Category: Economy

Forget Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Valkyrie Friday (well, this year it’s Friday) is the day after Christmas! The shopping mall battlefields are strewn with the dead and wounded misfit toys that didn’t make the cut while the wild-eyed mobs ran through the aisles like the bulls at Pamplona. Fly, fly, my sisters and brothers, and rescue the heroic offerings presented to you by a desperate consumer kingdom as is your sacred duty!

While those who have fulfilled their glassy-eyed Christian obligation to obtain material goods by a certain morning rest at home, replete with sated consumerism and shaking the blood of WalMart employees from their shoes (PAAAA-RAIZZZE JEEZUS!), those of us who have resisted the multi-limnal marketing bombardment of the previous weeks for whatever reason now have our chance.

Everything is half price! Some stuff is less than half price! This is all the STUFFFFFFF!!!!! that didn’t move, and now it can be YOURS!!!!! Can I get a “HOI KRIEGER!” everybody! Heed the wise post-9/11 words of Der FucktardFuhrer and GO SHOPPING!

It’s the 1930s, folks.  In Chicago, workers have been driven to the wall and are taking action:

Idled workers occupy factory in Chicago

By RUPA SHENOY, Associated Press Writer Rupa Shenoy, Associated Press Writer – 43 mins ago

CHICAGO – Workers laid off from their jobs at a factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they’ll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.

About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began their sit-in Friday, the last scheduled day of the plant’s operation.

“We’re going to stay here until we win justice,” said Blanca Funes, 55, of Chicago, after occupying the building for several hours. Speaking in Spanish, Funes said she fears losing her home without the wages she feels she’s owed. A 13-year employee of Republic, she estimated her family can make do for three months without her paycheck. Most of the factory’s workers are Hispanic.

snip

“We’re doing something we haven’t since the 1930s, so we’re trying to make it work,” Fried said.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/…

Here’s a great first hand report from Fred Kronsky, a blogger and head of a Chicago teachers union:

We were not exactly sure what we were going to do when we got there.

Republic Windows and Doors had suddenly announced it was shuttering its plant. The law requires 60 days notice or 60 days pay. The workers had received neither.

So, instead of leaving, they decided to stay.

It just seemed like we needed to let the folks who were sitting-in at Republic Windows and Doors know that they had support.

snip

Armando Robles came up to our car.

“I’m Fred Klonsky. I’m president of a teachers’ union local and we wanted to come by and show our support.

Senor Robles stuck out his hand. We shook. “I’m the local president here.”

“What do you need?”

“Coffee,” Robles said. “We’ve been inside since this morning and the people had some lunch, but nothing since then.”

“How many people?” I asked.

“About 150.”

Hmmm. 150 coffees.

http://preaprez.wordpress.com/…

More, after the fold.

Wearing ‘almost homeless’ sign, ex-executive seeks work

Paul Nawrocki says he’s beyond the point where he cares about humiliation.

Amazing, simply amazing.  For the past two days I’ve been watching these hearings on the automakers, and find myself more aghast than anything else.  Actually, it’s more than that.  I think I’ve had this almost sickening feeling, a feeling where anger is meshed in with a humiliation and sadness.  It isn’t just the automakers that has been the cause of this, but that they symbolize how far we’ve fallen.

I like this guy.  A lot.  And I like that Biden picked him.  I know Biden voted bad on the bankruptcy bill, but I think that was for his Deleware banks.  That he picked Jerod Bernstein today to be his economic advisor is good news for progressives.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden on Friday named Jared Bernstein as his chief economic policy adviser, a new post created as the nation faces a recession.

Bernstein, a senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, has been an informal economic adviser to President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign. He also served as deputy chief economist under Labor Secretary Robert Reich during the Clinton administration.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Today, he published an article about job losses.  This is Bernstein:

Our job market is now shedding jobs at a truly alarming rate, a rate measurably worse than past recessions. We face an emergency that certainly equals those in the financial markets in recent months. The American workforce is too big to fail.

No shit.  But it’s good to hear it from those who will be in power.

More on Bernstein and other good signals from Obama today, after the fold.  

This is interesting.  Obama has not put a number on the stimulus package he will propose, but many reports put it between $500 Billion and $700 Billion for two years.  That is, maybe $350 B per year.

Now along comes a Nobel Prize winning economist who served in the Clinton administration and a Harvard economist who advised McCain, and both advise Obama to go big, REAL BIG:

Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor who was an adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner who served in President Bill Clinton’s White House, are among those who say President- elect Barack Obama should push for a package of that size.

“They need a stimulus of $500-to-$600 billion a year for at least two years to counter what is going to be a collapse in consumption,” said Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

Calls for $1 Trillion Stimulus Package Grow as Economy Tumbles

More, after the fold.

(also on Daily Kos)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

The latest in a long string of screw ups, the economic decline towards Hooverism, is not being blamed on George W. Bush for some reason.

Harlold Meyerson at the Post says: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Herbert Hoover, we should recall, had a program for dealing with the Depression. It consisted of lending to banks but opposing fiscal stimulus or direct aid to individuals. Which is why Hank Paulson’s frenzied endeavors to prop up the banking sector and Bush’s dogged resistance to assisting anybody else amount to pure neo-Hooverism.

As the 1930s began, Hoover believed that the coordinated actions of the private sector could save the beleaguered economy. It soon became apparent that the only action that private-sector businesses could agree upon was closing down factories and offices and throwing people out of work. Under immense pressure to do something, in late 1931 Hoover asked Congress to establish the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, to provide funds to banks it deemed creditworthy.

Does this sound familiar? A “commander”, inept or otherwise, forcefully closing his eyes so he won’t see the locomotive juggernaut of failed economic policies and how they affect us little people not included in his “base”.

As breadlines lengthened, he [Hoover] vetoed a bill appropriating funds for public works on the grounds that it was inflationary and contained pork-barrel spending. Bankers would be saved; everyone else was effectively damned.

History repeating itself? Isn’t this administration focusing its efforts on the lending institutions and ignoring the homeowners unable to pay off their mortgages? Do they still think it’s going ‘trickle down’ after 28 years of proof that the only thing that trickles down is warm and wet and unwelcome.

(My apologies folks, for the delay.  This was supposed to be published this morning, but I had rush a sick wiener dog to one of those emergency vet places.  Rest assured, he’s Ok, and probably won’t eat another sock again!)

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday…er Tuesday!  Originally I wanted to post this on Monday morning, but I wanted to include the latest development from the Boeing SPEEA talks. Outside of this we got news from the steel industry, unfortunately not the good kind.  Sticking with steel for a moment, there’s an op-ed piece I wish to highlight that I thought you should look at.  We have news or alarm bells I should say about pensions.  Of course we also have some Green news, some ominous, but some good.  

But before we get to those, let’s take a look at the Numbers!

Madam Zelda!  Madam Zelda!

Has it only been 7 trading days?

Who wants to be long?

For stores, the holiday season may already be over

By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, AP Retail Writer

Thu Nov 27, 4:33 am ET

Major department stores and mall-based chains have cut prices up to 70 percent to move out mounds of excess inventory stuck in the pipeline since the financial crisis hit in September and people snapped their wallets shut.

Big moves of merchandise happen every year – but usually after Christmas. This year stores are desperate to shed inventory even before Thanksgiving.

…

It wasn’t supposed to be this bad. Stores, which typically place orders about four to seven months in advance, had cautiously planned their holiday inventories about 15 percent below last year’s levels.

But because of the free fall in consumer spending, stores are now stuck with about 15 percent to 20 percent excess holiday inventory, estimated Burt P. Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resource Group.

…

How bad will the season ultimately be for stores? Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wachovia Corp., expects total retail sales to fall 0.5 percent for November and December. That would be the first decline in holiday sales since 1982.

The problem for a retailer is that most of their capital is tied up in merchandise, most of which is ordered up to 6 months or even a year ahead of time.  Like everyone else they buy on credit and count on income from sales to pay off the loans when they come due.

This year, just like hedge funds, they are liquidating assets (inventory) in anticipation of margin calls and redemptions.

But Wait!

Greetings folks, first day of the workweek, and welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday.  I had planned to put this out earlier in the day, but had to deal with a turkey situation (hint: dogs); plus other holiday-related madness.  So anyways, we got some good stuff for you today.  First on our highlighted list is a story on GM’s board.  Then we got two industrial-esc jobs updates, first on coal then in green-collar world.  Finally, I want to finish off today’s edition with something special, a music video!  No…not me singing, but a reader sent it to me and thought you should all see it.  So a shout out to Amber for bringing this to my attention, you rock!  And with that we go to…the Numbers!

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

Our economic situation has been all over the news. Banks are failing, credit is contracting, the auto industry is crying for a bailout. Clearly, the U.S. economy has gotten derailed, and we’re now faced with the unenviable task of getting it back on track. The trouble is, we don’t know which track is the right track.

Or do we?

Suppose there exists a valid interpretation of economic forces and outcomes, one that explains our current situation, yet one that no one will acknowledge, even to knock down.

About 12 years ago I picked up Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life by Jane Jacobs (better known as the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities) at a used bookstore in upstate New York. Jacobs wrote this book in 1983, in response the emergence of stagflation. As an informed and educated layperson, she examined economic history with a critical eye and an urbanist’s heart, looking for the laws that explained what was going on — which the economic theories of the time did not.