anywhere from $200-$1,500 per year by purchasing generic products. While you may not want to subject your family to store brand cheddar or no-name beer, there are plenty generic products out there that are just as good as the real thing.
http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-110214-6160-2-5-generic-products-that-are-just-as-good?ywaad=ad0035
VIX Pointing To Major Move in Equities (VIX, SPY)
by Michael J. Zerinskas
Posted on 08/05/10 at 2:49pm
It appears that volatility traders are positioning for a major move in the S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) over the next six weeks. This is represented in the major and continued increased in the CBOE Volatility Index futures contango.
Ok—that’s a mouth-full; let’s breaking it down. The CBOE Volatility Index (CBOE: VIX), which tracks the daily average movement of the S&P 500, is currently at 22.22, whereas the front month (August) future is trading at $24.00 and the September future is trading at $27.45. The curve of those prices from the near term into September is up-sloping, and notably so; the up-sloping nature of the futures curve is known as: contango.
Given such a sharp level of contango in the futures over the next six weeks ($5.23) versus the actual historical volatility if the S&P 500 of 18% (total contango of $9.45), one can assume that traders are “bracing” for something, something large.
Several VIX pit trades are also confirming the growing sentiment of a large move in the equity markets. Yesterday, the September $45 call was purchased 50,000 times for $0.50 and earlier today the September $40 call was purchased 5,000 times for $0.80. So, not only are these trades confirming already elevated VIX futures, but they are also betting that those levels could increase over the next six weeks.
That would be the equivalent of the S&P 500 trading slightly less than 1% per day to over 3% per day—a significant event.
While the VIX is commonly referred to as an inverse to the S&P 500, this does not mean that the market is poised to crash lower; this could mean that a strong rally ensues as well. (Though, to be perfectly clear, the above options trades are in fact betting on SPX downside.) There is also the possibility that traders are “dressed up with no place to go” and that their theses and worries will be proved unfounded with the futures retraceing lower, toward the spot price.
Be that as it may, large, institutional traders are bracing for something significant to happen in the equity markets, shouldn’t you???
http://www.benzinga.com/trading-ideas/technicals/10/08/414923/vix-pointing-to-major-move-in-equities-vix-spy