Category: Economy

I found this rather touching story and wanted to share it with you.

“We all did what we had to do, buddy boy”, he told me.  “They was good jobs and it was how I  could take care of y’all.

Like thousands of our fathers, he joined the picket lines and fought to make a living for their families.

..he joined the union and walked the picket lines in the brutal Michigan winter for health care and better wages. He watched other people driving around in new cars he had helped to build but he could never afford to own. A million little worries and a dozen big troubles in a cold, gray place without family nearby caused him to fall to pieces. He spent time in an institution and when he was cured he had nothing to look forward to other than going back on the line. But the automobile industry gave him possibilities he was not able to find anywhere else with his tenth grade education.

A Stars Hollow Gazette

SILENCE!!!  The spirits are about to speak…

You know, I don’t just spend my time railing at our craven capitulationist Congress and their blow dried Beltway butt kissing Bozo court stenographers.  No siree.  I reserve a certain amount of bile for our corporate criminal culture of greed is good conmen and thieves.

When last we looked in the crystal ball, 18 trading days ago, my prediction was grim-

I expect a rally in anticipation of rate reduction from the next Fed meeting.  I expect a rally after they confirm market expectations.

I expect the fundamentals to remain the same.

Look for big Friday sell offs, why be long over the weekend?  What should you do in the mean time?

I feel the spirit of Jim Cramer…

Sell!  Sell!  Sell!  Sell!  Sell!  Sell!  Sell!  Sell!

Buy at the dips and sell into strength.  This market will not be done dropping until it bottoms out on the intraday lows, 6K to 7K.  For long term investments look at dividends and p/es, if you have the cash and the time.

Scary.

I think that over the next couple of days we’re going to test the market lows.  We might start hitting those 6Ks I talked about.

I’ve heard some gloom and dooming on CNBC about how Dow 4K is ‘the Great Depression all over again’, but I don’t agree that things are that dire yet.  I expect some serious defict spending and it’s all good (some types are better than others of course).

Anyway, at some point earnings and dividends are going to get more attractive than just leaving your money in your mattress.  There will be a bottom.

If you are liquid then you will pick up some bargains in the long run, there is no reason to believe that in 2 or 3 years values won’t approach historic levels.  And by historic I mean historical average growth, not tulip market prices.

Should have bought potato futures.  At least you can eat them.

I don’t pretend economic wisdom, but I see patterns in the data.  I use the DJIA as a broad indicator.  I don’t claim poblano prescience or accuracy, but if you want to see some brightly colored tables join me below.

Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a new installment of Manufacturing Monday.  Now I would like to do something a tad different this week. You see today we get two important economic indicators released. So, instead of waiting a whole week for me to reprise them here, I would go ahead and write about then today!  I will still go over last week’s indicators, but figured you deserve to get something more up to date as well.  The numbers get released around 9:30 Eastern, so they will be covered first, then last week’s stuff.

Beyond the Numbers section, this week we’ll be covering Green Manufacturing again.  We haven’t touched this in a while, what with all the GM related business.  Yet there have been some very interesting developments in the green collar world.  So before you, for your pleasure, is some stuff that may or may not put a smile on your face.  Either way, it looks as if, thankfully, we are turning a new leaf (sorry, couldn’t help it) on manufacturing!

I posted this on dailyKos last week, under my other handle I use there.  It passed by there as most diaries do.  This morning I woke up and started my weekly dose of opposition research and MSM lunacy.  I got 5 minutes of Fox News with Senator Dorgan arguing for taking 25-30 of the already allocated 700 billion to help the car companies (responsible for 3 to 5 million jobs).  Senator Kyl and Chris Matthews countered with the same supply-side crap and “blame the poor people” grandstanding that has gotten us in to this mess.  Then they asserted that the Democrats should “compromise” with the Republicans and not bail out the car companies (just the banks).  I got so angry, I turned the channel to ABC, where Ahnold was saying that Fannie May and Freddie Mac forced so many banks into loaning to people who had no business getting a home mortgage.  As a VP in a community bank, let me tell you that this is a baldfaced lie, but it is one of the somber “explanations” that the wingnuts peddle to again place the blame on “the poor”. (It is also designed to appeal to racists, BTW) I only got through about 6o seconds of Arnold’s  crap before I turned off the TV and decided to repost my rant here.

We’ve sold all the drywall and insulation out of the house that is the American economy, along with the siding, furniture (not the tv, of course), plumbing, and the “unnecessary” parts of the roof.  We’re down to the studs, people, and winter is coming.  What is left of the American middle class is about to be pushed forever into poverty, the the long term GOP-corporatist plan of feudalizing America is about to become complete, and the Sunday morning shills are suggesting we “compromise” with these thieves.  Its time to fight back.  We must obliterate supply side economics and expose it for the insidious farce that it is, with overwhelming force and all due haste.  Now, the repost:

This rant started in a bar in a 2700-person town, arguing politics with a mostly Republican group on the night after the election.  While (thankfully) they accepted the results of the election, and generally wished success for Obama, they also wished he would continue “supply side” and “free market” policies.  Our town, like most others, has been economically decimated the past 30 years.  It started a rap that is roughly transcribed here:

There are relatively few people who have benefited greatly from supply side economics, but if you live in a small town, the numbers are ridiculously skewed against you.  Supply side doesn’t have anything for your small town, except for job losses, poor quality products, the end of locally based businesses, and the erosion of community political and economic power.  These ill effects also spur on other problems such as bad customer service, lack of pride in workmanship, and lethargy in general.

This diary is about the G20 summit and the economy, but really it’s about the larger implications of a society which cannot let go of its status quo assumptions in time to save itself.  Here’s the false dilemma: either the current system must be saved, or the current system will fail.  The idea that we could switch over to another system, through a set of radical changes, cannot even insinuate itself into the conversation, outside of (perhaps) a marginal section of the blogosphere.  Yet this is what the world most needs.  In light of this, I recommend that we (bloggers) attempt to overcome resistance to some basic premises of thinking about the current situation.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

This evening the Associated Press reported the following —

As of Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008, at least 4,200 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003…

And —

As of Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008, at least 555 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001…

No count of the number of dead Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, or others killed during the invasion and subsequent occupations.

I have a simple question: have we seen enough members of the U.S. military to die yet for the U.S. to declare victory?

An associate of mine still believes that his stocks portfolio is safe (it will come back) even as he witnesses his business failing due to the credit freeze…but that is so American “it can’t happen here, it can’t happen to me,”… even though it is and right in front of our eyes.

And that is perhaps the most amazing trick as well as the biggest crime: making people believe that something works to their advantage, while in reality it drives them into debt-riddled poverty. People have this remarkable talent to fool themselves, to see only what they wish to see, and it can be a gift from heaven. But that’s not always a given.

http://theautomaticearth.blogs…

Today we conclude our small series on General Motors.  As you can probably tell by now, I favor helping out the company.  The company has history of market incompetence, it not only failed to meet various customer demands.  Adding to this, it designed its product line in such a way that made it at times more at the mercy of the price of petroleum than anything else.  Saying this, there are reasons to keep GM alive.

In his most recent missive, “Presto Change-o“, James Howard Kunstler shares his thoughts on bailing out the big three American automakers.

The dilemma is essentially this: the consumer economy we all knew and loved has died. There will be pressure from nearly every quarter to keep it hooked up to the costly life support machines even though it is dead. A different economy is waiting to be born, but it is nothing like the one that has died. The economy-to-come is one of rigor and austerity. It is not the kind of thing that a nation of overfed clowns is used to. Do we even have a prayer of getting to it, or are we going to squander our dwindling resources on life support for something that is already dead?

A case in point: the car industry. The Big Three, all functionally bankrupt, are now lined up for bail-outs from the treasury’s bottomless checking account. Personally, I believe the age of Happy Motoring is over. Many Americans have already bought their last car — they just don’t know it yet.

The changing reality that is our cratering, consumer-driven economy won’t stop the big three automakers from asking for a bailout.

In our first installment, we introduced you to the current battle for the fate of General Motors. We highlighted why they share some if not all of the blame for their current situation.  We talked about the various sides involved in one way or another with the situation of GM.  Today we tackle the big question, what many deemed “unthinkable” previously, what bankruptcy would mean for General Motors and you.

This column by Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post today is immoral crap. In an effort to defend the indefensible, Larry Summers 1991 writings suggesting we off-source pollution to poor countries, this jerk fully endorses polluting the poor overseas, and implictly, at home.  It is the antithesis of environmental justice.  

If an industrial plant that causes pollution is going to be built somewhere, it ought to be built where life is worth less.

Revisiting One Lawrence Summers Controversy

This diary is not about Larry Summers and whether he should be Treasury Secretary.  It is about this asshat, Michael Kinsley. The smarmy obscenity of his writings reveals a person without conscience.  Karma will get his ass one day.    

More, after the fold.

(also on Dkos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/… )

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another installment of Manufacturing Monday. Today we are going to cover something that has been in the news lately, General Motors.  Well to be exact, the potential bankruptcy of GM, and what it could mean to you.  For many, this is a non-issue, who cares about another car company and a failing one at that?  But indeed, it may just be that a collapse of GM could be worse than that of Lehman Brothers and AIG.  Of course we’ll cover, as always, the economic indicators for the past week and what they also mean.  So without further adieu, the Numbers!