Sep 17 2008
We’re hurt. We’re struggling. We look at our children and our dwindling bank accounts and piling debt and wonder how we’re going to make it. Will my company be bought tomorrow? Will I have a job?
What will happen to my kids?
Barack, I love your intellect. I appreciate the fact that you’ve presented real, tangible plans to fix our economy.
But I need to know that you get me.
Sep 17 2008
Can’t sleep, been thinking about the price of oil, worrying about it to be honest. Now you may be thinking “Venom, what are you crazy? A putz? A drop in the price of oil is a good thing!” And I would reply, yes, under normal circumstances it is. But these days, things ain’t so normal. Actually, right now, oil is up since yesterday, but it’s been in a slide for the past week or so.
Sep 17 2008
Proponents of a more systematic government role to help relieve financial institutions of their toxic securities range from Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary under President Clinton, to former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul A. Volcker and Alan Greenspan.
New York Times above the front page fold, 17 September 2008
Sep 16 2008
MSNBC has been examining the impact of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, and a recent article explores how the LHC has become an international magnet for brain power. The international “brain drain” is no longer flowing toward the United States in the field of particle physics, but rather the bright minds are being attracted to Europe. Or, more simply put – thus begins American “brain drain”.
The buzz of activity at CERN’s Swiss campus dramatically illustrates a changing of the guard on the frontier of physics, with Europe taking over from the United States. For the past 14 years, Europeans have taken the lead role in building and financing the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, which was started up on Wednesday. The U.S. federal government kicked in $531 million for construction.
Sep 16 2008
(Editor’s note: My sincerest apologies, I had planned to post this thing up this morning. But alas, my hard drive with the notes ended up saying it would mimic John McCain’s economic plan, and collapse on me. Several hours later looking for a hard drive and attempting to reinstall Vista, I’m up and running. So this is an abbreviated version of what I had planned. Once again, sorry, rest assured I will make up for this. )
Right now, you probably have heard that Lehman Brothers is no more, and the Merrill Lynch is now a vassal of Bank of America. Well things on the manufacturing side ain’t looking that great.
Sep 15 2008
The Financial Times first reported in news that Wall Street banks are fighting for life early this morning that the U.S. Federal Reserve was making “it easier for financial institutions to access Fed liquidity by easing terms on its borrowing facilities and accepting a much wider range of assets as collateral.”
The Fed likely figured the shock of bank failure today was an excellent time to sneak in a regulatory change. The Fed “widened the set of assets eligible as collateral for loans of Treasuries to include all investment grade paper, and raised the size of these Treasury loans to $200bn.”
The Fed also suspended rules that prohibit banks from using deposits to fund their investment banking subsidiaries.
The NY Times reports that the Fed loosens standards on emergency loans. Not just loosen, but “dramatically loosen” their standards.
In an obscure but highly important announcement late Sunday evening, the Fed said it would let Wall Street firms post as collateral much riskier assets – including equities, junk bonds, subprime mortgage-backed securities and even whole mortgages – in exchange for emergency loans through the Primary Dealer Credit Facility.
The Fed created the emergency loan program in March, at the same time that it engineered the shotgun marriage of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan. In itself, the program marked a historic expansion of the Fed’s lending to cover investment banks rather than only commercial banks.
Sep 13 2008
cross posted from The Dream Antilles
On Friday the nation’s recession, the big, ugly one that so many people feel directly in foreclosure of their homes, at the gas pump, in the cost of health care, in towering credit card debt, in the cost of heating their homes, in job and income insecurity, in lack of consumer confidence, in diminishing retirement funds, paid a personal, uninvited and unwanted visit to the county in the Hudson Valley of New York where I live.
The county’s fourth largest employer, Kaz Incorporated, a maker of humidifiers, announced that it was moving its production facilities from Columbia County, New York to Mexico. The announcement that about 350 workers were losing their jobs came on the heals of a similar announcement from LB Furniture earlier this year, that it was closing and that 150 production workers would lose their jobs. That’s 500 production jobs lost in 2008 in a small county with a population of about 62,000. That can modestly be described as an economic disaster.
Join me in Columbia County, New York.
Sep 09 2008
While Larry Kudlow and the rest of the neo-con Kudlowites are telling you the economy is Goldilocks, reality is trying to remind us that things aren’t so golden.
Sep 09 2008
I am not an economist or mathematician, In these areas I am a relatively ignorant lay-person. Just another working class stiff trying to make sense of it all. Please feel free to correct any mistakes I may make in the particulars, but I am more interested in the overview. I don’t know much.
But I am not blind.
It’s simple stuff really, on the surface where folks like me see it. It only gets complex when you listen to the Republican Spinmeisters when they try to justify and whine their way out of what they have inflicted on the country..
What is the BushMcCain economic policy? As I have said, all I can do is describe what I see from the layman’s perspective. The same old trickle down con game that Bush’s own father called voodoo economics when Reagan proposed it while running for office. Other than the eight years that a DEMOCRAT controlled the economy, the American middle and lower classes have been at the mercy of these voodoo econmics. The only change that I can see is that Bush Junior made it even easier for the rich to loot the economy, while the lower and middle class foot the bill. Just as we are footing the bill for the Bear Stearns failure and are about to foot the trillions of dollars necessary to bail out Fannie and Freddie. Which have failed because of the economic policies of Bush/McCain.
The theory is, at least in part, that if we make the rich as rich as possible….
…by not having them pay their fair share of taxes, they will then spend their riches buying things that Americans make, thus bolstering the economy. That they will be responsible to invest that middle and lower class funded largesse in new businesses creating new jobs. That they will invest in Research and Development to develop new technologies and enterprises. That they will fund entrepreneurship…somehow. Combine this myth with massive deregulation and replacing responsible oversight 9sound familiar?) With cronies and incompetent political appointments, putting the fox IN CHARGE OF the hen house and looking the other way while the alledgedly smart responsible rich people break the few remaining rules to manipulate and loot the economy. At the core of it is the fallacy that since the rich are rich, they are smart, responsible, and somehow worthy to be stewards of the economy. Stewards that will allegedly grow the economy in a way that benefits everyone. In other words, creating a new form of economic aristocracy that will direct the entire economy for the benefit of all. Here in America, where supposedly everyone has the chance to be rich. So, are you rich yet? Or are you enjoying the benefits of being trickled down upon? Other than the Clinton years, the Republicans have had since 1976 to make their voodoo economics succeed, to test their theory on the American economy.
How is that working out?
Are YOU better off than you were under Clinton? Is the economy better off? Is the country better off?
Sep 09 2008
From a stay-at-home mom.
I know, I know…my alias is “grannyhelen”, which I’ve used as a tribute to my own great-grandmother. I, myself, am a 40 year old stay-at-home mom of two in a small commuter city.
Wanna win my vote? It won’t be as easy as simply nominating a “hockey mom”, or even taking down the “maverick” image of John McCain. But women – and particularly mothers – may help decide this election, and it’s obvious that the McCain campaign picked Governor Palin to appeal to women like me. In order to put Barack Obama in the White House, Democrats must compete successfully for these votes.
Follow me over the fold for some talking point do’s and don’ts of this demographic.
Sep 08 2008
Greetings everyone, I hope your weekend was fantastic. Welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday! Some exciting and interesting stuff to cover this week. First the big time strike happening at Boeing. Then theres computer maker Dell looking to sell of ALL of it’s factories, and finally could Saudi Arabia claim to be Mecca of solar energy beside crude oil??
Sep 05 2008
This is the follow-up to News You Won’t Read in the Newspapers: Unemployment breaks 10%.
Yes, that’s right. 0.3% higher than the broad-unemployment peak two years after the 2001 recession kicked off. What you will read in the papers, though, is that “the” unemployment rate hit a five year high. That’s what you’ll see in the headlines … the headline unemployment rate.
The fact that broad unemployment seems to be at its highest point since they started calculating it this way in the mid-90’s? {*chirp*} {*chirp*} {*chirp*}